Chapter II: Part 2

Some of the communications made through mediums are from this source, from the disembodied entity, thus drawn back to the earth-sphere--a cruel kindness, delaying its forward evolution and introducing an element of disharmony into what should be an orderly progression. The period in Kâmaloka is thus lengthened, the desire body is fed and its hold on the Ego is maintained, and thus is the freedom of the Soul deferred, the immortal Swallow being still held down by the bird-lime of earth.

Persons who have led an evil life, who have gratified and stimulated their animal passions, and have full fed the desire body while they have starved even the lower mind--these remain for long, denizens of Kâmaloka, and are filled with yearnings for the earth-life they have left, and for the animal delights that they can no longer--in the absence of the physical body--directly taste. These gather round the medium and the sensitive, endeavouring to utilise them for their own gratification, and these are among the more dangerous of the forces so rashly confronted in their ignorance by the thoughtless and the curious.

Another class of disembodied entities includes those whose lives on earth have been prematurely cut short, by their own act, the act of others, or by accident. Their fate in Kâmaloka depends on the conditions which surrounded their outgoings from earthly life, for not all suicides are guilty of _felo de se_, and the measure of responsibility may vary within very wide limits. The condition of such has been thus described:

_Suicides, although not wholly dissevered from their sixth
and seventh principles, and quite potent in the séance room,
nevertheless to the day when they would have died a natural
death, are separated from their higher principles by a gulf.
The sixth and seventh principles remain passive and negative,
whereas in cases of_ accidental death _the higher and the
lower groups actually attract each other. In cases of good
and innocent Egos, moreover, the latter gravitates
irresistibly toward the sixth and seventh, and thus either
slumbers surrounded by happy dreams, or sleeps a dreamless
profound sleep until the hour strikes. With a little
reflection and an eye to the eternal justice and fitness of
things, you will see why. The victim, whether good or bad, is
irresponsible for his death. Even if his death were due to
some action in a previous life or an antecedent birth, was an
act, in short, of the Law of Retribution, still it was not
the_ direct _result of an act deliberately committed by the_
personal _Ego of that life during which he happened to be
killed. Had he been allowed to live longer he might have
atoned for his antecedent sins still more effectually, and
even now, the Ego having been made to pay off the debt of his
maker, the personal Ego is free from the blows of retributive
justice. The Dhyân Chohans, who have no hand in the guidance
of the living human Ego, protect the helpless victim when it
is violently thrust out of its element into a new one, before
it is matured and made fit and ready for it._

These, whether suicides or killed by accident, can communicate with those in earth-life, but much to their own injury. As said above, the good and innocent sleep happily till the life-period is over. But where the victim of an accident is depraved and gross, his fate is a sad one.

_Unhappy shades, if sinful and sensual, they wander about
(not shells, for their connection with their two higher
principles is not quite broken) until their_ death-_hour
comes. Cut off in the full flush of earthly passions which
bind them to familiar scenes, they are enticed by the
opportunities which mediums afford to gratify them
vicariously. They are the Pishâchas, the Incubi and Succubæ
of mediæval times; the demons of thirst, gluttony, lust, and
avarice--Elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness, and
cruelty; provoking their victims to horrid crimes, and
revelling in their commission! They not only ruin their
victims, but these psychic vampires, borne along by the
torrent of their hellish impulses, at last--at the fixed
close of their natural period of life--they are carried out
of the earth's aura into regions where for ages they endure
exquisite suffering and end with entire destruction.

* * * * *

Now the causes producing the "new being" and determining the
nature of Karma are Trishnâ (Tanhâ)--thirst, desire for
sentient existence--and Upâdâna, which is the realisation or
consummation of Trishnâ, or that desire. And both of these
the medium helps to develop_ ne plus ultra _in an Elementary,
be he a suicide or a victim. The rule is that a person who
dies a natural death will remain from "a few hours to several
short years" within the earth's attraction--_i.e._, the
Kâmaloka. But exceptions are the cases of suicides and those
who die a violent death in general. Hence, one of such Egos
who was destined to live, say, eighty or ninety years--but
who either killed himself or was killed by some accident, let
us suppose at the age of twenty--would have to pass in the
Kâmaloka not "a few years," but in his case sixty or seventy
years, as an Elementary, or rather an "earth-walker," since
he is not, unfortunately for him, even a "Shell." Happy,
thrice happy, in comparison, are those disembodied entities
who sleep their long slumber and live in dream in the bosom
of Space! And woe to those whose Trishnâ will attract them to
mediums, and woe to the latter who tempt them with such an
easy Upâdâna. For, in grasping them and satisfying their
thirst for life, the medium helps to develop in them--is, in
fact, the cause of--a new set of Skandhas, a new body with
far worse tendencies and passions than the one they lost. All
the future of this new body will be determined thus, not only
by the Karma of demerit of the previous set or group, but
also by that of the new set of the future being. Were the
mediums and spiritualists but to know, as I said, that with
every new "angel-guide" they welcome with rapture, they
entice the latter into a Upâdâna, which will be productive of
untold evils for the new Ego that will be reborn under its
nefarious shadow, and that with every séance, especially for
materialization, they multiply the causes for misery, causes
that will make the unfortunate Ego fail in his spiritual
birth, or be reborn into a far worse existence than
ever--they would, perhaps, be less lavish in their
hospitality._

Premature death brought on by vicious courses, by over-study, or by voluntary sacrifice for some great cause, will bring about delay in Kâmaloka, but the state of the disembodied entity will depend on the motive that cut short the life.

