CHAPTER VII

THE ASTRAL PLANE
IN connection with the early work done by those who have been privileged to put into a literary form avail- able for Western readers the occult teaching derived in the first instance from Eastern channels of information, no department of the subject was so imperfectly under- stood as that which I now wish to treat from a later standpoint of knowledge — the conditions and constitution of the Astral World. Among the many mistakes habitu- ally made by those who take up the study of Theosophy, one we frequently encounter is the notion that all the subjects we are now dealing with have always been fully understood by the early students of Eastern philosophy and metaphysics. I have not the slightest desire to dis- parage the varieties of culture referred to; but, from the point of view of the information I have, within later years, been able to obtain, I see now that the prevailing Eastern comprehension of the Astral World is misleading in a high degree for the European student. That phrase may seem bewildering at first, because great truths of Nature must be independent of Eastern or Western thinking. And yet the Astral World is so wondrously variegated a region, of such colossal magnitude and diversity, that putting the matter in the first instance rather crudely, the Astral World of European communities is a very different region from the Astral World regarded from the Eastern point of view. It is not a mere uniform appendage over the physical world or plane, it is not merely a " next world," as it may sometimes be correctly called, it is a congeries of next worlds, just as the physical earth is a congeries of continents and nations; so wonderfully
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complex in its structure and in connection with the natural laws and forces operative there, that the more we come to know about it, the more difficult becomes the task of expressing that knowledge in continuous writing or speech. No generalisation we can employ is exempt from the need of continual qualification. In the earlier editions of this book, I seemed to have a comparatively simple task in describing the Astral Plane. In the present edition, dealing with the whole subject entirely afresh, I feel at the outset rather dazzled by the complexity of the story that has to be told. That is indeed the case with all study of Nature on whatever level of creative mani- festation we may be dealing with. At the first glance the phenomena seem simple, to the closer investigation their complexity is infinite.
To begin with, of course, the term Astral Plane, so widely in use at present that it cannot be discarded, is a misnomer, because the Astral World or worlds is, or are, vast concentric spheres of matter — finer, of course, than the matter cognisable by the physical senses, and, there- fore, by them quite unperceived — surrounding the physical globe completely and extending in space to dimensions within which the physical earth is the mere small kernel of a gigantic husk. But no physical illustration can do otherwise than offend delicate intellectual per- ceptions. And yet, though the astral spheres surrounding the earth may be thought of, to begin with, as definitely stratified in their character, so that the conditions of each are entirely varied from those which prevail above or below, nevertheless in a certain sense they all interpene- trate one another, and as any of us sit in any room on the physical earth, we are surrounded with matter derived from all the planes or spheres of the Astral Worlds.
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Further than this, that astral matter interpenetrates the solid crust of the earth, and regions of the Astral World in this way definitely available as habitations for consciousness working in suitable vehicles, are actually sunk below our feet within the body of the planet.
Now, in spite of the interpenetration that I speak of, one can best approach a comprehension of the complicated truth by thinking of the various planes or spheres — it will generally be more convenient to use the word " planes " in spite of its geometrical inaccuracy — as definitely super- posed one above the other. There are the usual seven great sub-divisions of the Astral Plane, and counting from below upwards, the first two are actually submerged within the crust of the earth and to a considerable depth. Those regions of consciousness are very terrible to con- template; but we have to get over one great difficulty before describing their conditions more fully. It is exces- sively difficult for ordinary thinking to picture a habitable world in a region of space actually occupied by solid rock. But here, without going to the extreme length of meta- physicians who have endeavoured to deny the actuality of matter, let us endeavour to realise the profound truth that- the actuality or apparent solidity of matter is entirely a question of the senses devoted to its observation. Our senses in the ordinary physical life are adapted to certain attributes of matter which respond to them. If we could imagine ourselves invested with a wholly different set of senses, the matter which responds to the senses we know of, would simply be non-existent for us. However un- acceptable this may seem as an abstract statement, it has been for many of us a matter of simple experimental proof. There are people who can emerge from the physical body in the astral vehicle of consciousness, and finding them-
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selves by so doing invested with an entirely new and different set of senses, such people will cease to cognise the objects of the physical plane, unless, indeed — though this qualification can only relate to peculiar cases — they are able to retain some trace of the physical senses plus those of the Astral World. Never mind that point for the moment. To illustrate what I mean, let me take the definite case of a friend who was enabled, like many others — but I am thinking of one case in particular — with help, to try the experiment referred to. He was enabled to emerge from the body in the Astral but guarded from at once wandering off into distant spaces. With the Astral body still in the room in which his physical body sat at the table writing, he became at once cognisant of astral pheno- mena of all kinds around him, while the wails of the room in which he stood had faded into a diaphanous mist, scarcely perceptible at all, constituting no impediment to his passage through them had he moved in any direction. So it is with the submerged sub-planes of the Astral Plane. They are, as regards space, within the solid body of the earth, but that solid body for those who live and move in astral vehicles of consciousness, is, I will not say absolutely diaphanous, but is a condition which does not do more than somewhat impede and embarrass movement without prohibiting it altogether. I prefer to leave for later con- sideration the actual conditions of life in these two sub- merged sub-divisions of the Astral World, because however terrible their aspect may be, no great proportion, no more than a small minority of the most hideously debased examples of the human race, can have any personal ex- perience of them.
