The Writings of Alfred Percy Sinnett
Alfred
Percy Sinnett
1840
-1921
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Esoteric Buddhism
Chapter 6
Kāma 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 therefore, which corresponds to
physical gestation. The sphere in which such remnants remain for a time is
known to occult science as Kāma 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 recollections which accumulate round the human Ego during
life are incompatible in their nature with the pure subjective existence to
which the 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 finest) 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 upward
towards, the sixth principle, the spiritual soul, passes with the germ of that
divine soul into the superior region, or state of Devachan, in which it
separates itself almost completely 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 towards itself. But the animal soul, or fourth,
principle (the element of will and desire, as associated with objective
existence), has no upward attraction, and no more passes away from the earth
than the particles of the body consigned to the grave. It is not in the grave,
however, 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
it is physical, and hence the result. It remains within the actual physical
local attraction of the earth - in the earths atmosphere - or, since it is not
the gases of the atmosphere that are specially to be considered in connection
with the problem in hand, let us say, in Kāma loca.
And with the fourth principle a large part (as regards most of
mankind unfortunately, though a part very variable in its relative magnitude)
inevitably remains. There are plenty of attributes which the ordinary composite
human being exhibits, many ardent feelings, desires, and acts, floods of
recollections, which, even if not concerned with a life as ardent perhaps as
those which have to do with the higher aspirations, are nevertheless
essentially belonging 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 universal 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 meanwhile is the
consciousness of the individual who has died or dissolved? Assuredly in
Devachan; but a difficulty presents itself to the mind untrained in occult
science, from the fact that a semblance of consciousness inheres in the astral
portion - the fourth principle, with a portion of the fifth - which remains
behind in Kāma 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 of life, attaching to the astral shell or remnant; but
nevertheless a certain spurious manifestation of consciousness may be
reawakened in the shell, without having 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
assimilating 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 imparted
to it during life. The fourth principle is the instrument of volition, though
not volition itself, and impulses imparted to it during life by the higher
principles may run their course and produce results almost indistinguishable for
careless observers from those which would ensue were the four higher principles
really all united, as in life.
The fourth principle, is the vehicle during life of that
essentially mortal consciousness which cannot suit itself to conditions 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 over-shadowing of them, or their vitalization 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 intelligible at once, any more than a plain
drawing can show all sides of a solid object. 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 diversities 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 various views suggested
must mingle in the readers mind before the complete conception corresponds 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 Sanscrit 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 influence 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 remembered - 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 impressions, hearing words addressed to him, and
answering vaguely. Such a state of consciousness is unassociated with the notions
of past or future. It is an automatic consciousness, derived from the medium. A
medium, be it remembered, is a person whose principles are loosely united and
susceptible of being borrowed by other beings, or by 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 neighbourhood 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 communicate some fact to a still
living person. Certainly the shell does not go about in Kāma loca with a
persistent intelligent conscious purpose 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 had 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 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 - is 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 production 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 marvellous nature,
bespeaking a knowledge on the part of the communicating intelligence of powers
in 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 impulse is
communicable to nerves and muscles.
But, it may be objected, the communicating intelligence at a
spiritual séance will constantly 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 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
Returning to a consideration of the ex-human shells in Kāma loca,
it may be argued that their behaviour in spiritual séances is not
covered 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 survival of impulses from
the former life. Quite so; but with portions of the mediums 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 the fifth
principle are conveyed into the wandering shell to a very large extent, the
result is that there is a very tolerable revival of consciousness in the shell
for the time being, as regards the given moment. But what is the nature of such
consciousness, after all? Nothing more, really, than a reflected light. Memory
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 paralysed 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 canine personality, is as fresh as his masters; 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 magnetic sympathy therewith; but this will not
carry him beyond 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
complete oblivion of all things unknown to that medium or circle, or not found
in the lower recollections of his late personality, galvanized 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 advance of knowledge.
It will easily be seen that a shell, drawn into the mediumistic
current, and getting into rapport with the mediums fifth principle, is
not by any means sure to be animated with a consciousness (even for what such
consciousness 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 mediums 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 going 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, Kāma loca is the abode of another class of astral entities, which
must be taken into account if we desire to comprehend the various conditions
under which human 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 persons killed by sudden
accident, results ensue which differ widely from those following natural
deaths. A thoughtful consideration of such cases must show, indeed, that in a
world governed by rule and law, by affinities working out their regular effects
in that deliberate way which Nature favours, 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, whatever 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, readily separable into his various principles, each prepared to travel
their separate ways. Nature, always fertile in analogies, at once illustrates
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 unripe 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 person 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 victim of an
accident over which he has no control whatsoever.
