When the Self (atman), having fallen into a state of weakness, enters into unconsciousness, as it were, then the life-currents (pranas) gather around it. Seizing wholly these shining elements, it then enters the heart. When the Spirit of the eye moves away in a circle, it loses knowledge of form.
"He becomes one, he does not see," they say. "He becomes one, he does not smell," they say. "He becomes one, he does not taste," they say. "He becomes one, he does not speak," they say. "He becomes one, he does not hear," they say. "He becomes one, he does not think," they say. "He becomes one, he does not touch," they say. "He becomes one, he does not know," they say. Then the entrance of the heart becomes luminous. By way of this radiance, the Self takes its exit, either from the eye, or from the head, or from other parts of the body. When it departs, the life (prana) departs after it; when the life departs, all the vital airs depart. It becomes endowed with perception; it enters into that perception; knowledge and deeds, and the realization of the past, unite together and pervade it. — Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, IV, 4, 1-2There is no essential difference between the death of a sun and that of a man or of the smallest atom. The details are different, that is all. The death of a sun produces an instantaneous vanishing of the sun's body of light, which is grosser than the light of the spiritual realms, but nevertheless light; and light is energy, and energy is matter. Similarly, a man's body, or the body of an atom, in fact all physical matter, is but compacted light. As the sun is a divine being, it clothes itself with an appropriate vehicle of pure ethereal light, not gross or concreted light such as our bodies are. Consequently, when the divine flame of the sun is withdrawn (which is what death is), its component atoms are dispersed in the winking of an eye, and this dispersion causes a glory, a spread of light, throughout enormous realms of space.
In the case of man, when the divine flame is withdrawn, which occurs also like a flash of lightning, the body, being too gross and heavy to fall instantly apart and vanish, still coheres as a corpse until the chemical work of the atoms among themselves brings about physical dissolution.
Our bodies are radiating light constantly, light of many colors, beautiful at times, repulsive at others. A human being in a passion of anger or hatred, for instance, sends forth light from his whole physical being in a stream which is coarse, red, fiery, and hateful to see, and by reaction produces feelings of hate in others whom this evil light touches. Contrariwise, a man whose heart is filled with impersonal love, radiates this constantly, especially in those moments when he is acting under the urge of compassion — even his physical body then sends forth streams of light of indescriptible beauty, of opalescent glory. This is the secret of the nimbus or aureole said to surround the heads of saints. Every human being has such a nimbus. Light, however, is not the only thing that emanates from the body; odors likewise do so. Some animals are more sensitive to the light-emanations, while others are more sensitive to the odors.
During one's lifetime, every emotion is accompanied by similar radiations of light, each of its own quality and kind, yet all expressing themselves by reaction through the aura of the physical body; and this is why the adept, watching a man under emotional or mental or even spiritual stress, is able to ascertain just what movement of consciousness is thus affecting the aura.
Man is a dynamo of energies. Everything he does, every thought he has, every emotion he feels, produces a corresponding effect throughout his entire constitution. At death, the rupturing of the cord of life is the result of the action of energy — energy suddenly loosed, which must produce its effect. Because of this, death cannot happen without causing an explosion of light-atoms which flow forth from every pore of his physical body. This explosion of light when the body blazes for an instant in glory — invisible to ordinary eyesight — is not something unique, for the same is true in greater or less degree of every entity, from suns and stars to animals and plants. It is but a larger exemplification of the process that occurs in radioactive disintegration of certain chemical elements, such as uranium, thorium, and radium. This dissociation of the atoms results from what we may perhaps graphically describe as the death of the respective atomic and subatomic particles.
It is a most interesting fact that every motion, whether on the macrocosmic or on the microcosmic scale, is accompanied by an emission of light; and light is an electromagnetic phenomenon expressing itself as a radiation. In fact, any moving entity, any movement anywhere, such as the raising of our arm, the waving of a tree branch in the wind, the spark brought forth by the striking of steel on flint, or the whirling of the electron, invariably produces a flash, or conglomerate of tiny flashes, all of an electromagnetic character.
