Theos-Talk Archives (March 1996 Message tl00080)

OCEAN12.TXT (The Ocean of Theosophy - W.Q.Judge)

CHAPTER XII

LET US NOW CONSIDER the states of man after the death of the
body and before birth, having looked over the whole field of the
evolution of things and beings in a general way. This brings up
at once the questions: Is there any heaven or hell, and what are
they? Are they states or places? Is there a spot in space where
they may be found and to which we go or from where we come? We
must also go back to the subject of the fourth principle of the
constitution of man, that called Kama in Sanskrit and desire or
passion in English. Bearing in mind what was said about that
principle, and also the teaching in respect to the astral body
and the Astral Light, it will be easier to understand what is
taught about the two states ante and post mortem. In
chronological order we go into Kama Loka, or the plane of
desire, first on the demise of the body, and then the higher
principles, the real man, fall into the state of Devachan. After
dealing with Kama Loka it will be more easy to study the
question of Devachan.

The breath leaves the body and we say the man is dead, but that
is only the beginning of death; it proceeds on other planes.
When the frame is cold and eyes closed, all the forces of the
body and mind rush through the brain, and by a series of
pictures the whole life just ended is imprinted indelibly on the
inner man not only in a general outline but down to the smallest
detail of even the most minute and fleeting impression. At this
moment, though every indication leads the physician to pronounce
for death and though to all intents and purposes the person is
dead to this life, the real man is busy in the brain, and not
until his work there is ended is the person gone. When this
solemn work is over the astral body detaches itself from the
physical, and, life energy having departed, the remaining five
principles are in the plane of Kama Loka.

The natural separation of the principles brought about by death
divides the total man into three parts:

First, the visible body with all its elements left to further
disintegration on the earth plane, where all that it is composed
of is in time resolved into the different physical departments
of nature.

Second, the Kamarupa made up of the astral body and the passions
and desires, which also begins at once to go to pieces on the
astral plane;

Third, the real man, the upper triad of Atma-Buddhi-Manas,
deathless but now out of earth conditions, devoid of body,
begins in Devachan to function solely as mind clothed in a very
ethereal vesture which it will shake off when the time comes for
it to return to earth.

Kama Loka, or the place of desire, is the astral region
penetrating and surrounding the earth. As a place it is on and
in and about the earth. Its extent is to a measurable distance
from the earth, but the ordinary laws obtaining here do not
obtain there, and entities therein are not under the same
conditions as to space and time as we are. As a state it is
metaphysical, though that metaphysic relates to the astral
plane. It is called the plane of desire because it relates to
the fourth principle, and in it the ruling force is desire
devoid of and divorced from intelligence. It is an astral sphere
intermediate between earthly and heavenly life. Beyond any doubt
it is the origin of the Christian theory of purgatory, where the
soul undergoes penance for evil done and from which it can be
released by prayer and other ceremonies or offerings. The fact
underlying this superstition is that the soul may be detained in
Kama Loka by the enormous force of some unsatisfied desire, and
cannot get rid of the astral and kamic clothing until that
desire is satisfied by someone on earth or by the soul itself.
But if the person was pure minded and of high aspirations, the
separation of the principles on that plane is soon completed,
permitting the higher triad to go into Devachan. Being the
purely astral sphere, it partakes of the nature of the astral
matter which is essentially earthly and devilish, and in it all
the forces work undirected by soul or conscience. It is the
slag-pit, as it were, of the great furnace of life, where nature
provides for the sloughing off of elements which have no place
in Devachan, and for that reason it must have many degrees,
every one of which was noted by the ancients. These degrees are
known in Sanskrit as lokas or places in a metaphysical sense.
Human life is very varied as to character and other
potentialities, and for each of these the appropriate place
after death is provided, thus making Kama Loka an infinitely
varied sphere. In life some of the differences among men are
modified and some inhibited by a similarity of body and
heredity, but in Kama Loka all the hidden desires and passions
are let loose in consequence of the absence of body, and for
that reason the state is vastly more diversified than the life
plane. Not only is it necessary to provide for the natural
varieties and differences, but also for those caused by the
manner of death, about which something shall be said. And all
these various divisions are but the natural result of the life
thoughts and last thoughts of the persons who die on earth. It
is beyond the scope of this work to go into a description of all
these degrees, inasmuch as volumes would be needed to describe
them, and then but few would understand.

