CHAPTER III.

Kamaloka.
Kamaloka, literally the place or habitat of desire, is, as has already been intimated, a part of the astral plane, not divided from it as a distinct locality, but separated off by the conditions of consciousness of the entities belonging to it.* These are human be- ings who have lost their physical bodies by the stroke of death, and have to undergo certain purify- ing changes before they can pass on to the happy and peaceful life which belongs to the man proper, to the human soul.f
This region represents and includes the conditions described as existing in the various hells, purga- tories, and intermediate states, one or other of which is alleged by all the great religions to be the
* The Hindus call this state Pretaloka, the habitat of Pretas. A Preta is the human being who has lost his physical body, but is still encumbered with the vesture of his animal nature. He cannot carry this on with him, and until it is disintegrated he is kept imprisoned by it.
t The soul is the human intellect, the fink between the Di- vine Spirit in man and his lower personality. It is the Ego, the individual, the "I," which develops by evolution. In the- osophical parlance it is Manas, the Thinker. The mind is the energy of this, working within the limitations of the physical brain, or the astral and mental bodies.
84 THE ancie:nt wisdom
temporary dwelling-place of man after he leaves the body and before he reaches ''heaven." It does not include any place of eternal torture, the endless hell still believed in by some narrow religionists being only a nightmare dream of ignorance, hate, and fear. But it does include conditions of suffering, tempo- rary and purificatory in their nature, the working out of causes set going in his earth-life by the man who experiences them. These are as natural and inevitable as any effects caused in this world by wrong-doing, for we live in a world of law and every seed must grow up after its own kind. Death makes no sort of difference in a man's moral and mental nature, and the change of state caused by passing from one world to another takes away his physical body, but leaves the man as he was.
The kamalokic condition is found on each sub- division of the astral plane, so that we may speak of it as having seven regions, calling them the first, second, third, up to the seventh, beginning from the lowest and coimting upwards.'^ We have already seen that materials from each subdivision of the as- tral plane enter into the composition of the astral body, and it is a peculiar re-arrangement of these materials, to be explained in a moment, which sepa- rates the people dwelling in one region from those dwelling in another, although those in the same re-
* Often these regions are reckoned the other way, taking the first as the highest and the seventh as the lowest. It does not matter from which end we count, and I am reckoning up- wards to keep them in accord with the planes and the prin- ciples.
TB.t INDRAWING OF l.l'^t 85
gion are able to intercommunicate. The regions, being each a subdivision of the astral plane, differ in density, and the density of the external form of the kamalokic entity determines the region to which he is limited; these differences of matter are the bar- riers that prevent passage from one region to an- other; people dwelling in one can no more come into touch with people dwelling in another than a deep-sea fish can hold a conversation with an eagle — the medium necessary to the life of the one would be destructive to the life of the other.
When the physical body is struck down by death, the etheric body, carrying Prana with it and accom- panied by the remaining principles — that is, the whole man, except the dense body — withdraws from the "tabernacle of flesh," as the outer body is ap- propriately called. All the outgoing life-energies draw themselves inwards, and are "gathered up by Prana," their departure being manifested by the dulness that creeps over the physical organs of the senses. They are there, uninjured, physically com- plete, ready to act as they have always been ; but the "Inner Ruler" is going, he who through them saw, heard, felt, smelt, tasted, and by themselves they are mere aggregations of matter, living indeed but without power of perceptive action. Slowly the lord of the body draws himself away, enwrapped in the violet-grey etheric body, and absorbed in the contemplation of the panorama of his past life, which in the death-hour unrolls before him, com- plete in every detail. In that life-picture are all the
86 the: ancient wisdom
events of his life, small and great; he sees his am- bitions with their success or frustration, his efforts, his triumphs, his failures, his loves, his hatreds ; the predominant tendency of the whole comes clearly out, the ruling thought of the life asserts itself, and stamps itself deeply into the soul, marking the re- gion in which the chief part of his post-mortem ex- istence will be spent. Solemn the moment when the man stands face to face with his life, and from the lips of his past hears the presage of his future. For a brief space he sees himself as he is, recognizes the purpose of life, knows that the Law is strong and just and good. Then the magnetic tie breaks between the dense and etheric bodies, the comrades of a lifetime are disjoined, and — save in exceptional cases — the man sinks into peaceful unconsciousness.