From the standpoint of causes, all these movements are produced by the electromagnetic vitality of innumerable hosts of lives and of living beings which are everywhere around us; for magnetism and electricity are but manifestations of the vitality of the solar system as well as of our earth, uniting in a fascinating web with all the interacting forces of the individual vitalities of the entities contained in these macrocosmic bodies. But this is not all: the very thought expressed as will — such as that which brings about the movement of the arm — sets into vital-electric activity the particles of the brain, molecular, atomic and astral; and each such tiny motion of the atoms of the brain answering the thought-command emits its particular flash of radiation.
Coming then to the point, the radiations or explosions of light, which enwrap the physical body at the moment of death, are brought about by the sudden withdrawal or ruptured connections of the various pranas from the molecules and atoms which compose the body. Such outburst of light lasts but a few fugitive instants. The body thereafter is an 'inanimate' corpse, although of course every one of its molecules and atoms contains its own swabhavic pranas.
Finally, the intensity and volume of the light that exudes from the body at death vary in degree and in quality with the character of the dying man. When death takes place suddenly and with the body in full strength and maturity of years, the explosion of light is correspondingly intense and voluminous and probably of very brief duration; whereas in the case of a man's dying of old age, or passing out quietly in his sleep, or after a long illness, the outburst of luminous radiation is correspondingly less intense and less in volume because more protracted in time.
The concept of science with regard to electricity and magnetism and light and sound and heat, as being different octaves of radiation, closely approaches the esoteric philosophy, in the sense that all these forms of radiation are but various aspects of a fundamental and all-inclusive substratum of vitality expressing itself in different degrees of intensity. One of these days thought and consciousness will be recognized as belonging to the same vital scale of radiation, although belonging in their origin to higher planes of the universe than the physical.
KAMA-LOKA AND THE SECOND DEATH
. . . for one who has no inner perception and faith, there is no immortality possible. In order to live in the world to come a conscious life, one has to believe first of all in that life during one's terrestrial existence. On these two aphorisms of the Secret Science all the philosophy about the post-mortem consciousness and the immortality of the soul is built. The Ego receives always according to its desserts. After the dissolution of the body, there commences for it either a period of full clear consciousness, a state of chaotic dreams, or an utterly dreamless sleep indistinguishable from annihilation; and these are the three states of consciousness. Our physiologists find the cause of dreams and visions in an unconscious preparation for them during the waking hours; why cannot the same be admitted for the post-mortem dreams? I repeat it, death is sleep. After death begins, before the spiritual eyes of the soul, a performance according to a programme learnt and very often composed unconsciously by ourselves: the practical carrying out of correct beliefs or of illusions which have been created by ourselves. A Methodist, will be Methodist, a Mussulman, a Mussulman, of course, just for a time — in a perfect fool's paradise of each man's creation and making. These are the post-morte fruits of the tree of life. Naturally, our belief or unbelief in the fact of conscious immortality is unable to influence the unconditioned reality of the fact itself, once that it exists; but the belief or unbelief in that immortality, as the continuation or annihilation of separate entities, cannot fail to give colour to that fact in its application to each of these entities. — H.P.B. in Lucifer, January 1889, p. 413In order to grasp the teachings of occultism regarding the after-death states, it is important to keep in mind that man is composed of several element-principles forming the fields of action of the auric egg, in which the various consciousness centers function. All these element-principles with their appurtenant monads are intimately interrelated, and each is derived from its superior monad as a ray. We have then, first, a divine monadic essence, unconditionally immortal, of vast spiritual, intellectual and even physical powers, and of cosmic range of action and consciousness; second, a divine-spiritual monad, its ray or offspring, of purely spiritual nature and function; third, a spiritual-intellectual monad or higher ego; fourth, a human ego which in its turn is a ray of the preceding monadic center; fifth, the model-body, the field of the so-called astral monad; sixth, a physical body built around and partly from this astral body; and seventh and last, the vital essence or life, that is to say, the vital force or energy which runs through and unites all these element-principles. This life energy itself is progressively less ethereal as it descends through the lower parts of the constitution, and is composed in its turn, as are the other element-principles, of monadic units: vital corpuscles, so to say, entities of infinitesimal magnitude known as life-atoms.
