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

instead of his tyrant. In the partial freedom of Devachan he assimilates his experiences on earth, still partly dominated by them--at first, indeed, almost completely dominated by them so that the devachanic life is merely a sublimated continuation of the earth-life--but gradually freeing himself more and more as he recognises them as transitory and external, until he can move through any region of our universe with unbroken self-consciousness, a true Lord of Mind, the free and triumphant God. Such is the triumph of the Divine Nature manifested in the flesh, the subduing of every form of matter to be the obedient instrument of Spirit. Thus the Master said:

_The spiritual Ego of the man moves in eternity like a
pendulum between the hours of life and death, but if these_
_hours, the periods of life terrestrial and life posthumous,
are limited in their continuation, and even the very number
of such breaks in eternity between sleep and waking, between
illusion and reality, have their beginning as well as their
end, the spiritual Pilgrim himself is eternal. Therefore the_
hours of his posthumous life, _when unveiled he stands face
to face with truth, and the short-lived mirages of his
terrestrial existence are far from him,_ compose _or make up,
in our ideas,_ the only reality. _Such breaks, in spite of
the fact that they are finite, do double service to the
Sutratma, which, perfecting itself constantly, follows
without vacillation, though very slowly, the road leading to
its last transformation, when, reaching its aim at last, it
becomes a Divine Being. They not only contribute to the
reaching of this goal, but without these finite breaks
Sutratma-Buddhi could never reach it. Sutratma is the actor,
and its numerous and different incarnations are the actor's
parts. I suppose you would not apply to these parts, and so
much the less to their costumes, the term of personality.
Like an actor the soul is bound to play, during the cycle of
births up to the very threshold of Parinirvana, many such
parts, which often are disagreeable to it, but like a bee,
collecting its honey from every flower, and leaving the rest
to feed the worms of the earth, our spiritual individuality,
the Sutratma, collecting only the nectar of moral qualities
and consciousness from every terrestrial personality in which
it has to clothe itself, forced by Karma, unites at last all
these qualities in one, having then become a perfect being, a
Dhyan Chohan._[30]

It is very significant, in this connection, that every devachanic stage is conditioned by the earth-stage that precedes it, and the Man can only assimilate in Devachan the kinds of experience he has been gathering on earth.

_A colourless, flavourless personality has a colourless,
feeble Devachanic state._[31]

Husband, father, student, patriot, artist, Christian, Buddhist--he must work out the effects of his earth-life in his devachanic life; he cannot eat and assimilate more food than he has gathered; he cannot reap more harvest than he has sown seed. It takes but a moment to cast a seed into a furrow; it takes many a month for that seed to grow into the ripened ear; but according to the kind of the seed is the ear that grows from it, and according to the nature of the brief earth-life is the grain reaped in the field of Aanroo.

_There is a change of occupation, a continual change in
Devachan, just as much and far more than there is in the life
of any man or woman who happens to follow in his or her whole
life one sole occupation, whatever it may be, with this
difference, that to the Devachani this spiritual occupation
is always pleasant and fills his life with rapture. Life in
Devachan is the function of the aspirations of earth-life;
not the indefinite prolongation of that "single instant," but
its infinite developments, the various incidents and events
based upon and outflowing from that one "single moment" or
moments. The dreams of the objective become the realities of
the subjective existence.... The reward provided by Nature
for men who are benevolent in a large systematic way, and who
have not focussed their affections on an individual or
speciality, is that, if pure, they pass the quicker for
that through the Kama and Rupa Lokas into the higher sphere
of Tribhuvana, since it is one where the formulation of
abstract ideas and the consideration of general principles
fill the thought of its occupant._[32]

