CHAPTER 9: THE SPIRITUAL PLANE.

Conceptions of Heaven — Infinite resources of spiritual planes — Responsive to soul growth — The self-centred Heaven of undeveloped souls — Necessity for the subjective vision — The response of Devachan to thirst for knowledge — The limitations of this world's Heaven — Progress in Heaven — Its loftiest aspect — Religious expectations ; their subjective realisation — Spiritual consciousness during earth life — The resources of Devachan for the initiate — The forces of the different planes — The work to be done on the spiritual plane — Influencing disincarnate souls — The sub-planes of Devachan — What Devachan " looks like " — Light and colour — The Arupa planes.

LET us turn now to the consideration of the truly spiritual realm of Nature to which the astral plane is but the ante-chamber. From the first, however, we must keep in mind the dual aspect of this realm which corresponds to the dual aspect of the astral plane. The spiritual plane is one condition from the point of view of those normal souls that are resting in its blissful emotion between two periods of incarnate life, and another for the purified Ego of the living initiate qualified to ascend to that level of consciousness while still in touch with the conditions of moral responsibility and activity that belong to the earth life.

The fetters of immature religious thinking are apt to prevent those of us who are not trained occultists from drawing that distinction properly. People are liable to imagine that Heaven, for those who pass away from the physical plane at death, is a condition of greater exaltation and progress than the possibilities of the situation really provide for. Though its scope may be almost infinite — in regard to knowledge and exaltation of consciousness, — it responds in every case with exactitude to the characteristics of spiritual evolution brought thither by the soul which attains to it. There is no plane of Nature in fact that is above the operation of cause and effect. Transplant to Heaven a consciousness, a being, invested with no attributes transcending the best emotions of ordinary physical life, and Heaven does not for such persons contain more than the fruition of these emotions. You do not change an African savage's nature by bringing him over to a civilised country and planting him suddenly in the midst of art and science and literary culture. To use comparatively grovelling and familiar ideas in illustration of the principle before us, the savage can merely select from the resources of civilisation, supposing them offered to him in all their abundance, the food and drink and physical comforts which his experience of life enables him to crave for. So with the imperfectly developed souls of common humanity. Heaven is only Heaven for them in so far as the growth of their minds enables them to avail themselves of its resources. That which it does for all who have it in them to attain its confines at all, is to assure them complete happiness along the lines that their spiritual development has followed.

By spiritual development in this sense, let me hasten to add, I do not mean, in any exclusive way at any rate, the development of the religious instinct. Where this instinct is very energetic that is undoubtedly one phase of spiritual development, but real unselfish love is no less spiritual in its character and is equally capable of a glorified expansion on the heavenly or spiritual plane of consciousness.

The artistic faculty again is deeply tinged with true spirituality and is thus capable of evoking a generous response from the spiritual plane whether it has to do with the beauty of form, colour, or sound, and the love of knowledge may be spiritual if it penetrates the essence of things, though it is possible that it may be bent so exclusively on physical detail as to be sometimes a force which may operate to keep a soul set free by death, earth bound in the higher astral condition, instead of acting as a stimulus to the spiritual awakening.

As I have said, the resources of the spiritual plane are all but infinite, for thought is there becoming a creative power in a far higher degree than on the astral plane, and independently of this, consciousness is there in direct relations with the all but infinite memory of Nature, which is preserved— how we cannot at present expect to understand exactly — with imperishable perfection, in the all-embracing medium known to occult science as the "Akasa."

This marvellous medium is discernible in some of its manifestations on the astral plane, but its clear and unconfused records belong especially to the higher plane of spiritual consciousness. It is a natural mirror of all events, which recalls them for those who have the power of reading in it, in their minutest details. As nothing can alter the past when its events are once accomplished, so nothing can obliterate them from the memory of Nature. Our own individual memories in physical life are imperfect readings of so much in its records as we have personally had to do with — of as much as is connected by magnetic affinities, so to speak, with our own brain cells; but to the emancipated spiritual faculties on the spiritual plane all the records are accessible. We are in a position to remember everything that has ever occurred in the history of our world, and to remember it not in that dim shadowy way which physical memory alone achieves, but in such a way that the past scene or chain of events on which we bend our attention, re-enacts itself before us in vivid perfection of detail.

But it does not so unroll itself unless the attention is bent upon it with the set purpose of evoking its records, so that in this immensely important matter it will be seen that the Akasa is only panoramic in its character for those souls on the spiritual plane that are animated by the thought of applying to it. For a person dying in the ordinary way, and passing, after getting clear of the astral region, on to the spiritual plane, the records of Nature's memory will be a blank if the mind has not been stored with aspirations pointing to the use of such resources.

