Theosophical manual. No. 6

The Devachanic Plane

THE HEAVEN WORLD

ITS CHARACTERISTICS AND INHABITANTS

by

C. W. Leadbeater

SECOND EDITION REVISED AND ENLARGED

THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY - LONDON AND BENARES

1902

PREFACE

Few words are needed in sending this little book out into the world. It is the sixth of a series of Manuals designed to meet the public demand for a simple exposition of Theosophical teachings. Some have complained that our literature is at once too abstruse, too technical, and too expensive for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope, that the present series may succeed in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy is not only for the learned; it is for all. Perhaps among those who in these little books catch their first glimpse of its teachings, there may be a few who will be led by them to penetrate more deeply into its philosophy, its science and its religion, facing its abstruser problems with the students zeal and -the neophyte's ardour. But these Manuals are not written only for the eager student, whom no initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy men and women of the work-a-day world, and seek to make plain some of the great truths that render life easier to bear and death easier to face. Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder Brothers of our race, they can have no other object than to serve our fellow-men.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Since further enquiry has shown that the word " Devachan" is etymologically inaccurate and misleading, the author would prefer to omit it altogether, and to issue this manual under the simpler and more descriptive title of "The Mental Plane." The publishers inform him, however, that this alteration of title would cause difficulties in the matter of copyright, and produce confusion in various ways, so he defers to their wishes.

CONTENTS			Page
Introduction.		The place of the mental plane in evolution — Difficulties of expression	1
General Characteristics		— A beautiful description — The bliss of the Heaven-World — Its intense vitality —A new method of cognition —Surroundings —The sea of light —The colour-language of the angels —The great waves —The lower and the higher heaven-worlds —The action of thought —The formation of artificial elementals —Thought-forms —The sub-planes —The records of the past	8
Inhabitants	I. Human	— The embodied — Adepts and their pupils—
		Those in sleep or trance .	30
		The disembodied —Their consciousness —The qualities necessary for the heaven-life —How a man first gains it	35
		The lower heavens, with examples from each	42
		The reality of the heaven-life	68
		The renunciation of heaven	72
		The higher heavens	76
	II. Non-Human	—The elemental essence —What it is — The veiling of the Spirit —The elemental kingdoms — How the essence evolves	87
		The animal kingdom	95
		The Devas —Their classes	96
	III. Artificial	Artificial	100
Conclusion		—The still higher planes	101

INTRODUCTION

In the previous manual an attempt was made to describe to some extent the astral plane — the lower part of the vast unseen world in the midst of which we live and move unheeding. In this little book must be undertaken the still harder task of trying to give some idea of the stage next above that — the mental plane or the heaven-world, often spoken of in our Theosophical literature as that of Devachan or Sukhâvatí.

Although, in calling this plane the heaven-world, we distinctly intend to imply that it contains the reality which underlies all the best and most spiritual ideas of heaven which have been propounded in various religions, yet it must by no means be considered from that point of view only. It is a realm of nature. which is of exceeding importance to us — a vast and splendid world of vivid life in which we are living now as well as in the periods intervening between physical incarnations. It is only our lack of development, only the limitation imposed upon us by this robe of flesh, that prevents us from fully realizing that all the glory of the highest heaven is about us here and now [page 2], and that influences flowing from that world are ever playing upon us if we will only understand and receive them. Impossible as this may seem to the man of the world, it is the plainest of realities to the occultist; and to those who have not yet grasped this fundamental truth we can but repeat the advice given by the Buddhist teacher:— " Do not complain and cry and pray, but open your eyes and see. The light is all about you, if you would only cast the bandage from your eyes and look. It is so wonderful, so beautiful, so far beyond what any man has dreamt of or prayed for, and it is for ever and for ever." (The Soul of a People, page 163.)

It is absolutely necessary for the student of Theosophy to realize this great truth, that there exist in nature various planes or divisions, each with its own matter of an appropriate degree of density, which in each case interpenetrates the matter of the plane next below it. It should also be clearly understood that the use of the words "higher" and " lower " with reference to these planes does not refer in any way to their position (since they all occupy the same space), but only to the degree of rarity of the matter of which they are respectively composed, or (in other words) the extent to which their matter is subdivided - for all matter of which we know anything is essentially the same, and differs only in the extent of its subdivision and the rapidity of its vibration.

It follows, therefore, that to speak of a man as passing from one of these planes to another does not in the least signify any kind of movement in space, but simply a change of consciousness. For every man has within himself matter belonging to every one of these planes, a vehicle corresponding to each, in which he can function upon it when he learns how this may be done. So that to pass, from one plane to another is to change the focus of the consciousness from one of the vehicles to another, to use for the time the [page 3] astral or, the mental body instead of the physical. For naturally each of these bodies responds only to the vibrations of its own plane; and so while the man's consciousness is focused in his astral body, he will perceive the astral world only, just as while our consciousness is using only the physical senses we perceive nothing but this physical-world —though both these worlds (and many others) are in existence and full activity all round us all the while. Indeed, all these planes together constitute in reality one mighty living whole, though as yet our feeble powers are capable of observing only a very small part of this at a time.

When considering this question of locality and interpenetration we must be on our guard against possible misconceptions. It should be understood that none of the three lower planes of the solar system is co-extensive with it except as regards a particular condition of the highest or atomic subdivision of each. Each physical globe has its physical plane (including its atmosphere), its astral plane, and its mental plane, all interpenetrating one another, and therefore occupying the same position in space, but all quite apart from and not communicating with the corresponding planes of any other globe. It is only when we rise to the lofty levels of the buddhic plane that we find a condition common to, at any rate, all the planets of our chain.

Notwithstanding this, there is, as stated above, a condition of the atomic matter of each of these planes which is cosmic in its extent; so that the seven atomic sub-planes of our system, taken apart from the rest, may be said to constitute one cosmic plane - the lowest, sometimes called the cosmic-prakritic. The interplanetary ether, for example, which appears to extend through the whole of space - indeed must do so, at least to the farthest visible star, otherwise our physical eyes could not perceive that star - is composed of physical ultimate atoms in their normal and uncompressed [page 4] condition. But all the lower and more complex forms of ether exist only (so far as is at present known) in connection with the various heavenly bodies, aggregated round them just as their atmosphere is, though probably extending considerably further from their surface.

Precisely the same is true of the astral and mental planes. The astral plane of our own earth interpenetrates it and its atmosphere, but also extends for some distance beyond the atmosphere. It may be remembered that this plane was called by the Greeks the sub-lunar world. The mental plane in its turn interpenetrates the astral, but also extends further into space than does the latter.

Only the atomic matter of each of these planes, and even that only in an entirely free condition, is co-extensive with the interplanetary ether, and consequently a person can no more pass from planet to planet even of our own chain in his astral body or his mind-body, than he can in his physical body. In the causal body, when very highly developed, this achievement is possible, though even then by no means with the ease and rapidity with which it can be done upon the buddhic plane by those who have succeeded in raising their consciousness to that level.

A clear comprehension of these facts will prevent the confusion that has sometimes been made by students between the mental plane of our earth and those other globes of our chain which exist on the mental plane. It must be understood that the seven globes of our chain are real globes, occupying definite and separate positions in space, notwithstanding the fact that some of them are not up in the physical plane. Globes A, B, F, and G are separate from us and from one another just in the same way as are Mars and the earth; the only difference is that whereas the latter have physical, astral and mental planes of their own, globes B and F have nothing below the astral plane, and A [page 5] and G nothing below the mental. The astral plane dealt with in Manual V and the mental plane which we are about to consider are those of this earth only, and have nothing to do with these other planets at all.

The mental plane upon which the heaven-life takes place, is the third of the five great planes with which humanity is at present concerned, having below it the astral and the physical, and above it the buddhic and the nirvânic. It is the plane upon which man, unless at an exceedingly early stage of his progress, spends by far the greater part of his time during the process of evolution; for, except in the case of the entirely undeveloped, the proportion of the physical life to the celestial is rarely much greater than one in twenty, and in the case of fairly good people it would sometimes fall as low as one in thirty. It is, in fact, the true and permanent home of the reincarnating ego or soul of man, each descent into incarnation being merely a short though important episode in his career. It is therefore well worth our while to devote to its study such time and care as may be necessary to acquire as thorough a comprehension of it as is possible for us while encased in the physical body.

Unfortunately there are practically insuperable difficulties in the way of any attempt to put the facts of this third plane of nature into language — and not unnaturally, for we often find words insufficient to express our ideas and feelings even on this lowest plane. Readers of The Astral Plane will remember what was there stated as to the impossibility of conveying any adequate conception of the marvels of that region to those whose experience had not as yet transcended the physical world; one can but say that every observation there made to that effect applies with tenfold force to the effort which is before us in this sequel to that treatise. Not only is the matter which we must endeavour to describe much further removed than is astral [page 6] matter from that to which we are accustomed, but the consciousness of that plane is so immensely wider than anything we can imagine down here, and its very conditions so entirely different, that when called upon to translate it all into mere ordinary words the explorer feels himself utterly at a loss, and can only trust that the intuition of his readers will supplement the inevitable imperfections of his description.

