Death--and After?, Annie Besant [books for 8th graders TXT] 📗
- Author: Annie Besant
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If a person has led a pure life, and has steadfastly striven to rise and to identify himself with the higher rather than the lower parts of his nature, after shaking off the dense body and the etheric double, and after Prâna has re-mingled with the ocean of Life, and he is clothed only with the Kâma Rûpa, the passional elements in him, being but weak and accustomed to comparatively little activity, will not be able to assert themselves strongly in Kâmaloka. Now during earth-life Kâma and the Lower Manas are strongly united and interwoven with each other; in the case we are considering Kâma is weak, and the Lower Manas has purified Kâma to a great extent. The mind, woven with the passions, emotions, and desires, has purified them, and has assimilated their pure part, absorbed it into itself, so that all that is left of Kâma is a mere residue, easily to be gotten rid of, from which the Immortal Triad can readily free itself. Slowly this Immortal Triad, the true Man, draws in all his forces; he draws into himself the memories of the earth-life just ended, its loves, its hopes, its aspirations, and prepares to pass out of Kâmaloka into the blissful rest of Devachan, the "abode of the Gods", or as some say, "the land of bliss". Kâmaloka
Is an astral locality, the Limbus of scholastic theology, the Hades of the ancients, and, strictly speaking, a locality only in a relative sense. It has neither a definite area, nor boundary, but exists within subjective space, i.e., is beyond our sensuous perceptions. Still it exists, and it is there that the astral eidolons of all the beings that have lived, animals included, await their second death. For the animals it comes with the disintegration and the entire fading out of their astral particles to the last. For the human eidolon it begins when the Atmâ-Buddhi-Mânasic Triad is said to "separate" itself from its lower principles or the reflection of the ex-personality, by falling into the Devachanic state.[21]
This second death is the passage, then, of the Immortal Triad from the kâmalokic sphere, so closely related to the earth sphere, into the higher state of Devachan, of which we must speak later. The type of man we are considering passes through this, in the peaceful dreamy state already described, and, if left undisturbed, will not regain full consciousness until these stages are passed through, and peace gives way to bliss.
But during the whole period that the four principles—the Immortal Triad and Kâma—remain in Kâmaloka, whether the period be long or short, days or centuries, they are within the reach of the earth-influences. In the case of such a person as we have been describing, an awakening may be caused by the passionate sorrow and desires of friends left on earth, and these violently vibrating kâmic elements in the embodied persons may set up vibrations in the desire body of the disembodied, and so reach and rouse the lower Manas, not yet withdrawn to and reunited with its parent, the Spiritual Intelligence. Thus it may be roused from its dreamy state to vivid remembrance of the earth-life so lately left, and may—if any sensitive or medium is concerned, either directly, or indirectly through one of these grieving friends in communication with the medium—use the medium's etheric and dense bodies to speak or write to those left behind. This awakening is often accompanied with acute suffering, and even if this be avoided, the natural process of the Triad freeing itself is rudely disturbed, and the completion of its freedom is delayed. In speaking of this possibility of communication during the period immediately succeeding death and before the freed Man passes on into Devachan, H.P. Blavatsky says:
Whether any living mortal, save a few exceptional cases—when the intensity of the desire in the dying person to return for some purpose forced the higher consciousness to remain awake, and, therefore, it was really the individuality, the "Spirit", that communicated—has derived much benefit from the return of the Spirit into the objective plane is another question. The Spirit is dazed after death, and falls very soon into what we call "pre-devachanic unconsciousness."[22]
Intense desire may move the disembodied entity to spontaneously return to the sorrowing ones left behind, but this spontaneous return is rare in the case of persons of the type we are just now considering. If they are left at peace, they will generally sleep themselves quietly into Devachan, and so avoid any struggle or suffering in connection with the second death. On the final escape of the Immortal Triad there is left behind in Kâmaloka only the desire body, the "shell" or mere empty phantom, which gradually disintegrates; but it will be better to deal with this in considering the next type, the average man or woman, without marked spirituality of an elevated kind, but also without marked evil tendencies.
When an average man or woman reaches Kâmaloka, the spiritual Intelligence is clothed with a desire body, which possesses considerable vigour and vitality; the lower Manas, closely interwoven with Kâma during the earth-life just ended, having lived much in the enjoyment of objects of sense and in the pleasures of the emotions, cannot quickly disentangle itself from the web of its own weaving, and return to its Parent Mind, the source of its own being. Hence a considerable delay in the world of transition, in Kâmaloka, while the desires wear out and fade away to a point at which they can no longer detain the Soul with their clinging arms.
As said, during the period that the Immortal Triad and Kâma remain together in Kâmaloka, communication between the disembodied entity and the embodied entities on earth is possible. Such communication will generally be welcomed by these disembodied ones, because their desires and emotions still cling to the earth they have left, and the mind has not sufficiently lived on its own plane to find therein full satisfaction and contentment. The lower Manas still yearns towards kâmic gratifications and the vivid highly coloured sensations of earth-life, and can by these yearnings be drawn back to the scenes it has regretfully quitted. Speaking of the possibility of communication between the Ego of the deceased person and a medium, H.P. Blavatsky says in the Theosophist,[23] as from the teachings received by her from the Adept Brothers, that such communication may occur during two intervals:
Interval the first is that period between the physical death and the merging of the spiritual Ego into that state which is known in the Arhat esoteric doctrine as Bar-do. We have translated this as the "gestation" period [pre-devachanic].
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
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