_There are very few, if any, of the men who indulge in these
vices, who feel perfectly sure that such a course of action
will lead them eventually to premature death. Such is the
penalty of Mâyâ. The "vices" will not escape their
punishment; but it is the_ cause, _not the effect, that will
be punished, especially an unforeseen, though probable
effect. As well call a man a "suicide" who meets his death in
a storm at sea, as one who kills himself with "over-study".
Water is liable to drown a man, and too much brain work to
produce a softening of the brain matter which may carry him
away. In such a case no one ought to cross the_ Kâlapâni,
_nor even to take a bath for fear of getting faint in it and
drowned (for we all know of such cases), nor should a man do
his duty, least of all sacrifice himself for even a laudable
and highly beneficial cause as many of us do. Motive is
everything, and man is punished in a case of direct
responsibility, never otherwise. In the victim's case the
natural hour of death was anticipated_ accidentally, _while
in that of the suicide death is brought on voluntarily and
with a full and deliberate knowledge of its immediate
consequences. Thus a man who causes his death in a fit of
temporary insanity is_ not _a_ felo de se, _to the great
grief and often trouble of the Life Insurance Companies. Nor
is he left a prey to the temptations of the Kâmaloka, but
falls_ asleep _like any other victim._

The population of Kâmaloka is thus recruited with a peculiarly dangerous element by all the acts of violence, legal and illegal, which wrench the physical body from the soul and send the latter into Kâmaloka clad in the desire body, throbbing with pulses of hatred, passion, emotion, palpitating with longings for revenge, with unsatiated lusts. A murderer in the body is not a pleasant member of society, but a murderer suddenly expelled from the body is a far more dangerous entity; society may protect itself against the first, but in its present state of ignorance it is defenceless as against the second.

Finally, the Immortal Triad sets itself free from the desire body, and passes out of Kâmaloka; the Higher Manas draws back its Ray, coloured with the life-scenes it has passed through, and carrying with it the experiences gained through the personality it has informed. The labourer is called in from the field, and he returns home bearing his sheaves with him, rich or poor, according to the fruitage of the life. When the Triad has quitted Kâmaloka, it passes wholly out of the sphere of earth attractions:

_As soon as it has stepped outside the Kâmaloka--crossed the
"Golden Bridge" leading to the "Seven Golden Mountains"--the
Ego can confabulate no more with easy-going mediums._

There are some exceptional possibilities of reaching such an Ego, that will be explained later, but the Ego is out of the reach of the ordinary medium and cannot be recalled into the earth-sphere. But ere we follow the further course of the Triad, we must consider the fate of the now deserted desire body, left as a mere _reliquum_ in Kâmaloka.

KÂMALOKA. THE SHELLS.

The Shell is the desire body, emptied of the Triad, which has now passed onwards; it is the third of the transitory garments of Soul, cast aside and left in Kâmaloka to disintegrate.

When the past earth-life has been noble, or even when it has been of average purity and utility, this Shell retains but little vitality after the passing onwards of the Triad, and rapidly dissolves. Its molecules, however, retain, during this process of disintegration, the impressions made upon them during the earth-life, the tendency to vibrate in response to stimuli constantly experienced during that period. Every student of physiology is familiar with what is termed automatic action, with the tendency of cells to repeat vibrations originally set up by purposive action; thus are formed what we term habits, and we unconsciously repeat motions which at first were done with thought. So strong is this automatism of the body, that, as everyone knows by experience, it is difficult to break off the use of a phrase or of a gesture that has become "habitual."

Now the desire body is during earth-life the recipient of and the respondent to all stimuli from without, and it also continually receives and responds to stimuli from the lower Manas. In it are set up habits, tendencies to repeat automatically familiar vibrations, vibrations of love and desire, vibrations imaging past experiences of all kinds. Just as the hand may repeat a familiar gesture, so may the desire body repeat a familiar feeling or thought. And when the Triad has left it, this automatism remains, and the Shell may thus simulate feelings and thoughts which are empty of all true intelligence and will. Many of the responses to eager enquiries at _séances_ come from such Shells, drawn to the neighbourhood of friends and relatives by the magnetic attractions so long familiar and dear, and automatically responding to the waves of emotion and remembrance, to the impulse of which they had so often answered during the lately closed earth-life. Phrases of affection, moral platitudes, memories of past events, will be all the communications such Shells can make, but these may be literally poured out under favourable conditions under the magnetic stimuli freely applied by the embodied friends and relatives.

In cases where the lower Manas during earth-life has been strongly attached to material objects and to intellectual pursuits directed by a self-seeking motive, the desire body may have acquired a very considerable automatism of an intellectual character, and may give forth responses of considerable intellectual merit. But still the mark of non-originality will be present: the apparent intellectuality will only give out reproductions, and there will be no sign of the new and independent thought which would be the inevitable outcome of a strong intelligence working with originality amid new surroundings. Intellectual sterility brands the great majority of communications from the "spirit world"; reflections of earthly scenes, earthly conditions, earthly arrangements, are plentiful, but we usually seek in vain for strong, new thought, worthy of Intelligences freed from the prison of the flesh. The communications of a loftier kind occasionally granted are, for the most part, from non-human Intelligences, attracted by the pure atmosphere of the medium or sitters.

