| QUOTE |
| It is generally assumed that very little is known about what happens when we die. There are numerous accounts from spiritualist sources but they are not consistent among themselves in important detail. All religions have some teaching on the subject, but it is usually unspecific or incomplete, and often not convincing, especially to those of us of an enquiring mind. The account given in this book, even if regarded as only a theory based on a number of basic postulates, is at least reasonably complete and, if these postulates are accepted, credible. Some of them are confirmed by our common experience: for example, the cyclic nature of Nature's operations - days and nights, the seasons of the year. When used in the context of life and death, they certainly provide us with considerable food for thought. It is claimed by Those who know that these postulates are facts. The idea that they are indeed facts and that they can be known appears more and more feasible as we begin to see something of the whole picture presented in this book. Broadly, the claim that there can be such knowledge is based on the tradition that there are men who possess it. It is posited that there are, beyond the human kingdom, evolutionary stages attainable by all of us, in time. Progress into these higher stages will, however, not be physical but subjective, that is, it will be by means of inner faculties not yet active within most of us at present. These faculties reach a point where an individual so developed is able to perceive the inner workings of Nature. This is not psychism but spiritual vision, something quite different from normal clairvoyance. By its means, even the thoughts and emotions of others become perceptible. These are the internal subjective activities that it is said we indulge in, although to a much lesser degree, after death, when we are in a corresponding subjective state. Normally in our daily lives our thoughts and emotions are quite private to ourselves, but this is not so to these spiritually developed individuals. They are known traditionally by various names: in this book the terms Adepts, Initiates, Masters or Masters of Wisdom are used. To be more specific about the degree of their attainment, it is recognized that they are men who have worked out through many lives all the defects, deficiencies and limitations of the personal man. As we shall see, man has a divine spiritual component to his nature, such that when he can function consciously at that level he not only knows his own divinity (God) but also becomes virtually omniscient relative to even the highest genius in ordinary humanity. This omniscience extends into the inner realms of Nature. It is here that, to some extent, we ourselves are, not only in normal thought but also in the after-death states. The Adepts can function consciously in these realms and therefore know the states and activities in them of those we call the dead. Quoting one of the Masters, a little out of context: We tell you what we know, for we are made to learn it through personal experience. [M.L. 128:131] Needless to say, Masters of this stature appear very rarely in the annals of the world's history, and in their life-times they were never publicly known for what they were. Among reputed Adepts or Initiates were Plato, Pythagoras, Apollonius of Tyana, and Paracelsus. Some of their more occult teachings, apart from a great mass of religious and philosophical literature known to mankind throughout the centuries, were made public for the first time at the end of the last century. This was done in some letters written by two of them to a Mr A.P. Sinnett (a journalist working in India at the time) and in the writings of one of their pupils, Mme H.P. Blavatsky. Mme Blavatsky received a letter posing the question: "Enough has been given out at various times regarding the conditions of post-mortem existence, to furnish a solid block of information on this point. The writer would be glad to be told where this information may be found. Is it in print? Or must one be an Occultist enough to find it out in the "Symbology" of the Bible for himself?" Her reply: It is certainly necessary to be an "Occultist" before the post-mortem states of man can be correctly understood and realized, for this can only be accomplished through the actual experience of one who has the faculty of placing his consciousness on the Kamalokic and Devachanic planes. But a good deal has been given out in The Theosophist. Much also can be learnt from the symbology not only of the Bible but of all religions, especially the Egyptian and the Hindu. Only again the key to that symbology is in the keeping of the Occult Sciences and their Custodians. [C.W.IX, 171] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Many of the expressions in the extracts and the literature are in English spelling (moulded for molded, favourable for favorable, etc.), and some of the expressions in the quoted passages from these writings are not in today's conventional English but are easily understood. No apology is made for the number and, in some cases, the length of these quotations, as they constitute the prime source of our information. Without these Letters we would have little more idea of the after-death states than common speculation provides. Words inserted in the quoted extracts in square brackets are added into the text by the author of this book. The quoted passages are from the following sources: M.L. = The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett; two editions; page numbers to the 3rd edition are given first, those to the 1st and 2nd editions second, e.g. M.L. 128:131. The extracts are from the 2nd edition. Key = The Key to Theosophy by H.P. Blavatsky; there are various editions of this work with different page numbering. Here chapter and page numbers refer to the original edition. C.W. = The Collected Writings of H.P. Blavatsky; edited by Boris de Zirkoff in fourteen volumes, I to XIV. S.D. = The Secret Doctrine by H.P. Blavatsky; first and second editions, originally in two volumes, I and II, but later published in a third edition with different page numbering, when a third volume, III, and an Index, were added. Later still a fourth edition, known as the Adyar edition, in six volumes including an Index, came out, and this also had its own page numbering. The references here quoted are to the original edition. T.G. = The Theosophical Glossary by H.P. Blavatsky and others. |