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 durable principle, the fifth,
is no longer susceptible 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 existence. 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 elementary,
therefore, which finds itself in Kāma 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 communicate very effectually
at spiritual séances at their own heavy cost; for they are unfortunately
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 to their Karma
than similar indulgences would have been in life. In such cases facilis est
descensus. Cut off in the full flush of earthly passions which bind them to
familiar scenes, they are enticed by the opportunity which mediums afford for
the gratification of these vicariously. They become the incubi and succubi of mediaeval
writing, demons of thirst and gluttony, 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 Theosophist,
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 falling 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 consummation, whether real or imaginary, of some master passion of their
lives, the desire remaining 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 ignorance and full
oblivion. Among the suicides, those to whom the above statement about provoking
their victims to crime, &c., 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 Kāma loca, and every case is met there by an adequate 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 currents as they would have
been inaccessible in life to common incitements to crime.
Entities of another kind occasionally to be found in Kāma loca
have yet to be considered. We have followed the higher principles of persons
recently dead, observing the separation of the astral dross from the
spirituality durable portion; that spirituality durable portion being either
holy or Satanic in its nature, and provided for in Devachan or Avitchi
accordingly. We have examined the nature of the elementary 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 Kāma
loca who are the victims of accident or suicide. But what happens to a
personality which has absolutely no atom of spirituality, no trace of spiritual
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 Kāma loca is no more a sphere of existence for such a
personality than the subjective world; Kāma loca may be permanently inhabited
by astral beings, by elementals, 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 earths 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 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 traveller 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 itself 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 further information to give.
One statement though is definitely made-viz., that such a total
degradation of a personality as may suffice to draw it, after death, into the
attraction of the eighth sphere, is of very rare occurrence. From the vast
majority 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 that are productive of the elevated sort of happiness of which alone
Devachan is qualified to take cognizance, 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 remembrance is only achieved by the
individual at the threshold of a far more exalted spiritual state than that
which we are now concerned with; one which is attained far later on in the
progress of 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 concerning all the
long-forgotten personalities that is really meant by the doctrine of the
Resurrection. But we have no time at present to stop and unravel the enigmas of
symbolism as bearing upon the teachings at present under conveyance 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 narrative 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 deplorably 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 affinities, 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 Kāma loca, the spiritual individuality will have
passed into the unconscious gestation state from which, skipping the Devachan
state, it will be directly (though not immediately in time) reborn 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 perish
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.
ANNOTATIONS
There is no part of the present volume which I now regard as in so
much urgent need of amplification as the two chapters which have just been
passed. The Kāma loca stage of existence, and that higher region or state of
Devachan, to which it is but the antechamber, were, designedly I take it, left
by our teachers in the first instance in partial obscurity, in order that the
whole scheme of evolution might be the better understood. The spiritual state
which immediately follows our present physical life, is a department of Nature,
the study of which is almost unhealthily attractive for every one who once
realizes that some contact with it - some processes of experiment with its
conditions - are possible even during this life. Already we can to a certain
extent discern the phenomena of that state of existence into which a human
creature passes at the death of the body. The experience of spiritualism has
supplied us with facts concerning it in very great abundance. These facts are
but too highly suggestive of theories and inferences which seem to reach the
ultimate limits of speculation, and nothing but the bracing mental discipline
of esoteric study in its broadest aspect will protect any mind addressed to the
consideration of these facts from conclusions which that study shows to be
necessarily erroneous. For this reason, theosophical inquirers have nothing to
regret as far as their own progress in spiritual science is at stake, in the
circumstances which have hitherto induced them to be rather neglectful of the
problems that have to do with the state of existence next following our own. It
is impossible to exaggerate the intellectual advantages to be derived from
studying the broad design of Nature throughout those vast realms of the future
which only the perfect clairvoyance of the adepts can penetrate, before going
into details regarding that spiritual foreground, which is partially accessible
to less powerful vision, but liable, on a first acquaintance, to be mistaken
for the whole expanse of the future.
