The
Writings of Alfred Percy Sinnett
#alfred_percy_sinnett
Alfred Percy Sinnett
1840 -1921
Esoteric
Buddhism
#esoteric_buddhism
Chapter 5
Devachan
#devachan
IT was not
possible to approach a consideration of the states into which the higher human
principles pass at death, without first indicating the general framework of the
whole design worked out in the course of the evolution of man. That much of my
task, however, having now been accomplished, we may pass on to consider the
natural destinies of each human Ego in the interval which elapses between the
close of one objective life and the commencement of another. At the
commencement of another, the Karma of the previous objective life determines
the state of life into which the individual shall be born. This doctrine of
Karma is one of the most interesting features of Buddhist philosophy. There has
been no secret about it at any time, though for want of a proper comprehension
of elements in the philosophy, which have been strictly esoteric, it may
sometimes have been misunderstood.
Karma is a
collective expression applied to that complicated group of affinities for good
and evil generated by a human being during life, and the character of which
inheres in his fifth principle all through the interval which elapses between
his death out of one objective life and his birth into the next. As stated
sometimes, the doctrine seems to be one which exacts the notion of a superior
spiritual authority summing up the acts of a man’s life at its close, taking
into consideration his good deeds and his bad, and giving judgment about him on
the whole aspect of the case. But a comprehension of the way in which the human
principles divide up at death, will afford a clue to the comprehension of the
way in which Karma operates, and also of the great subject we may better take
up first - the immediate spiritual condition of man after death.
At death the three
lower principles - the body, its mere physical vitality, and its astral
counterpart - are finally abandoned by that which really is the Man himself,
and the four higher principles escape into that world immediately above our
own; above our own, that is, in the order of spirituality - not above it at
all, but in it and of it, as regards real locality - the astral plane or kâma
loca, according to a very familiar Sanskrit expression. Here a division takes
place between the two duads, which the four higher principles include. The
explanation already given concerning the imperfect extent to which the upper
principles of man are as yet developed, will show that this estimation of the
process, as in the nature of a mechanical separation of the principles, is a rough
way of dealing with the matter. It must be modified in the reader’s mind by the
light of what has been already said. It may be otherwise described as a trial
of the extent to which the fifth principle has been developed. Regarded in the
light of the former idea, however, we must conceive the sixth and seventh
principles, on the one hand, drawing the fifth, the human soul, in one
direction, while the fourth draws it back earthwards in the other. Now, the
fifth principle is a very complex entity, separable itself into superior and
inferior elements. In the struggle which takes place between its late companion
principles, its best, purest, most elevated and spiritual portions cling to the
sixth, its lower instincts, impulses and recollections adhere to the fourth,
and it is in a measure torn asunder. The lower remnant, associating itself with
the fourth, floats off in the earth’s atmosphere, while the best elements,
those, be it understood, which really constitute the Ego of the late earthly
personality, the individuality, the consciousness thereof, follow the sixth and
seventh into a spiritual condition, the nature of which we are about to
examine.
Rejecting the
popular English name for this spiritual condition, as encrusted with too many
misconceptions to be convenient, let us keep to the Oriental designation of
that region or state into which the higher principles of human creatures pass
at death. This is additionally desirable because, although the Devachan of
Buddhist philosophy corresponds in some respects to the modern European idea of
heaven, it differs from heaven in others which are even more important.
Firstly, however,
in Devachan, that which survives is not merely the individual monad, which
survives through all the changes of the whole evolutionary scheme, and flits
from body to body, from planet to planet, and so forth - that which survives in
Devachan is the man’s own self-conscious personality, under some restrictions
indeed, which we will come to directly, but still it is the same personality as
regards its higher feelings, aspirations, affections, and even tastes, as it
was on earth. Perhaps it would be better to say the essence of the late
self-conscious personality.