| QUOTE |
| Devachan is not, cannot be, monotonous; for this would be contrary to all analogies and antagonistic to the laws of effects, under which results are proportionate to antecedent energies. 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. The dream of Devachan lasts until Karma is satisfied in that direction, until the ripple of force reaches the edge of its cyclic basin and the being moves into the next area of causes. That particular one moment which will be most intense and uppermost in the thoughts of the dying brain at the moment of dissolution, will regulate all subsequent moments. The moment thus selected becomes the key-note of the whole harmony, around which cluster in endless variety ail the aspirations and desires which in connection with that moment had ever crossed the dreamer’s brain during his lifetime, without being realized on earth, — the theme modelling itself on, and taking shape from, that group of desires which was most intense during life. In Devachan there is no cognizance of time, of which the Devachanee loses all sense. (To realize the bliss of Devachan or the woes of Avitchi you have to assimilate them as we do.) The a priori ideas of space and time do not control his perceptions; for he absolutely creates and annihilates them at the same time. Physical existence has its cumulative intensity from infancy to prime, and its diminishing energy to dotage and death; so the dream-life of Devachan is lived correspondentially. Nature cheats no more the devachanee than she does the living physical man. Nature provides for him far more real bliss and happiness there than she does here, where all the conditions of evil and chance are against him. To call the devachan existence a "dream" in any other sense than that of a conventional term, is to renounce forever the knowledge of the esoteric doctrine, the sole custodian of truth. 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 the lives in Devachan and upon earth shall be respectively in each instance is determined by Karma, and this weary round of birth must be ever and ever run through until the being reaches the end of the seventh round, or attains in the interim the wisdom of an Arhat, then that of a Buddha, and thus gets relieved for a round or two, having learned how to burst through the vicious circle and to pass into Para-nirvana. A colorless, flavorless personality has a colorless, feeble devachanic state. 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 Devachanee 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. Two sympathetic souls will each work out their own devachanic sensations, making the other a sharer in its subjective bliss, yet each is dissociated from the other as regards actual mutual intercourse; for what companionship could there be between subjective entities which are not even as material as that Etherial body — the Mayavi Rupa? The stay in Devachan is proportionate to the unexhausted psychic impulses originating in earth life. Those whose attractions were preponderatingly material will sooner be drawn back into rebirth by the force of Tanha. The reward provided by nature for men who are benevolent in a large, systematic way, and who have not focused their affections on an individual or speciality, is that if pure they pass the quicker for that thro’ the Kama and Rupa lokas into the higher sphere of Tribuvana, since it is one where the formulation of abstract ideas and the consideration of general principles fill the thought of its occupant. |
| QUOTE |
| Deva Chan: The "dwelling of the gods". A state intermediate between two earth-lives, into which the Ego (Atma, Buddhi, Manas, or Trinity made One) enters, after its separation from Kama-rupa, and the disintegration of the lower principles on earth. |
| QUOTE (Nick the Pilot @ Mar 25 2008, 02:17 PM) |
| Nicholas, This brings up an important concept: the difference between Heaven and Devachan. (I use the name "Buddhist Heaven" to refer to the Pureland.) I just hope everyone is clear on the difference between Heaven and Devachan. |
| QUOTE |
| The Devachan, or land of "Sukhavati," is allegorically described by our Lord Buddha himself. What he said may be found in the Shan-aun-yi-tung. Says Tathagata: "Many thousand myriads of systems beyond this (ours) there is a region of bliss called Sukhavati. This region is encircled within seven rows of railings, seven rows of vast curtains, seven rows of waving trees; this holy abode of Arahats is governed by the Tathagatas [Dhyan Chohans] and is possessed by the Bodhisatwas. It hath seven precious lakes in the midst from which flow crystal waters, having 'seven and one' properties or distinctive qualities [the seven principles emanating from the One]. This, O Saryambra, is the 'Devachan'. Its divine udambara flower casts a root in the shadow of every earth, and blossoms for all those who reach it. Those born in the blessed region are truly felicitous; there are no more griefs or sorrows in that cycle for them myriads of Spirits resort there for rest, and then return to their own regions. Again in that land, O Saryambra, many who are born in it are Ardivartyas," etc. |