In the last analysis man's constitution is twelvefold, consisting of the seven manifest and the five unmanifest units of far superior character; and the seven manifest may again be subdivided into an upper spiritual triad and a lower quaternary. When using the tenfold manner of division we should keep in mind the other two units, one of which is the superdivine link with the divinity of the universe, and the other is the polar link uniting the entity with the lower parts of the universe, thus making the twelve.
We must not suppose that the twelvefold division of the human constitution is to be preferred over either the seven- or tenfold. H.P.B. concentrated more on the septenary because it is easier to teach and understand. The main point is that all the element-principles are enclosed by and contained within the auric egg which has its original focus or source in the very highest of the twelve portions of the constitution; and in a sense the auric egg, because of its perpetuity, really is the objective sutratman or thread-self.
Now the ranges of consciousness of the different parts of the human constitution when divided into twelve, are easily enough understood. The unmanifest five we may call typically universal or kosmic, at least the higher units thereof, for their range of action extends far beyond our own galaxy or home-universe. The reach of the divine monad, which is essentially the atmic monad with its buddhic vehicle, is the galaxy; the range of the spiritual monad, the buddhi-manas, is the solar system; while the field of action of the reimbodying ego is the planetary chain; and finally, the range of the astral monad or lower quaternary, as we may collectively describe it, is a single globe of a chain, our globe D for instance.
In this connection, we must make a distinction, even if it be not a real difference, between the reimbodying ego which has its range over the planetary chain, and its ray, the reincarnating ego, which applies to an imbodied human being in his physical vehicle on this globe D.
Man is indeed a compound of many substances, matters, forces and energies — each working in its own appropriate portion of the auric egg as an integral part of an ever-continuous stream of consciousness. Physical death brings about the temporary dissolution of the lower four-and-one-half principles of this composite entity.
When the constitution of man separates in the kama-loka at the second death, all that has been noble and of a spiritual character in the past life — the beautiful aspirations and ideals, the grand memories that the higher soul retains in the fabric of its substance — is withdrawn into the highest triad, which is the immortal monadic essence of our constitution. The aggregate of these indrawn elements is properly viewed as the human monad, which rests as an embryo in the spiritual monad of the higher triad until the next rebirth on this earth.
Contrariwise, the lower part of the man that was attracts to itself the lowest part of the human ego, all the passional, emotional, and purely selfish portions; and these dissipate into their different grades of life-atoms, of which in fact they are composed. These life-atoms then pursue their transmigrations through the various kingdoms of nature. When the physical body dies and disintegrates, its life-atoms return to the elements of the earth, air, water, fire, and the ether, which originally gave them to the body. Then, at a later date in the kama-loka of the astral light, each one of the life-atoms composing the intermediate sheaths of the excarnate being passes to its respective sphere of the cosmos. The saying, "earth to earth, water to water, air to air, fire to fire," etc., refers to the life-atoms of the different portions of man's constitution.
The same rule prevails for the monads in man, each of which seeks its own realm or sphere: the human monad enters its devachan; the spiritual monad undertakes its peregrinations through the spheres; and, at the instant of death, the divine ray bound into the human constitution is released from the human compound and flashes home more quickly than thought to its parent star, to the sphere of the divine monad, our inmost and our highest. (1)
Now the kama-loka is that portion only of the astral light which is immediately contiguous to and which completely surrounds and penetrates our earth globe. In its grossest parts, it is a truly semimaterial plane although, because we cannot invariably see it or sense it, we call it invisible and 'subjective.' While the kama-loka is divisible into different degrees of ethereality, it has no regions which we would call either beautiful or holy. It is the abode of the shades, that aspect of the astral world where, to use an early Christian expression, things which are rejected pass out in the draft. It contains the reliquiae, the astral-vital remains of beings who were. As for the astral light, this not only includes the kama-loka, but likewise ranges 'upwards' in quality of ethereality, gradually becoming spiritual. In a certain sense the astral light in its fullness is the auric egg of the earth, while in another sense it occupies for the earth the analogical position that the model-body does for man. The astral light itself is but the vehicle of the anima mundi, the 'soul of our world.' In other words, we may speak of the anima mundi as being the soul of the astral light (which latter in its lowest parts is the linga-sarira of the earth), and of the kama-loka as the grossest dregs or most material part of the astral light.
