{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_18266/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_18266","id":"gutenberg_18266","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18266","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Death","Future life","Theosophy"],"text":"Produced by Bryan Ness, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                    _Theosophical Manuals. No. 3._\n\n\n\n\n                          DEATH--AND AFTER?\n\n                                  BY\n\n                            ANNIE BESANT.\n\n\n\n                           (20TH THOUSAND)\n\n\n\n\n                   Theosophical Publishing Society\n\n                          London and Benares\n\n               City Agents, Percy Lund Humphries & Co.\n\n                      Amen Corner, London, E.C.\n\n\n                                 1906\n\n\n                         _PRICE ONE SHILLING_\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\n_Few words are needed in sending this little book out into the world.\nIt is the third of a series of Manuals designed to meet the public\ndemand for a simple exposition of Theosophical teachings. Some have\ncomplained that our literature is at once too abstruse, too technical,\nand too expensive for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope that the\npresent series may succeed in supplying what is a very real want.\nTheosophy is not only for the learned; it is for all. Perhaps among\nthose who in these little books catch their first glimpse of its\nteachings, there may be a few who will be led by them to penetrate\nmore deeply into its philosophy, its science, and its religion, facing\nits abstruser problems with the student's zeal and the neophyte's\nardour. But these Manuals are not written for the eager student, whom\nno initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy men\nand women of the work-a-day world, and seek to make plain some of the\ngreat truths that render life easier to bear and death easier to face.\nWritten by servants of the Masters who are the Elder Brothers of our\nrace, they can have no other object than to serve our fellow-men._\n\n\nDEATH--AND AFTER?\n\nWho does not remember the story of the Christian missionary in\nBritain, sitting one evening in the vast hall of a Saxon king,\nsurrounded by his thanes, having come thither to preach the gospel of\nhis Master; and as he spoke of life and death and immortality, a bird\nflew in through an unglazed window, circled the hall in its flight,\nand flew out once more into the darkness of the night. The Christian\npriest bade the king see in the flight of the bird within the hall the\ntransitory life of man, and claimed for his faith that it showed the\nsoul, in passing from the hall of life, winging its way not into the\ndarkness of night, but into the sunlit radiance of a more glorious\nworld. Out of the darkness, through the open window of Birth, the life\nof a man comes to the earth; it dwells for a while before our eyes;\ninto the darkness, through the open window of Death, it vanishes out\nof our sight. And man has questioned ever of Religion, Whence comes\nit? Whither goes it? and the answers have varied with the faiths.\nTo-day, many a hundred year since Paulinus talked with Edwin, there\nare more people in Christendom who question whether man has a spirit\nto come anywhence or to go anywhither than, perhaps, in the world's\nhistory could ever before have been found at one time. And the very\nChristians who claim that Death's terrors have been abolished, have\nsurrounded the bier and the tomb with more gloom and more dismal\nfuneral pomp than have the votaries of any other creed. What can be\nmore depressing than the darkness in which a house is kept shrouded,\nwhile the dead body is awaiting sepulture? What more repellent than\nthe sweeping robes of lustreless crape, and the purposed hideousness\nof the heavy cap in which the widow laments the \"deliverance\" of her\nhusband \"from the burden of the flesh\"? What more revolting than the\nartificially long faces of the undertaker's men, the drooping\n\"weepers\", the carefully-arranged white handkerchiefs, and, until\nlately, the pall-like funeral cloaks? During the last few years, a\ngreat and marked improvement has been made. The plumes, cloaks, and\nweepers have well-nigh disappeared. The grotesquely ghastly hearse is\nalmost a thing of the past, and the coffin goes forth heaped over with\nflowers instead of shrouded in the heavy black velvet pall. Men and\nwomen, though still wearing black, do not roll themselves up in\nshapeless garments like sable winding-sheets, as if trying to see how\nmiserable they could make themselves by the imposition of artificial\ndiscomforts. Welcome common-sense has driven custom from its throne,\nand has refused any longer to add these gratuitous annoyances to\nnatural human grief.\n\nIn literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding\nDeath has been characteristic of Christianity. Death has been painted\nas a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening\nfigure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking\nan hour-glass--all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round\nthis rightly-named King of Terrors. Milton, who has done so much with\nhis stately rhythm to mould the popular conceptions of modern\nChristianity, has used all the sinewy strength of his magnificent\ndiction to surround with horror the figure of Death.\n\n                              The other shape,\n    If shape it might be called, that shape had none\n    Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,\n    Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,\n    For each seemed either; black it stood as night,\n    Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,\n    And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head\n    The likeness of a kingly crown had on.\n    Satan was now at hand, and from his seat\n    The monster moving onward came as fast,\n    With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode....\n    ... So spoke the grisly terror: and in shape\n    So speaking, and so threatening, grew tenfold\n    More dreadful and deform....\n    ... but he, my inbred enemy,\n    Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart,\n    Made to destroy: I fled, and cried out _Death!_\n    Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed\n    From all her caves, and back resounded _Death_.[1]\n\nThat such a view of Death should be taken by the professed followers\nof a Teacher said to have \"brought life and immortality to light\" is\npassing strange. The claim, that as late in the history of the world\nas a mere eighteen centuries ago the immortality of the Spirit in man\nwas brought to light, is of course transparently absurd, in the face\nof the overwhelming evidence to the contrary available on all hands.\nThe stately Egyptian Ritual with its _Book of the Dead_, in which are\ntraced the post-mortem journeys of the Soul, should be enough, if it\nstood alone, to put out of court for ever so preposterous a claim.\nHear the cry of the Soul of the righteous:\n\n    O ye, who make the escort of the God, stretch out to me your\n    arms, for I become one of you. (xvii. 22.)\n\n    Hail to thee, Osiris, Lord of Light, dwelling in the mighty\n    abode, in the bosom of the absolute darkness. I come to thee,\n    a purified Soul; my two hands are around thee. (xxi. 1.)\n\n    I open heaven; I do what was commanded in Memphis. I have\n    knowledge of my heart; I am in possession of my heart, I am\n    in possession of my arms, I am in possession of my legs, at\n    the will of myself. My Soul is not imprisoned in my body at\n    the gates of Amenti. (xxvi. 5, 6.)\n\nNot to multiply to weariness quotations from a book that is wholly\ncomposed of the doings and sayings of the disembodied man, let it\nsuffice to give the final judgment on the victorious Soul:\n\n    The defunct shall be deified among the Gods in the lower\n    divine region, he shall never be rejected.... He shall drink\n    from the current of the celestial river.... His Soul shall\n    not be imprisoned, since it is a Soul that brings salvation\n    to those near it. The worms shall not devour it. (clxiv.\n    14-16.)\n\nThe general belief in Re-incarnation is enough to prove that the\nreligions of which it formed a central doctrine believed in the\nsurvival of the Soul after Death; but one may quote as an example a\npassage from the _Ordinances of Manu_, following on a disquisition on\nmetempsychosis, and answering the question of deliverance from\nrebirths.\n\n    Amid all these holy acts, the knowledge of self [should be\n    translated, knowledge of the _Self_, Atma] is said (to be)\n    the highest; this indeed is the foremost of all sciences,\n    since from it immortality is obtained.[2]\n\nThe testimony of the great Zarathustrean Religion is clear, as is\nshown by the following, translated from the _Avesta_, in which, the\njourney of the Soul after death having been described, the ancient\nScripture proceeds:\n\n    The soul of the pure man goes the first step and arrives at\n    (the Paradise) Humata; the soul of the pure man takes the\n    second step and arrives at (the Paradise) Hukhta; it goes the\n    third step and arrives at (the Paradise) Hvarst; the soul of\n    the pure man takes the fourth step and arrives at the Eternal\n    Lights.\n\n    To it speaks a pure one deceased before, asking it: How art\n    thou, O pure deceased, come away from the fleshy dwellings,\n    from the earthly possessions, from the corporeal world hither\n    to the invisible, from the perishable world hither to the\n    imperishable, as it happened to thee--to whom hail!\n\n    Then speaks Ahura-Mazda: Ask not him whom thou asketh, (for)\n    he is come on the fearful, terrible, trembling way, the\n    separation of body and soul.[3]\n\nThe Persian _Desatir_ speaks with equal definiteness. This work\nconsists of fifteen books, written by Persian prophets, and was\nwritten originally in the Avestaic language; \"God\" is Ahura-Mazda, or\nYazdan:\n\n    God selected man from animals to confer on him the soul,\n    which is a substance free, simple, immaterial, non-compounded\n    and non-appetitive. And that becomes an angel by improvement.\n\n    By his profound wisdom and most sublime intelligence, he\n    connected the soul with the material body.\n\n    If he (man) does good in the material body, and has a good\n    knowledge and religion he is _Hartasp_....\n\n    As soon as he leaves this material body, I (God) take him up\n    to the world of angels, that he may have an interview with\n    the angels, and behold me.\n\n    And if he is not Hartasp, but has wisdom and abstains from\n    vice, I will promote him to the rank of angels.\n\n    Every person in proportion to his wisdom and piety will find\n    a place in the rank of wise men, among the heavens and stars.\n    And in that region of happiness he will remain for ever.[4]\n\nIn China, the immemorial custom of worshipping the Souls of ancestors\nshows how completely the life of man was regarded as extending beyond\nthe tomb. The _Shu King_--placed by Mr. James Legge as the most\nancient of Chinese classics, containing historical documents ranging\nfrom B.C. 2357-627--is full of allusions to these Souls, who with\nother spiritual beings, watch over the affairs of their descendants\nand the welfare of the kingdom. Thus Pan-kang, ruling from B.C.\n1401-1374, exhorts his subjects:\n\n    My object is to support and nourish you all. I think of my\n    ancestors (who are now) the spiritual sovereigns.... Were I\n    to err in my government, and remain long here, my high\n    sovereign (the founder of our dynasty) would send down on me\n    great punishment for my crime, and say, \"Why do you oppress\n    my people?\" If you, the myriads of the people, do not attend\n    to the perpetuation of your lives, and cherish one mind with\n    me, the One man, in my plans, the former kings will send down\n    on you great punishment for your crime, and say, \"Why do you\n    not agree with our young grandson, but go on to forfeit your\n    virtue?\" When they punish you from above, you will have no\n    way of escape.... Your ancestors and fathers will (now) cut\n    you off and abandon you, and not save you from death.[5]\n\nIndeed, so practical is this Chinese belief, held to-day as in those\nlong-past ages, that \"the change that men call Death\" seems to play a\nvery small part in the thoughts and lives of the people of the Flowery\nLand.\n\nThese quotations, which might be multiplied a hundred-fold, may\nsuffice to prove the folly of the idea that immortality came to \"light\nthrough the gospel\". The whole ancient world basked in the full\nsunshine of belief in the immortality of man, lived in it daily,\nvoiced it in its literature, went with it in calm serenity through the\ngate of Death.\n\nIt remains a problem why Christianity, which vigorously and joyously\nre-affirmed it, should have growing in its midst the unique terror of\nDeath that has played so large a part in its social life, its\nliterature, and its art. It is not simply the belief in hell that has\nsurrounded the grave with horror, for other Religions have had their\nhells, and yet their followers have not been harassed by this shadowy\nFear. The Chinese, for instance, who take Death as such a light and\ntrivial thing, have a collection of hells quite unique in their varied\nunpleasantness. Maybe the difference is a question of race rather than\nof creed; that the vigorous life of the West shrinks from its\nantithesis, and that its unimaginative common-sense finds a bodiless\ncondition too lacking in solidity of comfort; whereas the more dreamy,\nmystical East, prone to meditation, and ever seeking to escape from\nthe thraldom of the senses during earthly life, looks on the\ndisembodied state as eminently desirable, and as most conducive to\nunfettered thought.\n\nEre passing to the consideration of the history of man in the\npost-mortem state, it is necessary, however briefly, to state the\nconstitution of man, as viewed by the Esoteric Philosophy, for we must\nhave in mind the constituents of his being ere we can understand their\ndisintegration. Man then consists of\n\n_The Immortal Triad_:\n\nAtma.\nBuddhi.\nManas.\n\n_The Perishable Quaternary_:\n\nKama.\nPrana.\nEtheric Double.\nDense Body.\n\nThe dense body is the physical body, the visible, tangible outer form,\ncomposed of various tissues. The etheric double is the ethereal\ncounterpart of the body, composed of the physical ethers. Prana is\nvitality, the integrating energy that co-ordinates the physical\nmolecules and holds them together in a definite organism; it is the\nlife-breath within the organism, the portion of the universal\nLife-Breath, appropriated by the organism during the span of existence\nthat we speak of as \"a life\". Kama is the aggregate of appetites,\npassions, and emotions, common to man and brute. Manas is the Thinker\nin us, the Intelligence. Buddhi is the vehicle wherein Atma, the\nSpirit, dwells, and in which alone it can manifest.\n\nNow the link between the Immortal Triad and the Perishable Quaternary\nis Manas, which is dual during earth life, or incarnation, and\nfunctions as Higher Manas and Lower Manas. Higher Manas sends out a\nRay, Lower Manas, which works in and through the human brain,\nfunctioning there as brain-consciousness, as the ratiocinating\nintelligence. This mingles with Kama, the passional nature, the\npassions and emotions thus becoming a part of Mind, as defined in\nWestern Psychology. And so we have the link formed between the higher\nand lower natures in man, this Kama-Manas belonging to the higher by\nits manasic, and to the lower by its kamic, elements. As this forms\nthe battleground during life, so does it play an important part in\npost-mortem existence. We might now classify our seven principles a\nlittle differently, having in view this mingling in Kama-Manas of\nperishable and imperishable elements:\n\n                          { Atma.\n      _Immortal_.         { Buddhi.\n                          { Higher-Manas.\n\n_Conditionally Immortal_. Kama-Manas.\n\n                          { Prana.\n      _Mortal_.           { Etheric Double.\n                          { Dense Body.\n\nSome Christian writers have adopted a classification similar to this,\ndeclaring Spirit to be inherently immortal, as being Divine; Soul to\nbe conditionally immortal, _i.e._, capable of winning immortality by\nuniting itself with Spirit; Body to be inherently mortal. The majority\nof uninstructed Christians chop man into two, the Body that perishes\nat Death, and the something--called indifferently Soul or\nSpirit--that survives Death. This last classification--if\nclassification it may be called--is entirely inadequate, if we are to\nseek any rational explanation, or even lucid statement, of the\nphenomena of post-mortem existence. The tripartite view of man's\nnature gives a more reasonable representation of his constitution, but\nis inadequate to explain many phenomena. The septenary division alone\ngives a reasonable theory consistent with the facts we have to deal\nwith, and therefore, though it may seem elaborate, the student will do\nwisely to make himself familiar with it. If he were studying only the\nbody, and desired to understand its activities, he would have to\nclassify its tissues at far greater length and with far more\nminuteness than I am using here. He would have to learn the\ndifferences between muscular, nervous, glandular, bony, cartilaginous,\nepithelial, connective, tissues, and all their varieties; and if he\nrebelled, in his ignorance, against such an elaborate division, it\nwould be explained to him that only by such an analysis of the\ndifferent components of the body can the varied and complicated\nphenomena of life-activity be understood. One kind of tissue is wanted\nfor support, another for movement, another for secretion, another for\nabsorption, and so on; and if each kind does not have its own\ndistinctive name, dire confusion and misunderstanding must result, and\nphysical functions remain unintelligible. In the long run time is\ngained, as well as clearness, by learning a few necessary technical\nterms, and as clearness is above all things needed in trying to\nexplain and to understand very complicated post-mortem phenomena, I\nfind myself compelled--contrary to my habit in these elementary\npapers--to resort to these technical names at the outset, for the\nEnglish language has as yet no equivalents for them, and the use of\nlong descriptive phrases is extremely cumbersome and inconvenient.