Quietness and devotion should mark the conduct of all who are gathered round a dying body, in order that a solemn silence may leave uninterrupted this review of the past by the departing man. Clsimor- ous weeping, loud lamentations, can but jar and dis- turb the concentrated attention of the soul, and to break with the grief of a personal loss into the still- ness which aids and soothes him is at once selfish and impertinent. Religion has wisely commanded prayers for the dying, for these preserve calm and stimulate unselfish aspirations directed to his help- ing, and these, like all loving thoughts, protect and shield.
Some hours after death — generally not more than thirtv-six, it is said — the man draws himself out of
ETHERIC CORPSES 87
the etheric body, leaving it in turn as a senseless corpse, and the latter, remaining near its dense counterpart, shares its fate. If the dense body be buried, the etheric double floats over the grave, slowly disintegrating, and the unpleasant feelings many experience in a churchyard are largely due to the presence of these decaying etheric corpses. If the body be burnt, the etheric double breaks up very quickly, having lost its nidus, its physical centre of attraction, and this is one among many reasons why cremation is preferable to burial as a way of dispos- ing of corpses.
The withdrawal of the man from the etheric double is accompanied by the withdrawal from it of Prana, which thereupon returns to the great reser- voir of life universal, while the man, ready now to pass into Kamaloka, undergoes a re-arrangement of his astral body, fitting it for submission to the purifi- catory changes which are necessary for the freeing of the man himself.* During earth-life the various kinds of astral matter intermingle in the formation of the body, as do the solids, liquids, gases, and ethers in the physical. The change in the arrange- ment of the astral body after death consists in the separation of these materials, according to their re- spective densities, into a series of concentric shells — the finest within, the densest without — each shell
* These changes result in the formation of what is called by Hindus the Yatana, or sujffering body, or in the case of very wicked men, in whose astral bodies there is a preponderance of the coarsest matter, the Dhruvam, or strong body.
88 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
being made of the materials drawn from one sub- division only of the astral plane; the astral body thus becomes a set of seven superimposed layers, or a seven-shelled encasement of astral matter, in which the man may not inaptly be said to be imprisoned, as only the breaking of these can set him free. Now will be seen the immense importance of the purifica- tion of the astral body during earth-life; the man is retained in each subdivision of Kamaloka so long as the shell of matter pertaining to that subdivision is not sufficiently disintegrated to allow of his escape into the next. Moreover, the extent to which his consciousness has worked in each kind of matter de- termines whether he will be awake and conscious in any given region, or will pass through it in uncon- sciousness, "wrapped in rosy dreams," and merely detained during the time necessary for the process of mechanical disintegration.
A spiritually advanced man, who has so purified his astral body that its constituents are drawn only from the finest grade of each division of astral mat- ter, merely passes through Kamaloka without delay, the astral body disintegrating with extreme swift- ness, and he goes on to whatever may be his bourne, according to the point he has reached in evolution. A less developed man, but one whose life has been pure and temperate and who has sat loosely on the things of earth, will wing a less rapid flight through Kamaloka, but will dream peacefully, unconscious of his surroundings, as his mental body disentangles itself from the astral shells, one after the other, to
SUDDIJN DEATH 89
awaken only when he reaches the heavenly places. Others, less developed still, will awaken after pass- ing out of the lower regions, becoming conscious in the division which is connected with the active working of the consciousness during the earth-life, for this will be aroused on receiving familiar im- pacts, although these be received now directly through the astral body, without the help of the physical. Those who have lived in the animal pas- sions will awake in their appropriate region, each man literally going "to his own place."