The earlier processes, however, through which the soul passes at
death, may be described at this date somewhat more fully than they are defined
in the foregoing chapter. The nature of the struggle that takes place in Kāma
loca between the upper and lower duads may now, I believe, be apprehended more
clearly than at first. That struggle appears to be a very protracted and
variegated process, and to constitute,- not as some of us may have conjectured
at first, an automatic or unconscious assertion of affinities or forces quite
ready to determine the future of the spiritual monad at the period of death, -
but a phase of existence which may be, and in the vast majority of cases is
more than likely to be, continued over a considerable series of years. And
during this phase of existence it is quite possible for departed human entities
to manifest themselves to still living persons through the agency of spiritual
mediumship, in a way which may go far towards accounting for, if it does not
altogether vindicate, the impressions that spiritualists derive from such
communications.
But we must not conclude too hastily that the human soul going
through the struggle or evolution of Kāma loca is in all respects what the
first glance at the position, as thus defined, may seem to suggest. First of
all, we must beware of too grossly materializing our conception of the
struggle, by thinking of it as a mechanical separation of principles. There is
a mechanical separation involved in the discard of lower principles when the
consciousness of the Ego is firmly seated in the higher. Thus at death the body
is mechanically discarded by the soul, which (in union, perhaps, with
intermediate principles), may actually be seen by some clairvoyants of a high
order to quit the tenement it needs no longer. And a very similar process may
ultimately take place in Kāma loca itself, in regard to the matter of the
astral principles. But postponing this consideration for a few moments, it is
important to avoid supposing that the struggle of Kāma loca does itself constitute
this ultimate division of principles, or second death upon the astral plane.
The struggle of Kāma loca is in fact the life of the entity in
that phase of existence. As quite correctly stated in the text of the foregoing
chapter, the evolution taking place during that phase of existence is not
concerned with the responsible choice between good and evil which goes on
during physical life. Kāma loca is a portion of the great world of effects, -
not a sphere in which causes are generated (except under peculiar
circumstances). The Kāma loca entity, therefore, is not truly master of his own
acts; he is rather the sport of his own already established affinities. But
these are all the while asserting themselves, or exhausting themselves, by
degrees, and the Kāma loca entity has an existence of vivid consciousness
of one sort or another the whole time. Now a moments reflection will show that
those affinities, which are gathering strength and asserting themselves, have
to do with the spiritual aspirations of the life last experienced, while
those which are exhausting themselves have to do with its material
tastes, emotions, and proclivities. The Kāma loca entity, be it remembered, is
on his way to Devachan, or, in other words, is growing into that state which is
the Devachanic state, and the process of growth is accomplished by action and
reaction, by ebb and flow, like almost every other in Nature, - by a species of
oscillation between the conflicting attractions of matter and spirit. Thus the
Ego advances towards Heaven, so to speak, or recedes towards earth, during his
Kāma loca existence, and it is just this tendency to oscillate between the two
poles of thought or condition, that brings him back occasionally within the
sphere of the life he has just quitted.
It is not by any means at once that his ardent sympathies with
that life are dissipated. His sympathies with the higher aspects of that life,
be it remembered, are not even on their way to dissipation. For instance, in what
is here referred to as earthly affinity, we need not include the exercise of
affection, which is a function of Devachanic existence in a pre-eminent degree.
But perhaps even in regard to his affections there may be earthly and spiritual
aspects of these, and the contemplation of them, with the circumstances and
surroundings of the earth-life, may often have to do with the recession towards
earth-life of the Kāma loca entity referred to above.
Of course it will be apparent at once that the intercourse which
the practice of spiritualism sets up between the Kāma loca entities as here in
view, and the friends they have left on earth, must go on during those periods
of the souls existence in which earth memories engage its attention; and there
are two considerations of a very important nature which arise out of this
reflection.
1st. While its attention is thus directed, it is turned
away from the spiritual progress on which it is engaged during its oscillations
in the other direction. It may fairly well remember, and in conversation refer
to, the spiritual aspirations of the life on earth, but its new spiritual
experiences appear to be of an order that cannot be translated back into terms
of the ordinary physical intellect, and, besides that, to be not within the
command of the faculties which are in operation in the soul during its
occupation with old-earth memories. The position might be roughly symbolized,
but only to a very imperfect extent, by the case of a poor emigrant, whom we
may imagine prospering in his new country, getting educated there, concerning
himself with its public affairs and discoveries, philanthropy, and so on. He
may keep up an interchange of letters with his relations at home, but he will
find it difficult to keep them au courant with all that has come to be
occupying his thoughts. The illustration will only fully apply to our present
purpose, however, if we think of the emigrant as subject to a psychological law
which draws a veil over his understanding when he sits down to write to his
former friends, and restores him during that time to his former mental
condition. He would then be less and less able to write about the old topics as
time went on, for they would not only be below the level of those to the
consideration of which his real mental activities had risen, but would to a
great extent have faded from his memory. His letters would be a source of
surprise to their recipients, who would say to themselves that it was certainly
so-and-so who was writing, but that he had grown very dull and stupid compared
to what he used to be before he went abroad.
