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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