The Life Beyond Death
Chapter VIII Astral Plane Geography
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, willprove 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 esingle 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 substancenor 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 heartfs desires come
true, of ideals made real - than in a heaven of the cessation of
unfoldment and creative endeavor, 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 weconsider
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.