2ndly. It must be borne in mind that a very well-known law of
physiology, according to which faculties are invigorated by use and atrophied
by neglect, applies on the astral as well as on the physical plane. The soul in
Kāma loca, which acquires the habit of fixing its attention on the memories of
the life it has quitted, will strengthen and harden those tendencies which are
at war with its higher impulses. The more frequently it is appealed to by the
affection of friends still in the body to avail itself of the opportunities
furnished by mediumship for manifesting its existence on the physical plane,
the more vehement will be the impulses which draw it back to physical life, and
the more serious the retardation of its spiritual progress. This consideration
appears to involve the most influential motive which leads the representatives
of Theosophical teaching to discountenance and disapprove of all attempts to
hold communication with departed souls by means of the spiritual séance. The
more such communications are genuine the more detrimental they are to the
inhabitants of Kāma loca concerned with them. In the present state of our
knowledge it is difficult to determine with confidence the extent to which the
Kāma loca entities are thus injured. And we may be tempted to believe that in
some cases the great satisfaction derived by the living persons who
communicate, may outweigh the injury so inflicted on the departed soul. This
satisfaction, however, will only be keen in proportion to the failure of the
still living friend to realize the circumstances under which the communication
takes place. At first, it is true, very shortly after death, the still vivid
and complete memories of earth-life may enable the Kāma loca entity to manifest
himself as a personage very fairly like his deceased self, but from the moment
of death the change in the direction of his evolution sets in. He will, as
manifesting on the physical plane, betray no fresh fermentation of thought in
his mind. He will never, in that manifestation, be any wiser, or higher in the
scale of Nature, than he was when he died; on the contrary, he must become less
and less intelligent, and apparently less instructed than formerly, as time goes
on. He will never do himself justice in communication with the friends left
behind, and his failure in this respect will grow more and more painful by
degrees.
Yet another consideration operates to throw a very doubtful light
on the wisdom or propriety of gratifying a desire for intercourse with deceased
friends. We may say, never mind the gradually fading interest of the friend who
has gone before, in the earth left behind; while there is anything of his or
her old self left to manifest itself to us, it will be a delight to communicate
even with that. And we may argue that if the beloved person is delayed a little
on his way to Heaven by talking with us, he or she would be willing to make
that sacrifice for our sake. The point overlooked here is, that on the astral,
just as on the physical plane, it is a very easy thing to set up a bad habit.
The soul in Kāma loca once slaking a thirst for earthly intercourse at the
wells of mediumship will have a strong impulse to fall back again and again on
that indulgence. We may be doing a great deal more than diverting the souls
attention from its own proper business by holding spiritualistic relations with
it. We may be doing it serious and almost permanent injury. I am not
affirming that this would invariably or generally be the case, but a severe
view of the ethics of the subject must recognize the dangerous possibilities
involved in the course of action under review. On the other hand, however, it
is plain that cases may arise in which the desire for communication chiefly
asserts itself from the other side: that is to say, in which the departed soul
is laden with some unsatisfied desire - pointing possibly towards the
fulfilment of some neglected duty on earth - the attention to which on the part
of still-living friends may have an effect quite the reverse of that attending
the mere encouragement of the Kāma loca entity in the resumption of its old
earthly interests. In such cases the living friends may, by falling in with its
desire to communicate, be the means, indirectly, of smoothing the path of its
spiritual progress. Here again, however, we must be on our guard against the
delusive aspect of appearances. A wish manifested by an inhabitant of Kāma loca
may not always be the expression of an idea then operative in his mind. It may
be the echo of an old, perhaps of a very old, desire, then for the first time
finding a channel for its outward expression. In this way, although it would be
reasonable to treat as important an intelligible wish conveyed to us from Kāma
loca by a person only lately deceased, it would be prudent to regard with great
suspicion such a wish emanating from the shade of a person who had been dead a
long time, and whose general demeanour as a shade did not seem to convey the
notion that he retained any vivid consciousness of his old personality.