And there is an ever-present danger in this commerce with the Shells. Just because they are Shells, and nothing more, they answer to the impulses that strike on them from without, and easily become malicious and mischievous, automatically responding to evil vibrations. Thus a medium, or sitters of poor moral character, will impress the Shells that flock around them with impulses of a low order, and any animal desires, petty and foolish thoughts, will set up similar vibrations in the blindly responsive Shells.

Again, the Shell is very easily taken possession of by Elementals, the semi-conscious forces working in the kingdoms of Nature, and may be used by them as a convenient vehicle for many a prank and trick. The etheric double of the medium, and the desire bodies emptied of their immortal Tenants, give the material basis by which Elementals can work many a curious and startling result; and frequenters of _séances_ may be confidently appealed to, and asked whether many of the childish freaks with which they are familiar--pullings of hair, pinchings, slaps, throwing about of objects, piling up of furniture, playing on accordions, &c.--are not more rationally accounted for as the tricky vagaries of sub-human forces, than as the actions of "spirits" who, while in the body, were certainly incapable of such vulgarities.

Let us leave the Shells alone to peacefully dissolve into their elements, and mingle once again in the crucible of Nature. The authors of the _Perfect Way_ put very well the real character of the Shell.

The true "ghost" consists of the exterior and earthly portion
of the Soul, that portion which, being weighted with cares,
attachments, and memories merely mundane, is detached by the
Soul and remains in the astral sphere, an existence more or
less definite and personal, and capable of holding, through a
sensitive, converse with the living. It is, however, but as a
cast-off vestment of the Soul, and is incapable of endurance
_as ghost_. The true Soul and real person, the _anima
divina_, parts at death with all those lower affections
which would have retained it near its earthly haunts.[24]

If we would find our beloved, it is not among the decaying remnants in Kâmaloka that we should seek them. "Why seek ye the living among the dead?"

KÂMALOKA. THE ELEMENTARIES.

The word "Elementary" has been so loosely used that it has given rise to a good deal of confusion. It is thus defined by H.P. Blavatsky:

Properly, the disembodied _souls_ of the depraved; these
souls having, at some time prior to death, separated from
themselves their divine spirits, and so lost their chance for
immortality. But at the present stage of learning it has been
thought best to apply the term to the spooks or phantoms of
disembodied persons, in general to those whose temporary
habitation is the Kâmaloka.... Once divorced from their
higher Triads and their bodies, these souls remain in their
Kâma Rûpic envelopes, and are irresistibly drawn to the earth
amid elements congenial to their gross natures. Their stay in
the Kâmaloka varies as to its duration; but ends invariably
in disintegration, dissolving like a column of mist, atom by
atom, in the surrounding elements.[25]

Students of this series of Manuals know that it is possible for the lower Manas to so entangle itself with Kâma as to wrench itself away from its source, and this is spoken of in Occultism as "the loss of the Soul."[26] It is, in other words, the loss of the personal self, which has separated itself from its Parent, the Higher Ego, and has thus doomed itself to perish. Such a Soul, having thus separated itself from the Immortal Triad during its earth-life, becomes a true Elementary, after it has quitted the dense and etheric bodies. Then, clad in its desire body, it lives for awhile, for a longer or shorter time according to the vigour of its vitality, a wholly evil thing, dangerous and malignant, seeking to renew its fading vitality by any means laid open to it by the folly or ignorance of still embodied souls. Its ultimate fate is, indeed, destruction, but it may work much evil on its way to its self-chosen doom.

The word Elementary is, however, very often used to describe the lower Manas in its garment the desire body, not broken away from the higher Principles, but not yet absorbed into its Parent, the Higher Manas. Such Elementaries may be in any stage of progress, harmless or mischievous.

Some writers, again, use Elementary as a synonym for Shell, and so cause increased confusion. The word should at least be restricted to the desire body _plus_ lower Manas, whether that lower Manas be disentangling itself from the kâmic elements, in order that it may be re-absorbed into its source, or separated from the Higher Ego, and therefore on the road to destruction.

DEVACHAN.

Among the various conceptions presented by the Esoteric Philosophy, there are few, perhaps, which the Western mind has found more difficulty in grasping than that of Devachan, or Devasthân, the Devaland, or land of the Gods.[27] And one of the chief difficulties has arisen from the free use of the words illusion, dream-state, and other similar terms, as denoting the devachanic consciousness--a general sense of unreality having thus come to pervade the whole conception of Devachan. When the Eastern thinker speaks of the present earthly life as Mâyâ, illusion, dream, the solid Western at once puts down the phrases as allegorical and fanciful, for what can be less illusory, he thinks, than this world of buying and selling, of beefsteaks and bottled stout. But when similar terms are applied to a state beyond Death--a state which to him is misty and unreal in his own religion, and which, as he sadly feels, is lacking in all the substantial comforts dear to the family man--then he accepts the words in their most literal and prosaic meaning, and speaks of Devachan as a delusion in his own sense of the word. It may be well, therefore, on the threshold of Devachan to put this question of "illusion" in its true light.