Into Devachan enters nothing that defileth, for gross matter has been left behind with all its attributes on earth and in Kamaloka. But if the sower has sowed but little seed, the devachanic harvest will be meagre, and the growth of the Soul will be delayed by the paucity of the nutriment on which it has to feed. Hence the enormous importance of the earth-life, _the field of sowing, the place where experience is to be gathered_. It conditions, regulates, limits, the growth of the Soul; it yields the rough ore which the Soul then takes in hand, and works upon during the devachanic stage, smelting it, forging it, tempering it, into the weapons it will take back with it for its next earth-life. The experienced Soul in Devachan will make for itself a splendid instrument for its next earth-life; the inexperienced one will forge a poor blade enough; but in each case the only material available is that brought from earth. In Devachan the Soul, as it were, sifts and sorts out its experiences; it lives a comparatively free life, and gradually gains the power to estimate the earthly experiences at their real value; it works out thoroughly and completely as objective realities all the ideas of which it only conceived the germ on earth. Thus, noble aspiration is a germ which the Soul would work out into a splendid realisation in Devachan, and it would bring back with it to earth for its next incarnation that mental image, to be materialised on earth when opportunity offers and suitable environment presents itself. For the mind sphere is the sphere of creation, and earth only the place for materialising the pre-existent thought. And the soul is as an architect that works out his plans in silence and deep meditation, and then brings them forth into the outer world where his edifice is to be builded; out of the knowledge gained in his past life, the Soul draws his plans for the next, and he returns to earth to put into objective material form the edifices he has planned. This is the description of a Logos in creative activity:

Whilst Brahma formerly, in the beginning of the Kalpas, was
meditating on creation, there appeared a creation beginning
with ignorance and consisting of darkness.... Brahma,
beholding that it was defective, designed another; and whilst
he thus meditated, the animal creation was manifested....
Beholding this creation also imperfect, Brahma again
meditated, and a third creation appeared, abounding with the
quality of goodness.[33]

The objective manifestation follows the mental meditation; first idea, then form. Hence it will be seen that the notion current among many Theosophists that Devachan is waste time, is but one of the illusions due to the gross matter that blinds them, and that their impatience of the idea of Devachan arises from the delusion that fussing about in gross matter is the only real activity. Whereas, in truth, all effective action has its source in deep meditation, and out of the Silence comes ever the creative Word. Action on this plane would be less feeble and inefficient if it were the mere blossom of the profound root of meditation, and if the Soul embodied passed oftener out of the body into Devachan during earth-life, there would be less foolish action and consequent waste of time. For Devachan is a state of consciousness, the consciousness of the Soul escaped for awhile from the net of gross matter, and may be entered at any time by one who has learned to withdraw his Soul from the senses as the tortoise withdraws itself within its shell. And then, coming forth once more, action is prompt, direct, purposeful, and the time "wasted" in meditation is more than saved by the directness and strength of the mind-engendered act.

Devachan is the sphere of the mind, as said, it is the land of the Gods, or the Souls. In the before quoted "Notes on Devachan" we read:

_There are two fields of causal manifestations: the objective
and the subjective. The grosser energies find their outcome
in the new personality of each birth in the cycle of
evoluting individuality. The moral and spiritual activities
find their sphere of effects in Devachan._

As the moral and spiritual activities are the most important, and as on the development of these depends the growth of the true Man, and therefore the accomplishing of "the object of creation, the liberation of Soul", we may begin to understand something of the vast importance of the devachanic state.



THE DEVACHANI.

When the Triad has shaken off its last garment, it crosses the threshold of Devachan, and becomes "a Devachani". We have seen that it is in a peaceful dreamy state before this passage out of the earth sphere, the "second death", or "pre-devachanic unconsciousness". This condition is otherwise spoken of as the "gestation" period, because it precedes the birth of the Ego into the devachanic life. Regarded from the earth-sphere the passage is death, while regarded from that of Devachan it is birth. Thus we find in "Notes on Devachan":

_As in actual earth-life, so there is for the Ego in Devachan
the first flutter of psychic life, the attainment of prime,
the gradual exhaustion of force passing into
semi-consciousness and lethargy, total oblivion, and--not
death but birth, birth into another personality, and the
resumption of action which daily begets new congeries of
causes that must be worked out in another term of Devachan,
and still another physical birth as a new personality. What