The Life Beyond Death
Chapter XIII Astral Plane
Occupation
Regarding the question of occupation
in the heaven-world - the Astral Plane - the following from
a well-known writer on the subject, Mr. A. P. Sinnett, will
prove interesting and instructive:
Readers, however, who may grant that a purview of
earthly life from heaven would render happiness in heaven
impossible, may still doubt whether true happiness is
possible in the state of monotonous isolation now described.
The objection is merely raised from the point of view of an
imagination that cannot escape from its present
surroundings. To begin with, about monotony.
No one will complain of having experienced monotony
during the minute, or moment, or half-hour, as it may have
been, of the greatest happiness he may have enjoyed in life.
Most people have had some happy moments, at all events, to
look back to for the purpose of this comparison; and let us
take even one such minute or moment, too short to be open to
the least suspicion of monotony, and imagine its sensations
immensely prolonged without any external events in progress
to mark the lapse of time.
There is no room, in such a condition of things, for
the conception of weariness. The unalloyed, unchangeable
sensation of intense happiness goes on and on, not forever,
because the causes which have produced it are not infinite
themselves, but for very long periods of time, until the
efficient impulse has exhausted itself.
Another high authority on the subject (quoted by
Sinnett)says:
"The moral and spiritual qualities have to find a
field in which their energies can expand themselves.
Devachan (the higher Astral Plane) is such a field. Hence,
all the great planes of moral reform, of intellectual
research into abstract principles of Nature - all the
divine, spiritual, aspirations that so fill the brightest
part of life, in Devachan come to fruition; and the abstract
entity occupies itself in this inner world, also of its own
preparation, in enjoying the effects of the grand beneficial
spiritual causes sown in life. It lives a purely and
spiritually conscious existence - a dream of realistic
vividness - until Karma, being satisfied in that direction
the being moves into its next era of causes, either in this
same world or another,according to its stage of progression.
Therefore, there is a change of occupation, a continual
change, in Devachan. For that dream-life is but the
fruition, the harvest-time, of those psychic germs dropped
from the tree of physical existence in our moments of dream
and hope - fancy glimpses of bliss and
happiness, stifled in an ungrateful social soil,
blooming in the rosy dawn of Devachan, and ripening under
its ever - fructifying sky. If man had but a single moment
of ideal experience, not even then could it be, as
erroneously supposed, the indefinite prolongation of that
single moment.
That one note struck from the lyre of life, would
form the key-note of the being's subjective state, and work
out into numberless harmonic tones and semi-tones of psychic
phantasmagoria. There all unrealized hopes, aspirations and
dreams, become fully realized, and the dreams of the
objective become the realities of the subjective existence.
And there, beyond the curtain of Maya, its vaporous and
deceptive appearances are perceived by the Initiate, who has
learned the great secret how to penetrate thus deep into the
Arcana of Being.
The same authority continues:
"To object to this on the ground that one is thus
cheated by Nature, and to call it a delusive sensation of
enjoyment which has no reality is to show oneself utterly
unfit to comprehend the conditions of life and being outside
of our material existence. For how can the same distinction
be made in Devachan. i. e. outside of the conditions of
earth-life - between what we call a reality, and a
fictitious or an artificial counterfeit of the same, in
this, our world. The same principle cannot apply to the two
sets of conditions.
The spiritual soul has no substance nor is it
confined to one place with a limited horizon of perceptions
around it. Therefore, whether in or out of its mortal body,
it is ever distinct, and free from its limitations; and, if
we call its Devanchanic experiences each eating of nature,
then we should never be allowed to call reality any of those
purely abstract feelings that belong entirely to, and are
reflected and assimilated by, our higher soul-such, for
instance, as an ideal perception of the beautiful, profound
philanthropy, love, etc., as well as every other purely
spiritual sensation that during life fills our inner being
with either immense pain or joy.
Surely to the aspiring soul there is a far greater
happiness in the thought of a heaven-world in which shall be
worked out the problems of this life - in which the creative
impulse shall be given full opportunity for unfoldment and
development, to the end that in a newer and fuller life to
come there shall be a putting forth of blossom and fruit, of
heart's desires come true, of ideals made real - than in a
heaven of the cessation of unfoldment and creative
endeavour, where all is finished, where there is nothing to
be done or created, where there is no occupation but to fold
hands end enjoy the bliss of eternal idleness. The creative
instinct is from the very heart of Nature herself, the
throbbing of her own life-blood, for Nature is ever at work,
creating, doing, performing, becoming, making,
achieving - forever, and ever, and ever, on, and on,
and on, without ceasing, rising from greater to greater
achievement, as the aeons of time fly by. Verily this alone
is life, and:
"All other
life is living death, a land where none but phantoms dwell;
A wind, a sound, a breath, a voice; the tinkling of
the Camel's bell.
And yet so grounded in materiality is the world of
men, that they would speak of the heaven-world of the higher
Astral Plane as a mirage, a mere dream, a phantasm. They
consider nothing real unless it is on the material plane.
Poor mortals, they do not realize that, at the last, there
can be nothing more unreal, more dreamlike, more transitory,
more phantasmal, than this very world of material substance.
They are not aware that in it there is absolutely no
permanence - that the mind itself is not quick enough to
catch a glimpse of material reality, for, before the mind
can grasp a material fact, the fact has merged into
something else.
The world of mind, and still more true, the world of
spirit, is far more real than is the world of materiality.
From the spiritual viewpoint there is nothing at all real
but Spirit; and matter is regarded as the most fleeting and
unreal of all illusory appearances. From the same viewpoint,
the higher in the scale one rises above the material plane,
the more real becomes the phenomena experienced. Therefore,
it follows, that the experiences of the soul on the higher
Astral Plane are not only not unreal in nature, but, by
comparison, are far more real than the experiences of life
on the material plans. As the writers just quoted have well
said, Nature is not cheated on the Astral Plane - but Nature
herself manifests with more real effect on that plane than
on the material plane. This is a hard saying for the
uninitiated - but the advanced soul becomes more and more
convinced of its truth every succeeding hour of its
experience.
It is a grievous error to regard the experiences of
the soul in the heaven-world as little more than a playing
at reality, as some materialistic critics has termed it. One
has but to turn to the experiences even of the earth-life to
see that some of the world's best work is performed in the
hours other than those employed in the actual fashioning of
the things. There are times in the everyday life of
the most active workers of the world which may be called the
ideal period - that is, the time in which the mind creates
and forms that which is afterward manifested in material
form. There has never been a building, nor a bridge, nor any
other great work of human hands, erected, unless first it
has been created in the mind of some man or men. It has had
its first existence in the creative faculties of the mind-
the material building is merely the reproduction of the
mental creation. This, being remembered, which shall we
consider the real creation, the mental or the material?
The soul, in its activities on the higher Astral
Plane, performs a work similar to that of the mind of the
inventor, designer, builder, when it fashions and designs
that which will afterward be objectified in material form.
It may be called the period or stage of forming the model,
or pattern, or mould, which shall afterward serve for the
material manifestation. Ignorance, alone, can conceive of
such a stage of existence as being a mere dream.
Verily, the scales of matter serve to blind the eyes
of man, so that he sees the real as the unreal- the unreal
as the real. The higher in the scale of existence the soul
rises, the more real are its experiences- the nearer it
approaches matter, in its descent of the scale, the more
unreal are its experiences. Ah, Maya! Maya! thou mother of
illusion, when shall we learn to rise above thy spell! Those
who play in the clay, are besmeared by it, and can see
nothing finer and higher than its sticky substance.