To take one only out of many possible examples of our difficulties, it would seem as though on this mental plane space and time were non-existent, for events which down here take place in succession and at widely-separated places, appear there to be occurring simultaneously and at the same point. That at least is the effect produced on the consciousness of the ego, though there are circumstances which favour the supposition that absolute simultaneity is the attribute of a still higher plane, and that the sensation of it in the heaven-world is simply the result of a succession so rapid that the infinitesimally minute spaces of time are indistinguishable, just as in the well-known optical experiment of whirling round a stick the end of which is red-hot, the eye receives the impression of a continuous ring of fire if the stick be whirled more than ten times a second; not because a continuous ring really exists, but because the average human eye is incapable of distinguishing as separate any similar impressions which follow one another at intervals of less than the tenth part of a second.

However that may be, the reader will readily comprehend that in the endeavour to describe a condition of existence so totally unlike that of physical life as is the one which we have to consider, it will be impossible to avoid saying many things that will be partly unintelligible and may even seem wholly incredible to those who have not personally experienced that higher life. That this should be so is, as I [page 7] have said, inevitable, so readers who find themselves unable to accept the report of our investigators must simply wait for a more satisfactory account of the heaven-world until they are able to examine it for themselves: I can only repeat the assurance previously given in The Astral Plane that all reasonable precautions have been taken to ensure accuracy. In this case as in that, we may say that " no fact, old or new, has been admitted to this treatise unless it has been confirmed by the testimony of at least two independent trained investigators among ourselves, and has also been passed as correct by older students whose knowledge on these points is necessarily much greater than ours. It is hoped, therefore, that this account, though it cannot be considered as complete, may yet be found reliable as far as it goes."

The general arrangement of the previous manual will as far as possible be followed in this one also, so that those who wish to do so will be able to compare the two planes stage by stage. The heading " Scenery " would, however, be inappropriate to the mental plane, as will be seen later; we will therefore substitute for it the title which follows.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS [page 8]

Perhaps the least unsatisfactory method of approaching this exceedingly difficult subject will be to plunge in medias res and make the attempt (foredoomed to failure though it be) to depict what a pupil or trained student sees when first the heaven-world opens before him. I use the word pupil advisedly, for unless a man stand in that relation to one of the Masters of Wisdom, there is but little likelihood of his being able to pass in full consciousness into that glorious land off bliss, and return to earth with clear remembrance of that which he has seen there. Thence no accommodating "spirit" ever comes to utter cheap platitudes through the mouth of the professional medium; thither no ordinary clairvoyant ever rises, though sometimes the best and purest have entered it when in deepest trance they slipped from the control of their mesmerizers — yet even then they have rarely brought back more than a faint recollection of an intense but indescribable bliss, generally deeply coloured by their personal religious convictions.

When once the departed soul, withdrawing into himself after what we call death, has reached that plane, neither the yearning thoughts of his sorrowing friends nor the allurements of the spiritualistic circle can ever draw him back into communion with the physical earth until all the spiritual forces which he has set in motion in his recent life have worked themselves out to the full, and he once more stands ready to take upon himself new robes of flesh. Nor, even if he could so return, would his account of his experiences give any true idea of the plane, for, as will presently [page 9] be seen, it is only those who can enter it in full waking consciousness who are able to move about freely and drink in all the wondrous glory and beauty which the heaven-world has to show. But all this will be more fully explained later, when we come to deal with the inhabitants of this celestial realm.

A beautiful description.

In an early letter from an eminent occultist the following beautiful passage was given as a quotation from memory. I have never been able to discover whence it was taken, though what seems to be another version of it, considerably expanded, appears in Beal's Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, page 378.

"Our Lord buddha says: Many thousand myriads of systems of worlds beyond this is a region of bliss called Sukhâvatî. This region is encircled within seven rows of railings, seven rows of vast curtains, seven rows of waving trees. This holy abode of the Arhats is governed by the Tathâgatas and is possessed by the Bodhisattvas. It has seven precious lakes, in the midst of which flow crystalline waters having seven and yet one distinctive properties and qualities. This, O Sâriputra, 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 this blessed region - who have crossed the golden bridge and reached the seven golden mountains - they are truly felicitous; there is no more grief or sorrow in that cycle for them."

Veiled though they be under the gorgeous imagery of the Orient, we may easily trace in this passage some of the leading characteristics which have appeared most prominently in the accounts of our own modern investigators. The "seven golden mountains" can be but the seven subdivisions of the mental plane, separated from [page 10] one another by barriers impalpable, yet real and effective there as "seven rows of railings, seven rows of vast curtains, seven rows of waving trees" might be here: the seven kinds of crystalline water, having each its distinctive properties and qualities, represent the different powers and conditions of mind belonging to them respectively, while the one quality which they all have in common is that of ensuring to those residing upon them the utmost intensity of bliss which they are capable of experiencing. Its flower indeed "casts a root in the shadow of every earth," for from every world man enters the corresponding heaven, and happiness such as no tongue may tell is the blossom which burgeons forth for all who so live as to fit themselves to attain it. For they have " crossed the golden bridge" over the stream which divides this realm from the world of desire; for them the struggle between the higher and the lower is over, and for them, therefore, is "no more grief or sorrow in that cycle," until once more the man puts himself forth into, incarnation, and the celestial world is again left for a time behind.

The Bliss of the Heaven-World.

This intensity of bliss is the first great idea which must form a background to all our conceptions of the heaven-life. It is not only that we are dealing with a world in which, by its very constitution, evil and sorrow are impossible; it is not only a world in which every creature is happy; the facts of the case go far beyond all that. It is a world in which every being must, from the very fact of his presence there, be enjoying the highest spiritual bliss of which he is capable — a world whose power of response to his aspirations is limited only by his capacity to aspire.[page 11]

Here for the first time we begin to grasp something of the true nature of the great Source of Life; here for the first time we catch a far-away glimpse of what the Logos must be, and of what He means us to be. And when the stupendous reality of it all bursts upon our astonished vision, we cannot but feel that, with this knowledge of the truth, life can never again look to us as it did before. We cannot but marvel at the hopeless inadequacy of all the worldly man's ideas of happiness; indeed, we cannot avoid seeing that most of them are absurdly inverted and impossible of realization, and that for the most part he has actually turned his back upon the very goal which he is seeking. But here at last is truth and beauty, far transcending all that every poet dreamed; and in the light of its surpassing glory all other joy seems dim and faint, unreal and unsatisfying.

Some detail of all this we must endeavour to make clear later on; the point to be emphasized for the moment is that this radiant sense, not only of the welcome absence of all evil and discord, but of the insistent, overwhelming presence of universal joy, is the first and most striking sensation experienced by him who enters upon the heaven-world. And it never leaves him so long as he remains there; whatever work he may be doing, whatever still higher possibilities of spiritual exaltation may arise before him as he learns more of the capabilities of this new world in which he finds himself, the strange indescribable feeling of inexpressible delight in mere existence in such a_t realm underlies all else — this enjoyment of the abounding joy of others is ever present with him. Nothing on earth is like it, nothing can image it; if one could suppose the bounding life of childhood carried up into our spiritual experience and then intensified many thousand-fold, perhaps some faint shadow of an idea of it might be suggested; [page 12] yet even such a simile falls miserably short of that which lies beyond all words — the tremendous spiritual vitality of this celestial world.

One way in which this intense vitality manifests itself is the extreme rapidity of vibration of all particles and atoms of this mental matter. As a theoretical proposition we are all aware that even here on the physical plane no particle of matter, though forming part of the densest of solid bodies, is ever for a moment at rest; nevertheless when by the opening of astral vision this becomes for us no longer a mere theory of the scientists, but an actual and ever-present fact, we realize the universality of life in a manner and to an extent that was quite impossible before; our mental horizon widens out, and we begin even already to have glimpses of possibilities in nature which to those who cannot yet see must appear the wildest of dreams.

If this be the effect of acquiring the mere astral vision, and applying it to dense physical matter, try to imagine the result produced on the mind of the observer when, having left this physical plane behind and thoroughly studied the far more vivid life and infinitely more rapid vibrations of the astral, he finds a new and transcendent sense opening within him, which unfolds to his enraptured gaze yet another and a higher world, whose vibrations are as much quicker than those of our physical plane as vibrations of light are than those of sound - a world where the omnipresent life which pulsates ceaselessly around and within him is of a different order altogether, is as it were raised to an enormously higher power.

A New Method of Cognition.

The very sense itself, by which he is enabled to cognize all this, is not the least of the marvels of this celestial [page 13] world; no longer does he hear and see and feel by separate and limited organs, as he does down here, nor has he even the immensely extended capacity of sight and hearing which he possessed on the astral plane; instead of these he feels within him a strange new power which is not any of them, and yet includes them all and much more — a power which enables him the moment any person or thing comes before him not only to see it and feel it and hear it, but to know all about it instantly inside and out — its causes, its effects, and its possibilities, so far at least as that plane and all below it are concerned. He finds that for him to think is to realize; there is never any doubt, hesitation, or delay about this direct action of the higher sense. If he thinks of a place, he is there; if of a friend, that friend is before him. No longer can misunderstandings arise, no longer can he be deceived or misled by any outward appearances, for every thought and feeling of his friend lies open as a book before him on that plane.