The kama-loka, in so far as its position in space goes, may be said to extend somewhat beyond the sphere of our moon in one direction, and to touch the earth's center in the other direction. When, however, we look upon the kama-loka as a series of states or conditions of matter occupied by entities temporarily in it, because attracted to their own corresponding kama-lokic quality, then we can say that the kama-loka, considered as a sevenfold aggregate, is intermediate between the devachan and avichi. However, neither devachan nor avichi are places, but are states of consciousness which beings experience. Of course an entity in any state of consciousness must have position likewise.
Although the devachan and the avichi are conditions or states only, the kama-loka is dual in character, being both a series of planes in the astral light immediately surrounding and within the earth, as well as qualities or states of matter fitting these planes to be the temporary abodes of the entities traversing them. What is said of the kama-loka of our earth applies in principle to the kama-lokas of the other globes of our chain — and indeed of any chain in the solar system — because each globe has its own astral light.
THE FOUR STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
There are four basic qualities of consciousness into which a man can enter both in life and after death. In Sanskrit these are called jagrat, swapna, sushupti, and turiya, (2) and every one of the seven states or conditions in which human consciousness can find itself contains its own relative jagrat, swapna, sushupti, and turiya. These four types of consciousness can be allocated each to its proper locus in the human constitution, so that while the ordinary brain-mind consciousness of man usually is in the jagrat state, another part may be in the swapna, another in the sushupti, while the highest part of his consciousness, the buddhi within him, is perennially in the turiya quality.This accounts for the manifold differences in consciousness existing between man and man, and the moods in which people at various times may be, one man being distinctly in the physical jagrat condition, whereas another, even though in the jagrat quality, may seem to be in the dreaming-sleeping state of swapna, and a third may be almost oblivious of outside events and therefore temporarily be in the sushupti quality of the jagrat, and so forth.
Let us take an average individual: he is in the normal waking state while on earth, yet he has intimations of something nobler and finer in him than the jagrat quality shows. This is the higher manas or manasaputra within him, expressing itself in this sphere of consciousness in the swapna quality because, although its power is already fully manifested on its own plane, it can but weakly express itself in such average man. Again, the buddhi within him, although fully functional on its own plane, nevertheless, because of the man's imperfections, only occasionally can reach him with a brilliant ray from itself, and this usually vaguely and more or less in the sushupti quality. Finally, the Buddha or Christ within him is functional on its own lofty spiritual plane, but cannot impress its fullness of consciousness on the mind of the ordinary individual, and thus to him his inner Buddha is of the turiya quality of consciousness.
Also, at any time throughout a man's life, there are those very mystical and wonderful and all too infrequent 'revelations' or intuitions, which come into his consciousness like spiritual-intellectual illuminations. These momentary flashes of inspiration may occur even after true senescence has begun, and may still continue, if the man has lived a decent life, until there commences — only a short time preceding death — the 'ascending' of the higher portions of the man's constitution, announcing its preliminary breakup which is completed when the body is cast aside.
Now then, the particular part of man experiencing these various qualities of consciousness is the human ego, which is obviously self-conscious in the jagrat quality of physical existence. Thus at the onset of both sleep and death the consciousness passes from the jagrat into unconsciousness: the human ego first has a temporary condition of swapna or sleeping-dreaming, and then, quickly or slowly, according to the constitution, begins the 'unconscious' condition of the sushupti — unconscious from our standpoint only because we have not yet become accustomed to live self-consciously in our higher qualities.