If we come to the first sub-division super-posed above the earth — the third in the septenary classification — we
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find ourselves in presence of a region still of a highly undesirable order. If the lower regions may be thought of as the actual hells of Nature (however different from the grotesque caricature of that idea presented by theology) we may think of the third sub-plane as the purgatorial region in which the lesser offences of humanity are appro- priately dealt with in preparation for passage to a loftier and more enjoyable region. And perhaps I may surprise some of my readers by saying I mean by lesser offences every kind of commonplace crime, every variety of vice or debauchery, almost every sinful proclivity that can be thought of. The horrible offences which carry people to the lower regions are of deeper dye still. We will con- sider them later. The purgatorial third level, although for some of our brothers and sisters who have frightfully misused the opportunities of physical life it is a condition of temporary suffering not to be treated lightly, must not be thought of as a penitentiary. Most of the grievous consequences of serious misdoing relate to the physical life, and can only be worked out on the physical plane. That is to say, the person who has engendered bad karma through selfish indulgence and disregard of other people's welfare — who has committed any of the commonplace crimes against person or property — such an entity must encounter the consequences of his misdoing in the next life on the physical plane. In that way the law of Karma suspends its operation at his death, and under some imagin- able conditions a person might be very faulty indeed, full of bad Karma which he would have to work out in another life, and yet, at death, free from any of the characteristics that would impede his happiness in the intervening period during his astral life. Such a person might slip through the third plane without being much aware of it, if at all,
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and find himself in a happy condition in the exercise of what, by the hypothesis, will be the loftier characteristics of his nature — honest love for some others, honest care for his own children or belongings, good human impulses along certain directions, compatible though these may have been with serious defects along others. But take the case of a person with a very little bad Karma of the kind above referred to as destined to embitter future lives on earth, but none the less with such persistent devotion to the mere pleasures of the physical plane that his mind is unable to contemplate anything like pleasure or happiness in the absence of those pleasures. Now there is no hard- ship for such a person in having to go through experiences which gradually show him that after all those pleasures are not the final thing worth having. We assume that such a man has some loftier streaks in his character, that if it had not been for his infatuated devotion to lower pleasures those higher streaks would have operated more freely in his consciousness. The third sub-plane for him is simply the region in which he wears out, by satiety, the impulse to which in the physical life he had given free play. Some exaggerated nonsense is talked sometimes about the after effects of the vice commonly called drunkenness. Of course, it is a habit of the entity in the body which he really must be induced to forget by some experience of a more or less disagreeable character on the third sub-plane; and inhering as such tendencies do to a very great extent in the physical body, although partially manifest also in the astral, they will unhappily cling to some extent in all probability in his next physical life, in which, again, they have to be worn out by some more or less disagreeable experiences. But there is so little of what may be called spirituality in the vice of drunkenness that
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it is pretty easily dealt with on the third sub-plane, and I have heard of cases in which in its less extreme develop- ment, it has been dealt with almost at once by what may almost be thought of as a mesmeric suggestion. In the astral consciousness, the entity is enabled to see that there are really no roots in his nature that demand this gratifi- cation, and the thirst for it disappears. More protracted embarrassments ensue from the excessive development of the sex impulse. Again, in itself, that is so little to be condemned that where its gratification in no way interferes with the happiness or welfare of any others, it is not to be thought of as a vice in any degree whatever. Indeed, it may be so intimately blended with spiritual love as to be merely on the physical plane the expression of states of consciousness which will find their more congenial expres- sion on lofty levels of the astral world in ways wholly unlike that to which the physical incarnate being has been used. But sometimes, where the passion is carried to excess, with perhaps a grievous disregard of incidental suffering to which it may give rise on the part of others, then it becomes a too inveterate propensity to be dis- regarded by those who rule the purifying methods of treat- ment available on the third sub-level. People not other- wise embarrassed by any serious defects of character have, I know, been entangled for years of our time on the lower astral level before getting rid of this devouring propensity for which, of course, loftier conditions of life on the astral world would afford no further scope. And there are no limits to the variety of purifying experiences which people of differently defective character will have to go through before getting clear of the third sub-level. It would be an endless task to try to draw up a complete catalogue of the varied experiences which those of us favourably situated