In a deep metaphysical sense all that is conditioned is illusory. All phenomena are literally "appearances", the outer masks in which the One Reality shows itself forth in our changing universe. The more "material" and solid the appearance, the further is it from Reality, and therefore the more illusory it is. What can be a greater fraud than our body, so apparently solid, stable, visible and tangible? It is a constantly changing congeries of minute living particles, an attractive centre into which stream continually myriads of tiny invisibles, that become visible by their aggregation at this centre, and then stream away again, becoming invisible by reason of their minuteness as they separate off from this aggregation. In comparison with this ever-shifting but apparently stable body how much less illusory is the mind, which is able to expose the pretensions of the body and put it in its true light. The mind is constantly imposed on by the senses, and Consciousness, the most real thing in us, is apt to regard itself as the unreal. In truth, it is the thought-world that is the nearest to reality, and things become more and more illusory as they take on more and more of a phenomenal character.

Again, the mind is permanent as compared with the transitory physical world. For the "mind" is only a clumsy name for the living Thinker in us, the true and conscious Entity, the inner Man, "that was, that is, and will be, for whom the hour shall never strike". The less deeply this inner Man is plunged into matter, the less unreal is his life; and when he has shaken off the garments he donned at incarnation, his physical, ethereal, and passional bodies, then he is nearer to the Soul of Things than he was before, and though veils of illusion still dim his vision they are far thinner than those which clouded it when round him was wrapped the garment of the flesh. His freer and less illusory life is that which is without the body, and the disembodied is, comparatively speaking, his normal state. Out of this normal state he plunges into physical life for brief periods in order that he may gain experiences otherwise unattainable, and bring them back to enrich his more abiding condition. As a diver may plunge into the depths of the ocean to seek a pearl, so the Thinker plunges into the depths of the ocean of life to seek the pearl of experience; but he does not stay there long; it is not his own element; he rises up again into his own atmosphere and shakes off from him the heavier element he leaves. And therefore it is truly said of the Soul that has escaped from earth that it has returned to its own place, for its home is the "land of the Gods", and here on earth it is an exile and a prisoner. This view was very clearly put by a Master of Wisdom in a conversation reported by H.P. Blavatsky, and printed under the title "Life and Death."[28] The following extracts state the case:

_The Vedântins, acknowledging two kinds of conscious
existence, the terrestrial and the spiritual, point only to
the latter as an undoubted actuality. As to the terrestrial
life, owing to its changeability and shortness, it is nothing
but an illusion of our senses. Our life in the spiritual
spheres must be thought an actuality because it is there that
lives our endless, never-changing immortal I, the Sûtrâtmâ.
Whereas in every new incarnation it clothes itself in a
perfectly different personality, a temporary and short-lived
one.... The very essence of all this, that is to say, spirit,
force, and matter, has neither end nor beginning, but the
shape acquired by this triple unity during its incarnations,
their exterior, so to speak, is nothing but a mere illusion
of personal conceptions. This is why we call the posthumous
life the only reality, and the terrestrial one, including the
personality itself, only imaginary._

Why in this case should we call the reality sleep, and the
phantasm waking?

_This comparison was made by me to facilitate your
comprehension. From the standpoint of your terrestrial
notions it is perfectly accurate._

Note the words: "From the standpoint of your terrestrial notions," for they are the key to all the phrases used about Devachan as an "illusion." Our gross physical matter is not there; the limitations imposed by it are not there; the mind is in its own realm, where to will is to create, where to think is to see. And so, when the Master was asked: "Would it not be better to say that death is nothing but a birth for a new life, or still better, a going back to eternity?" he answered:

_This is how it really is, and I have nothing to say against
such a way of putting it. Only with our accepted views of
material life the words "live" and "exist" are not applicable
to the purely subjective condition after death; and were they
employed in our Philosophy without a rigid definition of
their meanings, the Vedântins would soon arrive at the ideas
which are common in our times among the American
Spiritualists, who preach about spirits marrying among
themselves and with mortals. As amongst the true, not
nominal, Christians so amongst the Vedântins--the life on the
other side of the grave is the land where there are no_
_tears, no sighs, where there is neither marrying nor giving
in marriage, and where the just realise their full
perfection._

The dread of materialising mental and spiritual conceptions has always been very strong among the Philosophers and oral Teachers of the far East. Their constant effort has been to free the Thinker as far as possible from the bonds of matter even while he is embodied, to open the cage for the Divine Swallow, even though he must return to it for awhile. They are ever seeking "to spiritualise the material", while in the West the continual tendency has been "to materialise the spiritual". So the Indian describes the life of the freed Soul in all the terms that make it least material--illusion, dream, and so on--whereas the Hebrew endeavours to delineate it in terms descriptive of the material luxury and splendour of earth--marriage feast, streets of gold, thrones and crowns of solid metal and precious stones; the Western has followed the materialising conceptions of the Hebrew, and pictures a heaven which is merely a double of earth with earth's sorrows extracted, until we reach the grossest of all, the modern Summerland, with its "spirit-husbands", "spirit-wives", and "spirit-infants" that go to school and college, and grow up into spirit-adults.

