In the quotation from the occult writer, given in the
preceding chapter, the following statement is made: gEach man
is his own absolute law-giver, the dispenser of glory or gloom
to himself, the decreer of his life, his reward, his punishment.
And this is true not only in earth-life, but also doubly true of
the life of the soul on the Astral Plane. For each disembodied
soul carries with it its own heaven or hell, of its own
creation, and of its favorite belief, and partakes of the
blessings or sorrows of each, according to its merits. But the
Judge who sentences it to reward or punishment is not a Power
outside of itself, but a Power Within - in short, its own
conscience. On the Astral Plane the conscience of the soul
asserts itself very forcibly, and the still, quiet voice, that
was perhaps smothered during earth-life, now speaks in
trumpet-like tones, and the soul hears and obeys.
A man's own conscience, when allowed to speak clearly and
forcibly, is the most severe Judge that exists. Stripping aside
all self-deception, and hypocrisy, conscious or unconscious, it
causes the soul to stand forth naked and bare to its own
spiritual gaze. And the soul, speaking as its own conscience,
sentences itself in accordance with its own conceptions of right
and wrong, and accepts its fate as merited and just. Man can fly
from the judgment of others - but he can never escape from his
own conscience on the Astral Plane. He finds himself unable to
escape from the judgment seat of conscience, and he leads
himself away to his reward or punishment. Such is the poetic
justice of Nature, which far exceeds any conception of mortal
man in his religious speculations.
And, note the absolute equity and justice of it all. Man is
judged according to the highest standards of his own soul,
which, of course, represent the standards of his time and
environment.
The best in himself - the highest of which he is capable -
judges and passes upon all in him below that standard. The
result of this is that what the highest reason conceives as
absolute justice is meted out by the soul to itself. The leading
thinkers of the race almost unanimously agree that any arbitrary
standard of punishment, such as is expressed by the criminal
codes of the race, must necessarily fall far short of meting out
invariable actual justice. For the environment and education of
the criminal may have been such that the commission of the crime
is almost natural to him; while the same crime, committed by
another, would be the result of a direct betrayal of his
conscience and a breaking of a moral law of which he is fully
aware and conscious.
We would hardly call it criminal for the fox to steal a chicken,
or for the cat slyly to lap milk from the bowl on the table.
There are many human beings whose sense of moral right and wrong
is but little above that of the above named animals. Therefore,
even human law, at least theoretically aims not to punish, but
to restrain by example and precept.
In connection with the thought expressed in the preceding
paragraph, we must remember that absolute justice has no place
for punishment as such. As we have said, theoretically at least,
even human law does not seek to punish the criminal, but merely
seeks the following ends, viz: (1) To warn others not to commit
a like crime; (2) to restrain the criminal from committing
further crime, by confining him, or by imposing other deterring
penalties; (3) to reform the criminal by pointing out the
advantages of right action and the disadvantage of wrong action.
This being true even of finite human law, what should we expect
of infinite cosmic law, in this particular?
Surely, nothing more or less than a discipline which should
encourage the unfoldment of the ggoodh qualities of the soul,
and the smothering of the gevilh ones. And this is just what
the advanced occultist does find to exist on the Astral Plane.
In this connection, it must be remembered that the discipline
which would appeal most to the soul of lowly ideals, would be
without avail in the case of the cultured soul - and vice versa.
In short, it may truthfully be said that the nature of the
appropriate discipline in each individual case is well expressed
by the ideal of heaven and hell entertained by the individual in
earth-life, and which ideal, of course, remains with the soul
after it has passed from the body to the Astral Plane.
The mind of certain individuals is fully satisfied with the
ideals of a lake of brimstone for sinners, and the pleasant
abode in a golden-streeted heaven, with accompaniments of harp
and crown, for the blessed. Others, far advanced beyond this
stage,
having left behind them the old ideas of a heaven in space and a
hell of torment, think that the greatest happiness possible to
themselves would be a state or condition in which they could see
their ideals made real, their highest aims realized, their
dreams come true; and their greatest punishment a condition in
which they could follow up to its logical result the evil they
have done. And, both of these classes of souls find on the
AstralPlane the heavens and hells of which they have thought -
for both have created their heaven or hell from the material of
their own inner consciousness. And such mental conceptions lack
nothing of reality to those who are conscious of them - the joy
and suffering lose nothing of effect by reason of the absence of
the physical body.
