Western European stream·Esoteric Buddhism·CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
DEVACHAN.
It was not possible to approach a considera- tion of the states into which the higher human principles pass at death, without first indicat- ing the general framework of the whole design worked out in the course of the evolution of man. That much of my task, however, having now been accomplished, we may pass on to con- sider the natural destinies of each human Ego, in the interval which elapses between the close of one objective life and the commencement of another. At the commencement of another, the Karma of the previous objective life deter- mines the state of life into which the individ- ual shall be born. This doctrine of Karma is one of the most interesting features of Buddhist philosophy. There has been no secret about it at any time, though for want of a proper com- prehension of elements in the philosophy which have been strictly esoteric, it may sometimes have been misunderstood.
Karma is a collective expression applied to
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that complicated group of affinities for good and evil generated by a human being during life, and the character of which inheres in the mole- cules of his fifth principle all through the inter- val which elapses between his death from one objective life and his birth into the next. As stated sometimes, the doctrine seems to be one which exacts the notion of a superior spiritual authority summing up the acts of a man's life at its close, taking into consideration his good deeds and his bad, and giving judgment about him on the whole aspect of the case. But a comprehension of the way in which the human principles divide up at death, will afford a clue to the comprehension of the way in which Karma operates, and also of the great subject we may better take up first, the immediate spiritual condition of man after death. At death, the three lower principles — the body, its mere physical vitality, and its astral counterpart — are finally abandoned by that which really is the Man himself, and the four higher principles escape into that world imme- diately above our own ; above our own, that is, in the order of spirituality; not above it at all, but in it and of it, as regards real locality, — the astral plane, or Karma Loca, according to a very familiar Sanskrit expression. Here a division takes plaoe between the two duads, which the DEVACHAN. 123 four higher principles include. The explana- tions already given concerning the imperfect extent to which the upper principles of man are as yet developed, will show that this estimation of the process, as in the nature of a mechanical separation of the principles, is a rough way of dealing with the matter. It must be modified in the reader's mind by the light of what has been already said. It may be otherwise de- scribed as a trial of the extent to which the fifth principle has been developed. Regarded in the light of the former idea, however, we must conceive the sixth and seventh principles, on the one hand, drawing the fifth, the human soul, in one direction, while the fourth draws it back earthward in the other. Now, the fifth principle is a very complex entity, separable itself into superior and inferior elements. In the struggle which takes place between its late companion principles, its best, purest, most ele- vated, and spiritual portions cling to the sixth, its lower instincts, impulses, and recollections adhere to the fourth, and it is in a measure torn asunder. The lower remnant, associating itself with the fourth, floats off in the earth's atmos- phere, while the best elements, those, be it un- derstood, which really constitute the Ego of the late earthly personality, the individuality, the consciousness thereof, follows the sixth and sev-
124ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.
enth into a spiritual condition, the nature of which we are about to examine. Rejecting the popular English name for this spiritual condition, as incrusted with too many misconceptions to be convenient, let us keep to the Oriental designation of that region or state into which the higher principles of human crea- tures pass at death. This is additionally desir- able because, although the Devachan of Bud- dhist philosophy corresponds in some respects to the modern European idea of heaven, it dif- fers from heaven in others which are even more important. Firstly, however, in Devachan, that which survives is not merely the individual monad, which survives through all the changes of the whole evolutionary scheme, and flits from body to body, from planet to planet, and so forth, — that which survives in Devachan is the man's own self-conscious personality, under some re- strictions indeed, which we will come to direct- ly, but still it is the same personality as regards its higher feelings, aspirations, affections, and even tastes, as it was on earth. Perhaps it would be better to say the essence of the late self-conscious personality. It may be worth the reader's while to learn what Colonel H. S. Olcott has to say in his " Buddhist Catechism " (14th thousand) of the DEVACHAN. 125 intrinsic difference between " individuality " and " personality." Since he wrote not only under the approval of the High Priest of the Sripada and Galle, Sumangala, but also under the direct instruction of his adept Guru, his words will have weight for the student of Oc- cultism. This is what he says in his Appen- dix : — " Upon reflection, I have substituted ' person- ality ' for 4 individuality ' as written in the first edition. The successive appearances upon one or many earths, or ' descents into generation ' of the tanhaically-coherent parts (Skandhas) of a certain being, are a succession of personali- ties. In each birth the personality differs from that of the previous or next succeeding birth. Karma, the deus ex mdchina, masks (or shall we say, reflects ?) itself now in the personality of a sage, again as an artisan, and so on throughout the string of births. But though personalities ever shift, the one line of life along which they are strung like beads, runs unbroken. " It is ever that particular line, never any other. It is therefore individual, an individual vital undulation which began in Nirvana or the subjective side of Nature, as the light or heat undulation through ether began at its dynamic source ; is careering through the objective side
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of Nature, under the impulse of Karma and the creative direction of Tanha ; and tends through many cyclic changes back to Nirvana. Mr. Rhys Davids calls that which passes from per- sonality to personality along the individual chain, ' character ' or 4 doing.' Since ' charac- ter' is not a mere metaphysical abstraction, JDut the sum of one's mental qualities and moral propensities, would it not help to dispel what Mr. Rhys Davids calls ' the desperate expe- dient of a mystery,' if we regarded the life un- dulation as individuality, and each of its series of natal manifestations as a separate person- ality ? " The denial of 4 soul ' by Buddha (see 4 San- yutto Nikaya,' the Sutta Pitaka) points to the prevalent delusive belief in an independent transmissible personality ; an entity that could move from birth to birth unchanged, or go to a place or state where, as such perfect entity, it could eternally enjoy or suffer. And what he shows is that the ' I am I ' consciousness is, as regards permanency, logically impossible, since its elementary constituents constantly change, and the ' I ' of one birth differs from the 4 1 ' of every other birth. But everything that I have found in Buddhism accords with the theory of a gradual evolution of the perfect man, viz., a Buddha through numberless natal experiences. DEVACHAN. 