To deal with Kama Loka compels us to deal also with the fourth
principle in the classification of man's constitution, and
arouses a conflict with modern ideas and education on the
subject of the desires and passions. It is generally supposed
that the desires and passions are inherent tendencies in the
individual, and they have an altogether unreal and misty
appearance for the ordinary student. But in this system of
philosophy they are not merely inherent in the individual nor
are they due to the body per se. While the man is living in the
world the desires and passions, the principle Kama, have no
separate life apart from the astral and inner man, being, so to
say, diffused throughout his being. But as they coalesce with
the astral body after death and thus form an entity with its own
term of life, though without soul, very important questions
arise. During mortal life the desires and passions are guided by
the mind and soul; after death they work without guidance from
the former master; while we live we are responsible for them and
their effects, and when we have left this life we are still
responsible, although they go on working and making effects on
others while they last as the sort of entity I have described,
and without our direct guidance. In this is seen the continuance
of responsibility. They are a portion of the skandhas, well
known in eastern philosophy, which are the aggregates that make
up the man. The body includes one set of the skandhas, the
astral man another, the Kama principle is another set, and still
others pertain to other parts. In Kama are the really active and
important ones which control rebirths and lead to all the
varieties of life and circumstance upon each rebirth. They are
being made from day to day under the law that every thought
combines instantly with one of the elemental forces of nature,
becoming to that extent an entity which will endure in
accordance with the strength of the thought as it leaves the
brain, and all of these are inseparably connected with the being
who evolved them. There is no way of escaping; all we can do is
to have thoughts of good quality, for the highest of the Masters
themselves are not exempt from this law, but they "people their
current in space" with entities powerful for good alone.

Now in Kama Loka this mass of desire and thought exists very
definitely until the conclusion of its disintegration, and then
the remainder consists of the essence of these skandhas,
connected, of course, with the being that evolved and had them.
They can no more be done away with than we can blot out the
universe. Hence they are said to remain until the being comes
out of Devachan, and then at once by the law of attraction they
are drawn to the being, who from them as germ or basis builds up
a new set of skandhas for the new life. Kama Loka therefore is
distinguished from the earth plane by reason of the existence
therein, uncontrolled and unguided, of the mass of passions and
desires; but at the same time earth-life is also a Kama Loka,
since it is largely governed by the principle Kama, and will be
so until at a far distant time in the course of evolution the
races of men shall have developed the fifth and sixth principle,
thus throwing Kama into its own sphere and freeing earth-life
from its influence.

The astral man in Kama Loka is a mere shell devoid of soul and
mind, without conscience and also unable to act unless vivified
by forces outside of itself. It has that which seems like an
animal or automatic consciousness due wholly to the very recent
association with the human Ego. For under the principle laid
down in another chapter, every atom going to make up the man has
a memory of its own which is capable of lasting a length of time
in proportion to the force given it. In the case of a very
material and gross or selfish person the force lasts longer than
in any other, and hence in that case the automatic consciousness
will be more definite and bewildering to one who without
knowledge dabbles with necromancy. Its purely astral portion
contains and carries the record of all that ever passed before
the person when living, for one of the qualities of the astral
substance is to absorb all scenes and pictures and the
impressions of all thoughts, to keep them, and to throw them
forth by reflection when the conditions permit. This astral
shell, cast off by every man at death, would be a menace to all
men were it not in every case, except one which shall be
mentioned, devoid of all the higher principles which are the
directors. But those guiding constituents being disjoined from
the shell, it wavers and floats about from place to place
without any will of its own, but governed wholly by attractions
in the astral and magnetic fields.

It is possible for the real man, called the spirit by some, to
communicate with us immediately after death for a few brief
moments, but, those passed, the soul has no more to do with
earth until reincarnated. What can and do influence the
sensitive and the medium from out of this sphere are the shells
I have described. Soulless and conscienceless, these in no sense
are the spirits of our deceased ones. They are the clothing
thrown off by the inner man, the brutal earthly portion
discarded in the flight to Devachan, and so have always been
considered by the ancients as devils, our personal devils,
because essentially astral, earthly, and passionnel. It would be
strange indeed if this shell, after being for so long the
vehicle of the real man on earth, did not retain an automatic
memory and consciousness. We see the decapitated body of the
frog or the cock moving and acting for a time with a seeming
intelligence, and why is it not possible for the finer and more
subtle astral form to act and move with a far greater amount of
seeming mental direction?

Existing in the sphere of Kama Loka, as, indeed, also in all
parts of the globe and the solar system, are the elementals or
nature forces. They are innumerable, and their divisions are
almost infinite, as they are, in a sense, the nerves of nature.
Each class has its own work just as has every natural element or
thing. As fire burns and as water runs down and not up under
their general law, so the elementals act under law, but being
higher in the scale than gross fire or water their action seems
guided by mind. Some of them have a special relation to mental
operations and to the action of the astral organs, whether these
be joined to a body or not. When a medium forms the channel, and
also from other natural coordination, these elementals make an
artificial connection with the shell of a deceased person, aided
by the nervous fluid of the medium and others near, and then the
shell is galvanized into an artificial life. Through the medium
connection is made with the physical and psychical forces of all
present. The old impressions on the astral body give up their
images to the mind of the medium, the old passions are set on
fire. Various messages and reports are then obtained from it,
but not one of them is original, not one is from the spirit. By
their strangeness, and in consequence of the ignorance of those
who dabble in it, this is mistaken for the work of spirit, but
it is all from the living when it is not the mere picking out
from the astral light of the images of what has been in the
past. In certain cases to be noted there is an intelligence at
work that is wholly and intensely bad, to which every medium is
subject, and which will explain why so many of them have
succumbed to evil, as they have confessed.