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for getting such information may gradually hear of con- cerning existence on the third sub-level. But let me hasten to relieve what, no doubt, any protracted devotion of thought to this subject will give rise to as an appre- hension on the part of many people taking too modest a view of their own nature, let me assure the multitudes of relatively quite innocent people, grossly misled once a week in churches to think of themselves as " miserable sinners," that in all probability they will pass on, when in time set free from the physical life, through that lower sub-division of the Astral World all around us, as easily, to use an old familiar illustration, as an arrow passes through a cloud, as utterly unconscious of its embarrass- ments as the arrow would be of the impeding mist.
Passing clear in thought, now, from what I have called the purgatorial sub-division of the super-terrestrial astral plane, we have to consider the varied aspects of its higher and happier sub-divisions. Although for a variety of reasons affecting individual conditions, the intensity of happiness prevalent in the higher regions is superior to those of the less exalted, happiness, in one degree or another, is a normal condition of life in that exhilarating next world. The higher sub-planes vary, however, very greatly in the opportunities they afford to people at dif- ferent levels of development. And before describing the predominant attributes of the fifth, sixth, and seventh sub- planes, we have to recognise that the highly variegated region to be broadly defined as the fourth sub-plane pro- vides for a very great expansion of consciousness beyond that of those who in the beginning find their aspirations adequately dealt with on its very threshold. This con- sideration meets a bewildered complaint by those who hear of some first awakening to the happy conditions above,
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because these seem at the first glance to be altogether too materialistic, too deeply tinged with the habits of physical life to be acceptable in any way as a realisation of exalted anticipations concerning the life beyond the grave. The confusion of thought involved is due to the vague unen- lightened suggestion provided by commonplace ecclesias- tical teaching in reference to Heaven. Occult revelation, indeed, shows us conditions obtainable by discarnate human intelligence which realise the most glowing and poetical conceptions of a heavenly state. But accurate knowledge equally shows us intermediate conditions of 'super-physical happiness appropriate to the needs of those of us who pass on, still saturated, however innocently, with the habits of the earthly life. The real Heaven World, as it is some- times called, super-posed in one sense above the astral, is a region of spiritual beatitude concerning which much will have to be said later. But the vast average multitude of mankind are no more ready when they quit this life for that sublime condition of existence than a savage imported from Africa to a European capital would be at once capable of appreciating the refinements of its pleasures or the vast range of its intellectual resources. Thus the common- place human entity — if free of any defects which con- strain him to linger in the third sub-plane, or having passed through a purification there — may wake up on the thres- hold of the fourth under conditions where the creative power of the thoughts of all around him will have provided a world, the scenery and decoration of which are curiously the counterpart of much that he has been familiar with in the earth life. He and those with whom he is brought by some natural sympathy into intimate relationship will be found living in houses, going through some routine of life not entirely unlike that of physical existence, and
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yet already exempt from the strain and liability to suffer- ing that enter so largely into the familiar earth life. Some communications coming to still incarnate people from friends who have passed on and are really on the humbler levels of the fourth sub-plane, have even shocked many who hear of them because they relate to such earthly habits as eating and drinking and smoking cigars. It is difficult for us in imagination to realise that while the astral friends who talk of such habits quite honestly believe they are indulging them, they are nevertheless to a certain extent misled by their own imagination. Thus at the very outset of our attempt to understand the conditions of life in the Astral World, we come into touch with mysteries it is very difficult to comprehend. We have somehow to reconcile the idea that, for example, an astral, or to be more accurate, an etheric cigar may be at once real and unreal, giving, that is to say, to one consciousness a sense of reality, to a loftier observation, the consciousness that it is a mere figment of imagination. But the leading idea to keep touch with is, that all through the Astral World, the matter of which it is built is plastic to thought, can, therefore, assume almost any shape which the thinker desires.