It may be worth
the reader’s while to learn what Colonel H S. Olcott has to say in his
“Buddhist Catechism” (14th thousand) of the intrinsic difference
between “individuality” and “personality.” Since he wrote not only under the
approval of the High Priest of the Sripada and Galle, Sumangala, but also under
the direct instruction of his Adept Guru, his words will have weight for the
student of occultism. This is what he says in his appendix: -
“Upon reflection I
have submitted ‘personality’ for ‘individuality,’ as written in the first
edition. The successive appearances upon one or many earths, or ‘descents into
generation’ of the tanhaically coherent parts (Skandas) of a certain
being, are a succession of personalities. In each birth the personality
differs from that of the previous or next succeeding birth. Karma, the deus
ex machinâ, masks (or shall we say, reflects?) itself now in the
personality of a sage, again as an artisan, and so on throughout the string of
births. But though personalities ever shift, the one line of life along which
they are strung like beads runs unbroken.
“It is ever that
particular line, never any other. It is therefore individual, an individual
vital undulation which began in Nirvana or the subjective side of Nature, as
the light or heat undulation through æther began at its dynamic source; is
careering through the objective side of Nature, under the impulse of Karma and
the creative direction of Tanha; and tends through many cyclic changes back to
Nirvana. Mr Rhys Davids calls that which passes from personality to personality
along the individual chain ‘character’ or ‘doing.’ Since ‘character’ is not a
mere metaphysical abstraction, but the sum of one’s mental qualities and moral
propensities, would it not help to dispel what Mr Rhys Davids calls ‘the
desperate expedient of a mystery,’ if we regarded the life undulation as
individuality, and each of its series of natal manifestations as a separate
personality?
“The denial of
‘soul’ by Buddha (see ‘Sanyutto Nikaya,’ the Sutta Pitaka) points to the
prevalent delusive belief in an independent transmissible personality; and
entity that could move from birth to birth unchanged, or go to a place or state
where, as such perfect entity, it could eternally enjoy or suffer. And what he
shows is that the ‘I am I’ consciousness is, as regards permanency, logically
impossible, since its elementary constituents constantly change, and the ‘I’ of
one birth differs from the ‘I’ of every other birth. But everything that I have
found in Buddhism accords with the theory of a gradual evolution of the perfect
man - viz. A Buddha through numberless natal experiences. And in the
consciousness of that person who at the end of a given chain of beings attains
Buddha-hood, or who succeeds in attaining the fourth stage of Dhyâna, or mystic
self-development, in any one of his births anterior to the final one, the
scenes of all these serial births are perceptible. In the ‘Jatakattahavannana,’
so well translated by Mr Rhys Davids, an expression continually recurs which I
think rather supports such an idea - viz. ‘Then the blessed one made
manifest an occurrence hidden by change of birth,’ or ‘that which had been
hidden by, &c.’ Early Buddhism, then, clearly held to a permanency of
records in the Akâsa, and the potential capacity of man to read the same when
he has evoluted to the stage of true individual enlightenment.”
The purely sensual
feelings and tastes of the late personality will drop off from it in Devachan,
but it does not follow that nothing is preservable in that state, except
feelings and thoughts having a direct reference to religion or spiritual
philosophy. On the contrary, all the superior phases, even of sensuous emotion,
find their appropriate sphere of development in Devachan. To suggest a whole
range of ideas by means of one illustration, a soul in Devachan, if the soul of
a man who was passionately devoted to music, would be continuously enraptured
by the sensations music produces. The person whose happiness of the higher sort
on earth had been entirely centered in the exercise of the affections will miss
none in Devachan of those whom he or she loved. But, at once it will be asked,
if some of these are not themselves fit for Devachan, how then? The answer is,
that does not matter. For the person who loved them they will be there.
It is not necessary to say much more to give a clue to the position. Devachan
is a subjective state. It will seem, as real as the chairs and tables round us;
and remember that, above all things, to the profound philosophy of occultism
are the chairs and tables, and the whole objective scenery of the world, unreal
and merely transitory delusions of sense. As real as the realities of this
world to us, and even more so, will be the realities of Devachan to those who
go into that state.
From this it
ensues that the subjective isolation of Devachan, as it will perhaps be
conceived at first, is not real isolation at all, as the word is understood on
the physical plane of existence; it is companionship with all that the true
soul craves for, whether persons, things, or knowledge. An a patient
consideration of the place in Nature which Devachan occupies will show that
this subjective isolation of each human unit is the only condition which
renders possible anything which can be described as a felicitous spiritual
existence after death for mankind at large, and Devachan is as much a purely
and absolutely felicitous condition for all who attain it, as Avitchi is the
reverse of it. There is no inequality or injustice in the system; Devachan is
by no means the same thing for the good and the indifferent alike, but it is
not a life of responsibility, and therefore there is no logical place for it
for suffering, any more than in Avitchi there is any room for enjoyment or repentance.