\n\nFor myself, I believe that very much of the antagonism between the\nadherents of the Esoteric Philosophy and those of Spiritualism has\narisen from confusion of terms, and consequent misunderstanding of\neach others meaning. One eminent Spiritualist lately impatiently said\nthat he did not see the need of exact definition, and that he meant by\nSpirit all the part of man's nature that survived Death, and was not\nbody. One might as well insist on saying that man's body consists of\nbone and blood, and asked to define blood, answer: \"Oh! I mean\neverything that is not bone.\" A clear definition of terms, and a rigid\nadherence to them when once adopted, will at least enable us all to\nunderstand each other, and that is the first step to any fruitful\ncomparison of experiences.\n\n\nTHE FATE OF THE BODY.\n\nThe human body is constantly undergoing a process of decay and of\nreconstruction. First builded into the etheric form in the womb of the\nmother, it is built up continually by the insetting of fresh\nmaterials. With every moment tiny molecules are passing away from it;\nwith every moment tiny molecules are streaming into it. The outgoing\nstream is scattered over the environment, and helps to rebuild bodies\nof all kinds in the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms,\nthe physical basis of all these being one and the same.\n\n    The idea that the human tabernacle is built by countless\n    _lives_, just in the same way as the rocky crust of our Earth\n    was, has nothing repulsive in it for the true mystic....\n    Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead\n    organism of both man and animal are swarming with bacteria of\n    a hundred various kinds; that from without we are threatened\n    with the invasion of microbes with every breath we draw, and\n    from within by leucomaines, robes, aerobes, anaerobes, and what\n    not. But Science never yet went so far as to assert with the\n    Occult Doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals,\n    plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of\n    such beings, which, except larger species, no microscope can\n    detect. So far as regards the purely animal and material\n    portion of man, Science is on its way to discoveries that\n    will go far towards corroborating this theory. Chemistry and\n    physiology are the two great magicians of the future, who are\n    destined to open the eyes of mankind to the great physical\n    truths. With every day, the identity between the animal and\n    physical man, between the plant and man, and even between the\n    reptile and its nest, the rock, and man, is more and more\n    clearly shown. The physical and chemical constituents of all\n    being found to be identical, chemical Science may well say\n    that there is no difference between the matter which composes\n    the ox and that which forms man. But the Occult Doctrine is\n    far more explicit. It says: Not only the chemical compounds\n    are the same, but the same infinitesimal _invisible lives_\n    compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the\n    daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant, and of the tree\n    which shelters him from the sun. Each particle--whether you\n    call it organic or inorganic--_is a life_.[6]\n\nThese \"lives\" which, separate and independent, are the minute vehicles\nof Prana, aggregated together form the molecules and cells of the\nphysical body, and they stream in and stream out, during all the years\nof bodily life, thus forming a continual bridge between man and his\nenvironment. Controlling these are the \"Fiery Lives,\" the Devourers,\nwhich constrain these to their work of building up the cells of the\nbody, so that they work harmoniously and in order, subordinated to the\nhigher manifestation of life in the complex organism called Man. These\nFiery Lives on our plane correspond, in this controlling and\norganising function, with the One Life of the Universe,[7] and when\nthey no longer exercise this function in the human body, the lower\nlives run rampant, and begin to break down the hitherto definitely\norganised body. During bodily life they are marshalled as an army;\nmarching in regular order under the command of a general, performing\nvarious evolutions, keeping step, moving as a single body. At \"Death\"\nthey become a disorganised and tumultuous mob, rushing hither and\nthither, jostling each other, tumbling over each other, with no common\nobject, no generally recognised authority. The body is never more\nalive than when it is dead; but it is alive in its units, and dead in\nits totality; alive as a congeries, dead as an organism.\n\n    Science regards man as an aggregation of atoms temporarily\n    united by a mysterious force called the life-principle. To\n    the Materialist, the only difference between a living and a\n    dead body is that in the one case that force is active, in\n    the other latent. When it is extinct or entirely latent, the\n    molecules obey a superior attraction, which draws them\n    asunder and scatters them through space. This dispersion must\n    be Death, if it is possible to conceive such a thing as\n    Death, where the very molecules of the dead body manifest an\n    intense vital energy.... Says Eliphas Levi: \"Change attests\n    movement, and movement only reveals life. The corpse would\n    not decompose if it were dead; all the molecules which\n    compose it are living and struggle to separate.\"[8]\n\nThose who have read _The Seven Principles of Man_,[9] know that the\netheric double is the vehicle of Prana, the life-principle, or\nvitality. Through the etheric double Prana exercises the controlling\nand co-ordinating force spoken of above, and \"Death\" takes triumphant\npossession of the body when the etheric double is finally withdrawn\nand the delicate cord which unites it with the body is snapped. The\nprocess of withdrawal has been watched by clairvoyants, and definitely\ndescribed. Thus Andrew Jackson Davis, \"the Poughkeepsie Seer\",\ndescribes how he himself watched this escape of the ethereal body, and\nhe states that the magnetic cord did not break for some thirty-six\nhours after apparent death. Others have described, in similar terms,\nhow they saw a faint violet mist rise from the dying body, gradually\ncondensing into a figure which was the counterpart of the expiring\nperson, and attached to that person by a glistening thread. The\nsnapping of the thread means the breaking of the last magnetic link\nbetween the dense body and the remaining principles of the human\nconstitution; the body has dropped away from the man; he is\nexcarnated, disembodied; six principles still remain as his\nconstitution immediately after death, the seventh, or the dense body,\nbeing left as a cast-off garment.\n\nDeath consists, indeed, in a repeated process of unrobing, or\nunsheathing. The immortal part of man shakes off from itself, one\nafter the other, its outer casings, and--as the snake from its skin,\nthe butterfly from its chrysalis--emerges from one after another,\npassing into a higher state of consciousness. Now it is the fact that\nthis escape from the body, and this dwelling of the conscious entity\neither in the vehicle called the body of desire, the kamic or astral\nbody, or in a yet more ethereal Thought Body, can be effected during\nearth-life; so that man may become familiar with the excarnated\ncondition, and it may lose for him all the terrors that encircle the\nunknown. He can know himself as a conscious entity in either of these\nvehicles, and so prove to his own satisfaction that \"life\" does not\ndepend on his functioning through the physical body. Why should a man\nwho has thus repeatedly \"shed\" his lower bodies, and has found the\nprocess result, not in unconsciousness, but in a vastly extended\nfreedom and vividness of life--why should he fear the final casting\naway of his fetters, and the freeing of his Immortal Self from what he\nrealises as the prison of the flesh?\n\nThis view of human life is an essential part of the Esoteric\nPhilosophy. Man is primarily divine, a spark of the Divine Life. This\nliving flame, passing out from the Central Fire, weaves for itself\ncoverings within which it dwells, and thus becomes the Triad, the\nAtma-Buddhi-Manas, the reflection of the Immortal Self. This sends out\nits Ray, which becomes encased in grosser matter, in the desire body,\nor kamic elements, the passional nature, and in the etheric double and\nthe physical body. The once free immortal Intelligence thus entangled,\nenswathed, enchained, works heavily and laboriously through the\ncoatings that enwrap it. In its own nature it remains ever the free\nBird of Heaven, but its wings are bound to its side by the matter into\nwhich it is plunged. When man recognises his own inherent nature, he\nlearns to open his prison doors occasionally and escapes from his\nencircling gaol; first he learns to identify himself with the\nImmortal Triad, and rises above the body and its passions into a pure\nmental and moral life; then he learns that the conquered body cannot\nhold him prisoner, and he unlocks its door and steps out into the\nsunshine of his true life. So when Death unlocks the door for him, he\nknows the country into which he emerges, having trodden its ways at\nhis own will. And at last he grows to recognise that fact of supreme\nimportance, that \"Life\" has nothing to do with body and with this\nmaterial plane; that Life is his conscious existence, unbroken,\nunbreakable, and that the brief interludes in that Life, during which\nhe sojourns on Earth, are but a minute fraction of his conscious\nexistence, and a fraction, moreover, during which he is less alive,\nbecause of the heavy coverings which weigh him down. For only during\nthese interludes (save in exceptional cases) may he wholly lose his\nconsciousness of continued life, being surrounded by these coverings\nwhich delude him and blind him to the truth of things, making that\nreal which is illusion, and that stable which is transitory. The\nsunlight ranges over the universe, and at incarnation we step out of\nit into the twilight of the body, and see but dimly during the period\nof our incarceration; at Death we step out of the prison again into\nthe sunlight, and are nearer to the reality. Short are the twilight\nperiods, and long the periods of the sunlight; but in our blinded\nstate we call the twilight life, and to us it is the real existence,\nwhile we call the sunlight Death, and shiver at the thought of passing\ninto it. Well did Giordano Bruno, one of the greatest teachers of our\nPhilosophy in the Middle Ages, state the truth as to the body and Man.\nOf the real Man he says:\n\n    He will be present in the body in such wise that the best\n    part of himself will be absent from it, and will join himself\n    by an indissoluble sacrament to divine things, in such a way\n    that he will not feel either love or hatred of things mortal.\n    Considering himself as master, and that he ought not to be\n    servant and slave to his body, which he would regard only as\n    the prison which holds his liberty in confinement, the glue\n    which smears his wings, chains which bind fast his hands,\n    stocks which fix his feet, veil which hides his view. Let him\n    not be servant, captive, ensnared, chained, idle, stolid, and\n    blind, for the body which he himself abandons cannot\n    tyrannise over him, so that thus the spirit in a certain\n    degree comes before him as the corporeal world, and matter is\n    subject to the divinity and to nature.[10]\n\nWhen once we thus come to regard the body, and by conquering it we\ngain our liberty, Death loses for us all his terrors, and at his touch\nthe body slips from us as a garment, and we stand out from it erect\nand free.\n\nOn the same lines of thought Dr. Franz Hartmann writes:\n\n    According to certain views of the West man is a developed\n    ape. According to the views of Indian Sages, which also\n    coincide with those of the Philosophers of past ages and with\n    the teachings of the Christian Mystics, man is a God, who is\n    united during his earthly life, through his own carnal\n    tendencies, to an animal (his animal nature). The God who\n    dwells within him endows man with wisdom. The animal endows\n    him with force. After death, _the God effects his own release\n    from the man_ by departing from the animal body. As man\n    carries within him this divine consciousness, it is his task\n    to battle with his animal inclinations, and to raise himself\n    above them, by the help of the divine principle, a task which\n    the animal cannot achieve, and which therefore is not\n    demanded of it.[11]\n\nThe \"man\", using the word in the sense of personality, as it is used\nin the latter half of this sentence, is only conditionally immortal;\nthe true man, the evolving God, releases himself, and so much of the\npersonality goes with him as has raised itself into union with the\ndivine.\n\nThe body thus left to the rioting of the countless lives--previously\nheld in constraint by Prana, acting through its vehicle the etheric\ndouble--begins to decay, that is to break up, and with the\ndisintegration of its cells and molecules, its particles pass away\ninto other combinations.\n\nOn our return to Earth we may meet again some of those same countless\nlives that in a previous incarnation made of our then body their\npassing dwelling; but all that we are just now concerned with is the\nbreaking up of the body whose life-span is over, and its fate is\ncomplete disintegration. To the dense body, then, Death means\ndissolution as an organism, the loosing of the bonds that united the\nmany into one.\n\n\nTHE FATE OF THE ETHERIC DOUBLE.\n\nThe etheric double is the ethereal counterpart of the gross body of\nman. It is the double that is sometimes seen during life in the\nneighbourhood of the body, and its absence from the body is generally\nmarked by the heaviness or semi-lethargy of the latter. Acting as the\nreservoir, or vehicle, of the life-principle during earth-life, its\nwithdrawal from the body is naturally marked by the lowering of all\nvital functions, even while the cord which unites the two is still\nunbroken. As has been already said, the snapping of the cord means the\ndeath of the body.\n\nWhen the etheric double finally quits the body, it does not travel to\nany distance from it. Normally it remains floating over the body, the\nstate of consciousness being dreamy and peaceful, unless tumultuous\ndistress and violent emotion surround the corpse from which it has\njust issued. And here it may be well to say that during the slow\nprocess of dying, while the etheric double is withdrawing from the\nbody, taking with it the higher principles, as after it has withdrawn,\nextreme quiet and self-control should be observed in the chamber of\nDeath. For during this time the whole life passes swiftly in review\nbefore the Ego, the individual, as those have related who have passed\nin drowning into this unconscious and pulseless state. A Master has\nwritten:\n\n    _At the last moment the whole life is reflected in our\n    memory, and emerges from all the forgotten nooks and corners,\n    picture after picture, one event after another.... The man\n    may often appear dead, yet from the last pulsation, from and\n    between the last throbbing of his heart and the moment when\n    the last spark of animal heat leaves the body_, the brain\n    thinks, _and the Ego lives over in those few brief seconds\n    his whole life. Speak in whispers, ye who assist at a\n    deathbed, and find yourselves in the solemn presence of\n    death. Especially have ye to keep quiet just after death has\n    laid her clammy hand upon the body. Speak in whispers, I say,\n    lest ye disturb the quiet ripple of thought, and hinder the\n    busy work of the past, casting its reflection upon the veil\n    of the future._[12]\n\nThis is the time during which the thought-images of the ended\nearth-life, clustering around their maker, group and interweave\nthemselves into the completed image of that life, and are impressed in\ntheir totality on the Astral Light. The dominant tendencies, the\nstrongest thought-habits, assert their pre-eminence, and stamp\nthemselves as the characteristics which will appear as \"innate\nqualities\" in the succeeding incarnation. This balancing-up of the\nlife-issues, this reading of the karmic records, is too solemn and\nmomentous a thing to be disturbed by the ill-timed wailings of\npersonal relatives and friends.\n\n    At the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is\n    sudden, sees the whole of his past life marshalled before\n    him, in its minutest details. For one short instant the\n    _personal_ become one with the _individual_ and all-knowing\n    Ego. But this instant is enough to show to him the whole\n    chain of causes which have been at work during his life. He\n    sees and now understands himself as he is, unadorned by\n    flattery or self-deception. He reads his life, remaining as a\n    spectator, looking down into the arena he is quitting.[13]\n\nThis vivid sight is succeeded, in the ordinary person, by the dreamy,\npeaceful semi-consciousness spoken of above, as the etheric double\nfloats above the body to which it has belonged, now completely\nseparated from it.\n\nSometimes this double is seen by persons in the house, or in the\nneighbourhood, when the thought of the dying has been strongly turned\nto some one left behind, when some anxiety has been in the mind at the\nlast, something left undone which needed doing, or when some local\ndisturbance has shaken the tranquillity of the passing entity. Under\nthese conditions, or others of a similar nature, the double may be\nseen or heard; when seen, it shows the dreamy, hazy consciousness\nalluded to, is silent, vague in its aspect, unresponsive.