And if he is fortunate enough to have among his friends another whose higher sense is opened, their intercourse is perfect beyond all earthly conception. For them distance and separation do not exist; their feelings are no longer hidden or at best but half expressed by clumsy words; question and answer are unnecessary, for the thought-pictures are read as they are formed, and the interchange of ideas is rapid as is their flashing into existence in the mind.

All knowledge is theirs for the searching — all, that is, which does not transcend even this lofty plane; the past of the world is as open to them as the present; the indelible records of the memory of nature are ever at their disposal, and history, whether ancient or modern, unfolds itself before their eyes at their will. No longer are they at the mercy of the historian, who may be ill-informed, and must be more or less partial; they can [page14] study for themselves any incident in which they are interested, with the absolute certainty of seeing " the truth", the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." If they are able to stand upon the higher levels of the plane, the long line of their past lives unrolls itself before them like a scroll; they see the kârmic causes which have made them what they are; they see what karma still lies in front to be worked out before " the long sad count is closed," and thus they realize with unerring certainty their exact place in evolution.

If it be asked whether they can see the future clearly as the past, the answer must be in the negative, for that faculty belongs to a still higher plane, and though in this mental plane prevision is to a great extent possible to them, yet it is not perfect, because wherever in the web of destiny the hand of the developed man comes in, his powerful will may introduce new threads, and change the pattern of the life to come. The course of the ordinary undeveloped man, who has practically no will of his own worth speaking of, may often be foreseen clearly enough, but when the ego boldly takes his future into his own hands, exact prevision becomes impossible.

SURROUNDINGS

The first impressions, then, of the pupil who enters this mental plane in full consciousness will probably be those of intense bliss, indescribable vitality, enormously increased power, and the perfect confidence which flows from these; and when he makes use of his new sense to examine his surroundings, what does he see ? He finds himself in the midst of what seems to him a whole universe of ever-changing light and colour and sound, such as it has never entered into his loftiest dreams to imagine. Verily it is true that down here " eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard, neither [page 15] hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive" the glories of the heaven-world : and the man who has once experienced them in full consciousness will regard the world with widely different eyes for ever after. Yet this experience is so utterly unlike anything we know on the physical plane that in trying to put it into words one is troubled by a curious sense of helplessness — of absolute incapacity, not only to do it justice, for of that one resigns all hope from the very outset, but even to give any idea at all of it to those who have not themselves seen it.

Let a man imagine himself, with the feelings of intense bliss and enormously increased power already described, floating in a sea of living light, surrounded by every conceivable variety of loveliness in colour and form — the whole changing with every wave of thought that he sends out from his mind, and being indeed, as he presently discovers, only the expression of his thought in the matter of the plane and in its elemental essence. For that matter is of the very same order as that of which the mind-body is itself composed, and therefore when that vibration of the particles of the mind-body which we call a thought occurs, it immediately extends itself to this surrounding mental matter, and sets up corresponding vibrations in it, while in the elemental essence it images itself with absolute exactitude. Concrete thought naturally takes .the shape of its objects, while abstract ideas usually represent themselves by all kinds of perfect and most beautiful, geometrical forms; though in this connection it should be remembered that many thoughts which are little more than the merest abstractions to us down here become concrete facts on this loftier plane.

It will thus be seen that in this higher world anyone who wishes to devote himself for a time to quiet thought, and to abstract himself from his surroundings, may actually live in a world of his own without possibility of interruption, and [page 16] with the additional advantage of seeing all his ideas (and their consequences, fully worked out) passing in a sort of panorama before his eyes. If, however, he wishes instead to observe the plane upon which he finds himself, it will be necessary for him very carefully to suspend his thought for the time, so that its creations may not influence the readily impressible matter around him, and thus alter the entire conditions so far as he is concerned.

This holding of the mind in suspense must not be confounded with the blankness of mind towards the attainment of which so many of the Hatha Yoga practices are directed: in the latter case the mind is dulled down into absolute passivity in order that it may not by any thought of its own offer resistance to the entry of any external influence that may happen to approach it — a condition closely approximating to mediumship; while in the former the mind is as keenly alert and positive as it can be, holding its thought in suspense for the moment merely to prevent the intrusion of a personal equation into the observation which it wishes to make.

When the visitor to the mental plane succeeds in putting himself in this position he finds that although he is no longer himself a centre of radiation of all that marvellous wealth of light and colour, form and sound, which I have so vainly endeavoured to picture, it has not therefore ceased to exist; on the contrary, its harmonies and its coruscations are but grander and fuller than ever. Casting about for an explanation of this phenomenon, he begins to realize that all this magnificence is not a mere idle or fortuitous display — a kind of devachanic aurora borealis; he finds that it all has a meaning — a meaning which he himself can understand ; and presently he grasps the fact that what he is watching with such ecstasy of delight is simply the glorious colour-language of the Devas — the expression of the thought or the [page 17] conversation of beings far higher than himself in the scale of evolution. By experiment and practice he discovers that he also can use this new and beautiful mode of expression, and by this very discovery he enters into possession of another great tract of his heritage in this celestial realm —the power to hold converse with, and to learn from, its loftier non-human inhabitants, with whom we shall deal more fully when we come to treat of that part of our subject.

By this time it will have become apparent why it was impossible to devote a section of this paper to the scenery of the mental plane, as was done in the case of the astral; for in point of fact the mental world has no scenery except such as each individual chooses to make for himself by his thought — unless indeed we take into account the fact that the vast numbers of entities who are continually passing before him are themselves objects in many cases of the most transcendent beauty. Yet so difficult is it to express in words the conditions of this higher life that it would be a still better statement of the facts to say that all possible scenery exists there — that there is nothing conceivable of loveliness in earth or sky or sea which is not there with a fulness and intensity beyond all power of imagination; but that out of all this splendour-of living reality each man sees only that which he has within himself the power to see — that to which his development during the earth-life and the astral-life enables him to respond.

The Great Waves

If the visitor wishes to carry his analysis of the plane still further, and discover what it would be when entirely undisturbed by the thought or conversation of any of its inhabitants, he can do so by forming round himself a huge shell through which none of these influences can penetrate, and [page 18] then (of course holding his own mind perfectly still as before) examining the conditions which exist inside his shell.

If he performs this experiment with sufficient care, he will find that the sea of light has become — not still, for its particles continue their intense and rapid vibrations, but — as it were homogeneous; that those wonderful coruscations of colour and constant changes of form are no longer taking place, but that he is now able to perceive another and entirely different series of regular pulsations which the other more artificial phenomena had previously obscured. These are evidently universal, and no shell which human power can make will check them or turn them aside. They cause no change of colour, no assumption of form, but flow with resistless regularity through all the matter of the plane, outwards and in again, like the exhalations and inhalations of some great breath beyond our ken.

There are several sets of these, clearly distinguishable from one another by volume, by period of vibration, and by the tone of the harmony which they bring, and grander than them all sweeps one great wave which seems the very heartbeat of the system — a wave which, welling up from unknown centres on far higher planes, pours out its life through all our world, and then draws back in its tremendous tide to That from which it came. In one long undulating curve it comes, and the sound of it is like the murmur of the sea ; and yet in it and through it all the while there echoes a mighty ringing chant of triumph — the very music of the spheres. The man who once has heard that glorious song of nature never quite loses it again; even here on this dreary physical plane of illusion he hears it always as a kind of undertone, keeping ever before his mind the strength and light and splendour of the real life above.

If the visitor be pure in heart and mind, and has reached a certain degree of spiritual development, it is possible for [page 19] him to identify his consciousness with the sweep of that wondrous wave — to merge his spirit in it, as it were, and let it bear him upward to its source. It is possible, I say; but it is not wise — unless, indeed, his Master stands beside him to draw him back at the right moment from its mighty embrace; for otherwise its irresistible force will carry him away onward and upward into still higher planes, whose far greater glories his ego is as yet unable to sustain; he will lose consciousness, and with no certainty as to when and where and how he will regain it. It is true that the ultimate object of man's evolution is the attainment of unity, but he must reach that final goal in full and perfect consciousness as a victorious king entering triumphantly upon his heritage, not drift into absorption in a state of blank unconsciousness but little removed from annihilation.

The Lower and the Higher Heaven-Worlds.

All that we have hitherto attempted to indicate in this description may be taken as applying to the lowest subdivision of the mental plane; for this realm of nature, exactly like the astral, or the physical, has its seven subdivisions. Of these the four lower are called in the books the rûpa or form planes, and these constitute the Lower Heaven-World, in which the average man spends his long life of bliss between one incarnation and the next. The other three are spoken of as arûpa or formless, and they constitute the Higher Heaven-World, where functions the reincarnating ego — the true home of the soul of man. These Sanskrit names have been given because on the rûpa planes every thought takes to itself a certain definite form, while on the arûpa subdivisions it expresses itself in an entirely different manner, as will presently be explained. The distinction between these two great divisions of the plane — [page 20] the rûpa and the arûpa —is very marked; indeed, it even extends so far as to necessitate the use of different vehicles of consciousness.