It is a life of effects, not of causes; a life of being paid your
earnings, not of labouring for them. Therefore it is impossible to be during
that life cognizant of what is going on on earth. Under the operation of such
cognition there would be no true happiness possible in the state after death. A
heaven which constituted a watch-tower, from which the occupants could still
survey the miseries of the earth, would really be a place of acute mental
suffering for its most sympathetic, unselfish, and meritorious inhabitants. If
we invest them in imagination with such a very limited range of sympathy that
they could be imagined as not caring about the spectacle of suffering after the
few persons to whom they were immediately attached had died and joined them,
still they would have a very unhappy period of waiting to go through before
survivors reached the end of an often long and toilsome existence below. And
even this hypothesis would be further vitiated by making heaven most painful
for occupants who were most unselfish and sympathetic, whose reflected distress
would thus continue on behalf of the afflicted race of mankind generally, even
after their personal kindred had been rescued by the lapse of time. The only
escape from this dilemma lies in the supposition that heaven is not yet opened
for business, so to speak, and that all people who have ever lived from Adam
downwards are still lying in a death-like trance, waiting for the resurrection
at the end of the world. This hypothesis also has its embarrassments, but we
are concerned at present with the scientific harmony of esoteric Buddhism, not
with the theories of other creeds.
Readers, however,
who may grant that a purview of earthly life from heaven would render happiness
in heaven impossible, may still doubt whether true happiness is possible in the
state, as it may be objected, of monotonous isolation now described. The
objection is merely raised from the point of view of an imagination that cannot
escape from its present surroundings. To begin with, about monotony. No one
will complain of having experienced monotony during the minute, or moment, or
half-hour, as it may have been of the greatest happiness he may have enjoyed in
life. Most people have had some happy moments, at all events, to look back to
for the purpose of this comparison; and let us take even one such minute or
moment, too short to be open to the least suspicion of monotony, and imagine
its sensations immensely prolonged without any external events in progress to
mark the lapse of time. There is no room, in such a condition of things, for
the conception of weariness. The unalloyed, unchangeable sensation of intense
happiness goes on and on, not for ever, because the causes which have produced
it are not infinite themselves, but for very long periods of time, until the
efficient impulse has exhausted itself.
Nor must it be
supposed that there is, so to speak, no change of occupation for souls in
Devachan - that any one moment of earthly sensation is selected for exclusive
perpetuation. As a teacher of the highest authority on this subject writes: -
“There are two
fields of causal manifestations - the objective and subjective. The grosser
energies - those which operate in the denser condition of matter - manifest
objectively in the next physical life, their outcome being the new personality
of each birth marshaling within the grand cycle of the evolving individuality.
It is but the moral and spiritual activities that find their sphere of effects
in Devachan. And, thought and fancy being limitless, how can it be argued for
one moment that there is anything like monotony in the state of Devachan? Few
are the men whose lives were so utterly destitute of feeling, love, or of a
more or less intense predilection for some one line of thought as to be made
unfit for a proportionate period of Devachanic experience beyond their earthly
life. So, for instance, while the vices, physical and sensual attractions, say,
of a great philosopher, but a bad friend and a selfish man, may result in the
birth of a new and still greater intellect, but at the same time a most
miserable man, reaping the Karmic effects of all the causes produced by the
‘old’ being, and whose make-up was inevitable from the pre-ponderating proclivities
of that being in the preceding birth, the intermedial period between the two
physical births cannot be, in Nature’s exquisitely well-adjusted laws,
but a hiatus of unconsciousness. There can be no such dreary blank as
kindly promised, or rather implied, by Christian Protestant theology, to the
‘departed souls,’ which, between death and ‘resurrection,’ have to hang on in
space, in mental catalepsy, awaiting the ‘Day of Judgment.’ Causes produced by
mental and spiritual energy being far greater and more important than those
that are created by physical impulses, their effects have to be, for weal or
woe, proportionately as great. Lives on this earth, or other earths, affording
no proper field for such effects, and every labourer being entitled to his own harvest,
they have to expand in either Devachan or Avitchi. [The lowest states of
Devachan interchain with those of Avitchi.] Bacon for instance, whom a poet
called
‘The brightest,
wisest, meanest of mankind,’might reappear in his next incarnation as a
greedy money-getter, with extraordinary intellectual capacities. But, however
great the latter, they would find no proper field in which that particular line
of thought, pursued during his previous lifetime by the founder of modern
philosophy, could reap all its dues. It would be but the astute lawyer, the
corrupt Attorney-General, the ungrateful friend, and the dishonest Lord
Chancellor, who might find, led on by his Karma, a congenial new soil in the body
of the money-lender, and reappear as a new Shylock. But where would Bacon, the
incomparable thinker, with whom philosophical inquiry upon the most profound
problems of Nature was his ‘first and last and only love,’ where would this
‘intellectual giant of his race,’ once disrobed of his lower nature, go to? Have
all the effects of that magnificent intellect to vanish and disappear?