The case of men struck suddenly out of physical life by accident, suicide, murder, or sudden death in any form, differs from those of persons who pass away by the failure of the life-energies through dis- ease or old age. If they are pure and spiritually minded they are specially guarded, and sleep out happily the term of their natural life. But in other cases they remain conscious — often entangled in the final scene of earth-life for a time, and unaware that they have lost the physical body — held in whatever region they are related to by the outermost layer of the astral body; their normal kamalokic life does not begin until the natural web of earth-life is out- spun, and they are vividly conscious of both their astral and physical surroundings. One man who had committed an assassination and had been exe- cuted for his crime was said, by one of H. P. Bla- vatsky's Teachers, to be living through the scenes of the murder and the subsequent events over and over again in Kamaloka, ever repeating his diaboli-
90 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
cal act and going through the terrors of his arrest and execution. A suicide will repeat automatically the feelings of despair and fear which preceded his self-murder, and go through the act and the death- struggle time after time with ghastly persistence. A woman, who perished in the flames in a wild con- dition of terror and with frantic efforts to escape, created such a whirl of passions that, five days after- wards, she was still struggling desperately, fancying herself stiil in the fire and wildly repulsing all efforts to soothe her; while another woman who, with her baby on her breast, went down beneath the whirl of waters in a raging storm, with her heart calm and fttll of love, slept peacefully on the other side of death, dreaming of husband and children in happy lifelike visions. In more ordinary cases, death by accident is still a disadvantage, brought on a person by some serious fault,* for the possession of full consciousness in the lower kamalokic regions, which are closely related to the earth, is attended by many inconveniences and perils. The man is full of all the plans and interests that made up his life, and is conscious of the presence of the people and things connected with them; he is almost irresist- ibly impelled by his longings to try and influence the affairs to which his passions and feelings still cling, and is bound to the earth while he has lost all his accustomed organs of activity; his only hope of
* Not necessarily a fault committed in the present life. The law of cause and effect will be explained in Chapter IX., on "Karma."
CLINGING TO EARTH 91
peace lies in resolutely turning away from earth and fixing his mind on higher things, but comparatively few are strong enough to make this effort, even with the help always offered them by workers on the astral plane, whose sphere of duty lies in helping and guiding those who have left this world.* Too often such sufferers, impatient of their helpless inactivity, seek the assistance of sensitives, with whom they can communicate and so mix themselves up once more in terrestrial affairs ; they sometimes seek even to obsess convenient mediums and thus to utilize the bodies of others for their own purposes, so incurring many responsibilities in the future. Not without occult reason have English churchmen been taught to pray: "From battle, murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us."
We may now consider the divisions of Kamaloka one by one, and so gain some idea of the conditions which the man has made for himself in the interme- diate state by the desires which he has cultivated during physical life; it being kept in mind that the amount of vitality in any given "shell"— and there- fore his imprisonment in that shell — depends on the amount of energy thrown during earth-life into the kind of matter of which that shell consists. If the lowest passions have been active, the coarsest mat- ter will be strongly vitalized and its amount will also be relatively large. This principle rules through
* These workers are disciples of some of the great Teachers who guide and help humanity, and they are employed in this special duty of succoring souls in need of such assistance.
92 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
all kamalokic regions, so that a man during earth- life can judge very fairly as to the future for himself that he is preparing immediately on the other side of death.
The first, or lowest, division is the one that con- tains the conditions described in so many Hindu and Buddhist Scriptures under the name of ''hells" of various kinds. It must be understood that a man, in passing into one of these states, is not getting rid of the passions and vile desires that have led him thither; these remain, as part of his character, lying latent in the mind in a germinal state, to be thrown outwards again to form his passional nature when he is returning to birth in the physical world.* His presence in the lowest region of Kamaloka is due to the existence in his kamic body of matter belonging to that region, and he is held prisoner there until the greater part of that matter has dropped away, until the shell composed of it is sufficiently disinte- grated to allow the man to come into contact with the region next above.
The atmosphere of this place is gloomy, heavy, dreary, depressing to an inconceivable extent. It seems to reek with all the influences most inimical to good, as in truth it does, being caused by the per- son whose evil passions have led them to this dreary place. All the desires and feelings at which we shudder find here the materials for their expression ; it is, in fact, the lowest slum, with all the horrors veiled from physical sight, parading in their naked * See Chapter VII., on "Reincarnation."