\n\nAs the days go on, the five higher principles gradually disengage\nthemselves from the etheric double, and shake this off as they\npreviously shook off the grosser body. They pass on, as a fivefold\nentity, into a state to be next studied, leaving the etheric double,\nwith the dense body of which it is the counterpart, thus becoming an\nethereal corpse, as much as the body had become a dense corpse. This\nethereal corpse remains near the dense one, and they disintegrate\ntogether; clairvoyants see these ethereal wraiths in churchyards,\nsometimes showing likeness to the dead dense body, sometimes as violet\nmists or lights. Such an ethereal corpse has been seen by a friend of\nmy own, passing through the horribly repulsive stages of\ndecomposition, a ghastly vision in face of which clairvoyance was\ncertainly no blessing. The process goes on _pari passu_, until all but\nthe actual bony skeleton of the dense body is completely\ndisintegrated, and the particles have gone to form other combinations.\n\nOne of the great advantages of cremation--apart from all sanitary\nconditions--lies in the swift restoration to Mother Nature of the\nphysical elements composing the dense and ethereal corpses, brought\nabout by the burning. Instead of slow and gradual decomposition, swift\ndissociation takes place, and no physical remnants are left, working\npossible mischief.\n\nThe ethereal corpse may to some extent be revivified for a short\nperiod after its death. Dr. Hartmann says:\n\n    The fresh corpse of a person who has suddenly been killed may\n    be galvanised into a semblance of life by the application of\n    a galvanic battery. Likewise the astral corpse of a person\n    may be brought back into an artificial life by being infused\n    with a part of the life principle of the medium. If that\n    corpse is one of a very intellectual person, it may talk\n    very intellectually; and if it was that of a fool it will\n    talk like a fool.[14]\n\nThis mischievous procedure can only be carried out in the\nneighbourhood of the corpse, and for a very limited time after death,\nbut there are cases on record of such galvanising of the ethereal\ncorpse, performed at the grave of the departed person. Needless to say\nthat such a process belongs distinctly to \"Black\" Magic, and is wholly\nevil. Ethereal corpses, like dense ones, if not swiftly destroyed by\nburning, should be left in the silence and the darkness, a silence and\na darkness that it is the worst profanity to break.\n\n\nKAMALOKA, AND THE FATE OF PRANA AND KAMA.\n\nLoka is a Sanskrit word that may be translated as place, world, land,\nso that Kamaloka is literally the place or the world of Kama, Kama\nbeing the name of that part of the human organism that includes all\nthe passions, desires, and emotions which man has in common with the\nlower animals.[15] In this division of the universe, the Kamaloka,\ndwell all the human entities that have shaken off the dense body and\nits ethereal double, but have not yet disentangled themselves from the\npassional and emotional nature. Kamaloka has many other tenants, but\nwe are concerned only with the human beings who have lately passed\nthrough the gateway of Death, and it is on these that we must\nconcentrate our study.\n\nA momentary digression may be pardoned on the question of the\nexistence of regions in the universe, other than the physical,\npeopled with intelligent beings. The existence of such regions is\npostulated by the Esoteric Philosophy, and is known to the Adepts and\nto very many less highly evolved men and women by personal experience;\nall that is needed for the study of these regions is the evolution of\nthe faculties latent in every man; a \"living\" man, in ordinary\nparlance, can leave his dense and ethereal bodies behind him, and\nexplore these regions without going through Death's gateway. Thus we\nread in the _Theosophist_ that real knowledge may be acquired by the\nSpirit in the living man coming into conscious relations with the\nworld of Spirit.\n\n    As in the case, say, of an initiated Adept, who brings back\n    upon earth with him the clear and distinct\n    recollection--correct to a detail--of facts gathered, and the\n    information obtained, in the invisible sphere of\n    _Realities_.[16]\n\nIn this way those regions become to him matters of knowledge as\ndefinite, as certain, as familiar, as if he should travel to Africa in\nordinary fashion, explore its deserts, and return to his own land the\nricher for the knowledge and experience gained. A seasoned African\nexplorer would care but little for the criticisms passed on his report\nby persons who had never been thither; he might tell what he saw,\ndescribe the animals whose habits he had studied, sketch the country\nhe had traversed, sum up its products and its characteristics. If he\nwas contradicted, laughed at, set right, by untravelled critics, he\nwould be neither ruffled nor distressed, but would merely leave them\nalone. Ignorance cannot convince knowledge by repeated asseveration\nof its nescience. The opinion of a hundred persons on a subject on\nwhich they are wholly ignorant is of no more weight than the opinion\nof one such person. Evidence is strengthened by many consenting\nwitnesses, testifying each to his knowledge of a fact, but nothing\nmultiplied a thousand times remains nothing. Strange, indeed, would it\nbe if all the Space around us be empty, mere waste void, and the\ninhabitants of earth the only forms in which intelligence could clothe\nitself. As Dr. Huxley said:\n\n    Without stepping beyond the analogy of that which is known,\n    it is easy to people the cosmos with entities, in ascending\n    scale, until we reach something practically indistinguishable\n    from omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience.[17]\n\nIf these entities did not have organs of sense like our own, if their\nsenses responded to vibrations different from those which affect ours,\nthey and we might walk side by side, pass each other, meet each other,\npass through each other, and yet be never the wiser as to each other's\nexistence. Mr. Crookes gives us a glimpse of the possibility of such\nunconscious co-existence of intelligent beings, and but a very slight\neffort of imagination is needed to realise the conception.\n\n    It is not improbable that other sentient beings have organs\n    of sense which do not respond to some or any of the rays to\n    which our eyes are sensitive, but are able to appreciate\n    other vibrations to which we are blind. Such beings would\n    practically be living in a different world to our own.\n    Imagine, for instance, what idea we should form of\n    surrounding objects were we endowed with eyes not sensitive\n    to the ordinary rays of light, but sensitive to the\n    vibrations concerned in electric and magnetic phenomena.\n    Glass and crystal would be among the most opaque of bodies.\n    Metals would be more or less transparent, and a telegraph\n    wire through the air would look like a long narrow hole\n    drilled through an impervious solid body. A dynamo in active\n    work would resemble a conflagration, whilst a permanent\n    magnet would realise the dream of mediaeval mystics, and\n    become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of energy or\n    consumption of fuel.[18]\n\nKamaloka is a region peopled by intelligent and semi-intelligent\nentities, just as our own is thus peopled; it is crowded, like our\nworld, with many types and forms of living things, as diverse from\neach other as a blade of grass is different from a tiger, a tiger from\na man. It interpenetrates our own world and is interpenetrated by it,\nbut, as the states of matter in the two worlds differ, they co-exist\nwithout the knowledge of the intelligent beings in either. Only under\nabnormal circumstances can consciousness of each other's presence\narise among the inhabitants of the two worlds; by certain peculiar\ntraining a living human being can come into conscious contact with and\ncontrol many of the sub-human denizens of Kamaloka; human beings, who\nhave quitted earth and in whom the kamic elements were strong, may\nvery readily be attracted by the kamic elements in embodied men, and\nby their help become conscious again of the presence of the scenes\nthey had left; and human beings still embodied may set up methods of\ncommunication with the disembodied, and may, as said, leave their own\nbodies for awhile, and become conscious in Kamaloka by the use of\nfaculties through which they have accustomed their consciousness to\nact. The point which is here to be clearly grasped is the existence\nof Kamaloka as a definite region, inhabited by a large diversity of\nentities, among whom are disembodied human beings.\n\nFrom this necessary digression we return to the particular human being\nwhose fate, as a type, we may be said to be tracing, and of whose\ndense body and etheric double we have already disposed. Let us\ncontemplate him in the state of very brief duration that follows the\nshaking off of these two casings. Says H.P. Blavatsky, after quoting\nfrom Plutarch a description of the man after death:\n\n    Here you have our doctrine, which shows man a _septenary_\n    during life; a _quintile_ just after death, in Kamaloka.[19]\n\nPrana, the portion of the life-energy appropriated by the man in his\nembodied state, having lost its vehicle, the ethereal double, which,\nwith the physical body, has slipped away from its controlling energy,\nmust pass back into the great life-reservoir of the universe. As water\nenclosed in a glass vessel and plunged into a tank mingles with the\nsurrounding water if the vessel be broken, so Prana, as the bodies\ndrop from it, mingles again with the Life Universal. It is only \"just\nafter death\" that man is a quintile, or fivefold in his constitution,\nfor Prana, as a distinctively human principle, cannot remain\nappropriated when its vehicle disintegrates.\n\nThe man now is clothed, but with the Kama Rupa, or body of Kama, the\ndesire body, a body of astral matter, often termed \"fluidic,\" so\neasily does it, during earth-life, take any form impressed upon it\nfrom without or moulded from within. The living man is there, the\nimmortal Triad, still clad in the last of its terrestrial garments, in\nthe subtle, sensitive, responsive form which lent it during embodiment\nthe power to feel, to desire, to enjoy, to suffer, in the physical\nworld.\n\n    When the man dies, his three lower principles leave him for\n    ever; _i.e._, body, life, and the vehicle of the latter, the\n    etheric body, or the double of the living man. And then his\n    four principles--the central or middle principle (the animal\n    soul or Kama Rupa, with what it has assimilated from the\n    lower Manas) and the higher Triad--find themselves in\n    Kamaloka.[20]\n\nThis desire body undergoes a marked change soon after death. The\ndifferent densities of the astral matter of which it is composed\narrange themselves in a series of shells or envelopes, the densest\nbeing outside, shutting the consciousness away from all but very\nlimited contact and expression. The consciousness turns in on itself,\nif left undisturbed, and prepares itself for the next step onwards,\nwhile the desire body gradually disintegrates, shell after shell.\n\nUp to the point of this re-arrangement of the matter of the desire\nbody, the post-mortem experience of all is much the same; it is a\n\"dreamy, peaceful semi-consciousness,\" as before said, and this, in\nthe happiest cases, passes without vivid awakening into the deeper\n\"pre-devachanic unconsciousness\" which ends with the blissful wakening\nin Devachan, for the period of repose that intervenes between two\nincarnations. But as, at this point, different possibilities arise,\nlet us trace a normal uninterrupted progression in Kamaloka, up to the\nthreshold of Devachan, and then we can return to consider other\nclasses of circumstances.\n\nIf a person has led a pure life, and has steadfastly striven to rise\nand to identify himself with the higher rather than the lower parts of\nhis nature, after shaking off the dense body and the etheric double,\nand after Prana has re-mingled with the ocean of Life, and he is\nclothed only with the Kama Rupa, the passional elements in him, being\nbut weak and accustomed to comparatively little activity, will not be\nable to assert themselves strongly in Kamaloka. Now during earth-life\nKama and the Lower Manas are strongly united and interwoven with each\nother; in the case we are considering Kama is weak, and the Lower\nManas has purified Kama to a great extent. The mind, woven with the\npassions, emotions, and desires, has purified them, and has\nassimilated their pure part, absorbed it into itself, so that all that\nis left of Kama is a mere residue, easily to be gotten rid of, from\nwhich the Immortal Triad can readily free itself. Slowly this Immortal\nTriad, the true Man, draws in all his forces; he draws into himself\nthe memories of the earth-life just ended, its loves, its hopes, its\naspirations, and prepares to pass out of Kamaloka into the blissful\nrest of Devachan, the \"abode of the Gods\", or as some say, \"the land\nof bliss\". Kamaloka\n\n    Is an astral locality, the Limbus of scholastic theology, the\n    Hades of the ancients, and, strictly speaking, a _locality_\n    only in a relative sense. It has neither a definite area, nor\n    boundary, but exists _within_ subjective space, _i.e._, is\n    beyond our sensuous perceptions. Still it exists, and it is\n    there that the astral _eidolons_ of all the beings that have\n    lived, animals included, await their _second death_. For the\n    animals it comes with the disintegration and the entire\n    fading out of their astral particles to the last. For the\n    human _eidolon_ it begins when the Atma-Buddhi-Manasic Triad\n    is said to \"separate\" itself from its lower principles or the\n    reflection of the ex-personality, by falling into the\n    Devachanic state.[21]\n\nThis second death is the passage, then, of the Immortal Triad from the\nkamalokic sphere, so closely related to the earth sphere, into the\nhigher state of Devachan, of which we must speak later. The type of\nman we are considering passes through this, in the peaceful dreamy\nstate already described, and, if left undisturbed, will not regain\nfull consciousness until these stages are passed through, and peace\ngives way to bliss.\n\nBut during the whole period that the four principles--the Immortal\nTriad and Kama--remain in Kamaloka, whether the period be long or\nshort, days or centuries, they are within the reach of the\nearth-influences. In the case of such a person as we have been\ndescribing, an awakening may be caused by the passionate sorrow and\ndesires of friends left on earth, and these violently vibrating kamic\nelements in the embodied persons may set up vibrations in the desire\nbody of the disembodied, and so reach and rouse the lower Manas, not\nyet withdrawn to and reunited with its parent, the Spiritual\nIntelligence. Thus it may be roused from its dreamy state to vivid\nremembrance of the earth-life so lately left, and may--if any\nsensitive or medium is concerned, either directly, or indirectly\nthrough one of these grieving friends in communication with the\nmedium--use the medium's etheric and dense bodies to speak or write to\nthose left behind. This awakening is often accompanied with acute\nsuffering, and even if this be avoided, the natural process of the\nTriad freeing itself is rudely disturbed, and the completion of its\nfreedom is delayed. In speaking of this possibility of communication\nduring the period immediately succeeding death and before the freed\nMan passes on into Devachan, H.P. Blavatsky says:\n\n    Whether any living mortal, save a few exceptional cases--when\n    the intensity of the desire in the dying person to return for\n    some purpose forced the higher consciousness _to remain\n    awake_, and, therefore, it was really the _individuality_,\n    the \"Spirit\", that communicated--has derived much benefit\n    from the return of the Spirit into the _objective_ plane is\n    another question. The Spirit is dazed after death, and falls\n    very soon into what we call \"pre-devachanic\n    unconsciousness.\"[22]\n\nIntense desire may move the disembodied entity to spontaneously return\nto the sorrowing ones left behind, but this spontaneous return is rare\nin the case of persons of the type we are just now considering. If\nthey are left at peace, they will generally sleep themselves quietly\ninto Devachan, and so avoid any struggle or suffering in connection\nwith the second death. On the final escape of the Immortal Triad there\nis left behind in Kamaloka only the desire body, the \"shell\" or mere\nempty phantom, which gradually disintegrates; but it will be better to\ndeal with this in considering the next type, the average man or woman,\nwithout marked spirituality of an elevated kind, but also without\nmarked evil tendencies.\n\nWhen an average man or woman reaches Kamaloka, the spiritual\nIntelligence is clothed with a desire body, which possesses\nconsiderable vigour and vitality; the lower Manas, closely interwoven\nwith Kama during the earth-life just ended, having lived much in the\nenjoyment of objects of sense and in the pleasures of the emotions,\ncannot quickly disentangle itself from the web of its own weaving, and\nreturn to its Parent Mind, the source of its own being. Hence a\nconsiderable delay in the world of transition, in Kamaloka, while the\ndesires wear out and fade away to a point at which they can no longer\ndetain the Soul with their clinging arms.