Certainly not. Thus his moral and spiritual qualities would also have to find a
field in which their energies could expand themselves. Devachan is such a
field. Hence all the great plans of moral reform, of intellectual research into
abstract principles of Nature - all the divine, spiritual aspirations that had
so filled the brightest part of his life would, in Devachan, come to fruition;
and the abstract entity, known in the preceding birth as Francis Bacon, and
that maybe known in its subsequent re-incarnation as a despised usurer -
that Bacon’s own creation, his Frankenstein, the son of his Karma - shall in
the meanwhile occupy itself in this inner world, also of its own preparation,
in enjoying the effects of the grand beneficial spiritual causes sown in life.
It would live a purely and spiritually conscious existence - a dream of
realistic vividness - until Karma, being satisfied in that direction, and the
ripple of force reaching the edge of its sub-cycle basin, the being should move
into its next area of causes, either in this same world or another, according
to his stage of progression . . . . Therefore, there is’ a change of
occupation,’ a continual change, in Devachan. For that dreamlife is but the
fruition, the harvest-time, of those psychic seed-germs dropped from the tree
of physical existence in our moments of dream and hope - fancy-glimpses of
bliss and happiness, stifled in an ungrateful social soil, blooming in the rosy
dawn of Devachan, and ripening under its ever-fructifying sky. If man had but
one single moment of ideal experience, not even then could it be, as
erroneously supposed, the indefinite prolongation of that ‘single moment.’ That
one note, struck from the lyre of life, would form the key-note of the being’s
subjective state, and work out into numberless harmonic tones and semitones of
psychic phantasmagoria. There, all unrealized hopes, aspirations, dreams,
become fully realized, and the dreams of the objective become the realities of
the subjective existence. And there, behind the curtain of Maya, its vaporous
and deceptive appearances are perceived by the Initiate, who has learned the
great secret how to penetrate thus deep into the Arcana of Being . . . .”
As physical
existence has its cumulative intensity from infancy to prime, and its
diminishing energy thenceforward to dotage and death, so the dream-life of
Devachan is lived correspondentially. There is the first flutter of psychic
life, the attainment of prime, the gradual exhaustion of force passing into
conscious lethargy, semi-unconsciousness, oblivion and - not death, but birth!
- birth into another personality and the resumption of action which daily
begets new congeries of causes that must be worked out in another term of
Devachan.
“It is not a
reality then, it is a mere dream,” objectors will urge; “the soul so bathed in
a delusive sensation of enjoyment, which has no reality all the while, is being
cheated by Nature, and must encounter a terrible shock when it wakes to its
mistake.” But, in the nature of things, it never does or can wake. The waking
from Devachan is its next birth into objective life, and the draught of Lethe
has then been taken. Nor as regards the isolation of each soul is there any
consciousness of isolation whatever; nor is there ever possibly a parting from
its chosen associates. Those associates are not in the nature of companions who
may wish to go away, of friends who may tire of the friend that loves them,
even if he or she does not tire of them. Love, the creating force, has placed
their living image before the personal soul which craves for their presence,
and that image will never fly away.
On this aspect of
the subject I may again avail myself of the language of my teacher:-
“Objectors of that
kind will be simply postulating an incongruity, an intercourse of entities in
Devachan, which applies only to the mutual relationship of physical existence!