SOULS AS THDY AR^ 93
hideousness. Its repulsiveness is much increased by the fact that in the astral world character ex- presses itself in form, and the man who is full of evil passions looks the whole of them; bestial appe- tites shape the astral body into bestial forms, and repulsively human animal shapes are the appropriate clothing of brutalized human souls. No man can be a hypocrite in the astral world, and cloak foul thoughts with a veil of virtuous seeming; whatever a man is that he appears to be in outward form and semblance, radiant in beauty if his mind be noble, repulsive in hideousness if his nature be foul. It will readily be understood, then, how such Teachers as the Buddha — to whose unerring vision all worlds lay open — should describe what was seen in these hells in vivid language of terrible imagery, that seems incredible to modern readers only because people forget that, once escaped from the heavy and un- plastic matter of the physical world, all souls appear in their proper likenesses and look just what they are. Even in this world a degraded and besotted ruffian moulds his face into most repellent aspect; what then can be expected when the plastic astral matter takes shape with every impulse of his crimi- nal desires, but that such a man should wear a horrifying form, taking on changing elements of hideousness ?
For it must be remembered that the population — if that word may be allowed — of this lowest region consists of the very scum of humanity, murderers, ruffians, violent criminals of all types, drunkards.
94 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
profligates, the vilest of mankind. None is here, with consciousness awake to its surroundings, save those guilty of brutal crimes, or of deliberate per- sistent cruelty, or possessed by some vile appetite. The only persons who may be of a better general type, and yet for a while be held here, are suicides, men who have sought by self-murder to escape from the earthly penalties of crimes they had com- mitted, and who have but worsened their position by the exchange. Not all suicides, be it under- stood, for self-murder is committed from many motives, but only such as are led up to by crime and are then committed in order to avoid the con- sequences.
Save for the gloomy surroundings and the loath- someness of a man's associates, every man here is the immediate creator of his own miseries. Un- changed, except for the loss of the bodily veil, men here show out their passions in all their native hide- ousness, their naked brutality ; full of fierce unsa- tiated appetites, seething with revenge, hatred, long- ings after physical indulgences which the loss of physical organs incapacitates them from enjoying, they roam, raging and ravening, through this gloomy region, crowding round all foul resorts on earth, round brothels and gin-palaces, stimulating their occupants to deeds of shame and violence, seeking opportunities to obsess them, and so to drive them into worse excesses. The sickening atmosphere felt round such places comes largely from these earth- bound astral entities, reeking with foul passions and
THE VARIOUS HELLS 95
unclean desires. Mediums — unless of very pure and noble character — are special objects of attack, and too often the weaker ones, weakened still further by the passive yielding of their bodies for the tempo- rary habitation of other excarnate souls, are ob- sessed by these creatures, and are driven into intem- perance or madness. Executed murderers, furious with terror and passionate revengeful hatred, acting over again, as we have said, their crime and re- creating mentally its terrible results, surround them- selves with an atmosphere of savage thought-forms, and, attracted to any one harboring revengeful and violent designs, they egg him on into the actual commission of the deed over which he broods. Sometimes a man may be seen constantly followed by his murdered victim, never able to escape from his haunting presence, which hunts him with a dull persistency, try he never so eagerly to escape. The murdered person, vmless himself of a very base type, is wrapped in unconsciousness, and this very uncon- sciousness seems to add a new horror to its mechan- ical pursuit.
Here also is the hell of the vivisector, for cruelty draws into the astral body the coarsest materials and the most repulsive combinations of the astral mat- ter, and he lives amid the crowding forms of his mutilated victims — moaning, quivering, howling (they are vivified, not by the animal souls but by ele- mental life) pulsing with hatred to the tormentor — rehearsing his worst experiments with automatic regularity, conscious of all the horror, and yet im-
96 the; ancient wisdom
periously impelled to the self-torment by the habit set up during earth-life.
It is well once again to remember, ere quitting this dreary region, that we have here no arbitrary punishments inflicted from outside, but only the in- evitable working out of the causes set going by each person. During physical life they yielded to the vilest impulses and drew into, built into, their astral bodies the materials which alone could vibrate in answer to those impulses ; this self-built body be- comes the prison-house of the soul, and must fall into ruins ere the soul can escape from it. As in- evitably as a drunkard must live in his repulsive soddened physical body here, so must he live in his equally repulsive astral body there. The harvest sown is reaped after its kind. Such is the law in all the worlds, and it may not be escaped. Nor in- deed is the astral body there more revolting and horrible than it was when the man was living upon earth and made the atmosphere around him fetid with his astral emanations. But people on earth do not generally recognize its ugliness, being astrally blind.