The vehicle appropriate to the lower heaven-world is the mind-body, while that of the higher heaven-world is the causal body — the vehicle of the reincarnating ego, in which he passes from life to life throughout the whole evolutionary period. Another enormous distinction is that on those four lower subdivisions some degree of illusion is still possible — not indeed for the entity who stands upon them in full consciousness during life, but for the undeveloped person who passes there after the change which men call death. The higher thoughts and aspirations which he has poured forth during earth-life then cluster round him, and make a sort of shell about him — a kind of subjective world of his own ; and in that he lives his heaven-life, perceiving but very faintly or not at all the real glories of the plane which lie outside, and, indeed, usually supposing that what he sees is all there is to see.

Yet we should be wrong in thinking of that thought-cloud as a limitation. Its function is to enable the man to respond to certain vibrations — not to shut him off from the others. The truth is, that these thoughts which surround the man are the powers by which he draws upon the wealth of the heaven-world. This mental plane itself is a reflection of the Divine Mind — a storehouse of infinite extent from which the person enjoying heaven is able to draw just according to the power of his own thoughts and aspirations generated during the physical and astral life.

But in the higher heaven-world this limitation no longer exists ; it is true that even there many egos are only slightly and dreamily conscious of their surroundings, but in so far as they see, they see truly, for thought no longer assumes the same limited forms which it took upon itself lower down. [page21]

The Action of Thought

The exact condition of mind of the human inhabitants of these various sub-planes will naturally be much more fully dealt with under its own appropriate heading; but a comprehension of the manner in which thought acts in the lower and higher levels respectively, is so necessary to an accurate understanding of these great divisions that it will perhaps be worth while to recount in detail some of the experiments made by our explorers in the endeavour to throw light upon this subject.

At an early period of the investigation it became evident that on the mental as on the astral plane there was present an elemental essence quite distinct from the mere matter of the plane, and that it was, if possible, even more instantaneously sensitive to the action of thought here than it had been in that lower world. But here in the heaven-world all was thought-substance, and therefore not only the elemental essence, but the very matter of the plane was directly affected by the action of the mind; and hence it became necessary to make an attempt to discriminate between these two effects.

After various less conclusive experiments a method was adopted which gave a fairly clear idea of the different results produced, one investigator remaining on the lowest subdivision to send out the thought-forms, while others rose to the next higher level, so as to be able to observe what took place from above, and thus avoid many possibilities of confusion. Under these circumstances the experiment was tried of sending an affectionate and helpful thought to an absent friend in a far-distant country.

The result was very remarkable: a sort of vibrating shell, formed in the matter of the plane, issued in all directions [page 22] round the operator, corresponding exactly to the circle which spreads out in still water from the spot where a stone has been thrown into it, except that this was a sphere of vibration extending itself in many dimensions instead of merely over a flat surface. These vibrations, like those on the physical plane, though very much more gradually, lost in intensity as they passed further away from their source, till at last at an enormous distance they seemed to be exhausted, or at least became so faint as to be imperceptible.

Thus every one on the mental plane is a centre of radiant thought, and yet all the rays thrown out cross in all directions without interfering with one another in the slightest degree, just as rays of light do down here. This expanding sphere of vibrations was many coloured and opalescent, but its colours also grew gradually fainter and fainter as it spread away.

The effect on the elemental essence of the plane was, however, entirely different. In this the thought immediately called into existence a distinct form resembling the human, of one colour only, though exhibiting many shades of that colour. This form flashed instantaneously across the ocean to the friend to whom the good wish had been directed, and there took to itself elemental essence of the astral plane, and thus became an ordinary artificial elemental of that plane, waiting, as explained in Manual No. V, for an opportunity to pour out upon him its store of helpful influence. In taking on that astral form the mental elemental lost much of its brilliancy, though its glowing rose-colour was still plainly visible inside the shell of lower matter which it had assumed, showing that just as the original thought ensouled the elemental essence of its own plane, so that same thought, plus its form as a mental elemental, acted as soul to the astral elemental— thus following closely the method in which the ultimate [page 23] spirit itself takes on sheath after sheath in its descent through the various planes and sub-planes of matter.

Further experiments along similar lines revealed the fact that the colour of the projected elemental varied with the character of the thought. As above stated, the thought of strong affection produced a creature of glowing rose-colour; an intense wish of healing, projected towards a sick friend, called into existence a most lovely silvery-white elemental; while an earnest mental effort to steady and strengthen the mind of a depressed and despairing person resulted in the production of a beautiful flashing golden-yellow messenger.

In all these cases it will be perceived that, besides the effect of radiating colours and vibrations produced in the matter of the plane, a definite force in the shape of an elemental was sent forth towards the person to whom the thought was directed; and this invariably happened, with one notable exception. One of the operators, while on the lower division of the plane, directed a thought of intense love and devotion towards the Adept who is his spiritual teacher, and it was at once noticed by the observers above that the result was in some sense a reversal of what had happened in the previous cases.

It should be premised that a pupil of any one of the great Adepts is always connected with his Master by a constant current of thought and influence, which expresses itself on the mental plane as a great ray or stream of dazzling light of all colours — violet and gold and blue; and it might perhaps have been expected that the pupil's earnest, loving thought would send a special vibration along this line. Instead of this, however, the result was a sudden intensification of the colours of this bar of light, and a very distinct flow of spiritual influence, towards the pupil; so that it is evident that when a student turns his thought to his Master, what he [page 24] really does is to vivify his connection with that Master, and thus to open a way for an additional outpouring of strength and help to himself from higher planes. It would seem that the Adept is, as it were, so highly charged with the influences which sustain and strengthen, that any thought which brings into increased activity a channel of communication with him sends no current towards him, as it ordinarily would, but simply gives a wider opening through which the great ocean of his love finds vent.

On the arûpa levels the difference in the effect of thought is very marked, especially as regards the elemental essence. The disturbance set up in the mere matter of the plane is similar, though greatly intensified in this much more refined form of matter; but in the essence no form at all is now created, and the method of action is entirely changed. In all the experiments on lower planes it was found that the elemental hovered about the person thought of, and awaited a favourable opportunity of expending his energy either upon his mind-body, his astral, or even his physical body; here the result is a kind of lightning-flash of the essence from the causal body of the thinker direct to the causal body of the object of his thought; so that while the thought on those lower divisions is always directed to the mere personality, here we influence the reincarnating ego, the real man himself, and if our message has any reference to the personality it will reach it only from above, through the instrumentality of his causal vehicle.

Thought-Forms.

Naturally the thoughts to be seen on this plane are not all definitely directed at some other person; many are simply thrown off to float vaguely about, and the diversity of form and colour shown among these is practically infinite, [page 25] so that the study of them is a science in itself, and a very fascinating one. Anything like a detailed description even of the main classes among them would occupy far more space than we have to spare; but an idea of the principles upon which such classes might be formed may be gained from the following extract from a most illuminative paper on the subject written by Mrs. Besant in Lucifer (the earlier form of The Theosophical Review) for September 1896. She there enunciates the three great principles underlying the production of the thought-forms which are thrown off by the action of the mind — that (a) the quality of a thought determines its colour, (b) the nature of a thought determines its form, (c) the definiteness of a thought determines the clearness of its outline. Giving instances of the way in which the colour is affected, she continues:

" If the astral and mental bodies are vibrating under the influence of devotion, the aura will be suffused with blue, more or less intense, beautiful and pure according to the depth, elevation, and purity of the feeling. In a church such thought-forms may be seen rising, for the most part not very definitely outlined, but rolling masses of blue clouds. Too often the colour is dulled by the intermixture of selfish feelings, when the blue is mixed with browns and thus loses its pure brilliancy. But the devotional thought of an unselfish heart is very lovely in colour, like the deep blue of a summer sky. Through such clouds of blue will often shine out golden stars of great brilliancy, starting upwards like a shower of sparks.

" Anger gives rise to red, of all shades from brick-red to brilliant scarlet; brutal anger will show as flashes of lurid dull red from dark brown clouds, while the anger of noble indignation is a vivid scarlet, by no means unbeautiful to look at, though it gives an unpleasant thrill.

"Affection sends out clouds of rosy hue, varying from [page26] dull crimson, where the love is animal in its nature rose-red mingled with brown when selfish, or with dull green when jealous, to the most exquisite shades of delicate rose like the early flushes of the dawning, as the love becomes purified from all selfish elements, and flows out in wider, and wider circles of generous impersonal tenderness and compassion to all who are in need.

" Intellect produces yellow thought-forms, the pure reason directed to spiritual ends giving rise to a very delicate, beautiful yellow, while used for-more selfish ends or mingled with ambition it yields deeper shades of orange, clear and intense." (Lucifer, Volume xix. page 71.)