But, though the spiritual plane may be thus subject to limitations for people passing on to it in the ordinary way, it does not follow that its happiness-giving character is limited in a similar manner. Within its beneficent atmosphere there is simply no room for unhappiness of any sort or kind. For all who attain it there is necessarily an interior condition of complete, perfect, and unalloyed bliss and delight. The struggles and sorrows of incarnate life are for the time — and a long time is in question — entirely over and done with. Whatever — whoever — is needed to conduce to perfect happiness is there present to the consciousness of the enraptured soul, always, of course, assuming that the conditions of happiness for such a soul are susceptible of fulfilment in a spiritual state. If they have to do with delights of an absolutely earthly and physical character, it will not be possible for the person so bowed down to ascend to the spiritual plane at all. But we are not dealing now with earth-bound astrals, but with souls that have ascended, however feeble, comparatively, may be the force that has carried them upward.

At first the student of spiritual science will be apt to resent as unsatisfactory the self-centred, and, as it will seem to him, delusive character of the spiritual happiness thus attained by the normal human being reaching the Heaven I describe. Take the case of a person, say A, whose happiness is essentially dependent on the companionship of B. On the spiritual plane he has that happiness. But suppose the happiness of B has to do entirely with the companionship of C. In B's thought-sphere A may have no place. So then it may be conceived A is self-deceived all the time — wrapped in a delusion which would be a cruel negation of happiness if he understood it. But this criticism is vitiated by the confusion it makes between externals and essentials. In thinking of companionship from the point of view of the earth life we are dealing with externals. We do not concern ourselves on this physical plane with the inner thought consciousness of the person beloved, nearly so much as with the external manifestation thereof; or, at all events, that is true of the common-place mortal. If it is not true of anyone who may be reading these words, then the spiritual plane will shape itself to his higher spiritual evolution, as we shall see later on; but we must not criticise the scheme of Nature from one point of view only.

Heaven, — meaning thereby blissful rest in a consciousness of that order which the soul is capable of, — must somehow be provided for all, and not merely for persons of very highly refined intelligence; and assuming that A is a person on the humbler levels of humanity in this respect, how is he to be happy on the hypothesis we are dealing with except by means of an arrangement by which his aspirations take the shape of an apparent reality? Is A to be condemned to have no heavenly bliss because his affections have been directed towards an external manifestation on this plane of life which is not in true spiritual union with his own consciousness? He has not yet risen to a height of evolution in which spiritual existence per se constitutes the full fruition of happiness. A person is not essentially changed in his nature because he te translated to a new plane of being. Our friend A set himself up with a delusive theory of happiness on earth if he centred his dream of bliss in an affection that by the hypothesis was one-sided. Is that mistake to embitter his whole experience of Heaven? He has not made the realisation of spiritual truth the object of his life; he is denied nothing that he has sought in being left for the time without an exact appreciation of such spiritual truth; he has centred his aspirations in an earthly emotion, and he finds Heaven for him the entire and complete fruition of that emotion.

What, after all, is reality and what is unreality when we are handling the manifestations of things, and not their essential spiritual realities? Is the body of the beloved friend the reality? That will be dust and nothingness in a few years. For ages after its decay, the spiritual counterpart which A's thought has evoked or created is there before him unchanged and unchangeable. Nor is it a mere unresponsive phantom to be gazed at. The creations of thought on the spiritual plane are alive. It will never be unresponsive to A, for his desire has invested it with the externals of the emotion he would have desired his friend to possess. The world in which he will live — in Heaven — is a subjective world, no doubt; from the point of view of supreme knowledge, a realm of self-centred rapture; but it will be a condition of things for him in which no disappointment is possible. The duration is merely determined by the eventual exhaustion of the force of the desire that has evoked it. If its character change, that will merely be because in the latent consciousness of A there are other aspirations to be fulfilled, capable of displacing the aspiration we have been dealing with or requiring expansion simultaneously with that. There is room, so to speak, in the subjective world of the soul enjoying Heaven, for many affections, for many sources of delight. But though our own demands upon the infinite resources of the spiritual plane may be of an exalted order, let us not on that account require that Heaven shall be constructed, so to speak, to suit our case only, and leave plunged in forlorn unhappiness the myriads whose aspirations have not risen above the simple blessings suggested to the imagination by an unthoughtful experience of the earth life.

On first contact with this idea I know that it disconcerts many vague aspirations which imagination associates with the idea of heavenly experiences, but if the actual provisions of Nature may in this way fail to realise certain expectations, the failure is due, not to the shortcomings of Heaven, so to speak, but to the absolutely unreasonable and impracticable character of commonplace expectations concerning these. It is only on a higher level than that which is touched by the undeveloped majority, that it is possible for the soul to come into contact with those deeper realities of spiritual existence on which a true union of all spiritual individualities becomes possible. While the spiritual growth for any given individual is imperfect, it could not find happiness in a premature emancipation from those limitations in which alone, up to that period, it had found scope for the play of its affections. Devachanic existence may therefore be thought of as partaking to some extent of the nature of a vision, but the vision is one as vivid — all assurances indeed lead us to believe, more vivid — than that illusion by which we are surrounded on the physical plane of life. From the most exalted point of view, indeed, all states short of that must partake in some measure of illusion, which is thus regarded as more and more completely separating itself from realities, as we carry our observation down through the phases of Nature, until the maximum degree of such separation is reached in the manifestations of life on the physical plane.