127 And in the consciousness of that person who at the end of a given chain of beings attains Buddhahood, or who succeeds in attaining the fourth stage of Dhyana, or mystic self-develop- ment, in any one of his births anterior to the final one, the scenes of all these serial births are perceptible. In the ' Jatakattahavannana,' so well translated by Mr. Rhys Davids, an ex- pression continually recurs which I think rather supports such an* idea, viz., ' Then the blessed one made manifest an occurrence hidden by change of birth? or 'that which had been hid- den by, etc' Early Buddhism, then, clearly held to a permanency of records in the Akasa, and the potential capacity of man to read the same when he has evoluted to the stage of true individual enlightenment." The purely sensual feelings and tastes of the late personality will drop off from it in Deva- chan, but it does not follow that nothing is preservable in that state, except feelings and thoughts having a direct reference to religion or spiritual philosophy. On the contrary, all the superior phases, even of sensuous emotion, find their appropriate sphere of development in Devachan. To suggest a whole range of ideas by means of one illustration, a soul in Deva- chan, if the soul of a man who was passionately devoted to music, would be continuously en-
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raptured by the sensations music produces. The person whose happiness of the higher sort on earth had been entirely centred in the ex- ercise of the affections will miss none in Deva- chan of those whom he or she loved. But, at once it will be asked, if some of these are not themselves fit for Devachan, how then ? The answer is, that does not matter. For the per- son who loved them they will be there. It is not necessary to say much more to give a clue to the position. Devachan is a subjective state. It will seem as real as tbe chairs and tables round us ; and remember that, above all things, to the profound philosophy of Occultism, are the chairs and tables, and the whole objective scenery of the world, unreal and merely transi- tory delusions of sense. As real as the realities of this world to us, and even more so, will be the realities of Devachan to those who go into that state. From this it ensues that the subjective isola- tion of Devachan, as it will perhaps be con- ceived at first, is not real isolation at all, as the word is understood on the physical plane of ex- istence ; it is companionship with all that the true soul craves for, whether persons, things, or knowledge. And a patient consideration of the place in Nature which Devachan occupies will show that this subjective isolation of each DEVACHAN. 129 human unit is the only condition which renders possible anything which can be described as a felicitous spiritual existence after death for mankind at large, and Devachan is as much a purely and absolutely felicitous condition for all who attain it, as Avitchi is the reverse of it. There is no inequality or injustice in the sys- tem ; Devachan is by no means the same thing for the good and the indifferent alike, but it is not a life of responsibility, and therefore there is no logical place in it for suffering any more than in Avitchi there is any room for enjoy- ment or repentance. It is a life of effects, not of causes ; a life of being paid your earnings, not of laboring for them. Therefore it is im- possible to be during that life cognizant of what is going on on earth. Under the opera- tion of such cognition there would be no true happiness possible in the state after death. A heaven which constituted a watch-tower from which the occupants could still survey the mis- eries of the earth, would really be a place of acute mental suffering for its most sympathetic, unselfish, and meritorious inhabitants. If we invest them in imagination with such a very limited range of sympathy that they could be imagined as not caring about the spectacle of suffering after the few persons to whom they were immediately attached had died and joined
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them, still they would have a very unhappy pe- riod of waiting to go through before survivors reached the end of an often long and toilsome existence below. And even this hypothesis would be further vitiated by making heaven most painful for occupants who were most un- selfish and sympathetic, whose reflected distress would thus continue on behalf of the afflicted race of mankind generally, even after their per- sonal kindred had been rescued by the lapse of time. The only escape from this dilemma lies in the supposition that heaven is not yet opened for business, so to speak, and that all people who have ever lived, from Adam downward, are still lying in a death-like trance, waiting for the resurrection at the end of the world. This hypothesis also has its embarrassments, but we are concerned at present„with the scientific har- mony of esoteric Buddhism, not with the theo- ries of other creeds. Readers, however, who may grant that a pur- view of earthly life from heaven would render happiness in heaven impossible, may still doubt whether true happiness is possible in the state, as it may be objected, of monotonous isolation now described. The objection is merely raised from the point of view of an imagination that cannot escape from its present surroundings. To begin with, about monotony. No one will DEVACHAN. 131 complain of having experienced monotony dur- ing the minute, or moment, or half hour, as it may have been, of the greatest happiness he may have enjoyed in life. Most people have had some happy moments, at all events, to look back to for the purpose of this comparison ; and let us take even one such minute or moment, too short to be open to the least suspicion of monotony, and imagine its sensations immensely prolonged without any external events in prog- ress to mark the lapse of time. There is no room, in such a condition of things, for the con- ception of weariness. The unalloyed, unchange- able sensation of intense happiness goes on and on, not forever, because the causes which have produced it are not infinite themselves, but for very long periods of time, until the efficient im- pulse has exhausted itself. Nor must it be supposed that there is, so to speak, no change of occupation for souls in De- vachan, — that any one moment of earthly sen- sation is selected for exclusive perpetuation. As a teacher of the highest authority on this subject writes : — "There are two fields of causal manifesta- tions, the objective and subjective. The grosser energies — those which operate in the denser condition of matter — manifest objectively in the next physical life, their outcome being the