\n\nAs said, during the period that the Immortal Triad and Kama remain\ntogether in Kamaloka, communication between the disembodied entity and\nthe embodied entities on earth is possible. Such communication will\ngenerally be welcomed by these disembodied ones, because their desires\nand emotions still cling to the earth they have left, and the mind has\nnot sufficiently lived on its own plane to find therein full\nsatisfaction and contentment. The lower Manas still yearns towards\nkamic gratifications and the vivid highly coloured sensations of\nearth-life, and can by these yearnings be drawn back to the scenes it\nhas regretfully quitted. Speaking of the possibility of communication\nbetween the Ego of the deceased person and a medium, H.P. Blavatsky\nsays in the _Theosophist_,[23] as from the teachings received by her\nfrom the Adept Brothers, that such communication may occur during two\nintervals:\n\n    Interval the first is that period between the physical death\n    and the merging of the spiritual Ego into that state which is\n    known in the Arhat esoteric doctrine as Bar-do. We have\n    translated this as the \"gestation\" period [pre-devachanic].\n\nSome of the communications made through mediums are from this source,\nfrom the disembodied entity, thus drawn back to the earth-sphere--a\ncruel kindness, delaying its forward evolution and introducing an\nelement of disharmony into what should be an orderly progression. The\nperiod in Kamaloka is thus lengthened, the desire body is fed and its\nhold on the Ego is maintained, and thus is the freedom of the Soul\ndeferred, the immortal Swallow being still held down by the bird-lime\nof earth.\n\nPersons who have led an evil life, who have gratified and stimulated\ntheir animal passions, and have full fed the desire body while they\nhave starved even the lower mind--these remain for long, denizens of\nKamaloka, and are filled with yearnings for the earth-life they have\nleft, and for the animal delights that they can no longer--in the\nabsence of the physical body--directly taste. These gather round the\nmedium and the sensitive, endeavouring to utilise them for their own\ngratification, and these are among the more dangerous of the forces so\nrashly confronted in their ignorance by the thoughtless and the\ncurious.\n\nAnother class of disembodied entities includes those whose lives on\nearth have been prematurely cut short, by their own act, the act of\nothers, or by accident. Their fate in Kamaloka depends on the\nconditions which surrounded their outgoings from earthly life, for not\nall suicides are guilty of _felo de se_, and the measure of\nresponsibility may vary within very wide limits. The condition of such\nhas been thus described:\n\n    _Suicides, although not wholly dissevered from their sixth\n    and seventh principles, and quite potent in the seance room,\n    nevertheless to the day when they would have died a natural\n    death, are separated from their higher principles by a gulf.\n    The sixth and seventh principles remain passive and negative,\n    whereas in cases of_ accidental death _the higher and the\n    lower groups actually attract each other. In cases of good\n    and innocent Egos, moreover, the latter gravitates\n    irresistibly toward the sixth and seventh, and thus either\n    slumbers surrounded by happy dreams, or sleeps a dreamless\n    profound sleep until the hour strikes. With a little\n    reflection and an eye to the eternal justice and fitness of\n    things, you will see why. The victim, whether good or bad, is\n    irresponsible for his death. Even if his death were due to\n    some action in a previous life or an antecedent birth, was an\n    act, in short, of the Law of Retribution, still it was not\n    the_ direct _result of an act deliberately committed by the_\n    personal _Ego of that life during which he happened to be\n    killed. Had he been allowed to live longer he might have\n    atoned for his antecedent sins still more effectually, and\n    even now, the Ego having been made to pay off the debt of his\n    maker, the personal Ego is free from the blows of retributive\n    justice. The Dhyan Chohans, who have no hand in the guidance\n    of the living human Ego, protect the helpless victim when it\n    is violently thrust out of its element into a new one, before\n    it is matured and made fit and ready for it._\n\nThese, whether suicides or killed by accident, can communicate with\nthose in earth-life, but much to their own injury. As said above, the\ngood and innocent sleep happily till the life-period is over. But\nwhere the victim of an accident is depraved and gross, his fate is a\nsad one.\n\n    _Unhappy shades, if sinful and sensual, they wander about\n    (not shells, for their connection with their two higher\n    principles is not quite broken) until their_ death-_hour\n    comes. Cut off in the full flush of earthly passions which\n    bind them to familiar scenes, they are enticed by the\n    opportunities which mediums afford to gratify them\n    vicariously. They are the Pishachas, the Incubi and Succubae\n    of mediaeval times; the demons of thirst, gluttony, lust, and\n    avarice--Elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness, and\n    cruelty; provoking their victims to horrid crimes, and\n    revelling in their commission! They not only ruin their\n    victims, but these psychic vampires, borne along by the\n    torrent of their hellish impulses, at last--at the fixed\n    close of their natural period of life--they are carried out\n    of the earth's aura into regions where for ages they endure\n    exquisite suffering and end with entire destruction.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Now the causes producing the \"new being\" and determining the\n    nature of Karma are Trishna (Tanha)--thirst, desire for\n    sentient existence--and Upadana, which is the realisation or\n    consummation of Trishna, or that desire. And both of these\n    the medium helps to develop_ ne plus ultra _in an Elementary,\n    be he a suicide or a victim. The rule is that a person who\n    dies a natural death will remain from \"a few hours to several\n    short years\" within the earth's attraction--_i.e._, the\n    Kamaloka. But exceptions are the cases of suicides and those\n    who die a violent death in general. Hence, one of such Egos\n    who was destined to live, say, eighty or ninety years--but\n    who either killed himself or was killed by some accident, let\n    us suppose at the age of twenty--would have to pass in the\n    Kamaloka not \"a few years,\" but in his case sixty or seventy\n    years, as an Elementary, or rather an \"earth-walker,\" since\n    he is not, unfortunately for him, even a \"Shell.\" Happy,\n    thrice happy, in comparison, are those disembodied entities\n    who sleep their long slumber and live in dream in the bosom\n    of Space! And woe to those whose Trishna will attract them to\n    mediums, and woe to the latter who tempt them with such an\n    easy Upadana. For, in grasping them and satisfying their\n    thirst for life, the medium helps to develop in them--is, in\n    fact, the cause of--a new set of Skandhas, a new body with\n    far worse tendencies and passions than the one they lost. All\n    the future of this new body will be determined thus, not only\n    by the Karma of demerit of the previous set or group, but\n    also by that of the new set of the future being. Were the\n    mediums and spiritualists but to know, as I said, that with\n    every new \"angel-guide\" they welcome with rapture, they\n    entice the latter into a Upadana, which will be productive of\n    untold evils for the new Ego that will be reborn under its\n    nefarious shadow, and that with every seance, especially for\n    materialization, they multiply the causes for misery, causes\n    that will make the unfortunate Ego fail in his spiritual\n    birth, or be reborn into a far worse existence than\n    ever--they would, perhaps, be less lavish in their\n    hospitality._\n\nPremature death brought on by vicious courses, by over-study, or by\nvoluntary sacrifice for some great cause, will bring about delay in\nKamaloka, but the state of the disembodied entity will depend on the\nmotive that cut short the life.\n\n    _There are very few, if any, of the men who indulge in these\n    vices, who feel perfectly sure that such a course of action\n    will lead them eventually to premature death. Such is the\n    penalty of Maya. The \"vices\" will not escape their\n    punishment; but it is the_ cause, _not the effect, that will\n    be punished, especially an unforeseen, though probable\n    effect. As well call a man a \"suicide\" who meets his death in\n    a storm at sea, as one who kills himself with \"over-study\".\n    Water is liable to drown a man, and too much brain work to\n    produce a softening of the brain matter which may carry him\n    away. In such a case no one ought to cross the_ Kalapani,\n    _nor even to take a bath for fear of getting faint in it and\n    drowned (for we all know of such cases), nor should a man do\n    his duty, least of all sacrifice himself for even a laudable\n    and highly beneficial cause as many of us do. Motive is\n    everything, and man is punished in a case of direct\n    responsibility, never otherwise. In the victim's case the\n    natural hour of death was anticipated_ accidentally, _while\n    in that of the suicide death is brought on voluntarily and\n    with a full and deliberate knowledge of its immediate\n    consequences. Thus a man who causes his death in a fit of\n    temporary insanity is_ not _a_ felo de se, _to the great\n    grief and often trouble of the Life Insurance Companies. Nor\n    is he left a prey to the temptations of the Kamaloka, but\n    falls_ asleep _like any other victim._\n\nThe population of Kamaloka is thus recruited with a peculiarly\ndangerous element by all the acts of violence, legal and illegal,\nwhich wrench the physical body from the soul and send the latter into\nKamaloka clad in the desire body, throbbing with pulses of hatred,\npassion, emotion, palpitating with longings for revenge, with\nunsatiated lusts. A murderer in the body is not a pleasant member of\nsociety, but a murderer suddenly expelled from the body is a far more\ndangerous entity; society may protect itself against the first, but in\nits present state of ignorance it is defenceless as against the\nsecond.\n\nFinally, the Immortal Triad sets itself free from the desire body, and\npasses out of Kamaloka; the Higher Manas draws back its Ray, coloured\nwith the life-scenes it has passed through, and carrying with it the\nexperiences gained through the personality it has informed. The\nlabourer is called in from the field, and he returns home bearing his\nsheaves with him, rich or poor, according to the fruitage of the life.\nWhen the Triad has quitted Kamaloka, it passes wholly out of the\nsphere of earth attractions:\n\n    _As soon as it has stepped outside the Kamaloka--crossed the\n    \"Golden Bridge\" leading to the \"Seven Golden Mountains\"--the\n    Ego can confabulate no more with easy-going mediums._\n\nThere are some exceptional possibilities of reaching such an Ego, that\nwill be explained later, but the Ego is out of the reach of the\nordinary medium and cannot be recalled into the earth-sphere. But ere\nwe follow the further course of the Triad, we must consider the fate\nof the now deserted desire body, left as a mere _reliquum_ in\nKamaloka.\n\n\nKAMALOKA. THE SHELLS.\n\nThe Shell is the desire body, emptied of the Triad, which has now\npassed onwards; it is the third of the transitory garments of Soul,\ncast aside and left in Kamaloka to disintegrate.\n\nWhen the past earth-life has been noble, or even when it has been of\naverage purity and utility, this Shell retains but little vitality\nafter the passing onwards of the Triad, and rapidly dissolves. Its\nmolecules, however, retain, during this process of disintegration, the\nimpressions made upon them during the earth-life, the tendency to\nvibrate in response to stimuli constantly experienced during that\nperiod. Every student of physiology is familiar with what is termed\nautomatic action, with the tendency of cells to repeat vibrations\noriginally set up by purposive action; thus are formed what we term\nhabits, and we unconsciously repeat motions which at first were done\nwith thought. So strong is this automatism of the body, that, as\neveryone knows by experience, it is difficult to break off the use of\na phrase or of a gesture that has become \"habitual.\"\n\nNow the desire body is during earth-life the recipient of and the\nrespondent to all stimuli from without, and it also continually\nreceives and responds to stimuli from the lower Manas. In it are set\nup habits, tendencies to repeat automatically familiar vibrations,\nvibrations of love and desire, vibrations imaging past experiences of\nall kinds. Just as the hand may repeat a familiar gesture, so may the\ndesire body repeat a familiar feeling or thought. And when the Triad\nhas left it, this automatism remains, and the Shell may thus simulate\nfeelings and thoughts which are empty of all true intelligence and\nwill. Many of the responses to eager enquiries at _seances_ come from\nsuch Shells, drawn to the neighbourhood of friends and relatives by\nthe magnetic attractions so long familiar and dear, and automatically\nresponding to the waves of emotion and remembrance, to the impulse of\nwhich they had so often answered during the lately closed earth-life.\nPhrases of affection, moral platitudes, memories of past events, will\nbe all the communications such Shells can make, but these may be\nliterally poured out under favourable conditions under the magnetic\nstimuli freely applied by the embodied friends and relatives.\n\nIn cases where the lower Manas during earth-life has been strongly\nattached to material objects and to intellectual pursuits directed by\na self-seeking motive, the desire body may have acquired a very\nconsiderable automatism of an intellectual character, and may give\nforth responses of considerable intellectual merit. But still the mark\nof non-originality will be present: the apparent intellectuality will\nonly give out reproductions, and there will be no sign of the new and\nindependent thought which would be the inevitable outcome of a strong\nintelligence working with originality amid new surroundings.\nIntellectual sterility brands the great majority of communications\nfrom the \"spirit world\"; reflections of earthly scenes, earthly\nconditions, earthly arrangements, are plentiful, but we usually seek\nin vain for strong, new thought, worthy of Intelligences freed from\nthe prison of the flesh. The communications of a loftier kind\noccasionally granted are, for the most part, from non-human\nIntelligences, attracted by the pure atmosphere of the medium or\nsitters.\n\nAnd there is an ever-present danger in this commerce with the Shells.\nJust because they are Shells, and nothing more, they answer to the\nimpulses that strike on them from without, and easily become malicious\nand mischievous, automatically responding to evil vibrations. Thus a\nmedium, or sitters of poor moral character, will impress the Shells\nthat flock around them with impulses of a low order, and any animal\ndesires, petty and foolish thoughts, will set up similar vibrations in\nthe blindly responsive Shells.\n\nAgain, the Shell is very easily taken possession of by Elementals, the\nsemi-conscious forces working in the kingdoms of Nature, and may be\nused by them as a convenient vehicle for many a prank and trick. The\netheric double of the medium, and the desire bodies emptied of their\nimmortal Tenants, give the material basis by which Elementals can work\nmany a curious and startling result; and frequenters of _seances_ may\nbe confidently appealed to, and asked whether many of the childish\nfreaks with which they are familiar--pullings of hair, pinchings,\nslaps, throwing about of objects, piling up of furniture, playing on\naccordions, &c.--are not more rationally accounted for as the tricky\nvagaries of sub-human forces, than as the actions of \"spirits\" who,\nwhile in the body, were certainly incapable of such vulgarities.\n\nLet us leave the Shells alone to peacefully dissolve into their\nelements, and mingle once again in the crucible of Nature. The authors\nof the _Perfect Way_ put very well the real character of the Shell.\n\n    The true \"ghost\" consists of the exterior and earthly portion\n    of the Soul, that portion which, being weighted with cares,\n    attachments, and memories merely mundane, is detached by the\n    Soul and remains in the astral sphere, an existence more or\n    less definite and personal, and capable of holding, through a\n    sensitive, converse with the living. It is, however, but as a\n    cast-off vestment of the Soul, and is incapable of endurance\n    _as ghost_. The true Soul and real person, the _anima\n    divina_, parts at death with all those lower affections\n    which would have retained it near its earthly haunts.[24]\n\nIf we would find our beloved, it is not among the decaying remnants in\nKamaloka that we should seek them. \"Why seek ye the living among the\ndead?\"\n\n\nKAMALOKA. THE ELEMENTARIES.\n\nThe word \"Elementary\" has been so loosely used that it has given rise\nto a good deal of confusion. It is thus defined by H.P. Blavatsky:\n\n    Properly, the disembodied _souls_ of the depraved; these\n    souls having, at some time prior to death, separated from\n    themselves their divine spirits, and so lost their chance for\n    immortality. But at the present stage of learning it has been\n    thought best to apply the term to the spooks or phantoms of\n    disembodied persons, in general to those whose temporary\n    habitation is the Kamaloka.... Once divorced from their\n    higher Triads and their bodies, these souls remain in their\n    Kama Rupic envelopes, and are irresistibly drawn to the earth\n    amid elements congenial to their gross natures. Their stay in\n    the Kamaloka varies as to its duration; but ends invariably\n    in disintegration, dissolving like a column of mist, atom by\n    atom, in the surrounding elements.[25]\n\nStudents of this series of Manuals know that it is possible for the\nlower Manas to so entangle itself with Kama as to wrench itself away\nfrom its source, and this is spoken of in Occultism as \"the loss of\nthe Soul.