In "Notes on Devachan",[29] someone who evidently writes with knowledge remarks of the Devachanî:

_The_ à priori _ideas of space and time do not control his
perceptions; for he absolutely creates and annihilates them
at the same time. Physical existence has its cumulative
intensity from infancy to prime, and its diminishing energy
from dotage to death; so the dream-life of Devachan is lived
correspondentially. Nature cheats no more the Devachanî than
she does the living physical man. Nature provides for him far
more_ real _bliss and happiness_ there _than she does_ here,
_where all the conditions of evil and chance are against him.
To call the Devachan existence a "dream" in any other sense
than that of a conventional term, is to renounce for ever the
knowledge of the Esoteric Doctrine, the sole custodian of
truth._

"Dream" only in the sense that it is not of this plane of gross matter, that it belongs not to the physical world.

Let us try and take a general view of the life of the Eternal Pilgrim, the inner Man, the human Soul, during a cycle of incarnation. Before he commences his new pilgrimage--for many pilgrimages lie behind him in the past, during which he gained the powers which enable him to tread the present one--he is a spiritual Being, but one who has already passed out of the passive condition of pure Spirit, and who by previous experience of matter in past ages has evolved intellect, the self-conscious mind. But this evolution by experience is far from being complete, even so far as to make him master of matter; his ignorance leaves him a prey to all the illusions of gross matter, so soon as he comes into contact with it, and he is not fit to be a builder of a universe, being subject to the deceptive visions caused by gross matter--as a child, looking through a piece of blue glass, imagines all the outside world to be blue. The object of a cycle of incarnation is to free him from these illusions, so that when he is surrounded by and working in gross matter he may retain clear vision and not be blinded by illusion. Now the cycle of incarnation is made up of two alternating states: a short one called life on earth, during which the Pilgrim-God is plunged into gross matter, and a comparatively long one, called life in Devachan, during which he is encircled by subtle matter, illusive still, but far less illusive than that of earth. The second state may fairly be called his normal one, as it is of enormous extent as compared with the breaks in it that he spends upon earth; it is comparatively normal also, as being less removed from his essential Divine life; he is less encased in matter, less deluded by its swiftly-changing appearances. Slowly and gradually, by reiterated experiences, gross matter loses its power over him and becomes his servant instead of his tyrant. In the partial freedom of Devachan he assimilates his experiences on earth, still partly dominated by them--at first, indeed, almost completely dominated by them so that the devachanic life is merely a sublimated continuation of the earth-life--but gradually freeing himself more and more as he recognises them as transitory and external, until he can move through any region of our universe with unbroken self-consciousness, a true Lord of Mind, the free and triumphant God. Such is the triumph of the Divine Nature manifested in the flesh, the subduing of every form of matter to be the obedient instrument of Spirit. Thus the Master said:

_The spiritual Ego of the man moves in eternity like a
pendulum between the hours of life and death, but if these_
_hours, the periods of life terrestrial and life posthumous,
are limited in their continuation, and even the very number
of such breaks in eternity between sleep and waking, between
illusion and reality, have their beginning as well as their
end, the spiritual Pilgrim himself is eternal. Therefore the_
hours of his posthumous life, _when unveiled he stands face
to face with truth, and the short-lived mirages of his
terrestrial existence are far from him,_ compose _or make up,
in our ideas,_ the only reality. _Such breaks, in spite of
the fact that they are finite, do double service to the
Sûtrâtmâ, which, perfecting itself constantly, follows
without vacillation, though very slowly, the road leading to
its last transformation, when, reaching its aim at last, it
becomes a Divine Being. They not only contribute to the
reaching of this goal, but without these finite breaks
Sûtrâtmâ-Buddhi could never reach it. Sûtrâtmâ is the actor,
and its numerous and different incarnations are the actor's
parts. I suppose you would not apply to these parts, and so
much the less to their costumes, the term of personality.
Like an actor the soul is bound to play, during the cycle of
births up to the very threshold of Parinirvâna, many such
parts, which often are disagreeable to it, but like a bee,
collecting its honey from every flower, and leaving the rest
to feed the worms of the earth, our spiritual individuality,
the Sûtrâtmâ, collecting only the nectar of moral qualities
and consciousness from every terrestrial personality in which
it has to clothe itself, forced by Karma, unites at last all
these qualities in one, having then become a perfect being, a
Dhyân Chohan._[30]

It is very significant, in this connection, that every devachanic stage is conditioned by the earth-stage that precedes it, and the Man can only assimilate in Devachan the kinds of experience he has been gathering on earth.

_A colourless, flavourless personality has a colourless,
feeble Devachanic state._[31]

Husband, father, student, patriot, artist, Christian, Buddhist--he must work out the effects of his earth-life in his devachanic life; he cannot eat and assimilate more food than he has gathered; he cannot reap more harvest than he has sown seed. It takes but a moment to cast a seed into a furrow; it takes many a month for that seed to grow into the ripened ear; but according to the kind of the seed is the ear that grows from it, and according to the nature of the brief earth-life is the grain reaped in the field of Aanroo.