It must of course be borne in mind that astral as well as mental thought-forms are described in the above quotation, some of the feelings mentioned needing matter of the lower plane as well as of the higher before they can find expression. Some examples are then given of the beautiful flower-like and shell-like forms sometimes taken by our nobler thoughts; and especial reference is made to the not infrequent case in which the thought, taking human form, is liable to be confounded with an apparition:

"A thought-form may assume the shape of its projector; if a person wills strongly to be present at a particular place, to visit a particular person, and be seen, such a thought-form may take his own shape, and a clairvoyant present at the desired spot would see what he would probably mistake for his friend in the astral body. Such a thought-form might convey a message, if that formed part of its content, setting up in the astral body of the person reached vibrations like its own, and these being passed on by that astral body to the brain, where they would be translated into a thought or a sentence. Such a thought-form, again, might convey to its projector, by the magnetic relation between them, vibrations impressed on itself." (page 73.) [page 27]

The whole of the article from which these extracts are taken should be very carefully studied by those who wish to grasp this very complex branch of our subject, for, with the aid of the beautifully-executed coloured illustrations which accompany it, it enables, those who cannot yet see for themselves to approach much more nearly to a realization of what thought-forms actually are than anything previously written.

The Sub-Planes

If it be asked what is the real difference between the matter of the various sub-planes of the mental plane, it is not easy to answer in other than very general terms, for the unfortunate scribe bankrupts himself of adjectives in an unsuccessful endeavour to describe the lowest plane, and then has nothing left to say about the others. What, indeed, can be said, except that ever as we ascend the material becomes finer, the harmonies fuller, the light more living and transparent? There are more overtones in the sound, more delicate intershades in the colours as we rise, more and more new colours appear — hues entirely unknown to the physical sight; and it has been poetically yet truly said that the light of the lower plane is darkness on the one above it. Perhaps this idea is simpler if we start in thought from .the top instead of the bottom, and try to realize that on that highest sub-plane we shall find its appropriate matter ensouled and vivified by an energy which still flows down like light from above — from a plane which lies away beyond the mental altogether. Then if we descend to the second subdivision we shall find that the matter of our first sub-plane has become the energy of this — or, to put the thing more accurately, that the original energy, plus the garment of matter of the first sub-plane with which it has endued itself, is still the energy ensouling the matter of this [page 28 ] second sub-plane. In the same way, in the third division we shall find that the original energy has twice veiled itself in the matter of these first and second sub-planes through which it has passed; so that by the time we get to our seventh sub-division we shall have our original energy six times enclosed or veiled, and therefore by so much the weaker and less active. This process is exactly analogous to the veiling of Âtma, the primordial Spirit, in its descent as monadic essence in order to energize the matter of the planes of the cosmos, and as it is one which frequently takes place in nature, it will save the student much trouble if he will try to familiarize himself with the idea (see Mrs. Besant's <> Ancient Wisdom, page 54, and footnote).

The Records of the Past

In speaking of the general characteristics of the plane we must not omit to mention the ever-present background formed by the records of the past — the memory of nature, the only really reliable history of the world. While what we have on this plane is not yet the absolute record itself, but merely a reflection of something higher still, it is at any rate clear, accurate, and continuous, differing therein from the disconnected and spasmodic manifestation which is all that represents it in the astral world. It is, therefore, only when a clairvoyant possesses the vision of this mental plane that his pictures of the past can be relied upon; and even then, unless he has the power of passing in full consciousness from that plane to the physical, we have to allow for the possibility of errors in bringing back the recollection of what he has seen.

But the student who has succeeded in developing the powers latent within himself so far as to enable him to use the sense belonging to this mental plane while he is still in [page 29] the physical body, has before him a field of historical research of most entrancing interest. Not only can he review at his leisure all history with which we are acquainted, correcting as he examines it the many errors and misconceptions which have crept into the accounts handed down to us; he can also range at will over the whole story of the world from its very beginning, watching the slow development of intellect in man, the descent of the Lords of the Flame, and the growth of the mighty civilizations which they founded.

Nor is his study confined to the progress of humanity alone; he has before him, as in a museum, all the strange animal and vegetable forms which occupied the stage in days when the world was young; he can follow all the wonderful geological changes which have taken place, and watch the course of the great cataclysms which have altered the whole face of the earth again and again.

Many and varied are the possibilities opened up by access to these records — so many and so varied indeed that even if this were the only advantage of the mental plane, it would still transcend in interest all the lower worlds. But when to this we add the remarkable increase in the opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge given by its new and wider faculty — the privilege of direct untrammelled intercourse not only with the great Deva kingdom, but with the very Masters of Wisdom themselves — the rest and relief from the weary strain of physical life that is brought by the enjoyment of its deep unchanging bliss, and above all, the enormously enhanced capability of the developed student for the service of his fellow-men — then we shall begin to have some faint conception of what a pupil gains when he wins the right to enter at will and in perfect consciousness upon his heritage in this bright realm of the heaven-world. [page 30]

INHABITANTS.

In our endeavour to describe the inhabitants of the mental plane it will perhaps be well for us to divide them into the same three great classes chosen in the manual on the astral plane — the human, the non-human, and the artificial — though the sub-divisions will naturally be less numerous in this case than in that, since the products of man's evil passions, which bulked so largely there, can find no place here.

I. HUMAN.

Exactly as was the case when dealing with the lower world, it will be desirable to subdivide the human inhabitants of the mental plane into two classes — those who are still attached to a physical body, and those who are not — the living and the dead, as they are commonly but most erroneously called. Very little experience of these higher planes is needed to alter fundamentally the student's conception, of the change which takes place at death; he realizes immediately on the opening of his consciousness even in the astral, and still more in this mental world, that the fulness of true life is something which can never be known down here, and that when we leave this physical earth we are passing into that true life, not out of it. We have not at present in the English language any convenient and at the same time accurate words to express these conditions; perhaps to call them respectively embodied and disembodied will be, on the whole, the least misleading of [page 31] the various possible phrases. Let us therefore proceed to consider those inhabitants of the mental plane who come under the head of

The Embodied.

Those human beings who, while still attached to a physical body, are found moving in full consciousness and activity upon this plane, are invariably either Adepts or their initiated pupils, for until a student has been taught by his Master how to use his mental body he will be unable to move with freedom upon even its lower levels. To function consciously during physical life upon the higher levels denotes still greater advancement, for it means the unification of the man, so that down here he is no longer a mere personality, more or less influenced by the individuality above, but is himself that individuality — trammelled and confined by a body, certainly, but nevertheless having within him the power and knowledge of a highly developed ego.

Very magnificent objects are these Adepts and initiates to the vision which has learnt to see them — splendid globes of light and colour, driving away all evil influence wherever they go, acting upon all who come near them as the sunshine acts upon the flowers, and shedding around them a feeling of restfulness and happiness of which even those who do not see them are often conscious. It is in this celestial world that much of their most important work is done — more especially upon its higher levels, where the individuality can be acted upon directly. It is from this plane that they shower the grandest spiritual influences upon the world of thought; from it also they impel great and beneficent movements of all kinds. Here much of the spiritual force poured out by the glorious self-sacrifice of [page 32] the Nirmânâkayas is distributed; here also direct teaching is given to those pupils who are sufficiently advanced to receive it in this way, since it can be imparted far more readily and completely here than on the astral plane. In addition to all these activities they have a great field of work in connection with those whom we call the dead, but this will be more fitly explained under a later heading.

It is a pleasure to find that a class of inhabitants which obtruded itself painfully on our notice on the astral plane is almost entirely absent here. In a world whose characteristics are unselfishness and spirituality the black magician and his pupils can obviously find no place, since selfishness is of the essence of all the proceedings of the darker schools, and their study of occult forces is entirely for personal ends. Not but that in many of them the intellect is very highly developed, and consequently the matter of the mind-body extremely active and sensitive along certain lines; but in every case those lines are connected with personal desire of some sort, and they can therefore find expression only through that lower part of the mind-body which has become almost inextricably entangled with astral matter. As a necessary consequence of this limitation it follows that their activities are practically confined to the astral and physical planes. A man, the trend of whose whole life is evil and selfish, may indeed have periods of purely abstract thought during which he may utilize the mind-body if he has learnt how to do so, but the moment that the personal element comes in, and the effort to produce some evil result is made, the thought is no longer abstract, and the man finds himself working in connection with the familiar astral matter once more. One might almost say that a black magician could function on the mental plane only while he forgot that he was a black magician.

But even while he forgot it he could be visible on the [page 33] mental plane only to men functioning consciously on that plane — never by any possibility to those who are enjoying the heavenly rest in this region after death, since each of them is so entirely secluded within the world of his own thought that nothing outside of that can affect him, and he is consequently absolutely safe. Thus is justified the grand old description of the heaven-world as the place "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."

In Sleep or Trance.

In thinking of the embodied inhabitants of the mental plane, the question naturally suggests itself whether either ordinary people during sleep, or psychically developed persons in a trance condition, can ever penetrate to this plane. In both cases the answer must be that the occurrence is possible, though extremely rare. Purity of life and purpose would be an absolute pre-requisite, and even when the plane was reached there would be nothing that could be called real consciousness, but simply a capacity for receiving certain impressions.