Further, we may cheer ourselves in contemplating these unhappy brothers of ours by remembering that their sufferings are but temporary, and are giv- ing a much-needed lesson in the life of the soul. By the tremendous pressure of Nature's disregarded laws they are learning the existence of those laws, and the misery that accrues from ignoring them in life and conduct. The lesson they would not learn
TH^ world's astral DOUBLE 97
during earth-life, whirled away on the torrent of lusts and desires, is pressed on them here, and will be pressed on them in their succeeding lives, until the evils are eradicated and the man has risen into a better life. Nature's lessons are sharp, but in the long run they are merciful, for they lead to the evo- lution of the soul and guide it to the winning of its immortality.
Let us pass to a more cheerful region. The sec- ond division of the astral world may be said to be the astral double of the physical, for the astral bod- ies of all things and of many people are largely com- posed of the matter belonging to this division of the astral plane, and it is therefore more closely in touch with the physical world than any other part of the astral. The great majority of people make some stay here, and a very large proportion of these are consciously awake in it. These latter are folk whose interests were bound up in the trivial and petty ob- jects of life, who set their hearts on trifles, as well as those who allowed their lower natures to rule them, and who died with the appetites still active and desirous of physical enjoyment. Having largely sent their life outwards in these directions, thus building their astral bodies largely of the materials that responded very readily to material impacts, they are held by these bodies in the neighborhood of their physical attractions. They are mostly dis- satisfied, uneasy, restless, with more or less of suf- fering according to the vigor of the wishes they cannot gratify ; some even undergo positive pain
7
98 the: ancient wisdom
from this cause, and are long delayed ere these earthly longings are exhausted. Many unnecessa- rily lengthen their stay by seeking to communicate with the earth, in whose interests they are entan- gled, by means of mediums, who allow them to use their physical bodies for this purpose, thus supply- ing the loss of their own. From them comes most of the mere twaddle with which every one is familiar who has had experience of public spiritualistic seances, the gossip and trite morality of the petty lodging-house and small shop — feminine, for the most part. As these earth-bound souls are gener- ally of small intelligence, their communications are of no more interest (to those alread}^ convinced of the existence of the soul after death) than was their conversation when they were in the body, and — just as on earth — they are positive in proportion to their ignorance, representing the whole astral world as identical with their own very limited area. There, as here:
They think the rustic cackle of their burgh The murmur of the world.
It is from this region that people who have died with some anxiety on their minds will sometimes seek to communicate with their friends in order to arrange the earthly matter that troubles them; if they cannot succeed in showing themselves, or in impressing their wishes by a dream on some friend, they will often cause much annoyance by knockings and other noises, directly intended to draw atten-
VIOLEJNT GRIE:^ 99
tion or caused unconsciously by their restless efforts. It is a charity in- such cases for some competent per- son to communicate with the distressed entity and learn his wishes, as he may thus be freed from the anxiety which prevents him from passing onwards. Souls, while in this region, may also very easily have their attention drawn to the earth, even al- though they would not spontaneously have turned back to it, and this disservice is too often done to them by the passionate grief and craving for their beloved presence by friends left behind on earth. The thought-forms set up by these longings throng round them, beat against them, and oftentimes arouse them if they are peacefully sleeping, or vio- lently draw their thoughts to earth if they are al- ready conscious. It is especially in the former case that this unwitting selfishness on the part of friends on earth does mischief to their dear ones that they would themselves be the first to regret; and it may be that the knowledge of the unnecessary suffering thus caused to those who have passed through death may, with some, strengthen the binding force of the religious precepts which enjoin submission to the divine law and the checking of excessive and rebel- lious grief.