\"[26] It is, in other words, the loss of the personal self,\nwhich has separated itself from its Parent, the Higher Ego, and has\nthus doomed itself to perish. Such a Soul, having thus separated\nitself from the Immortal Triad during its earth-life, becomes a true\nElementary, after it has quitted the dense and etheric bodies. Then,\nclad in its desire body, it lives for awhile, for a longer or shorter\ntime according to the vigour of its vitality, a wholly evil thing,\ndangerous and malignant, seeking to renew its fading vitality by any\nmeans laid open to it by the folly or ignorance of still embodied\nsouls. Its ultimate fate is, indeed, destruction, but it may work much\nevil on its way to its self-chosen doom.\n\nThe word Elementary is, however, very often used to describe the lower\nManas in its garment the desire body, not broken away from the higher\nPrinciples, but not yet absorbed into its Parent, the Higher Manas.\nSuch Elementaries may be in any stage of progress, harmless or\nmischievous.\n\nSome writers, again, use Elementary as a synonym for Shell, and so\ncause increased confusion. The word should at least be restricted to\nthe desire body _plus_ lower Manas, whether that lower Manas be\ndisentangling itself from the kamic elements, in order that it may be\nre-absorbed into its source, or separated from the Higher Ego, and\ntherefore on the road to destruction.\n\n\nDEVACHAN.\n\nAmong the various conceptions presented by the Esoteric Philosophy,\nthere are few, perhaps, which the Western mind has found more\ndifficulty in grasping than that of Devachan, or Devasthan, the\nDevaland, or land of the Gods.[27] And one of the chief difficulties\nhas arisen from the free use of the words illusion, dream-state, and\nother similar terms, as denoting the devachanic consciousness--a\ngeneral sense of unreality having thus come to pervade the whole\nconception of Devachan. When the Eastern thinker speaks of the present\nearthly life as Maya, illusion, dream, the solid Western at once puts\ndown the phrases as allegorical and fanciful, for what can be less\nillusory, he thinks, than this world of buying and selling, of\nbeefsteaks and bottled stout. But when similar terms are applied to a\nstate beyond Death--a state which to him is misty and unreal in his\nown religion, and which, as he sadly feels, is lacking in all the\nsubstantial comforts dear to the family man--then he accepts the words\nin their most literal and prosaic meaning, and speaks of Devachan as a\ndelusion in his own sense of the word. It may be well, therefore, on\nthe threshold of Devachan to put this question of \"illusion\" in its\ntrue light.\n\nIn a deep metaphysical sense all that is conditioned is illusory. All\nphenomena are literally \"appearances\", the outer masks in which the\nOne Reality shows itself forth in our changing universe. The more\n\"material\" and solid the appearance, the further is it from Reality,\nand therefore the more illusory it is. What can be a greater fraud\nthan our body, so apparently solid, stable, visible and tangible? It\nis a constantly changing congeries of minute living particles, an\nattractive centre into which stream continually myriads of tiny\ninvisibles, that become visible by their aggregation at this centre,\nand then stream away again, becoming invisible by reason of their\nminuteness as they separate off from this aggregation. In comparison\nwith this ever-shifting but apparently stable body how much less\nillusory is the mind, which is able to expose the pretensions of the\nbody and put it in its true light. The mind is constantly imposed on\nby the senses, and Consciousness, the most real thing in us, is apt to\nregard itself as the unreal. In truth, it is the thought-world that is\nthe nearest to reality, and things become more and more illusory as\nthey take on more and more of a phenomenal character.\n\nAgain, the mind is permanent as compared with the transitory physical\nworld. For the \"mind\" is only a clumsy name for the living Thinker in\nus, the true and conscious Entity, the inner Man, \"that was, that is,\nand will be, for whom the hour shall never strike\". The less deeply\nthis inner Man is plunged into matter, the less unreal is his life;\nand when he has shaken off the garments he donned at incarnation, his\nphysical, ethereal, and passional bodies, then he is nearer to the\nSoul of Things than he was before, and though veils of illusion still\ndim his vision they are far thinner than those which clouded it when\nround him was wrapped the garment of the flesh. His freer and less\nillusory life is that which is without the body, and the disembodied\nis, comparatively speaking, his normal state. Out of this normal state\nhe plunges into physical life for brief periods in order that he may\ngain experiences otherwise unattainable, and bring them back to enrich\nhis more abiding condition. As a diver may plunge into the depths of\nthe ocean to seek a pearl, so the Thinker plunges into the depths of\nthe ocean of life to seek the pearl of experience; but he does not\nstay there long; it is not his own element; he rises up again into his\nown atmosphere and shakes off from him the heavier element he leaves.\nAnd therefore it is truly said of the Soul that has escaped from earth\nthat it has returned to its own place, for its home is the \"land of\nthe Gods\", and here on earth it is an exile and a prisoner. This view\nwas very clearly put by a Master of Wisdom in a conversation reported\nby H.P. Blavatsky, and printed under the title \"Life and Death.\"[28]\nThe following extracts state the case:\n\n    _The Vedantins, acknowledging two kinds of conscious\n    existence, the terrestrial and the spiritual, point only to\n    the latter as an undoubted actuality. As to the terrestrial\n    life, owing to its changeability and shortness, it is nothing\n    but an illusion of our senses. Our life in the spiritual\n    spheres must be thought an actuality because it is there that\n    lives our endless, never-changing immortal I, the Sutratma.\n    Whereas in every new incarnation it clothes itself in a\n    perfectly different personality, a temporary and short-lived\n    one.... The very essence of all this, that is to say, spirit,\n    force, and matter, has neither end nor beginning, but the\n    shape acquired by this triple unity during its incarnations,\n    their  exterior, so to speak, is nothing but a mere illusion\n    of personal conceptions. This is why we call the posthumous\n    life the only reality, and the terrestrial one, including the\n    personality itself, only imaginary._\n\n    Why in this case should we call the reality sleep, and the\n    phantasm waking?\n\n    _This comparison was made by me to facilitate your\n    comprehension. From the standpoint of your terrestrial\n    notions it is perfectly accurate._\n\nNote the words: \"From the standpoint of your terrestrial notions,\" for\nthey are the key to all the phrases used about Devachan as an\n\"illusion.\" Our gross physical matter is not there; the limitations\nimposed by it are not there; the mind is in its own realm, where to\nwill is to create, where to think is to see. And so, when the Master\nwas asked: \"Would it not be better to say that death is nothing but a\nbirth for a new life, or still better, a going back to eternity?\" he\nanswered:\n\n    _This is how it really is, and I have nothing to say against\n    such a way of putting it. Only with our accepted views of\n    material life the words \"live\" and \"exist\" are not applicable\n    to the purely subjective condition after death; and were they\n    employed in our Philosophy without a rigid definition of\n    their meanings, the Vedantins would soon arrive at the ideas\n    which are common in our times among the American\n    Spiritualists, who preach about spirits marrying among\n    themselves and with mortals. As amongst the true, not\n    nominal, Christians so amongst the Vedantins--the life on the\n    other side of the grave is the land where there are no_\n    _tears, no sighs, where there is neither marrying nor giving\n    in marriage, and where the just realise their full\n    perfection._\n\nThe dread of materialising mental and spiritual conceptions has always\nbeen very strong among the Philosophers and oral Teachers of the far\nEast. Their constant effort has been to free the Thinker as far as\npossible from the bonds of matter even while he is embodied, to open\nthe cage for the Divine Swallow, even though he must return to it for\nawhile. They are ever seeking \"to spiritualise the material\", while in\nthe West the continual tendency has been \"to materialise the\nspiritual\". So the Indian describes the life of the freed Soul in all\nthe terms that make it least material--illusion, dream, and so\non--whereas the Hebrew endeavours to delineate it in terms descriptive\nof the material luxury and splendour of earth--marriage feast, streets\nof gold, thrones and crowns of solid metal and precious stones; the\nWestern has followed the materialising conceptions of the Hebrew, and\npictures a heaven which is merely a double of earth with earth's\nsorrows extracted, until we reach the grossest of all, the modern\nSummerland, with its \"spirit-husbands\", \"spirit-wives\", and\n\"spirit-infants\" that go to school and college, and grow up into\nspirit-adults.\n\nIn \"Notes on Devachan\",[29] someone who evidently writes with knowledge\nremarks of the Devachani:\n\n    _The_ a priori _ideas of space and time do not control his\n    perceptions; for he absolutely creates and annihilates them\n    at the same time. Physical existence has its cumulative\n    intensity from infancy to prime, and its diminishing energy\n    from dotage to death; so the dream-life of Devachan is lived\n    correspondentially. Nature cheats no more the Devachani than\n    she does the living physical man. Nature provides for him far\n    more_ real _bliss and happiness_ there _than she does_ here,\n    _where all the conditions of evil and chance are against him.\n    To call the Devachan existence a \"dream\" in any other sense\n    than that of a conventional term, is to renounce for ever the\n    knowledge of the Esoteric Doctrine, the sole custodian of\n    truth._\n\n\"Dream\" only in the sense that it is not of this plane of gross\nmatter, that it belongs not to the physical world.\n\nLet us try and take a general view of the life of the Eternal Pilgrim,\nthe inner Man, the human Soul, during a cycle of incarnation. Before he\ncommences his new pilgrimage--for many pilgrimages lie behind him in the\npast, during which he gained the powers which enable him to tread the\npresent one--he is a spiritual Being, but one who has already passed out\nof the passive condition of pure Spirit, and who by previous experience\nof matter in past ages has evolved intellect, the self-conscious mind.\nBut this evolution by experience is far from being complete, even so far\nas to make him master of matter; his ignorance leaves him a prey to all\nthe illusions of gross matter, so soon as he comes into contact with it,\nand he is not fit to be a builder of a universe, being subject to the\ndeceptive visions caused by gross matter--as a child, looking through a\npiece of blue glass, imagines all the outside world to be blue. The\nobject of a cycle of incarnation is to free him from these illusions, so\nthat when he is surrounded by and working in gross matter he may retain\nclear vision and not be blinded by illusion. Now the cycle of\nincarnation is made up of two alternating states: a short one called\nlife on earth, during which the Pilgrim-God is plunged into gross\nmatter, and a comparatively long one, called life in Devachan, during\nwhich he is encircled by subtle matter, illusive still, but far less\nillusive than that of earth. The second state may fairly be called his\nnormal one, as it is of enormous extent as compared with the breaks in\nit that he spends upon earth; it is comparatively normal also, as being\nless removed from his essential Divine life; he is less encased in\nmatter, less deluded by its swiftly-changing appearances. Slowly and\ngradually, by reiterated experiences, gross matter loses its power over\nhim and becomes his servant instead of his tyrant. In the partial\nfreedom of Devachan he assimilates his experiences on earth, still\npartly dominated by them--at first, indeed, almost completely dominated\nby them so that the devachanic life is merely a sublimated continuation\nof the earth-life--but gradually freeing himself more and more as he\nrecognises them as transitory and external, until he can move through\nany region of our universe with unbroken self-consciousness, a true Lord\nof Mind, the free and triumphant God. Such is the triumph of the Divine\nNature manifested in the flesh, the subduing of every form of matter to\nbe the obedient instrument of Spirit. Thus the Master said:\n\n    _The spiritual Ego of the man moves in eternity like a\n    pendulum between the hours of life and death, but if these_\n    _hours, the periods of life terrestrial and life posthumous,\n    are limited in their continuation, and even the very number\n    of such breaks in eternity between sleep and waking, between\n    illusion and reality, have their beginning as well as their\n    end, the spiritual Pilgrim himself is eternal. Therefore the_\n    hours of his posthumous life, _when unveiled he stands face\n    to face with truth, and the short-lived mirages of his\n    terrestrial existence are far from him,_ compose _or make up,\n    in our ideas,_ the only reality. _Such breaks, in spite of\n    the fact that they are finite, do double service to the\n    Sutratma, which, perfecting itself constantly, follows\n    without vacillation, though very slowly, the road leading to\n    its last transformation, when, reaching its aim at last, it\n    becomes a Divine Being. They not only contribute to the\n    reaching of this goal, but without these finite breaks\n    Sutratma-Buddhi could never reach it. Sutratma is the actor,\n    and its numerous and different incarnations are the actor's\n    parts. I suppose you would not apply to these parts, and so\n    much the less to their costumes, the term of personality.\n    Like an actor the soul is bound to play, during the cycle of\n    births up to the very threshold of Parinirvana, many such\n    parts, which often are disagreeable to it, but like a bee,\n    collecting its honey from every flower, and leaving the rest\n    to feed the worms of the earth, our spiritual individuality,\n    the Sutratma, collecting only the nectar of moral qualities\n    and consciousness from every terrestrial personality in which\n    it has to clothe itself, forced by Karma, unites at last all\n    these qualities in one, having then become a perfect being, a\n    Dhyan Chohan._[30]\n\nIt is very significant, in this connection, that every devachanic\nstage is conditioned by the earth-stage that precedes it, and the Man\ncan only assimilate in Devachan the kinds of experience he has been\ngathering on earth.\n\n    _A colourless, flavourless personality has a colourless,\n    feeble Devachanic state._[31]\n\nHusband, father, student, patriot, artist, Christian, Buddhist--he\nmust work out the effects of his earth-life in his devachanic life; he\ncannot eat and assimilate more food than he has gathered; he cannot\nreap more harvest than he has sown seed. It takes but a moment to cast\na seed into a furrow; it takes many a month for that seed to grow into\nthe ripened ear; but according to the kind of the seed is the ear that\ngrows from it, and according to the nature of the brief earth-life is\nthe grain reaped in the field of Aanroo.\n\n    _There is a change of occupation, a continual change in\n    Devachan, just as much and far more than there is in the life\n    of any man or woman who happens to follow in his or her whole\n    life one sole occupation, whatever it may be, with this\n    difference, that to the Devachani this spiritual occupation\n    is always pleasant and fills his life with rapture. Life in\n    Devachan is the function of the aspirations of earth-life;\n    not the indefinite prolongation of that \"single instant,\" but\n    its infinite developments, the various incidents and events\n    based upon and outflowing from that one \"single moment\" or\n    moments. The dreams of the objective become the realities of\n    the subjective existence.... The reward provided by Nature\n    for men who are benevolent in a large systematic way, and who\n    have not focussed their affections on an individual or\n    speciality, is that, if pure, they pass the  quicker for\n    that through the Kama and Rupa Lokas into the higher sphere\n    of Tribhuvana, since it is one where the formulation of\n    abstract ideas and the consideration of general principles\n    fill the thought of its occupant._[32]\n\nInto Devachan enters nothing that defileth, for gross matter has been\nleft behind with all its attributes on earth and in Kamaloka. But if\nthe sower has sowed but little seed, the devachanic harvest will be\nmeagre, and the growth of the Soul will be delayed by the paucity of\nthe nutriment on which it has to feed. Hence the enormous importance\nof the earth-life, _the field of sowing, the place where experience is\nto be gathered_. It conditions, regulates, limits, the growth of the\nSoul; it yields the rough ore which the Soul then takes in hand, and\nworks upon during the devachanic stage, smelting it, forging it,\ntempering it, into the weapons it will take back with it for its next\nearth-life. The experienced Soul in Devachan will make for itself a\nsplendid instrument for its next earth-life; the inexperienced one\nwill forge a poor blade enough; but in each case the only material\navailable is that brought from earth. In Devachan the Soul, as it\nwere, sifts and sorts out its experiences; it lives a comparatively\nfree life, and gradually gains the power to estimate the earthly\nexperiences at their real value; it works out thoroughly and\ncompletely as objective realities all the ideas of which it only\nconceived the germ on earth. Thus, noble aspiration is a germ which\nthe Soul would work out into a splendid realisation in Devachan, and\nit would bring back with it to earth for its next incarnation that\nmental image, to be materialised on earth when opportunity offers and\nsuitable environment presents itself. For the mind sphere is the\nsphere of creation, and earth only the place for materialising the\npre-existent thought. And the soul is as an architect that works out\nhis plans in silence and deep meditation, and then brings them forth\ninto the outer world where his edifice is to be builded; out of the\nknowledge gained in his past life, the Soul draws his plans for the\nnext, and he returns to earth to put into objective material form the\nedifices he has planned. This is the description of a Logos in\ncreative activity:\n\n    Whilst Brahma formerly, in the beginning of the Kalpas, was\n    meditating on creation, there appeared a creation beginning\n    with ignorance and consisting of darkness.... Brahma,\n    beholding that it was defective, designed another; and whilst\n    he thus meditated, the animal creation was manifested....