On the Astral Plane, the gsinnerh who believes in a hell of
brimstone and flames, which awaits him by reason of the foul
crimes done in his days of nature,h is not disappointed. His
beliefs supply the necessary environment, and his conscience
condemns him to the punishment in which he believes. Even if he
has sought to disbelieve these things by the use of his reason,
and still retains the subconscious memories of his childhood
teachings or the traditions of his race, he will find himself in
the same condition. He will undergo the traditional tortures and
suffering (all in his imagination of course) until he receives a
valuable disciplinary lesson, the dim memories of which will
haunt him in the next incarnation. This, of course, is an
extreme case. There are many other degrees and grades of hells
carried over to the Astral Plane by souls of various shades of
religious belief. Each has the punishment which is best adapted
to exert a deterring influence and effect over him in his next
life.
The same is true of the ideal of heaven, The soul finds itself
enjoying the bliss of the blessed, according to its own ideals,
for the good deeds and acts it has to its credit in the
infallible books of its memory. Inasmuch as no soul has been
altogether bad, nor none absolutely good, it follows that each
soul has a taste both of reward and punishment, according to its
merits as determined by its awakened conscience. Or, stating it
in another way, the conscience strikes an average for it, which
average, likewise, agrees in detail with the prevailing belief
of the soul.
Those who in earth -life have deliberately brought themselves to
the conviction that there is no ghereafterh for the soul, have
a peculiar experience. They meet with their kind on a plane in
which they imagine that they have been transplanted toanother
planet and are still in the flesh. And there they are made
participants in a great drama of Karma, being made to suffer for
the miseries which they have wrought upon others, and to enjoy
blessings which they have bestowed upon others. They are not
punished for the unbelief -that would be unthinkable injustice
-but they learn the lesson of right and wrong in their own way.
This experience, likewise, is purely mental, and arises merely
from the expression in Astral manifestation of the memories of
their earth-life, urged on by the awakened conscience which
gives them an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, with a
vengeance.
Belief or disbelief in a future state, does not alter the cosmic
law of compensation and Astral purgation. The laws of Karma
cannot be defeated by a refusal to believe in a hereafter, nora
refusal to admit the distinction between right and wrong.
Every human being has, deep down under the surface though it may
be, an intuitive realization of a survival of the soul; and
every individual has a deep-seated consciousness of some sort of
a moral code. And these subconscious beliefs and opinions come
to the surface on the Astral Plane.
Those advanced souls who have given us the best and highest
reports of the life of the soul on the other side agree in
informing us that the highest bliss, and the deepest sorrow, of
the disembodied soul of intelligence and culture, comes in the
one case from perceiving the effect of the good actions and
thoughts of its earth-life, and, in the other case, from a
similar perception of the results of the evil thoughts and
actions of its earth-life. When the eyes of the soul are cleared
so that they may discern the tangled fabric of cause and effect,
and follow up each particular thread of its own insertion
therein, it has in itself a heaven and a hell of greater
intensity than anything of which Dante ever dreamed. There is no
joy of the disembodied soul comparable to that experienced from
perceiving the logical results of a right action and no sorrow
equal to that ofperceiving the result of evil action, with its
sickening thought of git might have been otherwise.
But, even these things pass away from the soul. In fact, they
often occupy but a moment of time, which seems to the soul as an
eternity. There is no such thing as eternal bliss or eternal
pain, on the Astral Plane. These things pass away, and the soul
emerges once more on earth-life, to once more enroll itself in
the School of Life, the Kindergarten of God, there to learn and
re-learn its lessons. And remember, always, that both the heaven
and the hell of each and every soul, abides in that soul itself.
Each soul creates its own heaven and hell - for neither have any
objective existence. The heaven and hell of each soul is the
result of its Karma, and is purely a mental creation of its own
being. But the phenomena is none the less real to the soul, for
this reason. There is nothing in its earth-life which ever
seemed more real to it. And again, remember, that heaven and
hell, on the Astral Plane, are not given as bribe or punishment,
respectively - but merely as a natural means of developing and
unfolding the higher qualities and restraining the lower, to the
end that the soul may advance on the Path.
So, once more, we see that in the words quoted at the beginning
of this chapter: Each man is his own absolute law-giver, the
dispenser of glory or gloom to himself, the decreer of his own
life, his reward, his punishment, on the Astral Plane. But life
on the Astral Plane does not consist entirely of heaven and
hell. There are joys experienced which have naught to do with
the good or evil deeds of earth-life, but which arise from the
urge to express one's own creative faculties, and to exercise
the intellect with increased power - the joys of expression and
knowledge, beyond which mortal cannot hope to experience.
In our next chapter we shall consider these phases of life on
the Astral Plane