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new personality of each birth marshaling within the grand cycle of the e vol u ting individuality. It is but the moral and spiritual activities that find their sphere of effects in Devachan. And, thought and fancy being limitless, how can it be argued for one moment that there is an 3*- thing like monotony in the state of Devachan ? Few are the men whose lives were so utterly destitute of feeling, love, or of a more or less intense predilection for some one line of thought as to be made unfit for a proportionate period of Devachanic experience beyond their earthly life. So, for instance, while the vices, physical and sensual attractions, say, of a great philosopher, but a bad friend and a selfish man, may result in the birth of a new and still greater intellect, but at the same time a most miserable man, reaping the Karmic effects of all the causes produced Ivy the ' old' being, and whose make-up was inevitable from the pre- ponderating proclivities of that being in the preceding birth, the intermedial period between the two physical births cannot be, in Nature's exquisitely well-adjusted laws, but a hiatus of unconsciousness. There can be no such dreary blank as kindly promised, or rather implied, by Christian Protestant theology, to the ' departed souls,' which, between death and 'resurrection,' have to hang on in space, in mental catalepsy DEVACRAN. 133 awaiting the 4 Day of Judgment.' Causes pro- duced by mental and spiritual energy being far greater and more important than those that are created by physical impulses, their effects have to be, for weal or woe, proportionately as great. Lives on this earth, or other earths, affording no proper field for such effects, and every laborer being entitled to his own harvest, they have to expand in either Devachan or Avitchi.1 Bacon, for instance, whom a poet called
4The brightest, wisest, meanest of mankind,1
might reappear in his next incarnation as a greedy money-getter, with extraordinary intel- lectual capacities. But, however great the lat- ter, they would find no proper field in which that particular line of thought, pursued during his previous lifetime by the founder of modern philosophy, could reap all its dues. It would be but the astute lawyer, the corrupt Attorney- General, the ungrateful friend, and the dishon- est Lord Chancellor, who might find, led on by his Karma, a congenial new soil in the body of the money-lender, and reappear as a new Shy- lock. But where would Bacon, the incompar- able thinker, with whom philosophical inquiry upon the most profound problems of Nature was his ' first and last and only love,' where
1The lowest states of Devachan interchain with those of Avitchi
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would this ' intellectual giant of his race once disrobed of his lower nature, go to ? Have all the effects of that magnificent intellect to vanish and disappear? Certainly not. Thus his moral and spiritual qualities would also have to find a field in which their energies could expand them- selves. Devachan is such a field. Hence, all the great plans of moral reform, of intellectual research into abstract principles of Nature — all the divine, spiritual aspirations that had so filled the brightest part of his life would, in Devachan, come to fruition ; and the abstract entity, known in the preceding birth as Francis Bacon, and that may be known in its subse- quent re-incarnation as a despised usurer — that Bacon's own creation, his Frankenstein, the son of his Karma — shall in the meanwhile occupy itself in this inner world, also of its own prepa- ration, in enjoying the effects of the grand beneficial spiritual causes sown in life. It would live a purely and spiritually conscious ex- istence — a dream of realistic vividness — until Karma, being satisfied in that direction, and the ripple of force reaching the edge of its sub-cy- clic basin, the being should move into its next area of causes, either in this same world or an- other, according to his stage of progression. . . . Therefore, there is ' a change of occupation,' a continual change, in Devachan. For that DE VAC HAN. 135 dream-life is but the fruition, the harvest-time, of those psychic seed-germs dropped from the tree of physical existence in our moments of dream and. hope — fancy-glimpses of bliss and happiness, stifled in an ungrateful social soil, blooming in the rosy dawn of Devachan, and ripening under its ever -fructifying sky. If man had but one single moment of ideal expe- rience, not even then could it be, as errone- ously supposed, the indefinite prolongation of that 'single moment.' That one note, struck from the lyre of life, would form the key-note of the being's subjective state, and work out into numberless harmonic tones and semitones of psychic phantasmagoria. There, all unreal- ized hopes, aspirations, dreams, become fully realized, and the dreams of the objective be- come the realities of the subjective existence. And there, behind the curtain of Maya, its va- porous and deceptive appearances are perceived by the Initiate, who has learned the great secret how to penetrate thus deep into the Arcana of Being." . . . As physical existence has its cumulative in- tensity from infancy to prime, and its dimin- ishing energy thenceforward to dotage and death, so the dream-life of Devachan is lived correspondentially. There is the first flutter of psychic life, the attainment of prime, the grad-
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ual exhaustion of force passing into conscious lethargy, semi-unconsciousness, oblivion and — not death but birth ! birth into another person- ality and the resumption of action which daily begets new congeries of causes that must be worked out in another term of Devachan. " It is not a reality then, it is a mere dream," objectors will urge ; " the soul so bathed in a delusive sensation of enjoyment which has no reality all the while is being cheated by Na- ture, and must encounter a terrible shock when it wakes to its mistake." But, in the nature of things, it never does or can wake. The waking from Devachan is its next birth into objective life, and the draught of Lethe has then been taken. Nor as regards the isolation of each soul is there any consciousness of isolation whatever; nor is there ever possibly a parting from its chosen associates. Those associates are not in the nature of companions who may wish to go away, of friends who may tire of the friend that loves them, even if he or she does not tire of them. Love, the creating force, has placed their living image before the personal soul which craves for their presence, and that image will never fly away. On this aspect of the subject I may again avail myself of the language of my teacher : — " Objectors of that kind will be simply postu DEVACHAN. 137 lating an incongruity, an intercourse of entities in Devachan, which applies only to the mutual relationship of physical existence ! Two sym- pathetic souls, both disembodied, will each work out its own Devachanic sensations, mak- ing the other a sharer in its subjective bliss. This will be as real to them, naturally, as though both were yet on this earth. Neverthe- less, each is dissociated from the other as re- gardo personal or corporeal association. While the latter is the only one of its kind that is recognized by our earth experience as an actual intercourse, for the Devachanee it would be not only something unreal, but could have no exist- ence for it in any sense, not even as a delusion : a physical body or even a Mayavi-rnpa remain- ing to its spiritual senses as invisible as it is it- self to the physical senses of those who loved it best on earth. Thus even though one of the 'sharers ' were alive and utterly unconscious of that intercourse in his waking state, still every dealing with him would be to the Devachanee an absolute reality. And what actual compan- ionship could there ever be other than the purely idealistic one as above described, between two subjective entities which are not even as mate- rial as that ethereal body-shadow — the Mayavi- rupa? To object to this on the ground that one is thus i cheated by Nature ' and to call it