The third and fourth regions of the kamalokic world differ but little from the second, and might almost be described as etherealized copies of it, the fourth being more refined than the third, but the general characteristics of the three subdivisions being very similar. Souls of somewhat more progressed
100 thK ancient wisdom
types are found there, and although they are held there by the encasement built by the activity of their earthly interests, their attention is for the most part directed onwards rather than back- wards, and. if they are not forcibly recalled to the concerns of earth-life, they will pass on without very much delay. Still, they are susceptible to earthly stimuli, and the weakening interest in terrestrial affairs may be reawakened by cries from below. Large numbers of educated and thoughtful people, who were chiefly occupied with worldly affairs dur- ing their physical lives, are conscious in these re- gions, and may be induced to communicate through mediums, and, more rarely, seek such communica- tion themselves. Their statements are naturallv of a higher type thon those spoken of as coming from the second division, but are not marked by any characteristics that render them more valuable than similar statements made by persons still in the body. Spiritual illumination does not come from Kama- loka.
The fifth subdivision of Kamaloka offers many new characteristics. It presents a distinctly lumi nous and radiant appearance, eminently attractive to those accustomed only to the dull hues of earth, and justifying the epithet astral, starry, given to the whole plane. Here are situated all the materialized heavens which play so large a part in popular relig- ions all the world over. The happy hunting-grounds of the Red Indian, the Valhalla of the Norsemen, the houri-filled paradise of the Muslim, the golden
MATERIALISTIC HEAVENS 101
jewelled-gated New Jerusalem of the Christian, the lyceum-filled heaven of the materialistic reformer, all have here their places. Men and women who clung desperately to every "letter that killeth" have here the literal satisfaction of their cravings, uncon- sciously creating in astral matter by their powers of imagination, fed on the mere husks of the world's Scriptures, the cloud-built palaces whereof they dreamed. The crudest religious beliefs find here their temporary cloudland realization, and literallsts of every faith, who were filled with selfish longings for their own salvation in the most materialistic of heavens, here find an appropriate, and to them en- joyable, home, surrounded by the very conditions In which they believed. The religious and philanthropic busybodies, who cared more to carry out their own fads and impose their own ways on their neigh- bors than to work unselfishly for the increase of human virtue and happiness, are here much to the fore, carrying on reformatories, refuges, schools, to their own great satisfaction, and much delighted are they still to push an astral finger into an earthly pie with the help of a subservient medium whom they patronize with lofty condescension. They build as- tral churches and schools and houses, reproducing the materialistic heavens they coveted ; and though to keener vision their erections are imperfect, even pathetically grotesque, they find them all-sufficing. People of the same religions flock together and co- operate with each other in various ways, so that communities are formed, differing as widely from
102 thd ancient wisdom
each other as do similar communities on earth. When they are attracted to the earth they seek, for the most part, people of their own faith and coun- try, chiefly by natural affinity, doubtless, but also because barriers of language still exist in Kamaloka, as may be noticed occasionally in messages received in spiritualistic circles. Souls from this region often take the most vivid interest in attempts to establish communication between this and the next world, and the "spirit-guides" of average mediums come, for the most part, from this and from the region next above. They are generally aware that there are many possibilities of higher life before them, and that they will, sooner or later, pass away into worlds whence communication with this earth will not be possible.
The sixth kamalokic region resembles the fifth, but is far more refined, and is largely inhabited by souls of a more advanced type, wearing out the as- tral vesture in which much of their mental energies had worked while they were in the physical body. Their delay here is due to the large part played by selfishness in their artistic and intellectual life, and to the prostitution of their talents to the gratifica- tion of the desire-nature in a refined and delicate way. Their surroundings are of the best that are found in Kamaloka, as their creative thoughts fash- ion the luminous materials of their temporary home into fair landscapes and rippling oceans, snow-clad mountains and fertile plains, scenes that are of fairy- like beauty compared with even the most exquisite
STUDENTS IN KAMALOKA 103
that earth can show. Religionists also are found here, of a slightly more progressed kind than those in the division immediately below, and with more definite views of their own limitations. They look forward more clearly to passing out of their present sphere, and reaching a higher state.