Two sympathetic souls, both disembodied, will each work out its own Devachanic
sensations, making the other a sharer in its subjective bliss. This will be as
real to them, naturally, as though both were yet on this earth. Nevertheless,
each is dissociated from the other as regards personal or corporeal
association. While the latter is the only one of its kind that is recognized by
our earth experience as an actual intercourse, for the Devachanee it
would be not only something unreal, but could have no existence for it
in any sense, not even as a delusion: a physical body or even a Mâyâvi-rûpa
remaining to its spiritual senses as invisible as it is itself to the
physical senses of those who loved it best on earth. Thus even though one of
the ‘sharers’ were alive and utterly unconscious of that intercourse in his
waking state, still every dealing with him would be to the Devachanee an
absolute reality, And what actual companionship could there ever
be other than the purely idealistic one, as above described, between two subjective
entities which are not even as material as that ethereal body-shadow - the
Mâyâvi-rûpa? To object to this on the ground that one is thus ‘cheated by
Nature,’ and to call it ‘ a delusive sensation of enjoyment which has no
reality,’ is to show oneself utterly unfit to comprehend the conditions of life
and being outside of our material existence. For how can the same distinction
be made in Devachan - i.e. outside of the conditions of earth-life - between
what we call a reality and a factitious or an artificial counterfeit of the
same, in this, our world? The same principle cannot apply to the two sets of
conditions. It is conceivable that what we call a reality in our embodied
physical state will exist under the same conditions as an actuality for a
disembodied entity? On earth, man is dual - in the sense of being a thing of
matter and a thing of spirit; hence the natural distinction made by his mind -
the analyst of his physical sensations and spiritual perceptions - between an
actuality and a fiction; though, even in this life, the two groups of faculties
are constantly equilibrating each other, each group when dominant seeing as
fiction or delusion what the other believes to be most real. But in Devachan
our Ego has ceased to be dualistic, in the above sense, and becomes a spiritual,
mental entity. That which was a fiction, a dream in life, and which had its
being but in the region of ‘fancy,’ becomes, under the new conditions of
existence, the only possible reality. Thus, for us to postulate the
possibility of any other reality for a Devachanee is to maintain an absurdity,
a monstrous fallacy, an idea unphilosophical to the last degree. The actual is
that which is acted or performed de facto: ‘the reality of a thing is
proved by its actuality.’ And the suppositions and artificial having no
possible existence in that Devachanic state, the logical sequence is that
everything in it is actual and real. For, again, whether overshadowing the five
principles during the life of the personality, or entirely separated from the
grosser principles by the dissolution of the body - the sixth principle, or our
‘Spiritual Soul,’ has no substance - it is ever Arupa; nor is it confined to
one place with a limited horizon of perceptions around it. Therefore, whether in
or out of its mortal body it is ever distinct, and free from its
limitations; and if we call its Devachanic experiences ‘a cheating of Nature,’
then we should never be allowed to call ‘reality’ any of those purely abstract
feelings that belong entirely to, and are reflected and assimilated by, our higher
soul - such, for instance, as an ideal perception of the beautiful, profound
philanthropy, love, &c., as well as every other purely spiritual sensation
that during life fills our inner being with either immense joy or pain.”
We must remember
that by the very nature of the system described there are infinite varieties of
well-being in Devachan, suited to the infinite varieties of merit in mankind.
If “the next world” really were the objective heaven which ordinary theology
preaches, there would be endless injustice and inaccuracy in its operation.
People, to begin with, would be either admitted or excluded, and the
differences of favour shown to different guests within the all-favoured region
would not sufficiently provide for differences of merit in this life. But the
real heaven of our earth adjusts itself to the needs and merits of each new
arrival with unfailing certainty. Not merely as regards the duration of the
blissful state, which is determined by the causes engendered during objective
life, but as regards the intensity and amplitude of the emotions which
constitute that blissful state, the heaven of each person who attains the
really existent heaven is precisely fitted to his capacity for enjoying it. It
is the creation of his own aspirations and faculties. More than this it may be
impossible for the uninitiated comprehension to realize. But this indication of
its character is enough to show how perfectly it falls into its appointed place
in the whole scheme of evolution.