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* a delusive sensation of enjoyment which has no reality,' is to show one's self utterly unfit to comprehend the conditions of life and being outside of our material existence. For how can the same distinction be made in Devachan — i. e., outside of the conditions of earth-life — be- tween what we call a reality, and a factitious or an artificial counterfeit of the same, in this, our world? The same principle cannot apply to the two sets of conditions. Is it conceivable that what we call a reality in our embodied phys- ical state will exist under the same conditions as an actuality^ for a disembodied entity? On earth, man is dual — in the sense of being a thing of matter and a thing of spirit ; hence the natural distinction made by his mind — the an- alyst of his physical sensations and spiritual perceptions — between an actuality and a fic- tion ; though, even in this life, the two groups of faculties are constantly equilibrating each other, each group when dominant seeing as fic- tion or delusion what the other believes to be most real. But in Devachan our Ego has ceased to be dualistic, in the above sense, and becomes a spiritual, mental entity. That which was a fiction, a dream in life, and which had fts being but in the region of ' fancy,' becomes, under the new conditions of existence, the only possible reality. Thus, for us, to postulate the DEVACHAN. 139 possibility of any other reality for a Devacbanee is to maintain an absurdity, a monstrous fallacy, an idea unpbilosophical to the last degree. The actual is that which is acted or performed de facto : 'the reality of a thing is proved by its actuality.' And the supposititious and artifi- cial having no possible existence in that De- vachanic state, the logical sequence is that everything in it is actual and real. For, again, whether overshadowing the five principles dur- ing the life of the personality, or entirely sepa- rated from the grosser principles by the dissolu- tion of the body — the sixth principle, or our 'Spiritual Soul,' has no substance — it is ever Arupa ; nor is it confined to one place with a limited horizon of perceptions around it. There- fore, whether in or out of its mortal body, it is ever distinct, and free from its limitations ; and if we call its Devachanic experiences ' a cheat- ing of Nature,' then we should never be allowed to call ' reality ' any of those purely abstract feel- ings that belong entirely to, and are reflected and assimilated by, our higher soul — such, for instance, as an ideal perception of the beautiful, profound philanthropy, love, etc., as well as ever)7 other purely spiritual sensation that dur- ing life fills our inner being with either im- mense joy or pain." We must remember that by the very nature
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of the system described there are infinite va- rieties of well-being in Devachan, suited to the infinite varieties of merit in mankind. If " the next world " really were the objective heaven which ordinary theology preaches, there would be endless injustice and inaccuracy in its oper- ation. People, to begin with, would be either admitted or excluded, and the differences of favor shown to different guests within the all- favored region would not sufficiently provide for differences of merit in this life. But the real heaven of our earth adjusts itself to the needs and merits of each new arrival with un- failing certainty. Not merely as regards the duration of the blissful state, which is deter- mined by the causes engendered during objec- tive life, but as regards the intensity and amplitude of the emotions which constitute that blissful state, the heaven of each person who attains the really existent heaven is pre- cisely fitted to his capacity for enjoying it. It is the creation of his own aspirations and facul- ties. More than this it may be impossible for the uninitiated comprehension to realize. But this indication of its character is enough to show how perfectly it falls into its appointed place in the whole scheme of evolution. " Devachan," to resume my direct quota- tions, " is, of course, a state, not a locality, as DEVACHAN. 141 much as Avitchi, its antithesis (which please not to confound with hell). Esoteric Buddhist philosophy has three principal lokas so-called — namely, 1, Kama loka ; 2, Rupa loka ; and 3, Arupa loka ; or in their literal translation and meaning — 1, world of desires or passions, of unsatisfied earthly cravings — the abode of
4Shells ' and Victims, of Elementaries and
Suicides ; 2, the world of Forms — i. e., of shadows more spiritual, having form and objec- tivity, but no substance ; and 3, the formless world, or rather the world of no form, the in- corporeal, since its denizens can have neither body, shape, nor color for us mortals, and in the sense that we give to these terms. These are the three spheres of ascending spirituality, in which the several groups of subjective and semi- subjective entities find their attractions. All but the suicides and the victims of premature violent deaths go, according to their attractions and powers, either into the Devachanic or the Avitchi state, which two states form the num- berless subdivisions of Rupa and Arupa lokas • — that is to say, that such states not only vary in degree, or in their presentation to the sub- ject entity as regards form, color, etc., but that there is an infinite scale of such states, in their progressive spirituality and intensity of feeling; from the lowest in the Rupa, up to the highest
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and the most exalted in the Arupa-loka. The student must bear in mind that personality is the synonym for limitation ; and that the more selfish, the more contracted the person's ideas, the closer will he cling to the lower spheres of being, the longer loiter on the plane of selfish social intercourse." Devachan being a condition of mere subjec- tive enjoyment, the duration and intensity of which is determined by the merit and spiritual- ity of the earth-life last past, there is no oppor- tunity, while the soul inhabits it, for the punc- tual requital of evil deeds. But Nature does not content herself with either forgiving sins in a free and easy way, or damning sinners out- right, like a lazy master too indolent, rather than too good-natured, to govern his household justly. The Karma of evil, be it great or small, is as certainty operative at the appointed time as the Karma of good. But the place of its operation is not Devachan, but either a new re-birth or Avitchi — a state to be reached only in exceptional cases and by exceptional natures. In other words, while the commonplace sinner will reap the fruits of his evil deeds in a follow- ing re-incarnation, the exceptional criminal, the aristocrat of sin, has Avitchi in prospect — that is to say, the condition of subjective spiritual misery which is the reverse side of Devachan. DEVACHAN. 143 " Avitchi is a state of the most ideal spirit- ual wickedness, something akin to the state of Lucifer, so superbly described by Milton. Not many, though, are there who can reach it, as the thoughtful reader will perceive. And if it is urged that since there is Devachan for nearly all, for the good, the bad, and the indiffer- ent, the ends of harmony and equilibrium are frustrated and the law of retribution and of impartial, implacable justice, hardly met and satisfied by such a comparative scarcity if not absence of its antithesis, then the answer will show that it is not so. 4 Evil is the dark son of Earth (matter) and Good — the fair daughter of Heaven ' (or Spirit) says the Chinese philosopher ; hence the place of pun- ishment for most of our sins is the earth — its birth-place and play-ground. There is more apparent and relative than actual evil even on earth, and it is not given to the hoi polloi to reach the fatal grandeur and eminence of a
4Satan ' every day."