Now these changings of consciousness from the jagrat to the swapna and then to the sushupti do not take place with high adepts and those still greater, because they have learned to live in the loftier ranges of their consciousness. Therefore, when the adept or mahatma dies he can at will transfer his full self-consciousness to any quality or condition he pleases, and shortly thereafter take reimbodiment, or in rare instances lapse into a brief devachan, or even, in the cases of great adepts, into a temporary nirvana.
Exactly the same observations apply to the adept in the case of sleep. He can allow his body and brain-mind to pass into full unself-consciousness and thus repair their exhausted tissues, the while his self-conscious ego is fully functional on inner planes. But the ordinary man has not learned to do this, because his whole consciousness is centered in this plane, so that when he falls asleep his state of consciousness is according to what his imperfectly developed inner life permits, to wit: first a dreaming-sleeping consciousness, sinking into unconsciousness, then perhaps slipping back into the swapna or sleeping-dreaming condition, and so forth until he awakens. Likewise, the ordinary man after death lapses into the devachan, which is a state of spiritual swapna — a dreaming-sleeping condition of the human egoic consciousness, but on a spiritual plane where only things of great beauty and longings of a highly intellectual or of a spiritual character pass like fleeting 'realities' before the vision of the devachani.
This explains why the coarser, more materialistic man has very little devachan or perhaps none at all, because during his life on earth all his self-consciousness has been so heavily tied to matter and the sense-world around him that he has built up no inner life of aspiring thoughts calling for a quasi-dreaming consciousness after death. If a man desire to remain self-conscious while asleep or, equivalently, after death, he must have previously learned to live in his higher manas and buddhi. Thus centering his consciousness during his lifetime, he becomes thoroughly at home in these higher principles and remains therein when the body is recuperating itself in sleep, or is cast off at death.
After death the human ego-consciousness of the average man cannot remain or become self-conscious in the higher qualities of his constitution. Therefore the part that drops into unconsciousness is the ordinary brain-mind consciousness of daily life. It remains in this state except for the brief intervals in the kama-loka when there is a more or less hazy reawakening and then a sinking into unconsciousness again, and then perhaps another reawakening, all dreamlike and shadowy, until the second death in the kama-loka, at which time the human ego enters the dreaming of the devachan, where it remains more or less continuously until the impetus for the next reincarnation is felt.
No man is conscious of what is happening around him after real death; (3) and any claims that such is the fact are either frauds, or misinterpretations in cases of trance which are wrongly taken for death. Once actual death has occurred, unconsciousness supervenes in every instance, and the man is absolutely not aware of what happens around his deathbed, contrary to what has been occasionally reported by 'returning' kama-rupas manifesting as 'spirits' through mediums. If a man is in trance, however, the links of consciousness with the physical brain may well be still sufficiently alert to enable the 'consciousness' vaguely to sense what is taking place around the sickbed. But once the golden cord of life is finally broken and death has definitely occurred, no such awareness of what is going on is at all possible because all links with the percipient brain, or even the linga-sarira have been snapped.
In one of the oldest Upanishads, the Brihadaka (IV, v, 13), the sage Yajnavalkya says to his consort Maitreyi: "Having passed on, there is no sanjna" — that is, no collected active self-conscious thinking. Now it is this faculty of self-conscious reflective thought which the entity in the kama-loka does not have, for the manas is non-functional then, being in its stupor of unconsciousness; and even in those fugitive moments when the kama-lokic entity has a shadowy adumbration of self-consciousness, this comes merely because the auric egg of the entity automatically repeats, so to speak, what it was accustomed to do or to think during life.
Hence the kama-lokic 'consciousness' ranges all the way from temporary obliteration of self-consciousness, through all intermediate degrees of unconsciousness, to the astral low-type self-consciousness that elementaries and lost souls have. The average man when in the kama-loka is either in unconsciousness or in a state of figure-flitting dreaming. The purer the man, the deeper the unconsciousness.