_There is a change of occupation, a continual change in
Devachan, just as much and far more than there is in the life
of any man or woman who happens to follow in his or her whole
life one sole occupation, whatever it may be, with this
difference, that to the Devachanî this spiritual occupation
is always pleasant and fills his life with rapture. Life in
Devachan is the function of the aspirations of earth-life;
not the indefinite prolongation of that "single instant," but
its infinite developments, the various incidents and events
based upon and outflowing from that one "single moment" or
moments. The dreams of the objective become the realities of
the subjective existence.... The reward provided by Nature
for men who are benevolent in a large systematic way, and who
have not focussed their affections on an individual or
speciality, is that, if pure, they pass the quicker for
that through the Kâma and Rûpa Lokas into the higher sphere
of Tribhuvana, since it is one where the formulation of
abstract ideas and the consideration of general principles
fill the thought of its occupant._[32]

Into Devachan enters nothing that defileth, for gross matter has been left behind with all its attributes on earth and in Kâmaloka. But if the sower has sowed but little seed, the devachanic harvest will be meagre, and the growth of the Soul will be delayed by the paucity of the nutriment on which it has to feed. Hence the enormous importance of the earth-life, _the field of sowing, the place where experience is to be gathered_. It conditions, regulates, limits, the growth of the Soul; it yields the rough ore which the Soul then takes in hand, and works upon during the devachanic stage, smelting it, forging it, tempering it, into the weapons it will take back with it for its next earth-life. The experienced Soul in Devachan will make for itself a splendid instrument for its next earth-life; the inexperienced one will forge a poor blade enough; but in each case the only material available is that brought from earth. In Devachan the Soul, as it were, sifts and sorts out its experiences; it lives a comparatively free life, and gradually gains the power to estimate the earthly experiences at their real value; it works out thoroughly and completely as objective realities all the ideas of which it only conceived the germ on earth. Thus, noble aspiration is a germ which the Soul would work out into a splendid realisation in Devachan, and it would bring back with it to earth for its next incarnation that mental image, to be materialised on earth when opportunity offers and suitable environment presents itself. For the mind sphere is the sphere of creation, and earth only the place for materialising the pre-existent thought. And the soul is as an architect that works out his plans in silence and deep meditation, and then brings them forth into the outer world where his edifice is to be builded; out of the knowledge gained in his past life, the Soul draws his plans for the next, and he returns to earth to put into objective material form the edifices he has planned. This is the description of a Logos in creative activity:

Whilst Brahmâ formerly, in the beginning of the Kalpas, was
meditating on creation, there appeared a creation beginning
with ignorance and consisting of darkness.... Brahmâ,
beholding that it was defective, designed another; and whilst
he thus meditated, the animal creation was manifested....
Beholding this creation also imperfect, Brahmâ again
meditated, and a third creation appeared, abounding with the
quality of goodness.[33]

The objective manifestation follows the mental meditation; first idea, then form. Hence it will be seen that the notion current among many Theosophists that Devachan is waste time, is but one of the illusions due to the gross matter that blinds them, and that their impatience of the idea of Devachan arises from the delusion that fussing about in gross matter is the only real activity. Whereas, in truth, all effective action has its source in deep meditation, and out of the Silence comes ever the creative Word. Action on this plane would be less feeble and inefficient if it were the mere blossom of the profound root of meditation, and if the Soul embodied passed oftener out of the body into Devachan during earth-life, there would be less foolish action and consequent waste of time. For Devachan is a state of consciousness, the consciousness of the Soul escaped for awhile from the net of gross matter, and may be entered at any time by one who has learned to withdraw his Soul from the senses as the tortoise withdraws itself within its shell. And then, coming forth once more, action is prompt, direct, purposeful, and the time "wasted" in meditation is more than saved by the directness and strength of the mind-engendered act.

Devachan is the sphere of the mind, as said, it is the land of the Gods, or the Souls. In the before quoted "Notes on Devachan" we read:

_There are two fields of causal manifestations: the objective
and the subjective. The grosser energies find their outcome
in the new personality of each birth in the cycle of
evoluting individuality. The moral and spiritual activities
find their sphere of effects in Devachan._

As the moral and spiritual activities are the most important, and as on the development of these depends the growth of the true Man, and therefore the accomplishing of "the object of creation, the liberation of Soul", we may begin to understand something of the vast importance of the devachanic state.

THE DEVACHANÎ.

When the Triad has shaken off its last garment, it crosses the threshold of Devachan, and becomes "a Devachanî". We have seen that it is in a peaceful dreamy state before this passage out of the earth sphere, the "second death", or "pre-devachanic unconsciousness". This condition is otherwise spoken of as the "gestation" period, because it precedes the birth of the Ego into the devachanic life. Regarded from the earth-sphere the passage is death, while regarded from that of Devachan it is birth. Thus we find in "Notes on Devachan":

_As in actual earth-life, so there is for the Ego in Devachan
the first flutter of psychic life, the attainment of prime,
the gradual exhaustion of force passing into
semi-consciousness and lethargy, total oblivion, and--not
death but birth, birth into another personality, and the
resumption of action which daily begets new congeries of
causes that must be worked out in another term of Devachan,
and still another physical birth as a new personality. What
the lives in Devachan and upon earth shall be respectively in
each instance is determined by Karma, and this weary round of
birth must be ever and ever run through until the being
reaches the end of the seventh Round, or attains in the
interim the wisdom of an Arhat, then that of a Buddha, and
thus gets relieved for a Round or two._

When the devachanic entity is born into this new sphere it has passed beyond recall to earth. The embodied Soul may rise to it, but it cannot be drawn back to our world. On this a Master has spoken decisively:

_From Sukhâvatî down to the "Territory of Doubt," there is a
variety of spiritual states, but ... as soon as it has
stepped outside the Kâmaloka, crossed the "Golden Bridge"
leading to the "Seven Golden Mountains," the Ego can
confabulate no more with easy-going mediums. No Ernest or
Joey has ever returned from the Rûpa Loka, let alone the
Arupa Loka, to hold sweet intercourse with men._