Generally, the re-birth into objective exist- ence is the event for which the Karma of evil patiently waits, and then it irresistibly asserts itself ; not that the Karma of good exhausts itself in Devachan, leaving the unhappy monad to develop a new consciousness with no mate- rial beyond the evil deeds of its last personality,
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The re-birth will be qualified by the merit as well as the demerit of the previous life, but the Devachan existence is a rosy sleep — a peace- ful night with dreams more vivid than day, and imperishable for many centuries. It will be seen that the Devachan state , is only one of the conditions of existence which go to make up the whole spiritual or relatively spir- itual complement of our earth life. Observers of spiritualistic phenomena would never have been perplexed as they have been if there were no other but the Devachan state to be dealt with. For once in Devachan there is very little op- portunity for communication between a spirit, then wholly absorbed in its own sensations and practically oblivious of the earth left behind, and its former friends still living. Whether gone before or yet remaining on earth, those friends, if the bond of affection has been suffi- ciently strong, will be with the happy spirit still to all intents and purposes for him, and as happy, blissful, innocent, as the disembodied dreamer himself. It is possible, however, for yet living persons to have visions of Devachan, though such visions are rare, and only one- sided, the entities in Devachan, sighted by the earthly clairvoyant, being quite unconscious themselves of undergoing such observation. The spirit of the clairvoyant ascends into the LEV ACE AN. 145 condition of Devachan in such rare visions, and thus becomes subject to the vivid delusions of that existence. It is under the impression that the spirits, with which it is in Devachanic bonds of sympathy, have come down to visit earth and itself, while the converse operation has really taken place. The clairvoyant's spirit has been raised towards those in Devachan. Thus many of the subjective spiritual commu- nications— most of them when the sensitives are pure-minded — are real, though it is most difficult for the uninitiated medium to fix in his mind the true and correct pictures of what he sees and hears. In the same way some of the phenomena called psychography (though more rarely) are also real. The spirit of the sensitive getting odylized, so to say, by the aura of the spirit in the Devachan becomes for a few minutes that departed personality, and writes in the handwriting of the latter, in his language and in his thoughts as the}^ were during his lifetime. The two spirits become blended in one, and the preponderance of one over the other during such phenomena deter- mines the preponderance of personality in the characteristics exhibited. Thus, it may inci- dentally be observed, what is called rapport, is, in plain fact, an identity of molecular vibra- tion between the astral part of the incarnate
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medium and the astral part of the disincarnate personality. As already indicated, and as the common sense of the matter would show, there are great varieties of states in Devachan, and each per- sonality drops into its befitting place there. Thence, consequently, he emerges in his befit- ting place in the world of causes, this earth or another, as the case may be, when his time for re-birth comes. Coupled with survival of the affinities, comprehensively described as Karma, the affinities both for good and evil engendered by the previous life, this process will be seen to accomplish nothing less than an explanation of the problem which has always been regarded as so incomprehensible — the inequalities of life. The conditions on which we enter life are the consequences of the use we have made of our last set of conditions. They do not impede the development of fresh Karma, whatever they may be, for this will be generated by the use we make of them in turn. Nor is it to be sup- posed that every event of a current life which bestows joy or sorrow is old Karma bearing fruit. Many may be the immediate conse- quences of acts in the life to which they belong ■ — ready-money transactions with Nature, so to speak, of which it may be hardly necessary to make any entry in her books. But the great DEVACHAN. 147 inequality of life, as regards the start in it which different human beings make, is a mani- fest consequence of old Karma, the infinite va- rieties of which always keep up a constant sup- ply of recruits for all the manifold varieties of human condition. It must not be supposed that the real Ego slips instantaneously at death from the earth- life and its entanglements into the Devachanic condition. When the division or purification of the fifth principle has been accomplished in Kama loca by the contending attractions of the fourth and sixth principles, the real Ego passes into a period of unconscious gestation. I have spoken already of the way in which the Devachanic life is itself a process of growth, maturity, and decline ; but the analogies of earth are even more closely preserved. There is a spiritual ante-natal state at the entrance to spiritual life, as there is a similar and equally unconscious physical state at the entrance to objective life. And this period, in different cases, may be of very different duration — from a few moments to immense periods of years. When a man dies, his soul or fifth principle be- comes unconscious and loses all remembrance of things internal as well as external. Whether his stay in Kama loca has to last but a few mo- ments, hours, days, weeks, months or years;
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whether he dies a natural or a violent death ; whether this occurs in youth or age, and whether the Ego has been good, bad, or indif- ferent, his consciousness leaves him as suddenly as the flame leaves the wick when it is blown out. When life has retired from the last par- ticle of the brain matter, his perceptive facul- ties become extinct forever, and his spiritual powers of cognition and volition become for the time being as extinct as the others. His Ma- yavi-rupa may be thrown into objectivity as in the case of apparitions after death, but unless it is projected by a conscious or intense desire to see or appear to some one shooting through the dying brain, the apparition will be simply automatic. The revival of consciousness in Kama loca is obviously, from what has been al- ready said, a phenomenon that depends on the characteristic of the principles passing, uncon- sciously at the moment, out of the dying body. It may become tolerably complete under cir- cumstances by no means to be desired, or it may be obliterated by a rapid passage into the gestation state leading to Devachan. This ges- tation state may be of very long duration in proportion to the Ego's spiritual stamina, and Devachan accounts for the remainder of the period between death and the next physical re- birth. The whole period is, of course, of very DEVACHAN. 149 varying length in the case of different persons, but re-birth in less than fifteen hundred years is spoken of as almost impossible, while the stay in Devachan which rewards a very rich Karma is sometimes said to extend to enormous periods. CHAPTER Vh KAMA LOCA. The statements already made in reference to the destiny of the higher human principles at death will pave the way for a comprehension of the circumstances in which the inferior remnant of these principles finds itself, after the real Ego has passed either into the Devachanic state or that unconscious intervening period of preparation therefor which corresponds to phys- ical gestation. The sphere in which such rem- nants remain for a time is known to occult science as Kama loca, the region of desire, not the region in which desire is developed to any abnormal degree of intensity as compared with desire as it attaches to earth-life, but the sphere in which that sensation of desire, which is a part of the earth-life, is capable of surviving. It will be obvious, from what has been said about Devachan, that a large part of the recol- lections which accumulate round the human Ego during life are incompatible in their nature with the pure subjective existence to which the KAMA LOCA. 151 real, durable, spiritual Ego passes ; but they are not necessarily on that account extinguished or annihilated out of existence. They inhere in certain molecules of those finer ( but not fin- est) principles, which escape from the body at death ; and just as dissolution separates what is loosely called the soul from the body, so also it provokes a further separation between the constituent elements of the soul. So much of the fifth principle, or human soul, which is in its nature assimilable with, or has gravitated upwards toward, the sixth principle, the spirit- ual soul, passes with the germ of that divine soul into the superior region, or state of Deva- chan, in which it separates itself almost com- pletely from the attractions of the earth ; quite completely, as far as its own spiritual course is concerned, though it still has certain affinities with the spiritual aspirations emanating from the earth, and may sometimes draw these to- wards itself. But the animal soul, or fourth principle (the element of will and desire as as- sociated with objective existence), has no up- ward attraction, and no more passes away from the earth than the particles of the body con- signed to the grave. It is not in the grave, how- ever, that this fourth principle can be put away. It is not spiritual in its nature or affinities, but it is not physical in its nature. In its affinities