The seventh, the highest, subdivision of Kama- loka, is occupied almost entirely by intellectual men and women who were either pronouncedly material- istic while on earth, or who are so wedded to the ways in which knowledge is gained by the lower mind in the physical body that they continue its pursuit in the old ways, though with enlarged facul- ties. One recalls Charles Lamb's dislike of the idea that in heaven knowledge would have to be gained "by some awkward process of intuition" instead of through his beloved books. Many a student lives for long years, sometimes for centuries — according to H. P. Blavatsky — Hterally in an astral library, conning eagerly all books that deal with his favor- ite subject, and perfectly contented with his lot Men who have been keenly set on some line of in- tellectual investigation, and have thrown off the physical body with their thirst for knowledge un- slaked, pursue their object still with unwearied per- sistence, fettered by their clinging to the physical modes of study. Often such men are still sceptical as to the higher possibilities that lie before them, and shrink from the prospect of what is practically a second death — the sinking into unconsciousness ere the soul is born into the higher life of heaven. Poli-
104 THE ancie;nt wisdom
ticlans, statesmen, men of science, dwell for a while in this region, slowly disentangling themselves from the astral body, still held to the lower life by their keen and vivid interest in the movements in which they have played so large a part, and in the effort to work out astrally some of the schemes from which Death snatched them ere yet they had reached fruition.
To all, however, sooner or later — save to that small minority who during earth-life never felt one touch of unselfish love, of intellectual aspiration, of recognition of something or some one higher than themselves — there comes a time when the bonds of the astral body are finally shaken off, while the soul sinks into brief unconsciousness of its surroundings, like the unconsciousness that follows the dropping off of the physical body, to be awakened by a sense of bliss, intense, immense, fathomless, undreamed of, the bliss of the heaven-world, of the world to which by its own nature it belongs. Low and vile may have been many of its passions, trivial and sordid many of its longings, but it had gleams of a higher nature, broken lights now and then from a purer region, and these must ripen as seeds to the time of their harvest, and however poor and few must yield their fair return. The man passes on to reap this harvest, and to eat and assimilate its fruit.*
The astral corpse, as it is sometimes called, or the "shell" of the departed entity, consists of the frag- * See Chapter V., on "Devachan."
ASTRAL CORPSi:S 105
merits of the seven concentric shells before de- scribed, held together by the remaining magnetism of the soul. Each shell in turn has disintegrated, until the point is reached when mere scattered frag- ments of it remain; these cling by magnetic attrac- tion to the remaining shells, and when one after another has been reduced to this condition, until the seventh or innermost is reached and itself disinte- grates, the man himself escapes, leaving behind him these remains. The shell drifts vaguely about in the kamalokic world, automatically and feebly re- peating its accustomed vibrations, and as the re- maining magnetism gradually disperses, it falls into a more and more decayed condition, and finally dis- integrates completely, restoring its materials to the general mass of astral matter, exactly as does the physical body to the physical world. This shell drifts wherever the astral currents may carry it, and may be vitalized, if not too far gone, by the mag- netism of embodied souls on earth, and so restored to some amount of activity. It will suck up mag- netism as a sponge sucks up water, and will then take on an illusory appearance of vitality, repeating more vigorously any vibrations to which it was ac- customed ; these are often set up by the stimulus of thoughts common to the departed soul and friends and relations on earth, and such a vitalized shell may play quite respectably the part of a communi- cating intelligence ; it is, however, distinguishable — apart from the use of astral vision — by its auto- matic repetitions of familiar thoughts, and by the
106 THK ANCIE^NT WISDOM
total absence of all originality and of any traces of knowledge not possessed during physical life.
Just as souls may be delayed in their progress by foolish and inconsiderate friends, so may they be aided in it by wise and well-directed efforts. Hence all religions, which retain any traces of the occult wisdom of their Founders, enjoin the use of "pray- ers for the dead." These prayers with their accom- panying ceremonies are more or less useful accord- ing to the knowledge, the love, and the will-power by which they are ensouled. They rest on that uni- versal truth of vibration by which the universe is built, modified, and maintained. Vibrations are set up by the uttered sounds, arranging astral matter into definite forms, ensouled by the thought en- shrined in the words. These are directed towards the kamalokic entity, and, striking against the astral body, hasten its disintegration. With the decay of occult knowledge these ceremonies have become less and less potent, until their usefulness has almost reached a vanishing-point. Nevertheless they are still sometimes performed by a man of knowledge, and then exert their rightful influence. Moreover, every one can help his beloved departed by sending to them thoughts of love and peace and longing for their swift progress through the kamalokic world and their liberation from astral fetters. No one should leave his "dead'' to go on a lonely way, unattended by loving hosts of these guardian angel thought-forms, helping them forward to joy.