As exemplifying the possibility of entering the mental plane during sleep, an incident may be mentioned which occurred in connection with the experiments made by the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society on dream consciousness, an account of some of which was given in my little book on Dreams. It may be remembered by those who have read that treatise that a thought-picture of a lovely tropical landscape was presented to the minds of various classes of sleepers, with a view of testing the extent to which it was afterwards recollected on awaking. One case which was not referred to in the account previously published, as it had no special connection with the phenomena of dreams, will serve as a useful illustration here. [page 34]

It was that of a person of pure mind and considerable though untrained psychic capacity ; and the effect of the presentation of the thought-picture to her mind was of a somewhat startling character. So intense was the feeling of reverent joy, so lofty and so spiritual were the thoughts evoked by the contemplation of this glorious scene, that the consciousness of the sleeper passed entirely into the mind-body — or, to put the same idea into other words, rose on to the mental plane. It must not, however, be supposed from this that she became cognizant of her surroundings upon that plane or of its real conditions; she was simply in the state of the ordinary person who has reached that level after death, floating in the sea of light and colour indeed, but nevertheless entirely absorbed in her own thought, and conscious of nothing beyond it — resting in ecstatic contemplation of the landscape and of all that it had suggested to her — yet contemplating it, be it understood, with the keener insight, the more perfect appreciation, and the enhanced vigour of thought peculiar to the mental plane, and enjoying all the while the intensity of bliss which has so often been spoken of before. The sleeper remained in that condition for several hours, though apparently entirely unconscious of the passage of time, and at last awoke with a sense of deep peace and inward joy for which, since she had brought back no recollection of what had happened, she was quite unable to account. There is no doubt, however, that such an experience as this, whether remembered in the physical body or not, would act as a distinct impulse to the spiritual evolution of the ego concerned.

Though in the absence of a sufficient number of experiments one hesitates to speak too positively, it seems almost, certain that such a result as this just described would be possible only in the case of a person having already some amount of psychic development: and the same condition [page 35] is even more definitely necessary in order that a mesmerized subject should touch the mental plane in trance. So decidedly is this the case, that probably not one in a thousand among ordinary clairvoyants ever reaches it at all; but on the rare occasions when it is so attained the clairvoyant, as before remarked, must be not only of exceptional development, but of perfect purity of life and purpose; and even when all these unusual characteristics are present there still remains the difficulty which an untrained psychic always finds in translating a vision accurately from the higher plane to the lower. All these considerations, of course, only emphasize what has been so often insisted upon before — the necessity of the careful training of all psychics under a qualified instructor before it is possible to attach much weight to their reports of what they see.

The Disembodied.

Before considering in detail the condition of the disembodied entities on the various subdivisions of the mental plane, we must have very clearly in our minds the broad distinction between the rûpa and arûpa levels, of which mention has already been made. On the former the man lives entirely in the world of his own thoughts, still fully identifying himself with his personality in the life which he has recently quitted; on the latter he is simply the reincarnating ego or soul, who (if he has developed sufficient consciousness on that level to know anything clearly at all) understands, at least to some extent, the evolution upon which he is engaged, and the work that he has to do.

It should be remembered that every man passes through both these stages between death and birth, though the undeveloped majority have so little consciousness in either of [page 36] them as yet that they might more truly be said to dream through them. Nevertheless, whether consciously or unconsciously, every human being must touch the higher levels of the mental plane before reincarnation can take place; and as his evolution proceeds this touch becomes more and more definite and real to him. Not only is he more conscious there as he progresses, but the period he passes in that world of reality becomes longer; for the fact is that his consciousness is slowly but steadily rising through the different planes of the system.

Primitive man, for example, has comparatively little consciousness on any plane but the physical during life, and the lower astral after death; and indeed the same may be said of the quite undeveloped man even in our own day. A person a little more advanced begins to have a short period of heaven-life (on the lower levels, of course), but still spends by far the greater part of his time, between incarnations, on the astral plane. As he progresses the astral life grows shorter and the heaven-life longer, until when he becomes an intellectual and spiritually-minded person he passes through the astral plane with hardly any delay at all, and enjoys a long and happy sojourn on the more refined of the lower mental levels. By this time, however, the consciousness in the true ego on its higher level is awakened to a very considerable extent, and thus his conscious life on the mental plane divides itself into two parts — the later and shorter portion being spent on the higher sub-planes in the causal body.

The process previously described then repeats itself, the life on the lower levels gradually shortening, while the higher life becomes steadily longer and fuller, till at last the time comes when the consciousness is unified — when the higher and lower selves are indissolubly united, and the man is no longer capable of wrapping himself up in his own [page 37] cloud of thought, and mistaking the little that he can see through that for the whole of the great heaven-world around him — when he realizes the true possibilities of his life, and so for the first time truly begins to live. But by the time that he attains these heights he will already have entered upon the Path, and taken his future progress definitely into his own hands.

The Qualities Necessary for the Heaven-Life.

The greater reality of the heaven-life as compared with that on earth shines forth clearly when we consider, what conditions are requisite for the attainment of this higher state of existence. For the very qualities which a man must develop during life, if he is to have any existence in the heaven-world after death, are just those which all the best and noblest of our race have agreed in considering as really and permanently desirable. In order that an aspiration or a thought-force should result in existence on that plane, its dominant characteristic must be unselfishness.

Affection for family or friends takes many a man into the heaven-life, and so also does religious devotion; yet it would be a mistake to suppose that all affection or all devotion must therefore necessarily find its post-mortem expression there, for of each of these qualities there are obviously two varieties, the selfish and the unselfish — though it might perhaps reasonably be argued that it is only the latter kind in each case which is really worthy of the name.

There is the love which pours itself out upon its object, seeking for nothing in return — never even thinking of itself, but only of what it can do for the loved one; and such a feeling as this generates a spiritual force which cannot work [page 38] itself out except upon the mental plane. But there is also another emotion which is sometimes called love — an exacting, selfish kind of passion which desires mainly to be loved — which is thinking all the time of what it receives rather than of what it gives, and is quite likely to degenerate into the horrible vice of jealousy upon (or even without) the smallest provocation. Such affection as this has in it no seed of the mental development; the forces which it sets in motion will never rise above the astral plane.

The same is true of the feeling of a certain very large class of religious devotees, whose one thought is, not the glory of their deity, but how they may save their own miserable souls — a position which forcibly suggests that they, have not yet developed anything that really deserves the name of a soul at all.

On the other hand there is the real religious devotion, which thinks never of self, but only of love and gratitude towards the deity or leader, and is filled with ardent desire to do something for him or in his name; and such a feeling often leads to a prolonged heaven-life of a comparatively exalted type.

This would of course be the case whoever the deity or leader might be, and followers of Buddha, Krishna, Ormuzd, Allah, and Christ would all equally attain their need of celestial bliss — its length and quality depending upon the intensity and purity of the feeling, and not in the least upon its object, though this latter consideration would undoubtedly affect the possibility of receiving instruction during that higher life.

Most human devotion, however, like most human love, is neither wholly pure nor wholly selfish. That love must be low indeed into which no unselfish thought or impulse has entered; and on the other hand an affection which is [page 39] usually and chiefly quite pure and noble may yet sometimes be clouded by a spasm of jealous feeling or a passing thought of self. In both these cases, as in all, the law of eternal justice discriminates unerringly; and just as the momentary flash of nobler feeling in the less developed heart will surely receive its need in the heaven-world, even though there be naught else in the life to raise the soul above the astral plane, so the baser thought which erstwhile dimmed the holy radiance of a real love will work out its force in the astral world, interfering not at all with the magnificent celestial life which flows infallibly from years of deep affection here below.

How a Man first gains the Heaven-Life.

It will be seen, therefore, that in the earlier stages of their evolution many of the backward egos never consciously attain the heaven-world at all, whilst a still larger number obtain only a comparatively slight touch of some of its lower planes. Every soul must of course withdraw into its true self upon the higher levels before reincarnation ; but it does not at all follow that in that condition it will experience anything that we should call consciousness. This subject will be dealt with more fully when we come to treat of the arûpa planes; it seems better to begin with the lowest of the rûpa levels, and work steadily upwards, so we may for the moment leave on one side that portion of humanity whose conscious existence after death is practically confined to the astral plane, and proceed to consider the case of an entity who has just risen out of that position — who for the first time has a slight and fleeting consciousness in the lowest subdivision of the heaven-world.

There are evidently various methods by which this [page 40] important step in the early development of the soul may be brought about, but it will be sufficient for our present purpose if we take as an illustration of one of them a somewhat pathetic little story from real life which came under the observation of our students when they were investigating this question. In this case the agent of the great evolutionary forces was a poor seamstress, living in one of the dreariest and most squalid of our terrible London slums — a fetid court in the East End into which light and air could scarcely struggle.

Naturally she was not highly educated, for her life had been one long round of the hardest work under the least favourable of conditions; but nevertheless she was a good-hearted, benevolent creature, overflowing with love and kindness towards all with whom she came into contact. Her rooms were as poor, perhaps, as any in the court, but at least they were cleaner and neater than the others. She had no money to give when sickness brought need even more dire than usual to some of her neighbours, yet on such an occasion she was always at hand as often as she could snatch a few moments from her work, offering with ready sympathy such service as was within her power.