In the "Notes on Devachan," again, we read:

_Certainly the new Ego, once that it is reborn (in Devachan),
retains for a certain time--proportionate to its
earth-life--a complete recollection "of his life on earth";
but it can never revisit the Earth from Devachan except in
Re-incarnation._

The Devachanî is generally spoken of as the Immortal Triad, Atmâ-Buddhi-Manas, but it is well always to bear in mind that

Atman is no individual property of any man, but is the Divine
Essence which has no body, no form, which is imponderable,
invisible, and indivisible, that which does not _exist_ and
yet _is_, as the Buddhists say of Nirvâna. It only
overshadows the mortal; that which enters into him and
pervades the whole body being only it's omni-present rays or
light, radiated through Buddhi, its vehicle and direct
emanation.[34]

Buddhi and Manas united, with this overshadowing of Atmâ, form the Devachanî; now, as we have seen in studying the Seven Principles, Manas is dual during earth-life, and the Lower Manas is redrawn into the Higher during the kâmalokic interlude. By this reuniting of the Ray and its Source, Manas re-becomes one, and carries the pure and noble experiences of the earth-life into Devachan with it, thus maintaining the past personality as the marked characteristic of the Devachanî, and it is in this prolongation of the "personal Ego", so to speak, that the "illusion" of the Devachanî consists. Were the mânasic entity free from all illusion, it would see all Egos as its brother-Souls, and looking back over its past would recognise all the varied relationships it had borne to others in many lives, as the actor would remember the many parts he had played with other actors, and would think of each brother actor as a man, and not in the parts he had played as his father, his son, his judge, his murderer, his master, his friend. The deeper human relationship would prevent the brother actors from identifying each other with their parts, and so the perfected spiritual Egos, recognising their deep unity and full brotherhood, would no longer be deluded by the trappings of earthly relationships. But the Devachanî, at least in the lower stages, is still within the personal boundaries of his past earth-life; he is shut into the relationships of the one incarnation; his paradise is peopled with those he "_loved best with an undying love, that holy feeling that alone survives_," and thus the purified personal Ego is the salient feature, as above said, in the Devachanî. Again quoting from the "Notes on Devachan":

"_Who goes to Devachan?" The personal Ego, of course; but
beatified, purified, holy. Every Ego--the combination of the
sixth and seventh principles[35]--which after the period of
unconscious gestation is reborn into the Devachan, is of
necessity as innocent and pure as a new-born babe. The fact
of his being reborn at all shows the preponderance of good
over evil in his old personality. And while the Karma [of
Evil] steps aside for the time being to follow him in his
future earth re-incarnation, he brings along with him but the
Karma of his good deeds, words and thoughts into this
Devachan. "Bad" is a relative term for us--as you were told
more than once before--and the Law of Retribution is the only
law that never errs. Hence all those who have not slipped
down into the mire of unredeemable sin and bestiality go to
the Devachan. They will have to pay for their sins, voluntary
and involuntary, later on. Meanwhile they are rewarded;
receive the effects of the causes produced by them._

Now in some people a sense of repulsion arises at the idea that the ties they form on earth in one life are not to be permanent in eternity. But let us look at the question calmly for a moment. When a mother first clasps her baby-son in her arms, that one relationship seems perfect, and if the child should die, her longing would be to re-possess him as her babe; but as he lives on through youth to manhood the tie changes, and the protective love of the mother and the clinging obedience of the child merge into a different love of friends and comrades, richer than ordinary friendship from the old recollections; yet later, when the mother is aged and the son in the prime of middle life, their positions are reversed and the son protects while the mother depends on him for guidance. Would the relation have been more perfect had it ceased in infancy with only the one tie, or is it not the richer and the sweeter from the different strands of which the tie is woven? And so with Egos; in many lives they may hold to each other many relationships, and finally, standing as Brothers of the Lodge closely knit together, may look back over past lives and see themselves in earth-life related in the many ways possible to human beings, till the cord is woven of every strand of love and duty; would not the final unity be the richer not the poorer for the many-stranded tie? "Finally", I say; but the word is only of this cycle, for what lies beyond, of wider life and less separateness, no mind of man may know. To me it seems that this very variety of experiences makes the tie stronger, not weaker, and that it is a rather thin and poor thing to know oneself and another in only one little aspect of many-sided humanity for endless ages of years; a thousand or so years of one person in one character would, to me, be ample, and I should prefer to know him or her in some new aspect of his nature. But those who object to this view need not feel distressed, for they will enjoy the presence of their beloved in the one personal aspect held by him or her in the one incarnation they are conscious of _for as long as the desire for that presence remains_. Only let them not desire to impose their own form of bliss on everybody else, nor insist that the kind of happiness which seems to them at this stage the only one desirable and satisfying, must be stereotyped to all eternity, through all the millions of years that lie before us. Nature gives to each in Devachan the satisfaction of all pure desires, and Manas there exercises that faculty of his innate divinity, that he "never wills in vain". Will not this suffice?