The apparent reality or solidity of buildings and scenery on the lower fourth may generally be due to the persistent contribution of many streams, so to speak, of creative thought confirming the original design. But even though we are talking merely of the threshold of the next world, its conditions, like all those appertaining to Nature on any level, present almost insoluble mysteries to us when we endeavour to get to the bed-rock of scientific reality.
Anyhow, observation by those capable of bringing adequate intellectual development to the task of
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investigating the higher regions still belonging to what we call the fourth sub-plane, shows us these varying in char- acter to an almost limitless degree. We very soon get clear of all those embarrassing conditions above referred to which offend certain sensibilities in the way described. And it will hardly be worth while to attempt a methodical pro- gress through the vast region of life we must all be so eager to explore. But here let me deal for a moment with magnitudes as well as with conditions.
Certainly those who are especially impressed with the way in which higher planes of nature interpenetrate one another are apt to forget that they do none the less have relation with space and magnitude. Keeping touch simply with one idea accepted universally by all who deal with astral phenomena, the Astral World is composed of matter, although of matter in a much more highly refined state than that with which we deal on the physical plane, and matter, however refined, must occupy space. The matter of the Astral World increasing in refinement on the higher levels, constitutes an envelope enclosing the earth, the thickness of which in the aggregate can hardly be less than a hundred thousand miles. And though the matter of the higher levels undoubtedly interpenetrates the lower, from another point of view, the solar spectrum suggests the way in which, though no definite boundaries between one colour and another can be discerned, there are never- theless regions in that spectrum which are yellow and other regions which are blue. So with the Astral World. To an adequately developed entity, even still of the human kingdom, all regions are equally accessible, all sub-plane boundaries equally negligible, and yet equally susceptible of observation.
Another very broad thought to be borne in mind in all
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studies of the Astral World has to do with the way in which, although again boundaries are not hard and fast, those regions of the Astral World that are in space super- posed above definite regions of the earth, are those to which the inhabitants of those definite regions would naturally gravitate after passing on. Thus we have a European, an American, an Asiatic astral dominion, an astral geography, so to speak, which takes count of the broad national distribution of life on the earth's surface. People whose habits of thought render them easily shocked if any statement is made concerning the after-life which fails to harmonise with their religious emotion, must none the less, if they desire to comprehend the actual state of the facts, be prepared to find some of the conditions of physical nature reproduced above.
Thus, for example, within the vast expanses of the fourth sub-plane, we find ample scope for the satisfaction of the religious emotion of those amongst whom it exists as a predominant idea. There are great regions in the super- physical world where the representatives of the varied religions amongst us are drawn together by mutual sym- pathy. There is a vast Roman Catholic area where creative thought devoted to the task and continuously re-in forced by fresh outbursts of this energy, has evolved cathedrals of surpassing magnitude and beauty, where ceremonies are constantly in progress, appealing even more effectually than any on earth to the religious emotions of those who attend them. But we need not think of that state of things as interfering with the full fruition of human life, which may be quite independent of religious thinking. The ties of real affection bring those who care for one another together in the astral life with the same or even a greater degree of certainty than
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the laws of chemistry control the combinations of the elements amongst us here. That, indeed, is one of the exquisite characteristics of the astral life, whether fore- shadowed or not by the experiences of the earth life. Mutual sympathy is the force that brings people into social relation on the astral world. Over and over again, in touch with friends who have passed on, I have been told that they find themselves living in households or communities with people they like exceedingly, even though they may not have known them on the physical plane. Indeed, on the happy levels of the astral, there seems to be no room for uncongenial companionship.