The recognition of all these facts and possibilities of Kāma loca
will, I think, afford theosophists a satisfactory explanation of a good many
experiences connected with spiritualism which the first exposition of the
esoteric doctrine, as bearing on this matter, left in much obscurity.
It will be readily perceived that as the soul slowly clears itself
in Kāma loca of the affinities which retard its Devachanic development, the
aspect it turns towards the earth is more and more enfeebled, and it is
inevitable that there must always be in Kāma loca an enormous number of
entities nearly ripe for a complete mergence in Devachan, who on that very
account appear to an earthly observer in a state of advanced decrepitude. These
will have sunk, as regards the activity of their lower astral principles, into
the condition of the altogether vague and unintelligible entities, which,
following the example of older occult writers, I have referred to as shells
in the text of this chapter. The designation, however, is not altogether a
happy one. It might have been better to have followed another precedent, and to
have called them shades, but either way their condition would be the same.
All the vivid consciousness inhering, as they left the earth, in the principles
appropriately related to the activities of physical life, has been transferred
to the higher principles which do not manifest at séances. Their memory of
earth-life has almost become extinct. Their lower principles are in such cases
only reawakened by the influences of the mediumistic current into which they
may be drawn, and they become then little more than astral looking-glasses, in
which the thoughts of the medium or sitters at the séance are reflected. If we
can imagine the colours on a painted canvas sinking by degrees into the
substance of the material, and at last re-emerging in their pristine brilliancy
on the other side, we shall be conceiving a process which might not have
destroyed the picture, but which would leave a gallery in which it took place,
a dreary scene of brown and meaningless backs, and that is very much what the
Kāma loca entities become before they ultimately shed the very material on
which their first astral consciousness operated, and pass into the wholly
purified Devachanic condition.
But this is not the whole of the story which teaches us to regard
manifestations coming from Kāma loca with distrust. Our present comprehension
of the subject enables us to realize that when the time arrives for that second
death on the astral plane, which releases the purified Ego from Kāma loca
altogether and sends it onward to the Devachanic state - something is left
behind in Kāma loca which corresponds to the dead body bequeathed to the earth
when the soul takes its first flight from physical existence. A dead astral
body is in fact left behind in Kāma loca, and there is certainly no impropriety
in applying the epithet shell to that residuum. The true shell in that
state disintegrates in Kāma loca before very long, just as the true body left
to the legitimate processes of Nature on earth would soon decay and blend its
elements with the general reservoirs of matter of the order to which they
belong. But until that disintegration is accomplished, the shell which the real
Ego has altogether abandoned, may even in that state be mistaken
sometimes at spiritual séances for a living entity. It remains for a time an
astral looking-glass, in which mediums may see their own thoughts reflected,
and take these back, fully believing them to come from an external source.
These phenomena in the truest sense of the term are galvanized
astral corpses; none the less so, because until they are actually disintegrated
a certain subtle connection will subsist between them and the true Devachanic
spirit; just as such a subtle communication subsists in the first instance
between the Kāma loca entity, and the dead body left on earth. That
last-mentioned communication is kept up by the finely-diffused material of the
original third principle, or linga sharira, and a study of this branch
of the subject will, I believe, lead us up to a better comprehension than we
possess at present of the circumstances under which materializations are
sometimes accomplished at spiritual séances. But without going into that
digression now, it is enough to recognize that the analogy may help to show
how, between the Devachanic entity and the discarded shell in Kāma loca a
similar connection may continue for awhile, acting, while it lasts, as a drag
on the higher spirit, but perhaps as an after-glow of sunset on the shell. It
would surely be distressing, however, in the highest degree, to any living
friend of the person concerned, to get, through clairvoyance, or in any other
way, sight or cognition of such a shell, and to be led into mistaking it for
the true entity.
The comparatively clear view of Kāma loca which we are now enabled
to take, may help us to employ terms relating to its phenomena with more
precision than we have hitherto been able to attain. I think if we adopt one
new expression, astral soul, as applying to the entities in Kāma loca who
have recently quitted earth-life, or who for other reasons still retain, in the
aspect they turn back towards earth, a large share of the intellectual
attributes that distinguished them on earth, we shall then find the other terms
in use already, adequate to meet our remaining emergencies. Indeed, we may then
get rid entirely of the inconvenient term elementary, liable to be confused
with elemental, and singularly inappropriate to the beings it describes. I
would suggest that the astral soul as it sinks (regarded from our point of
view) into intellectual decrepitude, should be spoken of in its faded condition
as a shade, and that the term shell should be reserved for the true shells or
astral dead bodies which the Devachanic spirit has finally quitted.