“Devachan,” to
resume my direct quotations, “is, of course, a state, not a locality, as
much as Avitchi, its antithesis (which please not to confound with hell).
Esoteric Buddhist philosophy has three principal lokas so-called -
namely, 1. Kâma loka; 2. Rûpa loka; and 3. Arûpa loka; or
in their literal translation and meaning - 1. world of desires or passions, of
unsatisfied earthly cravings - the abode of ‘Shells’ and Victims, of
Elementaries and Suicides; 2. the world of forms - i.e., of shadows more
spiritual, having form and objectivity, but no substance; and 3. the formless
world, or rather the world of no form, the incorporeal, since its denizens can
have neither body, shape, nor colour for us mortals, and in the sense that we
give to these terms. These are the three spheres of ascending spirituality in
which the several groups of subjective and semi-subjective entities find their
attractions. All but the suicides and the victims of premature violent deaths
go, according to their attractions and powers, either into the Devachanic or
the Avitchi state, which two states form the numberless subdivisions of Rûpa
and Arûpa lokas - that is to say, that such states not only vary in degree, or
in their presentation to the subject entity as regards form, colour, &c.,
but that there is an infinite scale of such states, in their progressive
spirituality and intensity of feeling, from the lowest in the Rûpa, up to the
highest and the most exalted in the Arûpa-loka. The student must bear in mind
that personality is the synonym for limitation; and that the more
selfish, the more contracted the person’s ideas, the closer will he cling to
the lower spheres of being, the longer loiter on the plane of selfish social
intercourse.”
Devachan being a
condition of mere subjective enjoyment, the duration and intensity of which is
determined by the merit and spirituality of the earth-life last past, there is
no opportunity, while the soul inhabits it, for the punctual requital of evil
deeds. But Nature does not content herself with either forgiving sins in a free
and easy way, or damning sinners outright, like a lazy master too indolent,
rather than too good-natured, to govern his household justly. The Karma of
evil, be it great or small, is at certainly operative at the appointed time as
the Karma of good. But the place of its operation is not Devachan, but either a
new rebirth, or Avitchi - a state to be reached only in exceptional cases and
by exceptional natures. In other words, while the common-place sinner will reap
the fruits of his evil deeds in a following re-incarnation, the exceptional
criminal, the aristocrat of sin, has Avitchi in prospect - that is to say, the
condition of subjective spiritual misery which is the reverse side of Devachan.
“Avitchi is a
state of the most ideal spiritual wickedness, something akin to the
state of Lucifer, so superbly described by
Generally the
re-birth into objective existence is the event for which the Karma of evil
patiently waits; and then it irresistibly asserts itself, not that the Karma of
good exhausts itself in Devachan, leaving the unhappy monad to develop a new
consciousness with no material beyond the evil deeds of its last personality.
The re-birth will be qualified by the merit as well as the demerit of the
previous life, but the Devachan existence is a rosy sleep - a peaceful night,
with dreams more vivid than day, and imperishable for many centuries.
It will be seen
that the Devachan state is only one of the conditions of existence which go to
make up the whole spiritual or relatively spiritual complement of our earth
life. Observers of spiritualistic phenomena would never have been perplexed, as
they have been, if there were no other but the Devachan state to be dealt with.
For once in Devachan there is very little opportunity for communication between
a spirit, then wholly absorbed in its own sensations and practically oblivious
of the earth left behind, and its former friends still living. Whether gone
before or yet remaining on earth, those friends, if the bond of affection has
been sufficiently strong, will be with the happy spirit still, to all intents
and purposes for him, and as happy, blissful, innocent, as the disembodied
dreamer himself. It is possible, however, for yet living persons to have
visions of Devachan, though such visions are rare, and only one-sided, the
entities in Devachan, sighted by the earthly clairvoyant, being quite
unconscious themselves of undergoing such observation. The spirit of the
clairvoyant ascends into the condition of Devachan in such rare visions, and
thus becomes subject to the vivid delusions of that existence. It is under the
impression that the spirits, with which it is in Devachanic bonds of sympathy,
have come down to visit earth and itself, while the converse operation has
really taken place. The clairvoyant’s spirit has been raised towards those in
Devachan. Thus many of the subjective spiritual communications - most of them
when the sensitives are pure-minded - are real, though it is most difficult for
the uninitiated medium to fix in his mind the true and correct pictures of what
he sees and hears. In the same way some of the phenomena called psychography
(though more rarely) are also real. The spirit of the sensitive, getting
odylized, so to say, by the aura of the spirit in the Devachan, becomes
for a few minutes that departed personality, and writes in the handwriting of
the latter, in his language and in his thoughts, as they were during his
lifetime. The two spirits become blended in one, and the preponderance of one
over the other during such phenomena determines the preponderance of
personality in the characteristic exhibited. Thus it may incidentally be
observed, what is called rapport, is, in plain fact, an identity of
molecular vibration between the astral part of the incarnate medium and the
astral part of the disincarnate personality.