The reader will see that I am attempting a task of extraordinary magnitude in endeavouring to describe the varieties of life in the Astral World, now that oppor- tunities of research in that direction have so enormouslv outgrown those with which theosophical students were concerned in the beginning. But although an unmanage- able volume of detail is accumulating to my hands, I must be content, in dealing with the higher sub-planes, to emphasise some broad considerations of supreme import- ance. The foremost idea to be emphasised is that, whereas at earlier stages of theosophical research some of us were led to believe that opportunities for lofty intellectual and spiritual consciousness had to be sought in spiritual regions entirely transcending the Astral World, we now find that the higher levels of the Astral World afford almost limit- less opportunities for the expansion of the higher faculties which inhere in human life. I am very far from wanting to deny or belittle the importance of that stupendously magnificent aspect of Nature which some theosophical writers call the Heaven World, but which I shall prefer to designate by a more scientifically appropriate term, the
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Manasic Plane. But before attempting, however faintly, to foreshadow the conditions of life there, let me attempt to dissipate the notion that the Astral World is itself subject to any ignoble limitations. On the higher levels of the Astral World there is still scope for the growth, ex- pansion, and improvement of every intellectual or artistic faculty which we can think of as taking its rise on the physical plane. Thus to begin with, as a matter of fact, I find that all the great scientific men of the past, not yet specifically re-incarnated on earth, are still to be found on the high levels of the Astral World, distinctly declining a certain course of development which would carry them into the Manasic condition because they find the oppor- tunities of the higher Astral World best suited to the further development of the researches, whatever these may have been, with which they were concerned in the earth .life. This statement seems at variance with what we know of the Manasic Plane as pre-eminently distinguished by the characteristic we described as intellect, when endeavouring to analyse the human being. And yet the paradox can be interpreted. The opportunities of the Astral World afford, for example, a great scientist a better opportunity than could even be found on the manasic level for cultivating in his own consciousness those attributes which will render him more and more capable of carrying on scientific research when he ultimately returns to the physical plane of life. Does he sacrifice anything by not passing on, as he might, to the so-called heaven world ? So far as mere happiness is concerned, though there may be differences even in that condition, the happiness insepar- ably associated with life on the higher levels of the Astral is so complete that one can hardly think of any sacrifice as involved in foregoing something that may be even more
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complete still. But anyhow, if there is a theoretical sacri- fice involved, that is one which the great scientists of the past, as far as fairly extensive information on the subject enables me to speak, are deliberately making in pursuance of what they hold to be their loftiest duty — the prepara- tion of themselves for more and more useful work when they return to the earth life.
Nor must we imagine that such people are shut off from the perception of manasic experience. So far as their selected path of progress is compatible with the idea, they may be thought of as having perfectly free access to manasic conditions where those are in some way needed to fulfil the developments of capacity at which they are aiming. And with appropriate modifications all that I have said of the great scientists applies equally to the great artists, poets, and men of letters, or if not quite equally, in a general way subject to individual exception.
In dealing with this profoundly interesting subject, I have aimed first at giving the reader some broad conception of the varied beauty, splendour, and opportunity involved in Astral life. And so I shrank in the beginning from dealing more minutely with the horrors of the lowest conditions prevailing in the submerged depths. Nor is it necessary to dwell in detail on them. But after what I have said with the design of showing how little those regions of horror have to do with the prospects of ordinary humanity, the story as a whole would be left incomplete without some further explanation of the circumstances under which a small minority of the most intensely evil sections of humanity may be dealt with in accordance with the inevitable justice of Divine Rule. Broa'dly speaking, there is only one kind of wickedness which can draw a human entity after physical life to the submerged regions.