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it is physical, and hence the result. It remains within the actual physical local attraction of the earth — in the earth's atmosphere — or, since it is not the gases of the atmosphere that are spe- cially to be considered in connection with the problem in hand, let us say, in Kama loca. And with the fourth principle a large part (as regards most of mankind unfortunately, though a part very variable in its relative mag- nitude) inevitably remains. There are plenty of attributes which the ordinary composite hu- man being exhibits, many ardent feelings, de- sires, and acts, floods of recollections, which even if not concerned with a life as ardent per- haps as those which have to do with the higher aspirations, are nevertheless essentially belong- ing to the physical life, which take time to die. They remain behind in association with the fourth principle, which is altogether of the earthly perishable nature, and disperse or fade out, or are absorbed into the respective univer- sal principles to which they belong, just as the body is absorbed into the earth, in progress of time, and rapidly or slowly in proportion to the tenacity of their substance. And where, mean- while, is the consciousness of the individual who has died or dissolved ? Assuredly in Deva- chan ; but a difficulty presents itself to the mind untrained in occult science, from the fact KAMA LOCA. 153 that a semblance of consciousness inheres in the astral portion — the fourth principle with a portion of the fifth — which remains behind in Kama loca. The individual consciousness, it is argued, cannot be in two places at once. But first of all, to a certain extent, it can. As may be perceived presently, it is a mistake to speak of consciousness, as we understand the feeling in life, attaching to the astral shell or remnant ; but nevertheless a certain spurious semblance may be reawakened in that shell, without hav- ing any connection with the real consciousness all the while growing in strength and vitality in the spiritual sphere. There is no power on the part of the shell of taking in and assimilat- ing new ideas and initiating courses of action on the basis of those new ideas. But there is in the shell a survival of volitional impulses im- parted to it during life. The fourth principle is the instrument of volition though not voli- tion itself, and impulses imparted to it during life by the higher principles may run their course and produce results almost indistinguish- able for careless observers from those which would ensue were the four higher principles really all united as in life. It, the fourth principle, is the receptacle or vehicle during life of that essentially moral con- sciousness which cannot suit itself to conditions
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of permanent existence ; but the consciousness even of the lower principles during life is a very different thing from the vaporous fleeting and uncertain consciousness, which continues to inhere in them when that which really is the life, the overshadowing of them, or vitalizatioh of them by the infusion of the spirit, has ceased as far as they are concerned. Language cannot render all the facets of a many-sided idea in- telligible at once any more than a plain draw- ing can show all sides of a solid object at once. And at the first glance different drawings of the same object from different points of view may seem so unlike as to be unrecognizable as the same ; but none the less, by the time they are put together in the mind, will their diver- sities be seen to harmonize. So with these subtle attributes of the invisible principles of man — no treatise can do more than discuss their different aspects separately. The vari- ous views suggested must mingle in the read- er's mind before the complete conception corre- sponds to the realities of Nature. In life the fourth principle is the seat of will and desire, but it is not will itself. It must be alive, in union with the overshadowing spirit, or " one life," to be thus the agent of that very elevated function of life — will, in its sublime potency. As already mentioned, the Sanskrit KAMA LOCA. 155 names of the higher principles connote the idea that they are vehicles of the one life. Not that the one life is a separable molecular principle itself, it is the union of all — the influences of the spirit ; but in truth the idea is too subtle for language, perhaps for intellect itself. Its manifestation in the present case, however, is apparent enough. Whatever the willing fourth principle may be when alive, it is no longer capable of active will when dead. But then, under certain abnormal conditions, it may partially recover life for a time ; and this fact it is which explains many, though by no means all, of the phenomena of spiritualistic mediumship. The " elementary," be it remem- bered — as the astral shell has generally been called in former occult writings — is liable to be galvanized for a time in the mediumistic current into a state of consciousness and life which may be suggested by the first condition of a person who, carried into a strange room in a state of insensibility during illness, wakes up feeble, confused in mind, gazing about with a blank feeling of bewilderment, taking in im- pressions, hearing words addressed to him and answering vaguely. Such a state of conscious- ness is unassociated with the notions of past or future. It is an automatic consciousness, de- rived from the medium. A medium, be it
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remembered, is a person whose principles are loosely united and susceptible of being bor- rowed by other beings, or floating principles, having an attraction for some of them or some part of them. Now what happens in the case of a shell drawn into the neighborhood of a person so constituted ? Suppose the person from whom the shell has been cast died with some strong unsatisfied desire, not necessarily of an unholy sort, but connected entirely with the earth-life, a desire, for example, to com- municate some fact to a still living person. Certainly the shell does not go about in Kama loca with a persistent intelligent conscious pur- pose of communicating that fact ; but, amongst others, the volitional impulse to do this has been infused into the fourth principle, and while the molecules of that principle remain in association, and that may be for many years, they only need a partial galvanization into life again to become operative in the direction of the original impulse. Such a shell comes into contact with a medium (not so dissimilar in nature from the person who has died as to render a rapport impossible), and something from the fifth principle of the medium associates itself with the wandering fourth principle and sets the original impulse to work. So much consciousness and so much intelligence as may KAMA LOCA. 157 be required to guide the fourth principle in the use of the immediate means of communication at hand — a slate and pencil, or a table to rap upon — are borrowed from the medium, and then the message given may be the message which the dead person originally ordered his fourth principle to give, so to speak, but which the shell has never till then had an opportunity of giving. It may be argued that the produc- tion of writing on a closed slate, or of raps on a table without the use of a knuckle or a stick, is itself a feat of a marvelous nature, bespeak- ing a knowledge on the part of the communi- cating intelligence of powers of Nature we in physical life know nothing about. But the shell is itself in the astral world ; in the realm of such powers. A phenomenal manifestation is its natural mode of dealing. It is no more conscious of producing a wonderful result by the use of new powers acquired in a higher sphere of existence than we are conscious of the forces by which in life the volitional im- pulse is communicable to nerves and muscles. But, it may be objected, the " communicating intelligence " at a spiritual seance will constant- ly perform remarkable feats for no other than their own sake, to exhibit the power over natural forces which it possesses. The reader will please remember, however, that occult