Indeed, she was quite a providence to the rough, ignorant factory girls about her, and they gradually came to look upon her as a kind of angel of help and mercy, always at hand in time, of trouble or illness. Often, after toiling all day with scarcely a moment's intermission, she sat up half the night, taking her turn at nursing some of the many sufferers who are always to be found in surroundings so fatal to health and happiness as those of a London slum; and in many cases the gratitude and affection which her unremitting kindness aroused in them were absolutely the only higher feelings that they had during the whole of their rough and sordid lives, [page 41]

The conditions of existence in that court being such as they were, there is little wonder that some of her patients died, and then it became clear that she had done for them much more than she knew; she had given them not only a little kindly assistance in their temporal trouble, but a very important impulse on the course of spiritual evolution. For these were undeveloped souls — entities of a very backward class — who had never yet in any of their births set in motion the spiritual forces which alone could give them conscious existence on the mental plane; but now for the first time not only had an ideal towards which they could strive been put before them, but also really unselfish love had been evoked in them by her action, and the very fact of having so strong a feeling as this had raised them and given them more individuality, and so after their stay in the astral plane was ended they gained their first experience of the lowest subdivision of the heaven-world. A short experience, probably, and of by no means an advanced type, but still of far greater importance than appears at first sight; for when once the great spiritual energy of unselfishness has been awakened, the very working-out of its results in the heaven-world gives it the tendency to repeat itself, and small in amount though this first outpouring may be, it yet builds into the soul a faint tinge of a quality which will certainly express itself again in the next life.

So the gentle benevolence of a poor seamstress has given to several less developed souls their introduction to a conscious spiritual life which incarnation after incarnation will grow steadily stronger, and react more and more upon the earth-lives of the future. This little incident perhaps suggests an explanation of the fact that in the various religions so much importance is attached to the personal element in charity — the direct association between donor and recipient. [page 42]

Seventh Sub-Plane; the Lowest Heaven.

This lowest subdivision of the heaven-world, to which the action of our poor seamstress raised the objects of her kindly care, has for its principal characteristic that of affection for family or friends — unselfish, of course, but usually somewhat narrow. Here, however, we must guard ourselves against the possibility of misconception. When it is said that family affection takes a man to the seventh celestial sub-plane, and religious devotion to the sixth, people sometimes very naturally imagine that a person having both these characteristics strongly developed in him would divide his period in the heaven-world between these two subdivisions, first spending a long period of happiness in the midst of his family, and then passing upward to the next level, there to exhaust the spiritual forces engendered by his devotional aspirations.

This, however, is not what happens, for in such a case as we have supposed the man would awaken to consciousness in the sixth subdivision, where he would find himself engaged, together with those whom he had loved so much in the highest form of devotion which he was able to realize. And when we think of it this is reasonable enough, for the man who is capable of religious devotion as well as mere family affection is naturally likely to be endowed with a higher and broader development of the latter virtue than one whose mind is susceptible to influence in one direction only. The same rule holds good all the way up; the higher plane may always include the qualities of the lower as well as those peculiar to itself, and when it does so its inhabitants almost invariably have these qualities in fuller measure than the souls on a lower plane.

When it is said that family affection is the characteristic [page 43] of the seventh sub-plane, it must not therefore be supposed for a moment that love is confined to this plane, but rather that the man who will find himself here after death is one in whose character this affection was the highest quality— the only one, in fact, which entitled him to the heaven-life at all. But love of a far nobler and grander type than anything to be seen on this level may of course be found upon the higher sub-planes.

One of the first entities encountered by the investigators upon this sub-plane forms a very fair typical example of its inhabitants. The man during life had been a small grocer — not a person of intellectual development or of any particular religious feeling, but simply the ordinary honest and respectable small tradesman. No doubt he had gone to church regularly every Sunday, because it was the customary and proper thing to do; but religion had been to him a sort of dim cloud which he did not really understand, which had no connection with the business of everyday life, and was never taken into account in deciding its problems. He had therefore none of the depth of devotion which might have lifted him to the next sub-plane; but he had for his wife and family a warm affection in which there was a large element of unselfishness. They were constantly in his mind, and it was for them far more than for himself that he worked from morning to night in his tiny little shop ; and so when, after a period of existence on the astral plane, he had at last shaken himself free from the disintegrating desire-body, he found himself in this lowest subdivision of the heaven-world with all his loved ones gathered round him.

He was no more an intellectual or highly spiritual man than he had been on earth, for death brings .with it no sudden development of that kind; the surroundings in which he found himself with his family were not of a very refined [page 44] type, for they represented only his own highest ideals of non-physical enjoyment during life ; but nevertheless he was as intensely happy as he was capable of being, and since he was all the time thinking of his family rather than of himself he was undoubtedly developing unselfish characteristics, which would be built into his soul as permanent qualities, and so would reappear in all his future lives on earth.

Another typical case was that of a man who had died while his only daughter was still young; here in the heaven-world he had her always with him and always at her best, and he was continually occupying himself in weaving all sorts of beautiful pictures of her future. Yet another was that of a young girl who was always absorbed in contemplating the manifold perfections of her father, and planning little surprises and fresh pleasures for him. Another was a Greek woman who was spending a marvellously happy time with her three children — one of them a beautiful boy, whom she delighted in imagining as the victor in the Olympic games.

A striking characteristic of this sub-plane for the last few centuries has been the very large number of Romans, Carthaginians, and Englishmen to be found there — this being due to the fact that among men of these nations the principal unselfish activity found its outlet through family affection, while comparatively few Hindus and Buddhists are here, since in their case real religious feeling usually enters more immediately into their daily lives, and consequently takes them to a higher level.

There was, of course, an almost infinite variety among the cases observed, their different degrees of advancement being distinguishable by varying degrees of luminosity, while differences of colour indicated respectively the qualities which the persons in question had developed. Some were lovers who had died in the full strength of their affection, [page 45] and so were always occupied with the one person they loved to the entire exclusion of all others; others there were who had been almost savages, one example being a Malay, a very undeveloped man (at the stage which we should technically describe as that of a low third-class pitri) who obtained a slight experience of the heaven-life in connection with a daughter whom he had loved.

In all these cases it was the touch of unselfish affection which gave them their heaven; indeed, apart from that, there was nothing in the activity of their personal lives which could have expressed itself on that plane. In most instances observed on this level the images of the loved ones are very far from perfect, and consequently the true egos or souls of the friends who are loved can express themselves but poorly through them ; though even at the worst that expression is much fuller and more satisfying than it ever was in physical life. In earth-life we see our friends so partially; we know only those parts of them which are congenial to us, and the other sides of their characters are practically non-existent for us. Our communion with them and our knowledge of them down here mean very much to us, and are often to us among the greatest things in life; yet in reality this communion and this knowledge must always be exceedingly defective, for even in the very rare cases where we can think that we know a man thoroughly and all through, body and soul, it is still only the part of him which is in manifestation on these lower planes while in incarnation that we can know, and there is far more behind in the real ego which we cannot reach at all. Indeed, if it were possible for us, with the direct and perfect vision of the mental plane, to see for the first time the whole of our friend when we met him after death, the probability is that he would be quite unrecognizable ; certainly he would not be at all the dear one whom we thought we had known before. [page 46]

It must be understood that the keen affection which alone brings one man into the heaven-life of another is a very powerful force upon these higher planes — a force which reaches up to the soul of the man who is loved, and evokes a response from it. Naturally the vividness of that response, the amount of life and energy in it, depends on the development of the soul of the loved one, but there is no case in which the response is not a perfectly real one as far as it goes.

Of course the soul or ego can be fully reached only upon his own level — one of the arûpa subdivisions of this mental plane — but at least we are very much nearer to that in any stage of the heaven-world than we are here, and therefore under favourable conditions we could there know enormously more of our friend than would ever be possible here, while even under the most unfavourable of conditions we are at any rate far closer to the reality there than we have ever been before.

Two factors have to be taken into account in our consideration of this subject — the degree of development of each of the persons concerned. If the man in the heaven-life has strong affection and some development in spirituality he will form a clear and fairly perfect thought-image of his friend as he knew him — an image through which at that level the soul of the friend could express himself to a very considerable extent. But in order to take full advantage of that opportunity it is necessary that that soul should himself be very fairly advanced in evolution.

We see, therefore, that there are two reasons for which the manifestation may be imperfect. The image made by the dead man may be so vague and inefficient that the friend, even though well-evolved, may be able to make very little use of it; and on the other hand, even when a good image is made, there may not be sufficient development [page 47] on the friend's part to enable him to take due advantage of it.

But in any and every case the soul of the friend is reached by the feeling of affection, and whatever may be its stage of development it at once responds by pouring itself forth into the image which has been made. The extent to which the true man can express himself through it depends on the two factors above mentioned — the kind of image which is made in the first place, and how much soul there is to express in the second; but even the feeblest image that can be made is at any rate on the mental plane, and, therefore, far easier for the ego to reach than is a physical body two-whole planes lower down.