We are naturally led in studying the law of spiritual growth in
Kāma loca to inquire how long a time may probably elapse before the transfer of
consciousness from the lower to the higher principles of the astral soul may be
regarded as complete; and as usual, when we come to figures relating to the
higher processes of Nature, the answer is very elastic. But I believe the
esoteric teachers of the East declare that as regards the average run of
humanity - for what may be called, in a spiritual sense, the great middle
classes of humanity - it is unusual that a Kāma loca entity will be in a
position to manifest as such for more than twenty-five to thirty years. But on
each side of this average the figures may run up very considerably. That is to
say, a very ignoble and besotted human creature may hang about in Kāma loca for
a much longer time for want of any higher principles sufficiently developed to
take up his consciousness at all, and at the other end of the scale the very
intellectual and mentally-active soul may remain for very long periods in Kāma
loca (in the absence of spiritual affinities in corresponding force), by reason
of the great persistence of forces and causes generated on the higher plane of
effects, though mental activity could hardly be divorced in this way from
spirituality except in cases where it was exclusively associated with worldly
ambition. Again, while Kāma loca periods may thus be prolonged beyond the
average from various causes, they may sink to almost infinitesimal brevity when
the spirituality of a person dying at a ripe old age, and at the close of a
life which has legitimately fulfilled its purpose, is already far advanced.
There is one other important possibility connected with
manifestations reaching us by the usual channels of communication with Kāma
loca, which it is desirable to notice here, although from its nature the
realization of such a possibility cannot be frequent. No recent students of
theosophy can expect to know as yet very much about the conditions of existence
which await adepts who relinquish the use of physical bodies on earth. The
higher possibilities open to them appear to me quite beyond the reach of intellectual
appreciation. No man is clever enough, by virtue of the mere cleverness seated
in a living brain, to understand Nirvana; but it would appear that adepts in
some cases elect to pursue a course lying midway between re-incarnation and the
passage into Nirvana, and in the higher regions of Devachan; that is to say, in
the arupa state of Devachan may await the slow advance of human
evolution towards the exalted condition they have thus attained. Now an adept
who has thus become a Devachanic spirit of the most elevated type would not be
cut off by the conditions of his Devachanic state - as would be the case with a
natural Devachanic spirit passing through that state on his way to
reincarnation - from manifesting his influence on earth. His would certainly not
be an influence which would make itself felt by the instrumentality of any
physical signs to mixed audiences, but it is not impossible that a medium of
the highest type - who would more properly be called a seer - might be thus influenced.
By such an Adept spirit, some great men in the worlds history may from time to
time have been overshadowed and inspired, consciously or unconsciously as the
case may have been.
The disintegration of shells in Kāma-loca will inevitably suggest
to any one who endeavours to comprehend the process at all, that there must be
in Nature some general reservoirs of the matter appropriate to that sphere of
existence, corresponding to the physical earth and its surrounding elements
into which our own bodies are resigned at death. The grand mysteries on which
this consideration impinges will claim a far more exhaustive investigation than
we have yet been enabled to undertake; but one broad idea connected with them
may usefully be put forward without further delay. The state of Kāma-loca is
one which has its corresponding orders of matter in manifestation round it. I
will not here attempt to go into the metaphysics of the problem, which might
even lead us to discard the notion that astral matter need be any less real and
tangible than that which appeals to our physical senses. It is enough for the
present to explain that the propinquity of Kāma loca to the earth which is so
readily made apparent by spiritualistic experience, is explained by Oriental
teaching to arise from this fact, - that Kāma-loca is just as much in and of
the earth as, during our lives, our astral soul is in and of the living man.
The stage of Kāma-loca, in fact, the great realm of matter in the appropriate
state which constitutes Kāma-loca and is perceptible to the senses of astral
entities, as also to those of many clairvoyants, is the fourth principle of
man. For the earth has its seven principles like the human creatures who
inhabit it. Thus, the Devachanic state corresponds to the fifth principle of
the earth, and Nirvana to the sixth principle.
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