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science is very far from saying that all the phenomena of spiritualism are traceable to one class of agents. Hitherto in this treatise little has been said of the " elementals," those semi- intelligent creatures of the astral light who belong to a wholly different kingdom of Nature from ourselves. Nor is it possible at present to enlarge upon their attributes for the simple and obvious reason, that knowledge concerning the elementals, detailed knowledge on that sub- ject, and in regard to the way they work, is scrupulously withheld by the adepts of occult- ism. To possess such knowledge is to wield power, and the whole motive of the great se- crecy in which occult science is shrouded turns upon the danger of conferring powers upon peo- ple who have not, first of all, by undergoing the training of initiates, given moral guarantees of their trustworthiness. It is by command over the elementals that some of the greatest physical feats of adeptship are accomplished ; and it is by the spontaneous playful acts of the elementals that the greatest physical phenom- ena of the seance room are brought about. So also with almost all Indian Fakirs and Yogis of the lower class who have power of producing phenomenal results. By some means, by a scrap of inherited occult teaching, most likely, they have come into possession of a mor« KAMA LOCA. 159 sel of occult science. Not necessarily that they understand the action of the forces they employ any more than an Indian servant in a telegraph office, taught how to mix the ingredients of the liquid used in a galvanic battery, understands the theory of electric science. He can perform the one trick he has been taught ; and so with the inferior Yogi. He has got influence over certain elementals, and can work certain won- ders. Returning to a consideration of the ex-human shells in Kama loca, it may be argued that their behavior in spiritual seances is not cov- ered by the theory that they have had some message to deliver from their late master, and have availed themselves of the mediumship present to deliver it. Apart altogether from phenomena that may be put aside as elemental pranks, we sometimes encounter a continuity of intelligence on the part of the elementary or shell that bespeaks much more than the sur- vival of impulses from the former life. Quite so; but with portions of the medium's fifth principle conveyed into it the fourth principle is once more an instrument in the hands of a master. With a medium entranced so that the energies of his fifth principle are conveyed into the wandering shell to a very large extent, the result is that there is a very tolerable revival of
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consciousness in the shell for the time being, as regards the given moment. But what is the nature of such consciousness, after all ? Noth- ing more, really, than a reflected light. Mem- ory is one thing, and perceptive faculties quite another. A madman may remember very clearly some portions of his past life; yet he is unable to perceive anything in its true light, for the higher portion of his Manas (fifth) and Buddhi (sixth) principles are paralyzed in him and have left him. Could an animal — a dog, for instance — explain himself, he could prove that his memory, in direct relation to his ca- nine personality, is as fresh as his master's ; nevertheless, his memory and instinct cannot be called perceptive faculties. Once that a shell is in the aura of a medium, he will perceive, clearly enough, whatever he can perceive through the borrowed principles of the medium, and through organs in mag- netic sympath}^ therewith ; but this will not carry him be}^ond the range of the perceptive faculties of the medium, or of some one else present in the circle. Hence the often rational and sometimes highly intelligent answers he may give, and hence, also, his invariably com- plete oblivion of all things unknown to that medium or circle, or not found in the lower recollections of his late personality, galvanized KAMA LOCA. 161 afresh by the influences under which he is placed. The shell of a highly intelligent, learned, but utterly unspiritual man, who died a natural death, will last longer than those of weaker temperament, and (the shadow of his own memory helping) he may deliver, through trance-speakers, orations of no contemptible kind. But these will never be found to relate to anything beyond the subjects he thought much and earnestly of during life, nor will any word ever fall from him indicating a real ad- vance of knowledge. It will easily be seen that a shell, drawn into the mediumistic current, and getting into rap- port with the medium's fifth principle, is not by any means sure to be animated with a con- sciousness (even for what such consciousnesses are worth) identical with the personality of the dead person from whose higher principles it was shed. It is just as likely to reflect some quite different personality, caught from the suggestions of the medium's mind. In this personality it will perhaps remain and answer for a time ; then some new current of thought, thrown into the minds of the people present, will find its echo in the fleeting impressions of the elementary, and his sense of identity will begin to waver ; for a little while it flickers over two or three conjectures, and. ends by go-
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ing out altogether for a time. The shell is once more sleeping in the astral light, and may- be unconsciously wafted in a few moments to the other ends of the earth. Besides the ordinary elementary or shell of the kind just described, Kama loca is the abode of another class of astral entities, which must be taken into account if we desire to compre- hend the various conditions under which hu^ man creatures may pass from this life to others. So far we have been examining the normal course of events, when people die in a natural manner. But an abnormal death will lead to abnormal consequences. Thus, in the case of persons committing suicide, and in that of per- sons killed by sudden accident, results ensue which differ widely from those following nat- ural deaths. A thoughtful consideration of such cases must show, indeed, that in a world governed by rule and law, by affinities work- ing out their regular effects in that deliberate way which Nature favors, the case of a person dying a sudden death at a time when all his principles are firmly united, and ready to hold together for twenty, forty, or sixty years, what- ever the natural remainder of his life would be, must surely be something different from that of a person who, by natural processes of decay, finds himself, when the vital machine stops, KAMA LOCA. 165 readily separable into his various principles, each prepared to travel its separate way. Na- ture, always fertile in analogies, at once illus- trates the idea by showing us a ripe and an unripe fruit. From out of the first the inner stone will come away as cleanly and easily as a hand from a glove, while from the unripe fruit the stone can only be torn with difficulty, half the pulp clinging to its surface. Now, in the case of the sudden accidental death or of the suicide, the stone has to be torn from the un- ripe fruit. There is no question here about the moral blame which may attach to the act of suicide. Probably, in the majority of cases, such moral blame does attach to it, but that is a question of Karma which will follow the per- son concerned into the next re-birth, like any other Karma, and has nothing to do with the immediate difficulty such person may find in getting himself thoroughly and wholesomely dead. This difficulty is manifestly just the same whether a person kills himself, or is killed in the heroic discharge of duty, or dies the vic- tim of an accident over which he has no con- trol whatever. As an ordinary rule, when a person dies, the long account of Karma naturally closes itself ; that is to say, the complicated set of affinities which have been set up during life in the first