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That characteristic is to be broadly defined as cruelty. Cruelty, that is to say, on the physical plane, not merely the outcome of thoughtless or careless disregard of suffer- ing inflicted on others. The kind of cruelty in question is that which really takes pleasure in the infliction of suffer- ing on others. It is an attribute of character which few of us can really comprehend; but it does exist as a possibility of the lowest and most degraded human life, by no means always to be found in the lowest in the sense of the humblest, or degraded in the sense of the most ignorant examples of humanity. The horrible attribute I speak of, diabolical in its essential character, will be seen on reflec- tion to be the exact antipodal reverse of the Divine emotion, love and sympathy for others, pleasure in the sight of their improved welfare when anything can be done to promote it. The diabolical attribute where it exists must be burned out of the Ego it has infected before it is possible for that Ego to enter on the happier conditions of the upper Astral World. And so the awful process of eradicating that characteristic has to be carried out in that region which I have described as the second sub-plane of the Astral, counting from the bottom, the region im- mediately submerged below the earth's surface. Beyond that, indeed, there is a region which we speak of as the first sub-plane of the Astral with which even the horrible examples of humanity to which I refer have little or nothing to do. It is a region mainly devoted to the gradual disintegration of early elemental forms only appropriate to the very primitive conditions prevailing on the globe before it reached the condition appropriate to human life. The second sub-plane is the hell of reality, as different from the hell of mediaeval religion as the perfection of scientific knowledge is different from the crudest
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superstition. I need not attempt to describe in detail the miseries of existence there. That existence has utter misery for the background of its consciousness, just as the existence on the higher Astral regions has happiness for its background, whatever specific variety of happiness is best appropriate to each variety of human aspiration. And to each variety of human atrocity the second sub-plane will provide an exactly appropriate intensification of the pervading misery. But even there, let us constantly remember, that purification is the purpose the Divine scheme has in view, not merely blind revengeful punish- ment in accordance with the blasphemous conception which commonplace religion provides for the victims of its foul imagination. The Ego condemned by his own action to a sojourn on the second sub-plane will be released therefrom as soon as a genuine change in his nature has been effected by its awful remedies, but not until then. There is no possibility of defining an average period for existence on the second sub-plane; it may even be brief as measured in months or years, it may extend, as I know in extraordinary cases, to centuries of our time. But there is only one more thought to be impressed on the reader in connection with this gloomy topic, though that is one of supreme importance.
The blundering stupidity of mediaeval thinking designed a hell to be ruled by a devil, by the Devil, so clumsily caricatured. A moment's thought along the line of recog- nising all that exists in connection with the programme of human life as of Divine origin, will show that the real hell, curative in its purpose, as I have already shown, must be ruled by Divine intelligence. And it is so ruled by a Being whom we may think of with reverential adoration that cannot be in excess of what the situation needs, if
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we really understand the wonder and beauty of the whole idea. The ruler of a real curative hell must be of an absolutely god-like nature, and before going further, let me emphasise one truth connected with the great Divine hierarchy through which the Will, that we vaguely think of as Divine, is worked out. All service in that mighty hierarchy is voluntary service. Whatever task of the kind that can only be confided to a being of lofty spiritual evolution has to be fulfilled, its fulfilment awaits the voluntary readiness of some appropriate being to perform it. Thus the awful task of governing the hell I am describing claimed the service of a volunteer from regions of spiritual beatitude entirely transcending the scope of human imagination. And it was from such regions that the glorious and mighty being who rules the under-world at this moment voluntarily descended in order that the terrible task that had to be fulfilled should, in the service of God, be accomplished. Faintly one can grope towards a conception of what it must be for a being who, to begin with, so to speak, amongst other attributes of power, is an embodiment of Divine Love, to undertake the task of distributing in the varied population of the awful domain below, the horrible sufferings that have to be borne by its ghastly population.
There are few subjects connected with occult study that •appeal more powerfully to the emotions — if any other can appeal so powerfully — as that mighty sacrifice I am faintly endeavouring to describe, accomplished by the sublime being who is the ruler of the Under- World.
And so, although a multitude of details have been omitted, the description of the Astral World I have been able to give will show how grotesquely incomplete were the first crude presentations of what, while theosophical
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writers were still hampered by Eastern terminology, was called " kama-loka." So far as I can make out, the ideas attached to that phrase can only have been derived from some imperfect comprehension of the third sub-plane of the Astral. Nothing connected with the original night- mare described as kama-loka has any resemblance to the beautiful realities of astral existence of the loftier order.