\n    Beholding this creation also imperfect, Brahma again\n    meditated, and a third creation appeared, abounding with the\n    quality of goodness.[33]\n\nThe objective manifestation follows the mental meditation; first idea,\nthen form. Hence it will be seen that the notion current among many\nTheosophists that Devachan is waste time, is but one of the illusions\ndue to the gross matter that blinds them, and that their impatience of\nthe idea of Devachan arises from the delusion that fussing about in\ngross matter is the only real activity. Whereas, in truth, all\neffective action has its source in deep meditation, and out of the\nSilence comes ever the creative Word. Action on this plane would be\nless feeble and inefficient if it were the mere blossom of the\nprofound root of meditation, and if the Soul embodied passed oftener\nout of the body into Devachan during earth-life, there would be less\nfoolish action and consequent waste of time. For Devachan is a state\nof consciousness, the consciousness of the Soul escaped for awhile\nfrom the net of gross matter, and may be entered at any time by one\nwho has learned to withdraw his Soul from the senses as the tortoise\nwithdraws itself within its shell. And then, coming forth once more,\naction is prompt, direct, purposeful, and the time \"wasted\" in\nmeditation is more than saved by the directness and strength of the\nmind-engendered act.\n\nDevachan is the sphere of the mind, as said, it is the land of the\nGods, or the Souls. In the before quoted \"Notes on Devachan\" we read:\n\n    _There are two fields of causal manifestations: the objective\n    and the subjective. The grosser energies find their outcome\n    in the new personality of each birth in the cycle of\n    evoluting individuality. The moral and spiritual activities\n    find their sphere of effects in Devachan._\n\nAs the moral and spiritual activities are the most important, and as\non the development of these depends the growth of the true Man, and\ntherefore the accomplishing of \"the object of creation, the liberation\nof Soul\", we may begin to understand something of the vast importance\nof the devachanic state.\n\n\nTHE DEVACHANI.\n\nWhen the Triad has shaken off its last garment, it crosses the\nthreshold of Devachan, and becomes \"a Devachani\". We have seen that\nit is in a peaceful dreamy state before this passage out of the earth\nsphere, the \"second death\", or \"pre-devachanic unconsciousness\". This\ncondition is otherwise spoken of as the \"gestation\" period, because it\nprecedes the birth of the Ego into the devachanic life. Regarded from\nthe earth-sphere the passage is death, while regarded from that of\nDevachan it is birth. Thus we find in \"Notes on Devachan\":\n\n    _As in actual earth-life, so there is for the Ego in Devachan\n    the first flutter of psychic life, the attainment of prime,\n    the gradual exhaustion of force passing into\n    semi-consciousness and lethargy, total oblivion, and--not\n    death but birth, birth into another personality, and the\n    resumption of action which daily begets new congeries of\n    causes that must be worked out in another term of Devachan,\n    and still another physical birth as a new personality. What\n    the lives in Devachan and upon earth shall be respectively in\n    each instance is determined by Karma, and this weary round of\n    birth must be ever and ever run through until the being\n    reaches the end of the seventh Round, or attains in the\n    interim the wisdom of an Arhat, then that of a Buddha, and\n    thus gets relieved for a Round or two._\n\nWhen the devachanic entity is born into this new sphere it has passed\nbeyond recall to earth. The embodied Soul may rise to it, but it\ncannot be drawn back to our world. On this a Master has spoken\ndecisively:\n\n    _From Sukhavati down to the \"Territory of Doubt,\" there is a\n    variety of spiritual states, but ... as soon as it has\n    stepped outside the Kamaloka, crossed the \"Golden Bridge\"\n    leading to the \"Seven Golden Mountains,\" the Ego can\n    confabulate no more with easy-going mediums. No Ernest or\n    Joey has ever returned from the Rupa Loka, let alone the\n    Arupa Loka, to hold sweet intercourse with men._\n\nIn the \"Notes on Devachan,\" again, we read:\n\n    _Certainly the new Ego, once that it is reborn (in Devachan),\n    retains for a certain time--proportionate to its\n    earth-life--a complete recollection \"of his life on earth\";\n    but it can never revisit the Earth from Devachan except in\n    Re-incarnation._\n\nThe Devachani is generally spoken of as the Immortal Triad,\nAtma-Buddhi-Manas, but it is well always to bear in mind that\n\n    Atman is no individual property of any man, but is the Divine\n    Essence which has no body, no form, which is imponderable,\n    invisible, and indivisible, that which does not _exist_ and\n    yet _is_, as the Buddhists say of Nirvana. It only\n    overshadows the mortal; that which enters into him and\n    pervades the whole body being only it's omni-present rays or\n    light, radiated through Buddhi, its vehicle and direct\n    emanation.[34]\n\nBuddhi and Manas united, with this overshadowing of Atma, form the\nDevachani; now, as we have seen in studying the Seven Principles,\nManas is dual during earth-life, and the Lower Manas is redrawn into\nthe Higher during the kamalokic interlude. By this reuniting of the\nRay and its Source, Manas re-becomes one, and carries the pure and\nnoble experiences of the earth-life into Devachan with it, thus\nmaintaining the past personality as the marked characteristic of the\nDevachani, and it is in this prolongation of the \"personal Ego\", so\nto speak, that the \"illusion\" of the Devachani consists. Were the\nmanasic entity free from all illusion, it would see all Egos as its\nbrother-Souls, and looking back over its past would recognise all the\nvaried relationships it had borne to others in many lives, as the\nactor would remember the many parts he had played with other actors,\nand would think of each brother actor as a man, and not in the parts\nhe had played as his father, his son, his judge, his murderer, his\nmaster, his friend. The deeper human relationship would prevent the\nbrother actors from identifying each other with their parts, and so\nthe perfected spiritual Egos, recognising their deep unity and full\nbrotherhood, would no longer be deluded by the trappings of earthly\nrelationships. But the Devachani, at least in the lower stages, is\nstill within the personal boundaries of his past earth-life; he is\nshut into the relationships of the one incarnation; his paradise is\npeopled with those he \"_loved best with an undying love, that holy\nfeeling that alone survives_,\" and thus the purified personal Ego is\nthe salient feature, as above said, in the Devachani. Again quoting\nfrom the \"Notes on Devachan\":\n\n    \"_Who goes to Devachan?\" The personal Ego, of course; but\n    beatified, purified, holy. Every Ego--the combination of the\n    sixth and seventh principles[35]--which after the period of\n    unconscious gestation is reborn into the Devachan, is of\n    necessity as innocent and pure as a new-born babe. The  fact\n    of his being reborn at all shows the preponderance of good\n    over evil in his old personality. And while the Karma [of\n    Evil] steps aside for the time being to follow him in his\n    future earth re-incarnation, he brings along with him but the\n    Karma of his good deeds, words and thoughts into this\n    Devachan. \"Bad\" is a relative term for us--as you were told\n    more than once before--and the Law of Retribution is the only\n    law that never errs. Hence all those who have not slipped\n    down into the mire of unredeemable sin and bestiality go to\n    the Devachan. They will have to pay for their sins, voluntary\n    and involuntary, later on. Meanwhile they are rewarded;\n    receive the effects of the causes produced by them._\n\nNow in some people a sense of repulsion arises at the idea that the\nties they form on earth in one life are not to be permanent in\neternity. But let us look at the question calmly for a moment. When a\nmother first clasps her baby-son in her arms, that one relationship\nseems perfect, and if the child should die, her longing would be to\nre-possess him as her babe; but as he lives on through youth to\nmanhood the tie changes, and the protective love of the mother and the\nclinging obedience of the child merge into a different love of friends\nand comrades, richer than ordinary friendship from the old\nrecollections; yet later, when the mother is aged and the son in the\nprime of middle life, their positions are reversed and the son\nprotects while the mother depends on him for guidance. Would the\nrelation have been more perfect had it ceased in infancy with only the\none tie, or is it not the richer and the sweeter from the different\nstrands of which the tie is woven? And so with Egos; in many lives\nthey may hold to each other many relationships, and finally, standing\nas Brothers of the Lodge closely knit together, may look back over\npast lives and see themselves in earth-life related in the many ways\npossible to human beings, till the cord is woven of every strand of\nlove and duty; would not the final unity be the richer not the poorer\nfor the many-stranded tie? \"Finally\", I say; but the word is only of\nthis cycle, for what lies beyond, of wider life and less separateness,\nno mind of man may know. To me it seems that this very variety of\nexperiences makes the tie stronger, not weaker, and that it is a\nrather thin and poor thing to know oneself and another in only one\nlittle aspect of many-sided humanity for endless ages of years; a\nthousand or so years of one person in one character would, to me, be\nample, and I should prefer to know him or her in some new aspect of\nhis nature. But those who object to this view need not feel\ndistressed, for they will enjoy the presence of their beloved in the\none personal aspect held by him or her in the one incarnation they are\nconscious of _for as long as the desire for that presence remains_.\nOnly let them not desire to impose their own form of bliss on\neverybody else, nor insist that the kind of happiness which seems to\nthem at this stage the only one desirable and satisfying, must be\nstereotyped to all eternity, through all the millions of years that\nlie before us. Nature gives to each in Devachan the satisfaction of\nall pure desires, and Manas there exercises that faculty of his innate\ndivinity, that he \"never wills in vain\". Will not this suffice?\n\nBut leaving aside disputes as to what may be to us \"happiness\" in a\nfuture separated from our present by millions of years, so that we are\nno more fitted now to formulate its conditions than is a child,\nplaying with its dolls, to formulate the deeper joys and interests of\nits maturity, let us understand that, according to the teachings of\nthe Esoteric Philosophy, the Devachani is surrounded by all he loved\non earth, with pure affection, and the union being on the plane of the\nEgo, not on the physical plane, it is free from all the sufferings\nwhich would be inevitable were the Devachani present in consciousness\non the physical plane with all its illusory and transitory joys and\nsorrows. It is surrounded by its beloved in the higher consciousness,\nbut is not agonised by the knowledge of what they are suffering in the\nlower consciousness, held in the bonds of the flesh. According to the\northodox Christian view, Death is a separation, and the \"spirits of\nthe dead\" wait for reunion until those they love also pass through\nDeath's gateway, or--according to some--until after the judgment-day\nis over. As against this the Esoteric Philosophy teaches that Death\ncannot touch the higher consciousness of man, and that it can only\nseparate those who love each other so far as their lower vehicles are\nconcerned; the man living on earth, blinded by matter, feels separated\nfrom those who have passed onwards, but the Devachani, says H.P.\nBlavatsky, has a complete conviction \"that there is no such thing as\nDeath at all\", having left behind it all those vehicles over which\nDeath has power. Therefore, to its less blinded eyes, its beloved are\nstill with it; for it, the veil of matter that separates has been torn\naway.\n\n    A mother dies, leaving behind her little helpless children,\n    whom she adores, perhaps a beloved husband also. We say that\n    her \"Spirit\" or Ego--that individuality which is now wholly\n    impregnated, for the entire Devachanic period, with the\n    noblest feelings held by its late _personality, i.e._, love\n    for her children, pity for those who suffer, and so on--is\n    now entirely separated from the \"vale of tears,\" that its\n    future bliss consists in that blessed ignorance of all the\n    woes it left behind ... that the _post-mortem_ spiritual\n    consciousness of the mother will represent to her that she\n    lives surrounded by her children and all those whom she\n    loved; that no gap, no link will be missing to make her\n    disembodied state the most perfect and absolute\n    happiness.[36]\n\nAnd so again:\n\n    As to the ordinary mortal his bliss in Devachan is complete.\n    It is an absolute oblivion of all that gave it pain or sorrow\n    in the past incarnation, and even oblivion of the fact that\n    such things as pain or sorrow exist at all. The Devachani\n    lives its intermediate cycle between two incarnations\n    surrounded by everything it had aspired to in vain, and in\n    the companionship of everything it loved on earth. It has\n    reached the fulfilment of all its soul-yearnings. And thus it\n    lives throughout long centuries an existence of _unalloyed_\n    happiness, which is the reward for its sufferings in\n    earth-life. In short, it bathes in a sea of uninterrupted\n    felicity spanned only by events of still greater felicity in\n    degree.[37]\n\nWhen we take the wider sweep in thought demanded by the Esoteric\nPhilosophy, a far more fascinating prospect of persistent love and\nunion between individual Egos rolls itself out before our eyes than\nwas offered to us by the more limited creed of exoteric Christendom.\n\"Mothers love their children with an immortal love,\" says H.P.\nBlavatsky, and the reason for this immortality in love is easily\ngrasped when we realise that it is the same Egos that play so many\nparts in the drama of life, that the experience of each part is\nrecorded in the memory of the Soul, and that between the Souls there\nis no separation, though during incarnation they may not realise the\nfact in its fulness and beauty.\n\n    We are with those whom we have lost in material form, and\n    far, far nearer to them now than when they were alive. And it\n    is not only in the fancy of the Devachani, as some may\n    imagine, but in reality. For pure divine love is not merely\n    the blossom of a human heart, but has its roots in eternity.\n    Spiritual holy love is immortal, and Karma brings sooner or\n    later all those who loved each other with such a spiritual\n    affection to incarnate once more in the same family\n    group.[38]\n\nLove \"has its roots in eternity\", and those to whom on earth we are\nstrongly drawn are the Egos we have loved in past earth-lives and\ndwelt with in Devachan; coming back to earth these enduring bonds of\nlove draw us together yet again, and add to the strength and beauty of\nthe tie, and so on and on till all illusions are lived down, and the\nstrong and perfected Egos stand side by side, sharing the experience\nof their well-nigh illimitable past.\n\n\nTHE RETURN TO EARTH.\n\nAt length the causes that carried the Ego into Devachan are exhausted,\nthe experiences gathered have been wholly assimilated, and the Soul\nbegins to feel again the thirst for sentient material life that can be\ngratified only on the physical plane. The greater the degree of\nspirituality reached, the purer and loftier the preceding earth-life,\nthe longer the stay in Devachan, the world of spiritual, pure, and\nlofty effects. [I am here ignoring the special conditions surrounding\none who is forcing his own evolution, and has entered on the Path\nthat leads to Adeptship within a very limited number of lives.] The\n\"average time [in Devachan] is from ten to fifteen centuries\", H.P.\nBlavatsky tells us, and the fifteen centuries cycle is the one most\nplainly marked in history.[39] But in modern life this period has much\nshortened, in consequence of the greater attraction exercised by\nphysical objects over the heart of man. Further, it must be remembered\nthat the \"average time\" is not the time spent in Devachan by any\nperson. If one person spends there 1000 years, and another fifty, the\n\"average\" is 525. The devachanic period is longer or shorter according\nto the type of life which preceded it; the more there was of\nspiritual, intellectual, and emotional activity of a lofty kind, the\nlonger will be the gathering in of the harvest; the more there was of\nactivity directed to selfish gain on earth, the shorter will be the\ndevachanic period.\n\nWhen the experiences are assimilated, be the time long or short, the\nEgo is ready to return, and he brings back with him his now increased\nexperience, and any further gains he may have made in Devachan along\nthe lines of abstract thought; for, while in Devachan,\n\n    In one sense we can acquire more knowledge; that is, we can\n    develop further any faculty which we loved and strove after\n    during life, provided it is concerned with abstract and ideal\n    things, such as music, painting, poetry, &c.