But leaving aside disputes as to what may be to us "happiness" in a future separated from our present by millions of years, so that we are no more fitted now to formulate its conditions than is a child, playing with its dolls, to formulate the deeper joys and interests of its maturity, let us understand that, according to the teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy, the Devachanî is surrounded by all he loved on earth, with pure affection, and the union being on the plane of the Ego, not on the physical plane, it is free from all the sufferings which would be inevitable were the Devachanî present in consciousness on the physical plane with all its illusory and transitory joys and sorrows. It is surrounded by its beloved in the higher consciousness, but is not agonised by the knowledge of what they are suffering in the lower consciousness, held in the bonds of the flesh. According to the orthodox Christian view, Death is a separation, and the "spirits of the dead" wait for reunion until those they love also pass through Death's gateway, or--according to some--until after the judgment-day is over. As against this the Esoteric Philosophy teaches that Death cannot touch the higher consciousness of man, and that it can only separate those who love each other so far as their lower vehicles are concerned; the man living on earth, blinded by matter, feels separated from those who have passed onwards, but the Devachanî, says H.P. Blavatsky, has a complete conviction "that there is no such thing as Death at all", having left behind it all those vehicles over which Death has power. Therefore, to its less blinded eyes, its beloved are still with it; for it, the veil of matter that separates has been torn away.

A mother dies, leaving behind her little helpless children,
whom she adores, perhaps a beloved husband also. We say that
her "Spirit" or Ego--that individuality which is now wholly
impregnated, for the entire Devachanic period, with the
noblest feelings held by its late _personality, i.e._, love
for her children, pity for those who suffer, and so on--is
now entirely separated from the "vale of tears," that its
future bliss consists in that blessed ignorance of all the
woes it left behind ... that the _post-mortem_ spiritual
consciousness of the mother will represent to her that she
lives surrounded by her children and all those whom she
loved; that no gap, no link will be missing to make her
disembodied state the most perfect and absolute
happiness.[36]

And so again:

As to the ordinary mortal his bliss in Devachan is complete.
It is an absolute oblivion of all that gave it pain or sorrow
in the past incarnation, and even oblivion of the fact that
such things as pain or sorrow exist at all. The Devachanî
lives its intermediate cycle between two incarnations
surrounded by everything it had aspired to in vain, and in
the companionship of everything it loved on earth. It has
reached the fulfilment of all its soul-yearnings. And thus it
lives throughout long centuries an existence of _unalloyed_
happiness, which is the reward for its sufferings in
earth-life. In short, it bathes in a sea of uninterrupted
felicity spanned only by events of still greater felicity in
degree.[37]

When we take the wider sweep in thought demanded by the Esoteric Philosophy, a far more fascinating prospect of persistent love and union between individual Egos rolls itself out before our eyes than was offered to us by the more limited creed of exoteric Christendom. "Mothers love their children with an immortal love," says H.P. Blavatsky, and the reason for this immortality in love is easily grasped when we realise that it is the same Egos that play so many parts in the drama of life, that the experience of each part is recorded in the memory of the Soul, and that between the Souls there is no separation, though during incarnation they may not realise the fact in its fulness and beauty.

We are with those whom we have lost in material form, and
far, far nearer to them now than when they were alive. And it
is not only in the fancy of the Devachanî, as some may
imagine, but in reality. For pure divine love is not merely
the blossom of a human heart, but has its roots in eternity.
Spiritual holy love is immortal, and Karma brings sooner or
later all those who loved each other with such a spiritual
affection to incarnate once more in the same family
group.[38]

Love "has its roots in eternity", and those to whom on earth we are strongly drawn are the Egos we have loved in past earth-lives and dwelt with in Devachan; coming back to earth these enduring bonds of love draw us together yet again, and add to the strength and beauty of the tie, and so on and on till all illusions are lived down, and the strong and perfected Egos stand side by side, sharing the experience of their well-nigh illimitable past.

THE RETURN TO EARTH.

At length the causes that carried the Ego into Devachan are exhausted, the experiences gathered have been wholly assimilated, and the Soul begins to feel again the thirst for sentient material life that can be gratified only on the physical plane. The greater the degree of spirituality reached, the purer and loftier the preceding earth-life, the longer the stay in Devachan, the world of spiritual, pure, and lofty effects. [I am here ignoring the special conditions surrounding one who is forcing his own evolution, and has entered on the Path that leads to Adeptship within a very limited number of lives.] The "average time [in Devachan] is from ten to fifteen centuries", H.P. Blavatsky tells us, and the fifteen centuries cycle is the one most plainly marked in history.[39] But in modern life this period has much shortened, in consequence of the greater attraction exercised by physical objects over the heart of man. Further, it must be remembered that the "average time" is not the time spent in Devachan by any person. If one person spends there 1000 years, and another fifty, the "average" is 525. The devachanic period is longer or shorter according to the type of life which preceded it; the more there was of spiritual, intellectual, and emotional activity of a lofty kind, the longer will be the gathering in of the harvest; the more there was of activity directed to selfish gain on earth, the shorter will be the devachanic period.

When the experiences are assimilated, be the time long or short, the Ego is ready to return, and he brings back with him his now increased experience, and any further gains he may have made in Devachan along the lines of abstract thought; for, while in Devachan,

In one sense we can acquire more knowledge; that is, we can
develop further any faculty which we loved and strove after
during life, provided it is concerned with abstract and ideal
things, such as music, painting, poetry, &c.[40]