A rough classification of these shells that visit mediums would
be as follows:

(1) Those of the recently deceased whose place of burial is not
far away. This class will be quite coherent in accordance with
the life and thought of the former owner. An immaterial, good,
and spiritualized person leaves a shell that will soon
disintegrate. A gross, mean, selfish, material person's shell
will be heavy, consistent, and long lived: and so on with all
varieties.

(2) Those of persons who had died far away from the place where
the medium is. Lapse of time permits such to escape from the
vicinity of their old bodies, and at the same time brings on a
greater degree of disintegration which corresponds on the astral
plane to putrefaction on the physical. These are vague, shadowy,
incoherent; respond but briefly to the psychic stimulus, and are
whirled off by any magnetic current. They are galvanized for a
moment by the astral currents of the medium and of those persons
present who were related to the deceased.

(3) Purely shadowy remains which can hardly be given a place.
There is no English to describe them, though they are facts in
this sphere. They might be said to be the mere mold or impress
left in the astral substance by the once coherent shell long
since disintegrated. They are therefore so near being fictitious
as to almost deserve the designation. As such shadowy
photographs they are enlarged, decorated, and given an imaginary
life by the thoughts, desires, hopes, and imaginings of medium
and sitters at the seance.

(4) Definite, coherent entities, human souls bereft of the
spiritual tie, now tending down to the worst state of all,
avitchi, where annihilation of the personality is the end. They
are known as black magicians. Having centered the consciousness
in the principle of Kama, preserved intellect, divorced
themselves from spirit, they are the only damned beings we know.
In life they had human bodies and reached their awful state by
persistent lives of evil for its own sake; some of such already
doomed to become what I have described, are among us on earth
today. These are not ordinary shells, for they have centered all
their force in Kama, thrown out every spark of good thought or
aspiration, and have a complete mastery of the astral sphere. I
put them in the classification of shells because they are such
in the sense that they are doomed to disintegration consciously
as the others are to the same end mechanically only. They may
and do last for many centuries, gratifying their lusts through
any sensitive they can lay hold of where bad thought gives them
an opening. They preside at nearly all seances, assuming high
names and taking the direction so as to keep the control and
continue the delusion of the medium, thus enabling themselves to
have a convenient channel for their own evil purposes. Indeed,
with the shells of suicides, of those poor wretches who die at
the hand of the law, of drunkards and gluttons, these black
magicians living in the astral world hold the field of physical
mediumship and are liable to invade the sphere of any medium no
matter how good. The door once open, it is open to all. This
class of shell has lost higher Manas, but in the struggle not
only after death but as well in life the lower portion of Manas
which should have been raised up to godlike excellence was torn
away from its lord and now gives this entity intelligence which
is devoid of spirit but power to suffer as it will when its
final day shall come.

In the state of Kama Loka suicides and those who are suddenly
shot out of life by accident or murder, legal or illegal, pass a
term almost equal to the length life would have been but for the
sudden termination. These are not really dead. To bring on a
normal death, a factor not recognized by medical science must be
present. That is, the principles of the being as described in
other chapters have their own term of cohesion, at the natural
end of which they separate from each other under their own laws.
This involves the great subject of the cohesive forces of the
human subject, requiring a book in itself. I must be content
therefore with the assertion that this law of cohesion obtains
among the human principles. Before that natural end the
principles are unable to separate. Obviously the normal
destruction of the cohesive force cannot be brought about by
mechanical processes except in respect to the physical body.
Hence a suicide, or person killed by accident or murdered by man
or by order of human law, has not come to the natural
termination of the cohesion among the other constituents, and is
hurled into the Kama Loka state only partly dead. There the
remaining principles have to wait until the actual natural life
term is reached, whether it be one month or sixty years.

But the degrees of Kama Loka provide for the many varieties of
the last-mentioned shells. Some pass the period in great
suffering, others in a dreamy sort of sleep, each according to
the moral responsibility. But executed criminals are in general
thrown out of life full of hate and revenge, smarting under a
penalty they do not admit the justice of. They are ever
rehearsing in Kama Loka their crime, their trial, their
execution, and their revenge. And whenever they can gain touch
with a sensitive living person, medium or not, they attempt to
inject thoughts of murder and other crime into the brain of such
unfortunate. And that they succeed in such attempts the deeper
students of Theosophy full well know.

We have now approached Devachan. After a certain time in Kama
loka the being falls into a state of unconsciousness which
precedes the change into the next state. It is like the birth
into life, precluded by a term of darkness and heavy sleep. It
then wakes to the joys of Devachan.

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