[40]\n\nBut the Ego meets, as he crosses the threshold of Devachan on his way\noutwards--dying out of Devachan to be reborn on earth--he meets in the\n\"atmosphere of the terrestrial plane\", the seeds of evil sown in his\npreceding life on earth. During the devachanic rest he has been free\nfrom all pain, all sorrow, but the evil he did in his past has been in\na state of suspended animation, not of death. As seeds sown in the\nautumn for the spring-time lie dormant beneath the surface of the\nsoil, but touched by the soft rain and penetrating warmth of sun begin\nto swell and the embryo expands and grows, so do the seeds of evil we\nhave sown lie dormant while the Soul takes its rest in Devachan, but\nshoot out their roots into the new personality which begins\nto form itself for the incarnation of the returning man. The Ego has\nto take up the burden of his past, and these germs or seeds, coming\nover as the harvest of the past life, are the Skandhas, to borrow a\nconvenient word from our Buddhist brethren. They consist of material\nqualities, sensations, abstract ideas, tendencies of mind, mental\npowers, and while the pure aroma of these attached itself to the Ego\nand passed with it into Devachan, all that was gross, base and evil\nremained in the state of suspended animation spoken of above. These\nare taken up by the Ego as he passes outwards towards terrestrial\nlife, and are built into the new \"man of flesh\" which the true man is\nto inhabit. And so the round of births and deaths goes on, the turning\nof the Wheel of Life; the treading of the Cycle of Necessity, until\nthe work is done and the building of the Perfect Man is completed.\n\n\nNIRVANA.\n\nWhat Devachan is to each earth-life, Nirvana is to the finished cycle\nof Re-incarnation, but any effective discussion of that glorious\nstate would here be out of place. It is mentioned only to round off\nthe \"After\" of Death, for no word of man, strictly limited within the\nnarrow bounds of his lower consciousness, may avail to explain what\nNirvana is, can do aught save disfigure it in striving to describe.\nWhat it is not may be roughly, baldly stated--it is not\n\"annihilation\", it is not destruction of consciousness. Mr. A.P.\nSinnett has put effectively and briefly the absurdity of many of the\nideas current in the West about Nirvana. He has been speaking of\nabsolute consciousness, and proceeds:\n\n    We may use such phrases as intellectual counters, but for no\n    ordinary mind--dominated by its physical brain and brain-born\n    intellect--can they have a living signification. All that\n    words can convey is that Nirvana is a sublime state of\n    conscious rest in omniscience. It would be ludicrous, after\n    all that has gone before, to turn to the various discussions\n    which have been carried on by students of exoteric Buddhism\n    as to whether Nirvana does or does not mean annihilation.\n    Worldly similes fall short of indicating the feeling with\n    which the graduates of Esoteric Science regard such a\n    question. Does the last penalty of the law mean the highest\n    honour of the peerage? Is a wooden spoon the emblem of the\n    most illustrious pre-eminence in learning? Such questions as\n    these but faintly symbolise the extravagance of the question\n    whether Nirvana is held by Buddhism to be equivalent to\n    annihilation.[41]\n\nSo we learn from the _Secret Doctrine_ that the Nirvani returns to\ncosmic activity in a new cycle of manifestation, and that\n\n    _The thread of radiance which is imperishable and dissolves\n    only in Nirvana, re-emerges from it in its integrity  on the\n    day when the Great Law calls all things back into\n    action._[42]\n\n\nCOMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN THE EARTH AND OTHER SPHERES.\n\nWe are now in position to discriminate between the various kinds of\ncommunication possible between those whom we foolishly divide into\n\"dead\" and \"living,\" as though the body were the man, or the man could\ndie. \"Communications between the embodied and the disembodied\" would\nbe a more satisfactory phrase.\n\nFirst, let us put aside as unsuitable the word Spirit: Spirit does not\ncommunicate with Spirit in any way conceivable by us. That highest\nprinciple is not yet manifest in the flesh; it remains the hidden\nfount of all, the eternal Energy, one of the poles of Being in\nmanifestation. The word is loosely used to denote lofty Intelligences,\nwho live and move beyond all conditions of matter imaginable by us,\nbut pure Spirit is at present as inconceivable by us as pure matter.\nAnd as in dealing with possible \"communications\" we have average human\nbeings as recipients, we may as well exclude the word Spirit as much\nas possible, and so get rid of ambiguity. But in quotations the word\noften occurs, in deference to the habit of the day, and it then\ndenotes the Ego.\n\nTaking the stages through which the living man passes after \"Death\",\nor the shaking off of the body, we can readily classify the\ncommunications that may be received, or the appearances that may be\nseen:\n\nI. While the Soul has shaken off only the dense body, and remains\nstill clothed in the etheric double. This is a brief period only, but\nduring it the disembodied Soul may show itself, clad in this ethereal\ngarment.\n\n    For a very short period after death, while the incorporeal\n    principles remain within the sphere of our earth's\n    attraction, it is _possible_ for spirit, under _peculiar_ and\n    _favourable_ conditions, to appear.[43]\n\nIt makes no communications during this brief interval, nor while\ndwelling in this form. Such \"ghosts\" are silent, dreamy, like\nsleep-walkers, and indeed they are nothing more than astral\nsleep-walkers. Equally irresponsive, but capable of expressing a\nsingle thought, as of sorrow, anxiety, accident, murder, &c., are\napparitions which are merely a thought of the dying, taking shape in\nthe astral world, and carried by the dying person's will to some\nparticular person, with whom the dying intensely longs to communicate.\nSuch a thought, sometimes called a Mayavi Rupa, or illusory form\n\n    _May be often thrown into objectivity, as in the case of\n    apparitions after death; but, unless it is projected with the\n    knowledge of (whether latent or potential), or owing to the\n    intensity of the desire to see or appear to some one shooting\n    through, the dying brain, the apparition will be simply\n    automatical; it will not be due to any sympathetic\n    attraction, or to any act of volition, any more than the\n    reflection of a person passing unconsciously near a mirror is\n    due to the desire of the latter._\n\nWhen the Soul has left the etheric double, shaking it  off as it\nshook off the dense body, the double thus left as a mere empty corpse\nmay be galvanised into an \"artificial life\"; but fortunately the\nmethod of such galvanisation is known to few.\n\nII. While the Soul is in Kamaloka. This period is of very variable\nduration. The Soul is clad in an astral body, the last but one of its\nperishable garments, and while thus clad it can utilise the physical\nbodies of a medium, thus consciously procuring for itself an\ninstrument whereby it can act on the world it has left, and\ncommunicate with those living in the body. In this way it may give\ninformation as to facts known to itself only, or to itself and another\nperson, in the earth-life just closed; and for as long as it remains\nwithin the terrestrial atmosphere such communication is possible. The\nharm and the peril of such communication has been previously\nexplained, whether the Lower Manas be united with the Divine Triad and\nso on its way to Devachan, or wrenched from it and on its way to\ndestruction.\n\nIII. While the Soul is in Devachan, if an embodied Soul is capable of\nrising to its sphere, or of coming into _rapport_ with it. To the\nDevachani, as we have seen, the beloved are present in consciousness\nand full communication, the Egos being in touch with each other,\nthough one is embodied and one is disembodied, but the higher\nconsciousness of the embodied rarely affects the brain. As a matter of\nfact, all that we know on the physical plane of our friend, while we\nboth are embodied, is the mental image caused by the impression he\nmakes on us. This is, to our consciousness, our friend, and lacks\nnothing in objectivity. A similar image is present to the\nconsciousness of the Devachani, and to him lacks nothing in\nobjectivity. As the physical plane friend is visible to an observer on\nearth, so is the mental plane friend visible to an observer on that\nplane. The amount of the friend that ensouls the image is dependent on\nhis own evolution, a highly evolved person being capable of far more\ncommunication with a Devachani than one who is unevolved.\nCommunication when the body is sleeping is easier than when it is\nawake, and many a vivid \"dream\" of one on the other side of death is a\nreal interview with him in Kamaloka or in Devachan.\n\n    Love beyond the grave, illusion though you may call it,[44]\n    has a magic and divine potency that re-acts on the living. A\n    mother's Ego, filled with love for the imaginary children it\n    sees near itself, living a life of happiness, as real to it\n    as when on earth--that love will always be felt by the\n    children in flesh. It will manifest in their dreams and often\n    in various events--in providential protections and escapes,\n    for love is a strong shield, and is not limited by space or\n    time. As with this Devachanic \"mother\", so with the rest of\n    human relationships and attachments, save the purely selfish\n    or material.[45]\n\nRemembering that a thought becomes an active entity, capable of\nworking good or evil, we easily see that as embodied Souls can send to\nthose they love helping and protecting forces, so the Devachani,\nthinking of those dear to him, may send out such helpful and\nprotective thoughts, to act as veritable guardian angels round his\nbeloved on earth. But this is a very different thing from the \"Spirit\"\nof the mother coming back to earth to be the almost helpless spectator\nof the child's woes.\n\nThe Soul embodied may sometimes escape from its prison of flesh, and\ncome into relations with the Devachani. H.P. Blavatsky writes:\n\n    Whenever years after the death of a person his spirit is\n    claimed to have \"wandered back to earth\" to give advice to\n    those it loved, it is always in a subjective vision, in dream\n    or in trance, and in that case it is the Soul of the living\n    seer that is drawn to the _disembodied_ spirit, and not the\n    latter which wanders back to our spheres.[46]\n\nWhere the sensitive, or medium, is of a pure and lofty nature, this\nrising of the freed Ego to the Devachani is practicable, and naturally\ngives the impression to the sensitive that the departed Ego has come\nback to him. The Devachani is wrapped in its happy \"illusion\", and\n\n    _The Souls, or astral Egos, of pure loving sensitives,\n    labouring under the same delusion, think their loved ones\n    come down to them on earth, while it is their own spirits\n    that are raised towards those in the Devachan._[47]\n\nThis attraction can be exercised by the departed Soul from Kamaloka or\nfrom Devachan:\n\n    A \"spirit\" or the spiritual Ego, cannot _descend_ to the\n    medium, but it can _attract_ the spirit of the latter to\n    itself, and it can do this only during the two\n    intervals--before and after its \"gestation period\". Interval\n    the first is that period between the physical death and the\n    merging of the spiritual Ego into that state which is known\n    in the Arhat Esoteric Doctrine as \"Bar-do\". We have\n    translated this as the \"gestation period\", and it lasts from\n    a few days to several years, according to the evidence of the\n    Adepts. Interval the second lasts so long as the merits of\n    the old [personal] Ego entitle the being to reap the fruit of\n    its reward in its new regenerated Egoship. It occurs after\n    the gestation period is over, and the new spiritual Ego is\n    reborn--like the fabled Phoenix from its ashes--from the\n    old one. The locality which the former inhabits is called by\n    the northern Buddhist Occultists \"Devachan.\"[48]\n\nSo also may the incorporeal principles of pure sensitives be placed\n_en rapport_ with disembodied Souls, although information thus\nobtained is not reliable, partly in consequence of the difficulty of\ntransferring to the physical brain the impressions received, and\npartly from the difficulty of observing accurately, when the seer is\nuntrained.[49]\n\n    A pure medium's Ego can be drawn to and made, for an instant,\n    to unite in a magnetic(?) relation with a real disembodied\n    spirit, whereas the soul of an impure medium can only\n    confabulate with the _Astral Soul_, or Shell, of the\n    deceased. The former possibility explains those extremely\n    rare cases of direct writing in recognised autographs, and of\n    messages from the higher class of disembodied intelligences.\n\nBut the confusion in messages thus obtained is considerable, not only\nfrom the causes above-named, but also because\n\n    Even the best and purest sensitive can at most only be placed\n    at any time _en rapport_ with a particular spiritual entity,\n    and can only know, see, and feel what that particular entity\n    knows, sees, and feels.\n\nHence much possibility of error if generalisations are indulged in,\nsince each Devachani lives in his own paradise, and there is no\n\"peeping down to earth,\"\n\n    Nor is there any _conscious_ communication with the flying\n    Souls that come as it were to learn where the Spirits are,\n    what they are doing, and what they think, feel, and see.\n\n    What then is being _en rapport_? It is simply an identity of\n    molecular  vibration between the astral part of the\n    incarnated sensitive and the astral part of the\n    dis-incarnated personality. The spirit of the sensitive gets\n    \"odylised\", so to speak, by the aura of the spirit, whether\n    this be hybernating in the earthly region or dreaming in the\n    Devachan; identity of molecular vibration is established, and\n    for a brief space the sensitive becomes the departed\n    personality, and writes in its handwriting, uses its\n    language, and thinks its thoughts. At such times sensitives\n    may believe that those with whom they are for the moment _en\n    rapport_ descend to earth and communicate with them, whereas,\n    in reality, it is merely their own spirits which, being\n    correctly attuned to those others, are for the time blended\n    with them.[50]\n\nIn a special case under examination, H.P. Blavatsky said that the\ncommunication might have come from an Elementary, but that it was\n\n    Far more likely that the medium's spirit really became _en\n    rapport_ with some spiritual entity in Devachan, the\n    thoughts, knowledge, and sentiments of which formed the\n    substance, while the medium's own personality and\n    pre-existing ideas more or less governed the forms of the\n    communication.[51]\n\nWhile these communications are not reliable in the facts and opinions\nstated,\n\n    We would remark that it may _possibly_ be that there really\n    is a distinct spiritual entity impressing our correspondent's\n    mind. In other words, there may, for all we know, be some\n    spirit, with whom his spiritual nature becomes habitually,\n    for the time, thoroughly harmonised, and whose thoughts,\n    language, &c., become his for the time, the result being that\n    this spirit seems to communicate with him.... It is possible\n    (though by no means probable) that he habitually passes into\n    a state of _rapport_ with a genuine spirit, and, for the\n    time, is assimilated therewith, thinking (to a great extent\n    if not entirely) the thoughts that spirit would think,\n    writing in its handwriting, &c. But even so, Mr. Terry must\n    not fancy that that spirit is consciously communicating with\n    him, or knows in any way  anything of him, or any other\n    person or thing on earth. It is simply that, the _rapport_\n    established, he, Mr. Terry, becomes for the nonce assimilated\n    with that other personality, and thinks, speaks, and writes\n    as it would have done on earth.... The molecules of his\n    astral nature may from time to time vibrate in perfect unison\n    with those of some spirit of such a person, now in Devachan,\n    and the result may be that he appears to be in communication\n    with that spirit, and to be advised, &c., by him, and\n    clairvoyants may see in the Astral Light a picture of the\n    earth-life form of that spirit.\n\nIV. Communications other than those from disembodied Souls, passing\nthrough normal _post mortem_ states.\n\n(a) _From Shells._ These, while but the cast-off garment of the\nliberated Soul, retain for some time the impress of their late\ninhabitant, and reproduce automatically his habits of thought and\nexpression, just as a physical body will automatically repeat habitual\ngestures. Reflex action is as possible to the desire body as to the\nphysical, but all reflex action is marked by its character of\nrepetition, and absence of all power to initiate movement. It answers\nto a stimulus with an appearance of purposive action, but it initiates\nnothing. When people \"sit for development\", or when at a _seance_ they\nanxiously hope and wait for messages from departed friends, they\nsupply just the stimulus needed, and obtain the signs of recognition\nfor which they expectantly watch.\n\n(b) _From Elementaries._ These, possessing the lower capacities of the\nmind, _i.e._, all the intellectual faculties that found their\nexpression through the physical brain during life, may produce\ncommunications of a highly intellectual character. These, however, are\nrare, as may be seen from a survey of the messages published as\nreceived from \"departed Spirits\".