Death - and After? by Annie Besant (best english novels to read txt) 📕

bath for fear of getting faint in it and
drowned (for we all know of such cases), nor should a man do
his duty, least of all sacrifice himself for even a laudable
and highly beneficial cause as many of us do. Motive is
everything, and man is punished in a case of direct
responsibility, never otherwise. In the victim's case the
natural hour of death was anticipated_ accidentally, _while
in that of the suicide death is brought on voluntarily and
with a full and deliberate knowledge of its immediate
consequences. Thus a man who causes his death in a fit of
temporary insanity is_ not _a_ felo de se, _to the great
grief and often trouble of the Life Insurance Companies. Nor
is he left a prey to the temptations of the Kamaloka, but
falls_ asleep _like any other victim._

The population of Kamaloka is thus recruited with a peculiarly dangerous element by all the acts of violence, legal and illegal, which wrench the physical body from the soul and send the latter into Kamaloka clad in the desire body, throbbing with pulses of hatred, passion, emotion, palpitating with longings for revenge, with unsatiated lusts. A murderer in the body is not a pleasant member of society, but a murderer suddenly expelled from the body is a far more dangerous entity; society may protect itself against the first, but in its present state of ignorance it is defenceless as against the second.

Finally, the Immortal Triad sets itself free from the desire body, and passes out of Kamaloka; the Higher Manas draws back its Ray, coloured with the life-scenes it has passed through, and carrying with it the experiences gained through the personality it has informed. The labourer is called in from the field, and he returns home bearing his sheaves with him, rich or poor, according to the fruitage of the life. When the Triad has quitted Kamaloka, it passes wholly out of the sphere of earth attractions:

_As soon as it has stepped outside the Kamaloka--crossed the
"Golden Bridge" leading to the "Seven Golden Mountains"--the
Ego can confabulate no more with easy-going mediums._

There are some exceptional possibilities of reaching such an Ego, that will be explained later, but the Ego is out of the reach of the ordinary medium and cannot be recalled into the earth-sphere. But ere we follow the further course of the Triad, we must consider the fate of the now deserted desire body, left as a mere _reliquum_ in Kamaloka.



KAMALOKA. THE SHELLS.

The Shell is the desire body, emptied of the Triad, which has now passed onwards; it is the third of the transitory garments of Soul, cast aside and left in Kamaloka to disintegrate.

When the past earth-life has been noble, or even when it has been of average purity and utility, this Shell retains but little vitality after the passing onwards of the Triad, and rapidly dissolves. Its molecules, however, retain, during this process of disintegration, the impressions made upon them during the earth-life, the tendency to vibrate in response to stimuli constantly experienced during that period. Every student of physiology is familiar with what is termed automatic action, with the tendency of cells to repeat vibrations originally set up by purposive action; thus are formed what we term habits, and we unconsciously repeat motions which at first were done with thought. So strong is this automatism of the body, that, as everyone knows by experience, it is difficult to break off the use of a phrase or of a gesture that has become "habitual."

Now the desire body is during earth-life the recipient of and the respondent to all stimuli from without, and it also continually receives and responds to stimuli from the lower Manas. In it are set up habits, tendencies to repeat automatically familiar vibrations, vibrations of love and desire, vibrations imaging past experiences of all kinds. Just as the hand may repeat a familiar gesture, so may the desire body repeat a familiar feeling or thought. And when the Triad has left it, this automatism remains, and the Shell may thus simulate feelings and thoughts which are empty of all true intelligence and will. Many of the responses to eager enquiries at _seances_ come from such Shells, drawn to the neighbourhood of friends and relatives by the magnetic attractions so long familiar and dear, and automatically responding to the waves of emotion and remembrance, to the impulse of which they had so often answered during the lately closed earth-life. Phrases of affection, moral platitudes, memories of past events, will be all the communications such Shells can make, but these may be literally poured out under favourable conditions under the magnetic stimuli freely applied by the embodied friends and relatives.

In cases where the lower Manas during earth-life has been strongly attached to material objects and to intellectual pursuits directed by a self-seeking motive, the desire body may have acquired a very considerable automatism of an intellectual character, and may give forth responses of considerable intellectual merit. But still the mark of non-originality will be present: the apparent intellectuality will only give out reproductions, and there will be no sign of the new and independent thought which would be the inevitable outcome of a strong intelligence working with originality amid new surroundings. Intellectual sterility brands the great majority of communications from the "spirit world"; reflections of earthly scenes, earthly conditions, earthly arrangements, are plentiful, but we usually seek in vain for strong, new thought, worthy of Intelligences freed from the prison of the flesh. The communications of a loftier kind occasionally granted are, for the most part, from non-human Intelligences, attracted by the pure atmosphere of the medium or sitters.