As already
indicated, and as the common sense of the mater would show, there are great
varieties of states in Devachan, and each personality drops into its befitting
place there. Thence, consequently he emerges in his befitting place in the
world of causes, this earth or another, as the case may be, when his time for
re-birth comes. Coupled with survival of the affinities, comprehensively
described as Karma, the affinities both for good and evil engendered by the
previous life, this process will be seen to accomplish nothing less than an
explanation of the problem which has always been regarded as so
incomprehensible - the inequalities of life. The conditions on which we enter
life are the consequences of the use we have made of our last set of
conditions. They do not impede the development of fresh Karma, whatever they
may be, for this will be generated by the use we make of them in turn.
Nor is it to be supposed that every event of a current life which bestows joy
or sorrow is old Karma bearing fruit. Many may be the immediate consequences of
acts in the life to which they belong - ready-money transactions with Nature, so
to speak, of which it may be hardly necessary to make any entry in her books.
But the great inequalities of life, as regards the start in it which different
human beings make, is a manifest consequence of old Karma, the infinite
varieties of which always keep up a constant supply of recruits for all the
manifold varieties of human condition.
It must not be
supposed that the real Ego slips instantaneously at death from the earth life
and its entanglements, into the Devachanic condition. When the division of, or
purification of the fifth principle has been accomplished in Kâma loca by the
contending attractions of the fourth and sixth principles, the real Ego passes
into a period of unconscious gestation. I have spoken already of the way in
which the Devachanic life is in itself a process of growth, maturity, and
decline; but the analogies of earth are even more closely preserved. There is a
spiritual ante-natal state at the entrance to spiritual life, as there is a
similar and equally unconscious physical state at the entrance to objective
life. And this period, in different cases, may be of very different duration -
from a few moments to immense periods of years. When a man dies, his soul or
fifth principle becomes unconscious and loses all remembrance of things
internal as wall as external. Whether his stay in Kâma loca has to last but a
few moments, hours, days, weeks, months or years, whether he dies a natural or
a violent death, whether this occurs in youth or age, and whether the Ego has
been good, bad, or indifferent, his consciousness leaves him as suddenly as the
flame leaves a wick when it is blown out. When life has retired from the last
particle of the brain matter, his perceptive faculties become extinct for ever,
and his spiritual powers of cognition and volition become for the time being as
extinct as the others. His Mâyâvi-rûpa may be thrown into objectivity, as in
the case of apparitions after death, but unless it is projected by a conscious
or intense desire to see or appear to some one shooting through the dying
brain, the apparition will be simply automatic. The revival of consciousness in
Kâma loca is obviously, from what has been said, a phenomenon that depends on
the characteristic of the principles passing, unconsciously at the moment, out
of the dying body. It may become tolerably complete under circumstances by no
means to be desired, or it may be obliterated by a rapid passage into the
gestation state leading to Devachan. This gestation state may be of very long
duration in proportion to the Ego’s spiritual stamina, and Devachan accounts
for the remainder of the period between death and the next physical re-birth.
The whole period is, of course, of very varying length in the case of different
persons, but re-birth in less than fifteen hundred years is spoken of as almost
impossible, while the stay in Devachan, which rewards a very rich Karma is
sometimes said to extend to enormous periods.
ANNOTATIONS
The comments I
have to make on the doctrine embodied in the foregoing chapter will be
postponed most conveniently to the end of the next, and offered in connection
with those applying to the conditions of Kâma loca.
___________________________________
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