Those strongly attached to things of earth and their material appetites and passions have quite an awakening in the kama-loka, and there is a good deal of suffering about it, because they are in a sort of nightmare; although even here nature is kind, as the nightmare is dreamy, rather vague. The truly spiritual man, on the contrary, has scarcely any consciousness at all of passing through the kama-loka, and speeds through it like a train through a tunnel, totally unaware of anything that is evil or unpleasant. Among average men, those with materialistic bias may have a hazy feeling that they are in a bad dream, while others of a more spiritual character may just have a dreamy notion that such conditions exist, but they do not experience them. In any case, the kama-loka is not long, except for evil men and sorcerers. These indeed suffer sometimes terribly — not a physical suffering as we understand it, but a horrible nightmarish dream which keeps repeating itself with variations. They have brought this upon themselves by their constant broodings, and the astral recorder inside, so to speak, having been wound up, now must run down.
On the other hand, in the case of those adepts and initiates who are not of the highest but yet belong to a class above even spiritual men, there is a certain suffering after death because of their awakened inner senses and vision, the suffering arising from an awareness of the horrors in the kama-loka that are passing around them. But even here it does not last long, perhaps only a few moments or hours; and it may be slight or intense according to the inner awakening. As a matter of fact, initiates and chelas, even when imbodied, almost at will can sense (or close off their vision of) the astral light or the kama-loka thereof.
Of course those who are still higher are not at all affected by the astral light, because they are fully acquainted with all its aspects even before they die and, shutting off all the avenues of impression, shoot through it like a star.
The suffering after death that H.P.B. alludes to in one or two passages is very much the same as that which the neophyte during initiation must go through. He must learn at first hand, by personal experience, all the facts of the underworld, as well as of the upper world; and to the neophyte who has to enter the kama-loka with his eyes open and every faculty alert, the suffering is at times almost insupportable, because of the horror and misery and filth that he senses around him. But initiation has to be faced, in order to know. Once known, one becomes master of the situation, and thereafter is no longer so keenly affected.
Another point that I may comment upon is the average length of time during which the human entity, after death, is unconscious before regaining at least a shadowy self-consciousness in the kama-loka. Each single case is unique. Highly spiritual men come to no self-consciousness of any kind in the kama-loka except for a brief interval in connection with the second panoramic visioning at the second death just before entering the devachan. On the other hand, human beings of a grossly animal or material character range all the way from those destined to become elementaries to those who have sufficient spirituality in them to give them a short devachan before reincarnation.
Any such partial 'awakening' in the kama-loka is invariably dependent upon the life just ended. The thoughts that a man has at the moment of death, which foreshadow the type of his after-death states, are but the almost automatic functioning of his consciousness showing what character of man he is; for his last thoughts will be of the general type of those most common to him and most cherished by him.
The length of time between physical death and the second death is again almost wholly dependent upon the nature of the excarnate human entity. (4) Here we have the same rules applying: the truly spiritual man will have an extremely short sojourn in the kama-loka, perhaps passing through it without pause, and his second death will come soon; the average human being will have a much longer stay; while the man of strong material instincts and feelings will have a still longer period in the kama-loka. Some remain for scores of years, possibly even a hundred or two, before having the second death and the subsequent short devachan. All those in whom the spiritual nature exercises no attraction 'upwards' — and this would include congenital idiots, and also infants who suffer premature death — will obviously have no true second death, which is really a new birth into higher conditions of consciousness.
In the very exceptional case of an elementary or lost soul — or any human being whose life has been so utterly animalistic and woven into matter that his consciousness is enchained thereto — there is an 'awakening' for a greater or less length of time to a self-conscious or quasi-self-conscious realization that he is dead, no longer a physically imbodied man (cf. The Mahatma Letters, p. 128). But in no instance does such consciousness last until reincarnation occurs, because unconsciousness mercifully comes upon him before he assumes a new physical body.
In normal cases, once the man dies, unconsciousness, sweet and beautiful and infinitely compassionate, descends upon him like an enveloping veil of akasic protection; and then, with the exception of the few fugitive moments of dreaming consciousness in the kama-loka, the devachani begins the sequence of blissful spiritual mentation, which is not so different from the type of consciousness an individual has when he has pleasant dreams. We may call it 'self-consciousness' if we wish, for that is what it is in a sense; but it is the swapna state of self-consciousness, and not the jagrat state of the imbodied human being.
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