\n\n(c) _From Elementals._ These semi-conscious centres of force play a\ngreat part at _seances_, and are mostly the agents who are active in\nproducing physical phenomena. They throw about or carry objects, make\nnoises, ring bells, etc., etc. Sometimes they play pranks with Shells,\nanimating them and representing them to be the spirits of great\npersonalities who have lived on earth, but who have sadly degenerated\nin the \"spirit-world\", judging by their effusions. Sometimes, in\nmaterialising _seances_, they busy themselves in throwing pictures\nfrom the Astral Light on the fluidic forms produced, so causing them\nto assume likenesses of various persons. There are also Elementals of\na high type who occasionally communicate with very gifted mediums,\n\"Shining Ones\" from other spheres.\n\n(d) _From Nirmanakayas._ For these communications, as for the two\nclasses next mentioned, the medium must be of a very pure and lofty\nnature. The Nirmanakaya is a perfected man, who has cast aside his\nphysical body but retains his other lower principles, and remains in\nthe earth-sphere for the sake of helping forward the evolution of\nmankind. Nirmanakayas\n\n    Have, out of pity for mankind and those they left on earth,\n    renounced the Nirvanic state. Such an Adept, or Saint, or\n    whatever you may call him, believing it a selfish act to rest\n    in bliss while mankind groans under the burden of misery\n    produced by ignorance, renounces Nirvana and determines to\n    remain invisible _in spirit_ on this earth. They have no\n    material body, as they have left it behind; but otherwise\n    they remain with all their principles even _in astral life_\n    in our sphere. And such can and do communicate with a few\n    elect ones, only surely not with _ordinary_ mediums.[52]\n\n(e) _From Adepts now living on earth._ These often communicate with\nTheir disciples, without using the ordinary methods of communication,\nand when any tie exists, perchance from some past incarnation, between\nan Adept and a medium, constituting that medium a disciple, a message\nfrom the Adept might readily be mistaken for a message from a\n\"Spirit\". The receipt of such messages by precipitated writing or\nspoken words is within the knowledge of some.\n\n(f) _From the medium's Higher Ego._ Where a pure and earnest man or\nwoman is striving after the light, this upward striving is met by a\ndownward reaching of the higher nature, and light from the higher\nstreams downward, illuminating the lower consciousness. Then the lower\nmind is, for the time, united with its parent, and transmits as much\nof its knowledge as it is able to retain.\n\nFrom this brief sketch it will be seen how varied may be the sources\nfrom which communications apparently from \"the other side of Death\"\nmay be received. As said by H.P. Blavatsky:\n\n    The variety of the causes of phenomena is great, and one need\n    be an Adept, and actually look into and examine what\n    transpires, in order to be able to explain in each case what\n    really underlies it.[53]\n\nTo complete the statement it may be added that what the average Soul\ncan do when it has passed through the gateway of Death, it can do on\nthis side, and communications may be as readily obtained by writing,\nin trance, and by the other means of receiving messages, from embodied\nas from disembodied Souls. If each developed within himself the\npowers of his own Soul, instead of drifting about aimlessly, or\nignorantly plunging into dangerous experiments, knowledge might be\nsafely accumulated and the evolution of the Soul might be accelerated.\nThis one thing is sure: Man is to-day a living Soul, over whom Death\nhas no power, and the key of the prison-house of the body is in his\nown hands, so that he may learn its use if he will. It is because his\ntrue Self, while blinded by the body, has lost touch with other\nSelves, that Death has been a gulf instead of a gateway between\nembodied and disembodied Souls.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX.\n\n\n     The following passage on the fate of suicides is taken from the\n     _Theosophist_, September, 1882.\n\nWe do not pretend--we are not permitted--to deal exhaustively with the\nquestion at present, but we may refer to one of the most important\nclasses of entities, who can participate in objective phenomena, other\nthan Elementaries and Elementals.\n\nThis class comprises the Spirits of conscious sane suicides. They are\n_Spirits_, and not _Shells_, because there is not in their cases, at\nany rate until later, a total and permanent divorce between the fourth\nand fifth principles on the one hand, and the sixth and seventh on the\nother. The two duads are divided, they exist apart, but a line of\nconnection still unites them, they may yet reunite, and the sorely\nthreatened personality avert its doom; the fifth principle still holds\nin its hands the clue by which, traversing the labyrinth of earthly\nsins and passions, it may regain the sacred penetralia. But for the\ntime, though really a Spirit, and therefore so designated, it is\npractically not far removed from a Shell.\n\nThis class of Spirit can undoubtedly communicate with men, but, as a\nrule, its members have to pay dearly for exercising the privilege,\nwhile it is scarcely possible for them to do otherwise than lower and\ndebase the moral nature of those with and through whom they have much\ncommunication. It is merely, broadly speaking, a question of degree;\nof much or little injury resulting from such communication; the cases\nin which real, permanent good can arise are too absolutely exceptional\nto require consideration.\n\nUnderstand how the case stands. The unhappy being revolting against\nthe trials of life--trials, the results of its own former actions,\ntrials, heaven's merciful medicine for the mentally and spiritually\ndiseased--determines, instead of manfully taking arms against a sea of\ntroubles, to let the curtain drop, and, as it fancies, end them. It\ndestroys the body, but finds itself precisely as much alive mentally\nas before. It had an appointed life-term determined by an intricate\nweb of prior causes, which its own wilful sudden act cannot shorten.\nThat term must run out its appointed sands. You may smash the lower\nhalf of the hand hour-glass, so that the impalpable sand shooting from\nthe upper bell is dissipated by the passing aerial currents as it\nissues; but that stream will run on, unnoticed though it remain, until\nthe whole store in that upper receptacle is exhausted.\n\nSo you may destroy the body, but not the appointed period of sentient\nexistence, foredoomed (because simply the effect of a plexus of\ncauses) to intervene before the dissolution of the personality; this\nmust run on for its appointed period.\n\nThis is so in other cases, _e.g._, those of the victims of accident or\nviolence; they, too, have to complete their life-term, and of these,\ntoo, we may speak on another occasion--but here it is sufficient to\nnotice that, whether good or bad, their mental attitude at the time of\ndeath alters wholly their subsequent position. They, too, have to wait\non within the \"Region of Desires\" until their wave of life runs on to\nand reaches its appointed shore, but they wait on, wrapped in dreams\nsoothing and blissful, or the reverse, according to their mental and\nmoral state at, and prior to the fatal hour, but nearly exempt from\nfurther material temptations, and, broadly speaking, incapable (except\njust at the moment of real death) of communicating _scio motu_ with\nmankind, though not wholly beyond the possible reach of the higher\nforms of the \"Accursed Science,\" Necromancy. The question is a\nprofoundly abstruse one; it would be impossible to explain within the\nbrief space still remaining to us, how the conditions immediately\nafter death differ so entirely as they do in the case (1) of the man\nwho deliberately _lays down_ (not merely _risks_) his life from\naltruistic motives in the hope of saving those of others; and (2) of\nhim who deliberately sacrifices his life from selfish motives, in the\nhope of escaping trials and troubles which loom before him. Nature or\nProvidence, Fate, or God, being merely a self-adjusting machine, it\nwould at first sight seem as if the results must be identical in both\ncases. But, machine though it be, we must remember that it is a\nmachine _sui generis_--\n\n    Out of himself he span\n      The eternal web of right and wrong;\n    And ever feels the subtlest thrill,\n      The slenderest thread along.\n\nA machine compared with whose perfect sensitiveness and adjustment the\nhighest human intellect is but a coarse clumsy replica, _in petto_.\n\nAnd we must remember that thoughts and motives are material, and at\ntimes marvellously potent material, forces, and we may then begin to\ncomprehend why the hero, sacrificing his life on pure altruistic\ngrounds, sinks as his life-blood ebbs away into a sweet dream, wherein\n\n    All that he wishes and all that he loves,\n    Come smiling round his sunny way,\n\nonly to wake into active or objective consciousness when reborn in the\nRegion of Happiness, while the poor unhappy and misguided mortal who,\nseeking to elude fate, selfishly loosens the silver string and breaks\nthe golden bowl, finds himself terribly alive and awake, instinct with\nall the evil cravings and desires that embittered his world-life,\nwithout a body in which to gratify these, and capable of only such\npartial alleviation as is possible by more or less vicarious\ngratification, and this only at the cost of the ultimate complete\nrupture with his sixth and seventh principles, and consequent ultimate\nannihilation after, alas! prolonged periods of suffering.\n\nLet it not be supposed that there is no hope for this class--the sane\ndeliberate suicide. If, bearing steadfastly his cross, he suffers\npatiently his punishment, striving against carnal appetites still\nalive in him, in all their intensity, though, of course, each in\nproportion to the degree to which it had been indulged in earth-life.\nIf, we say, he bears this humbly, never allowing himself to be tempted\nhere or there into unlawful gratifications of unholy desires, then\nwhen his fated death-hour strikes, his four higher principles reunite,\nand, in the final separation that then ensues, it may well be that all\nmay be well with him, and that he passes on to the gestation period\nand its subsequent developments.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 1: Book ii., from lines 666-789. The whole passage bristles\nwith horrors.]\n\n[Footnote 2: xii. 85. Trans., of Burnell and Hopkins.]\n\n[Footnote 3: From the translation of Dhunjeebhoy Jamsetjee Medhora,\n_Zoroastrian and some other Ancient Systems_, xxvii.]\n\n[Footnote 4: Trans., by Mirza Mohamed Hadi. _The Platonist_, 306.]\n\n[Footnote 5: _The Sacred Books of the East_, iii, 109, 110.]\n\n[Footnote 6: _Secret Doctrine_, vol. i. p. 281.]\n\n[Footnote 7: See _ibid._, p. 283.]\n\n[Footnote 8: _Isis Unveiled_, vol. i. p. 480.]\n\n[Footnote 9: Theosophical Manuals, No. 1.]\n\n[Footnote 10: _The Heroic Enthusiasts_, Trans., by L. Williams. part ii.\npp. 22, 23.]\n\n[Footnote 11: _Cremation_, Theosophical Siftings, vol. iii.]\n\n[Footnote 12: _Man: Fragments of Forgotten History_, pp. 119, 120.]\n\n[Footnote 13: _Key to Theosophy_, H.P. Blavatsky, p. 109. Third\nEdition.]\n\n[Footnote 14: _Magic, White and Black_, Dr. Franz Hartmann, pp. 109,\n110. Third Edition.]\n\n[Footnote 15: See _The Seven Principles of Man_, pp. 17-21.]\n\n[Footnote 16: _Theosophist_, March, 1882, p. 158, note.]\n\n[Footnote 17: _Essays upon some Controverted Questions_, p. 36.]\n\n[Footnote 18: _Fortnightly Review_, 1892, p. 176.]\n\n[Footnote 19: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 67.]\n\n[Footnote 20: _Ibid._, p. 97.]\n\n[Footnote 21: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 97]\n\n[Footnote 22: _Ibid._, p. 102.]\n\n[Footnote 23: June, 1882, art. \"Seeming Discrepancies.\"]\n\n[Footnote 24: Pp. 73, 74. Ed. 1887.]\n\n[Footnote 25: _Theosophical Glossary_, Elementaries.]\n\n[Footnote 26: See _The Seven Principles of Man_, p.p. 44-46.]\n\n[Footnote 27: The name Sukhavati, borrowed from Tibetan Buddhism, is\nsometimes used instead of that of Devachan. Sukhavati, according to\nSchlagintweit, is \"the abode of the blessed, into which ascend those\nwho have accumulated much merit by the practice of virtues\", and\n\"involves the deliverance from metempsychosis\" (_Buddhism in Tibet_,\np. 99). According to the Prasanga school, the higher Path leads to\nNirvana, the lower to Sukhavati. But Eitel calls Sukhavati \"the\nNirvana of the common people, where the saints revel in physical bliss\nfor aeons, until they reenter the circle of transmigration\"\n(_Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary_). Eitel, however, under \"Amitabha\"\nstates that the \"popular mind\" regards the \"paradise of the West\" as\n\"the haven of final redemption from the eddies of transmigration\".\nWhen used by one of the Teachers of the Esoteric Philosophy it covers\nthe higher Devachanic states, but from all of these the Soul comes\nback to earth.]\n\n[Footnote 28: See _Lucifer_, Oct, 1892, Vol. XI. No. 62.]\n\n[Footnote 29: _The Path_, May, 1890.]\n\n[Footnote 30: _Ibid._]\n\n[Footnote 31: \"Notes on Devachan,\" as cited.]\n\n[Footnote 32: \"Notes on Devachan,\" as before. There are a variety of\nstages in Devachan; the Rupa Loka is an inferior stage, where the Soul\nis still surrounded by forms. It has escaped from these personalities\nin the Tribhuvana.]\n\n[Footnote 33: _Vishnu Purana_, Bk. I. ch. v.]\n\n[Footnote 34: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 69. Third Edition.]\n\n[Footnote 35: Sixth and seventh in the older nomenclature, fifth and\nsixth in the later--_i.e._, Manas and Buddhi.]\n\n[Footnote 36: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 99. Third Edition.]\n\n[Footnote 37: _Ibid._, p. 100.]\n\n[Footnote 38: _Ibid._, p. 101.]\n\n[Footnote 39: See Manual No. 2 _Re-incarnation_, pp. 60, 61. Third\nEdition.]\n\n[Footnote 40: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 105. Third Edition.]\n\n[Footnote 41: _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 197. Eighth\nEdition.]\n\n[Footnote 42: Quoted in the _Secret Doctrine_, vol. ii. p. 83. The\nstudent will do well to read, for a fair presentation of the subject,\nG.R.S. Mead's \"Note on Nirvana\" in _Lucifer_, for March, April, and\nMay, 1893. (Re-printed in _Theosophical Siftings_).]\n\n[Footnote 43: _Theosophist_, Sept., 1882, p. 310.]\n\n[Footnote 44: See on \"illusion\" what was said under the heading\n\"Devachan\".]\n\n[Footnote 45: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 102. Third Edition.]\n\n[Footnote 46: _Theosophist_, Sept. 1881.]\n\n[Footnote 47: \"Notes on Devachan\", _Path_, June, 1890, p. 80.]\n\n[Footnote 48: _Theosophist_, June, 1882, p. 226.]\n\n[Footnote 49: Summarised from article in _Theosophist_, Sept., 1882.]\n\n[Footnote 50: _Ibid._, p. 309.]\n\n[Footnote 51: _Ibid._, p. 310.]\n\n[Footnote 52: _Key to Theosophy,_ p. 151.]\n\n[Footnote 53: _Theosophist_, Sept., 1882, p. 310.]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nINDEX.\n\n\nAccident, Death by, 37.\n\nAppendix, 81.\n\nAstral Body, 19,\n  Fate of, 31.\n\nAstral Shell or Soul, 75.\n\n_Avesta_, quoted, 9.\n\n\nBlavatsky, H.P., quoted, 16, 17, 24, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 45, 49, 60,\n                         65, 66, 67, 73, 74, 78.\n\n_Book of the Dead_, quoted, 8.\n\nBruno, Giordano, quoted, 21.\n\n_Buddhism in Tibet_, quoted, 47, (note).\n\n\nCommunications between Earth and other Spheres, 70.\n      \"        between Earth and Soul in Etheric Body, 71.\n      \"        between Earth, and soul in Devachan, 72,\n      \"        between Earth and soul in Kamaloka, 72.\n      \"        from Adepts now living, 79.\n      \"        from Elementals, 78.\n      \"        from Elementaries, 77.\n      \"        from Medium's Higher Ego, 79.\n      \"        from Nirmanakayas, 78.\n      \"        from Shells, 43, 77.\n\n_Controverted Questions, Essays upon some_, quoted, 28.\n\n_Cremation_, quoted, 21.\n\nCycle of Incarnation, 52 et seq.\n\n\nDeath, a Gateway, 79.\n  \"    Chinese Ideas of, 11.\n  \"    Christian Ideas of, 6.\n  \"    Egyptian Ideas of, 8.\n  \"    Theosophic Ideas of, 18.\n\n_Desatir_, quoted, 9.\n\nDevachan, 33, 46. et seq.\n\nDevachan, Passing into, of the average-living, 33.\n\nDevachan, The Soul in, 72.\n\nDevachani, The, 58 et seq.\n\n\nEarth, The return to, 66.\n\nEgos, Many lives of, 63 et seq.\n\nElementals, 44, 78.\n\nElementaries, 45, 77.\n\n_Esoteric Buddhism_, quoted, 69.\n\nEtheric Double, 12, 22 et seq., 24, 25, 71 et seq.\n\n\nFiery Lives, 17.\n\n_Fortnightly Review_, quoted, 29.\n\n\n_Heroic Enthusiasts, The_, quoted, 21.\n\n\nImmortal Triad, The, 12, 13, 31, 33, 58, 60.\n\n_Isis Unveiled_, quoted, 17.\n\n\nKamaloka, 26, 27, 29, 32, 34, 41.\n\nKamaloka, The Soul in, 72.\n\nKama Rupa, 30.\n\n_Key to Theosophy_, quoted, 24, 30, 31, 33, 60, 65, 67, 73, 78.\n\n\n_Lucifer_, quoted, 49, 70.\n\n\n_Magic, White and Black_, quoted, 26.\n\n_Man: Fragments of Forgotten History_, quoted, 23.\n\nMan: How Made, 12 et seq.\n\nMaya, 47.\n\nMedium, Communications from Higher Egos of, 79.\n\n\nNirvana, 69.\n\n\n_Ordinances of Manu_, quoted, 9.\n\n\n_Paradise Lost_, quoted, 7.\n\n_Path_, quoted, 51, 54, 55, 56, 59 et seq.\n\n_Perfect Way_, quoted, 44.\n\nPerishable Quaternary, 12.\n\nPishachas, 38.\n\nPrana, 26, 30.\n\nPremature Death, 36, 39.\n\n\nRe-incarnation, 8, 67.\n\n\n_Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary_, quoted, 47 (Footnote: 27).\n\n_Seven principles of Man_, quoted, 26, 45.\n\nShell, Astral Soul, or, 75.\n\nShells, The, 41.\n\n_Shu King_, quoted, 10.\n\nSoul, Growth of, in Devachan, 56,\n\n  \"   Powers of the, 80.\n\n  \"   Relations of, with Devachani, 74 et seq.\n\n  \"   The Disembodied, 71 et seq.\n\nSpiritualism and Esoteric Philosophy, 15.\n\nSuicides, 36, et seq., 81.\n\n\n_Theosophical Glossary_, quoted, 45.\n\n_Theosophical Siftings_, quoted, 21.\n\n_Theosophist, The_, quoted, 27, 35, 71, 74, 75 et seq.\n\n_Theosophist. The_, summarised, 75, 79, 81.\n\n\nUnconscious co-existence of intelligent beings, 28 et seq.\n\n\n_Vishnu Purana_, quoted, 57.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *","title":"Death\u2014and After?","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":23687}