If the friend who is loved is still alive he will of course be entirely unaware down here on the physical plane that his true self is enjoying this additional manifestation, but this in no way affects the fact that that manifestation is a more real one and contains a nearer approximation to his true self than this lower one, which is all that most of us can as yet see.

An interesting point is that since a man may well enter into the heaven-life of several of his departed friends at once, he may thus be simultaneously manifesting himself in all these various forms, as well as, perhaps, managing a physical body down here. That conception, however, presents no difficulty to anyone who understands the relation of the different planes to one another; it is just as easy for him to manifest himself in several of these celestial images at once, as it is for us to be simultaneously conscious of the pressure of several different articles against different parts of our body. The relation of one plane to another is like that of one dimension to another ; no number of units of the lower dimension can ever equal one of the higher, and in just the same way no number of these manifestations could exhaust [page 48] the power of response in the ego above. On the contrary, such manifestations afford him an appreciable additional opportunity for development on the mental plane — an opportunity which is the direct result and reward under the operation of the law of divine justice of the actions or qualities which evoked such an outpouring of affection.

It is clear from all this that as the man evolves, his opportunities in all directions become greater. Not only is he more likely as he advances to attract the love and reverence of many, and so to have many strong thought-images at his disposal on the mental plane; but also his power of manifestation through each of these and his receptivity in it rapidly increase with his progress.

This was very well illustrated by a simple case which recently came under the notice of our investigators. It was that of a mother who had died perhaps twenty years ago, leaving behind her two boys to whom she was deeply attached. Naturally they were the most prominent figures in her heaven, and quite naturally, too, she thought of them as she had left them, as boys of fifteen or sixteen years of age. The love which she thus ceaselessly poured out upon these mental images was really acting as a beneficent force showered down upon the grown-up men in this physical world, but it did not affect them both to the same extent— not that her love was stronger for one than the other, but because there was a great difference, in the vitality of the images themselves. Not a difference, be it understood, that the mother could see; to her both appeared equally with her and equally all that she could possibly desire: yet to the eyes of the investigators it was very evident that one of these images was very much more instinct with living force than the other. On tracing this very interesting phenomenon to its source, it was found that in one case the son had grown [page 49] up into an ordinary man of business — not specially evil in any way, but by no means spiritually-minded — while the other had become a man of high unselfish aspiration, and of considerable refinement and culture. His life had been such as to develop a much greater amount of consciousness in the soul than his brother's, and consequently this higher self was able to vitalize much more fully that image of his youthful days which his mother had formed in her heaven-life. There was more soul to put in, and so the image was vivid and living.

Further research revealed numbers of similar instances, and it was very clearly seen that the more highly a soul is evolved in spirituality, the more fully he can express himself in such manifestations as his friends' love has provided for him. And by such fuller expression he is also enabled to derive more and more benefit from the living force of that love as it pours itself upon him through these thought-images. As the soul grows these images become fuller expressions of him, till when he gains the level of a Master he consciously employs them as a means of helping and instructing his pupils.

Along these lines only is conscious communication possible between those still imprisoned in the physical body and those who have passed into this celestial realm. As has been said, a soul may be shining out gloriously through his image in a friend's heaven-life, and yet in his manifestation through the physical body on this plane that soul may be entirely unconscious of all this, and so may suppose himself unable to communicate with his departed friend. But if that soul has evolved his consciousness to the point of unification, and can therefore use his full powers while still in the physical body, he can then realize, even during this dull earthly life, that he still stands face to face with his friend as of yore — that death has not removed the man he [page 50] loved, but has only opened his eyes to the grander, wider life which ever lies around us all.

In appearance the friend would seem much as he did in earth-life, yet somehow strangely glorified. In the mind-body as in the astral body there is a reproduction of the physical form within the outer ovoid whose shape is determined by that of the causal body, so that it has somewhat the appearance of a form of denser mist surrounded by a lighter mist. All through the heaven-life the personality of the last physical life is distinctly preserved, and it is only when the consciousness is finally withdrawn into the causal body that this feeling of personality is merged in the individuality, and the man for the first time since this descent into incarnation realizes himself as the true and comparatively permanent ego.

Men sometimes ask whether on this mental plane there is any consciousness of time — any alternation of night and day, of sleeping and waking. The only waking in the heaven-world is the slow dawning of its wonderful bliss upon the mind-sense as the man enters upon his life on that plane, and the only sleeping is the equally gradual sinking into happy unconsciousness when the long term of that life at length comes to an end. It was once described to us in the beginning as a sort of prolongation of all the happiest hours in a man's life magnified a hundredfold in bliss; and though that definition leaves much to be desired (as indeed all physical-plane definitions must), it still comes far nearer the truth than this idea of day and night. There is, indeed, what seems an infinity of variety in the happiness of the heaven-world; but the changes of sleeping and waking form no part of its plan.

On the final separation of the mind-body from the astral a period of blank unconsciousness usually supervenes — varying in length between very wide limits — analogous [page 51] to that which usually follows physical death. The awakening from this into active mental consciousness closely resembles what often occurs in waking from a night's sleep. Just as on first awakening in the morning one sometimes passes through a period of intensely delightful repose during which one is conscious of the sense of enjoyment, though the mind is as yet inactive and the body hardly under control so the entity awakening into the heaven-world first passes through a more or less prolonged period of intense and gradually increasing bliss before his full activity of consciousness on that plane is reached. When first this sense of wondrous joy dawns on him it fills the entire field of his consciousness, but gradually as he awakens he finds himself surrounded by a world peopled by his own ideals, and presenting the features appropriate to the sub-plane to which he has been drawn.

Sixth Sub-Plane; the Second Heaven.

The dominant characteristic of this subdivision may be said to be anthropomorphic religious devotion. The distinction between such devotion and the religious feeling which finds its expression on the second sub-plane of the astral lies in the fact that the former is purely-unselfish (the man who feels it being totally unconcerned as to what the result of his devotion may be as regards himself), while the latter is always aroused by the hope and desire of gaining some advantage through it; so that on the second astral sub-plane such religious feeling as is there active invariably contains an element of selfish bargaining, while the devotion which raises a man to this sixth sub-plane of the heaven-world is entirely free from any such taint.

On the other hand, this phase of devotion, which consists essentially in the perpetual adoration of a personal [page 52] deity, must be carefully distinguished from those still higher forms which find their expression in performing some definite work for the deity's sake. A few examples of the cases observed on this sub-plane will perhaps show these distinctions more clearly than any mere description can do.

A fairly large number of entities whose mental activities work themselves out on this level are drawn from the oriental religions; but only those are included who have the characteristic of pure but comparatively unreasoning and unintelligent devotion. Worshippers of Vishnu, both in his avatâr of Krishna and otherwise, as well as a few followers of Shiva, are to be found here, each wrapped up in the self-woven cocoon of his own thoughts, alone with his own god, and oblivious of the rest of mankind, except in so far as his affections may associate with him in his adoration those whom he loved on earth. A Vaishnavite, for example, was noticed wholly absorbed in the ecstatic worship of the very same image of Vishnu to which he had made offerings during life.

Some of the most characteristic examples of this plane are to be found among women, who indeed form a very large majority of its inhabitants. Among others there was a Hindu woman who had glorified her husband into a divine being, and also thought of the child Krishna as playing with her own children, but while these latter were thoroughly human and real, the child Krishna was obviously nothing but the semblance of a blue wooden image galvanized into life. Krishna also appeared in her heaven under another form — that of an effeminate young man playing on a flute; but she was not in the least confused or troubled by this double manifestation. Another woman, who was a worshipper of Shiva, had confounded the god with her husband, looking upon the latter as a manifestation of the [page 53] former, so that the one seemed to be constantly changing into the other. Some Buddhists also are found upon this subdivision, but apparently exclusively those less instructed ones who regard the Buddha rather as an object of adoration than as a great teacher.

The Christian religion also contributes many of the inhabitants of this plane. The un-intellectual devotion which is exemplified on the one hand by the illiterate Roman Catholic peasant, and on the other by the earnest and sincere "soldier" of the Salvation Army, seems to produce results very similar to those already described, for these people also are found wrapped up in contemplation of their ideas of Christ or his mother respectively. For instance, an Irish peasant was seen absorbed in the deepest adoration of the Virgin Mary, whom he imaged as standing on the moon after the fashion of Titian's " Assumption," but holding out her hands and speaking to him. A mediaeval monk was found in ecstatic contemplation of Christ crucified, and the intensity of his yearning love and pity was such that as he watched the blood dropping from the wounds of the figure of his Christ the stigmata reproduced themselves upon his own mind-body.

Another man seemed to have forgotten the sad story of the crucifixion, and thought of his Christ only as glorified on his throne, with the crystal sea before him, and all around a vast multitude of worshippers, among whom he himself stood with his wife and family. His affection for these relatives was very deep, yet his thoughts were more occupied in adoration of the Christ, though his conception of his deity was so material that he imaged him as constantly changing kaleidoscopically backwards and forwards between the form of a man and that of the lamb bearing the flag which we often see represented in church window.

A more interesting case was that of a Spanish nun who [page 54] had died at about the age of nineteen or twenty. In her heaven she carried herself back to the date of Christ's life upon