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durable principle, the fifth is no longer suscep- tible of extension. The balance-sheet, so to speak, is made out afterwards, when the time comes for the next objective birth ; or, in other words, the affinities long dormant in Devachan, by reason of the absence there of any scope for their action, assert themselves as soon as they come in contact once more with physical exis- tence. But the fifth principle, in which these affinities are grown, cannot be separated in the case of the person dying prematurely from the earthly principle — the fourth. The elemen- tary, therefore, which finds itself in Kama loca, on its violent expulsion from the body, is not a mere shell — it is the person himself who was lately alive minus nothing but the body. In the true sense of the word he is not dead at all. Certainly elementaries of this kind may com- municate very effectually at spiritual seances at their own heavy cost; for they are unfortu- nately able, by reason of the completeness of their astral constitution, to go on generating Karma, to assuage their thirst for life at the unwholesome spring of mediumship. If they were of a very material sensual type in life, the enjoyments they will seek will be of a kind the indulgence of which in their disembodied state may readily be conceived even more prejudicial KAMA LOCA. 165 to their Karma than similar indulgences would have been in life. In such cases facilis est de- scensus. Cut off in the full flush of earthly- passions which bind them to familiar scenes, they are enticed by the opportunity which me- diums afford for the gratification of these vica- riously. They become the incubi and succubi of mediaeval writing, demons of thirst and glut- tony, provoking their victims to crime. A brief essay on this subject, which I wrote last year, and from which I have reproduced some of the sentences just given, appeared in "The Theoso- phist," with a note, the authenticity of which I have reason to trust, and the tenor of which was as follows : — " The variety of states after death is greater if possible than the variety of human lives upon this earth. The victims of accident do not generally become earth walkers, only those fall- ing into the current of attraction who die full of some engrossing earthly passion, the selfish who have never given a thought to the welfare of others. Overtaken by death in the consum- mation, whether real or imaginary, of some master passion of their lives, the desire remain- ing unsatisfied even after a full realization, and they still craving for more, such personalities can never pass beyond the earth attraction to wait for the hour of deliverance in happy igno-
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ranee and full oblivion. Among the suicides, those to whom the above statement about pro- voking their victims to crime, etc., applies, are that class who commit the act in consequence of a crime to escape the penalty of human law or their own remorse. Natural law cannot be broken with impunity ; the inexorable causal relation between action and result has its full sway only in the world of effects, the Kama loca, and every case is met there by an ade- quate punishment, and in a thousand ways, that would require volumes even to describe them superficially." Those who " wait for the hour of deliverance in happy ignorance and full oblivion " are of course such victims of accident as have already on earth engendered pure and elevated affinities, and after death are as much beyond the reach of temptation in the shape of mediumistic cur- rents as they would have been inaccessible in life to common incitements to crime. Entities of another kind occasionally to be found in Kama loca have yet to be considered. We have followed the higher principles of per- sons recently dead, observing the separation of the astral dross from the spiritually durable portion, that spiritually durable portion being either holy or Satanic in its nature, and pro- vided for in Devachan or Avitchi accordingly KAMA LOCA. 167 We have examined the nature of the elemen- tary shell cast off and preserving for a time a deceptive resemblance to a true entity ; we have paid attention also to the exceptional cases of real four principled beings in Kama loca who are the victims of accident or suicide. But what happens to a personality which has abso- lutely no atom of spirituality, no trace of spir- itual affinity in its fifth principle, either of the good or bad sort ? Clearly in such a case there is nothing for the sixth principle to attract to itself. Or, in other words, such a personality has already lost its sixth principle by the time death comes. But Kama loca is no more a sphere of existence for such a personality than the subjective world; Kama loca maybe per- manently inhabited by astral beings, by ele- mentals, but can only be an antechamber to some other state for human beings. In the case imagined, the surviving personality is promptly drawn into the current of its future destinies, and these have nothing to do with this earth's atmosphere or with Devachan, but with that " eighth sphere " of which occasional mention will be found in older occult writings. It will have been unintelligible to ordinary readers hitherto why it was called the " eighth " sphere, but since the explanation, now given out for the first time, of the sevenfold constitution of our
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planetary system, the meaning will be clear enough. The spheres of the cyclic process of evolution are seven in number, but there is an eighth in connection with our earth, our earth being, it will be remembered, the turning-point in the cyclic chain, and this eighth sphere is out of circuit, a cul de sac, and the bourne from which it may be truly said no traveler returns. It will readily be guessed that the only sphere connected with our planetary chain, which is lower than our own in the scale, having spirit at the top and matter at the bottom, must it- self be no less visible to the eye and to optical instruments than the earth itself, and as the duties which this sphere has to perform in our planetary system are immediately associated with this earth, there is not much mystery left now in the riddle of the eighth sphere, nor as to the place in the sky where it may be sought. The conditions of existence there, however, are topics on which the adepts are very reserved in their communications to uninitiated pupils, and concerning these I have for the present no fur- ther information to give. One statement though is definitely made, viz., that such a total degradation of a person- ality as may suffice to draw it, after death, into the attraction of the eighth sphere, is of very rare occurrence. From the vast majority KAMA LOCA. 169 of lives there is something which the higher principles may draw to themselves, something to redeem the page of existence just passed from total destruction : and here it must be remembered that the recollections of life in Devachan, very vivid as they are, as far as they go, touch only those episodes in life which are productive of the elevated sort of happiness of which alone Devachan is qualified to take cog- nizance ; whereas the life from which for the time being the cream is thus skimmed may come to be remembered eventually in all its details quite fully. That complete remem- brance is only achieved by the individual at the threshold of a far more exalted spiritual state than that which we are now concerned with, and which is attained far later on in the progress of the vast cycles of evolution. Each one of the long series of lives that will have been passed through will then be, as it were, a page in a book to which the possessor can turn back at pleasure, even though many such pages will then seem to him, most likely, very dull reading, and will not be frequently referred to. It is this revival eventually of recollection con- cerning all the long-forgotten personalities that is really meant by the doctrine of the Resurrec- tion. But we have no time at present to stop and unravel the enigmas of symbolism as bear-
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ing upon the teachings at present under con- veyance to the reader. It may be worth while to do this as a separate undertaking at a later period ; but meanwhile, to revert to the narra- tive of how the facts stand, it may be explained that in the whole book of pages, when at last the "resurrection" has been accomplished, there will be no entirely infamous pages ; for even if any given spiritual individuality has occasionally, during its passage through this world, been linked with personalities so deplor- ably and desperately degraded that they have passed completely into the attraction of the lower vortex, that spiritual individuality in such cases will have retained in its own affini- ties no trace or taint of them. Those pages will, as it were, have been cleanly torn out from the book. And, as at the end of the struggle, after crossing the Kama loca, the spiritual indi- viduality will have passed into the unconscious gestation state from which, skipping the Deva- chan state, it will be directly (though not immediately in time) re-born into its next life of objective activity, all the self-consciousness connected with that existence will have passed into the lower world, there eventually to " per- ish everlastingly ; " an expression of which, as of so many more, modern theology has proved a faithless custodian, making pure nonsense out of psycho-scientific facts.