And there is an ever-present danger in this commerce with the Shells. Just because they are Shells, and nothing more, they answer to the impulses that strike on them from without, and easily become malicious and mischievous, automatically responding to evil vibrations. Thus a medium, or sitters of poor moral character, will impress the Shells that flock around them with impulses of a low order, and any animal desires, petty and foolish thoughts, will set up similar vibrations in the blindly responsive Shells.

Again, the Shell is very easily taken possession of by Elementals, the semi-conscious forces working in the kingdoms of Nature, and may be used by them as a convenient vehicle for many a prank and trick. The etheric double of the medium, and the desire bodies emptied of their immortal Tenants, give the material basis by which Elementals can work many a curious and startling result; and frequenters of _seances_ may be confidently appealed to, and asked whether many of the childish freaks with which they are familiar--pullings of hair, pinchings, slaps, throwing about of objects, piling up of furniture, playing on accordions, &c.--are not more rationally accounted for as the tricky vagaries of sub-human forces, than as the actions of "spirits" who, while in the body, were certainly incapable of such vulgarities.

Let us leave the Shells alone to peacefully dissolve into their elements, and mingle once again in the crucible of Nature. The authors of the _Perfect Way_ put very well the real character of the Shell.

The true "ghost" consists of the exterior and earthly portion
of the Soul, that portion which, being weighted with cares,
attachments, and memories merely mundane, is detached by the
Soul and remains in the astral sphere, an existence more or
less definite and personal, and capable of holding, through a
sensitive, converse with the living. It is, however, but as a
cast-off vestment of the Soul, and is incapable of endurance
_as ghost_. The true Soul and real person, the _anima
divina_, parts at death with all those lower affections
which would have retained it near its earthly haunts.[24]

If we would find our beloved, it is not among the decaying remnants in Kamaloka that we should seek them. "Why seek ye the living among the dead?"



KAMALOKA. THE ELEMENTARIES.

The word "Elementary" has been so loosely used that it has given rise to a good deal of confusion. It is thus defined by H.P. Blavatsky:

Properly, the disembodied _souls_ of the depraved; these
souls having, at some time prior to death, separated from
themselves their divine spirits, and so lost their chance for
immortality. But at the present stage of learning it has been
thought best to apply the term to the spooks or phantoms of
disembodied persons, in general to those whose temporary
habitation is the Kamaloka.... Once divorced from their
higher Triads and their bodies, these souls remain in their
Kama Rupic envelopes, and are irresistibly drawn to the earth
amid elements congenial to their gross natures. Their stay in
the Kamaloka varies as to its duration; but ends invariably
in disintegration, dissolving like a column of mist, atom by
atom, in the surrounding elements.[25]

Students of this series of Manuals know that it is possible for the lower Manas to so entangle itself with Kama as to wrench itself away from its source, and this is spoken of in Occultism as "the loss of the Soul."[26] It is, in other words, the loss of the personal self, which has separated itself from its Parent, the Higher Ego, and has thus doomed itself to perish. Such a Soul, having thus separated itself from the Immortal Triad during its earth-life, becomes a true Elementary, after it has quitted the dense and etheric bodies. Then, clad in its desire body, it lives for awhile, for a longer or shorter time according to the vigour of its vitality, a wholly evil thing, dangerous and malignant, seeking to renew its fading vitality by any means laid open to it by the folly or ignorance of still embodied souls. Its ultimate fate is, indeed, destruction, but it may work much evil on its way to its self-chosen doom.

The word Elementary is, however, very often used to describe the lower Manas in its garment the desire body, not broken away from the higher Principles, but not yet absorbed into its Parent, the Higher Manas. Such Elementaries may be in any stage of progress, harmless or mischievous.

Some writers, again, use Elementary as a synonym for Shell, and so cause increased confusion. The word should at least be restricted to the desire body _plus_ lower Manas, whether that lower Manas be disentangling itself from the kamic elements, in order that it may be re-absorbed into its source, or separated from the Higher Ego, and therefore on the road to destruction.



DEVACHAN.

Among the various conceptions presented by the Esoteric Philosophy, there are few, perhaps, which the Western mind has found more difficulty in grasping than that of Devachan, or Devasthan, the Devaland, or land