The difficulty I have touched on here is one which must be thoroughly cleared out of the way before any student of the inner verities of Nature, as related to after-death conditions, can make any serious progress. I grant that at the first blush of the facts, thinking that has been deeply saturated with vague and impracticable conceptions of the future is apt to rebel against true explanations of the Devachanic vision. People for whom all regions of Nature beyond the physical world they see are inaccessible, except in imagination, get into the habit of using even imagination when dealing with ideas of Heaven in a terribly unintelligent way. They lose sight of the whole principle which in connexion with every department of Nature they know anything about, they apply to all questions with so much determination; they ignore the fundamental idea of evolution. They claim that Heaven for all men shall realise all that can be imagined as heavenly by the most advanced representatives of the race; that it shall be an objective locality, where the things seen by one denizen are equally seen by all; the conditions enjoyed by one, equally by all. This idea is profoundly immoral in reality; but above all things it is foolish. The ultimate possibilities of evolution undoubtedly provide for all human beings who grow up to them, spiritual destinies immensely transcending the conditions of the Devachanic plane as these present themselves to normal entities of the present period in evolution. I shall attempt to deal with some of these possibilities later on. But long before a human soul has grown to the development in which it will be capable of consciousness on Nirvanic levels, it is still in need of spiritual refreshment, and desperately in want of some experiences it can feel as happiness, in the course of its weary pilgrimage through the innumerable incarnations on which it is dependent — under the programme of the whole system — for its upward growth. " I myself am Heaven and Hell " answers the " Soul " of the Persian poet, when sent through the Invisible "that after life to spell." The line embodies a deeper truth than is suspected by many who quote it with an approval they are quick to withdraw from the same idea set forth with scientific precision. The soul makes its own Heaven by evoking from the infinitely responsive conditions of Nature by which it is confronted on the Devachanic plane, the vision which exactly provides for its happiness. And in furnishing it with the necessary facilities for doing this, Nature does not find it necessary to make a sacrifice of other souls whose happiness might not be entirely provided for if they were called upon to play exactly the parts assigned to them in the visions of all their friends. Nor would it always be possible, however they might be sacrificed, that they should, in this way, play what might easily be incompatible parts. In short, any Heaven that was constructed to meet the objections of persons who find fault with the aspect of the Devachanic plane which renders it, for our present humanity, the heaven of inter-incarnate periods, — would soon be reduced to a melancholy scene of conflicting jealousies and despair.

Illusive in one sense the Devachanic vision may be, — though the enlightened consciousness which can roam still higher levels will regard the deeper illusions of the physical plane — where the mask of flesh and blood is mistaken for the true individuality, and none but the things which are evanescent are thought of as real, — as a point of view from which it is strangely inappropriate that the relatively durable illusions of the Devachanic vision should be treated as deceptive. Let us now take one step in advance in contemplating the possibilities of the spiritual plane for those who in due time awaken there after death in the usual way. Of course Devachan for them is not a condition of active energy or work. If the persons we are now concerned with are so filled with philanthropic impulse that they might not — from the earth point of view — be able to conceive a state of happiness that did not involve doing good in some way to others, so beautiful an attribute in their natures will in due time assert itself, and may even tend to bring them back more quickly than would otherwise be the case to the incarnate life which is the only possible sphere of activity for them, until they attain heights of spiritual evolution to be considered later on. But though, if asked the question, it may be that they would have been willing to sacrifice the personal bliss of Heaven in order to go on unintermittently being useful to their fellow creatures, Nature does not hurriedly accept that sacrifice. We are assuming that, though of a very elevated and generous character, they are still in the current of normal evolution, and for all such persons death is the introduction to a period of rest and happiness. Whether they demand it or not, the reward, or an instalment of the reward, of their good and meritorious lives is served out to them; and if from the earth point of view they would fancy, as I have said, that happiness would not be happiness unless associated with continuous effort for others, that impression is merely due to their insufficient comprehension of the conditions of existence on the spiritual plane. It would be impossible but that such persons as we are now thinking of would have many capacities of emotion which Nature, working with the boundless resources, in that direction, of Heaven, would take advantage of, so to speak, to make them thoroughly happy during the period of their spiritual repose.

And now, still keeping to the aspect of the spiritual plane which presents itself to the normal soul getting into that state of consciousness after death, let us contemplate the interest of the Heavenly condition, — to fall back on that convenient and familiar phrase, — as related to the opportunities it affords to the soul thirsting for knowledge. Such a soul, to begin with, has all the resources of the astral light to draw upon. Just as the thought of the spiritual Ego directed towards a beloved friend in life evokes that friend as a living reality before the creative thinker, so does the attention turned towards any events or phenomena of the past evoke their living pictures from the all-embracing memory of Nature. And this would apply not merely to historical scenes or remote periods of geological development, but to the essential truths which scientific research gropes after. It is true indeed that our aspirations towards knowledge often in life take daring flights, and we set ourselves problems which the resources even of the Devachanic plane are inadequate to satisfy. We must always remember that the spiritual plane we are considering is the spiritual plane of this world. One of the mistakes of uninstructed imagination dealing with the conception of Heaven is a mistake of incoherent thinking. From the earth life belonging to this present stage of human evolution, the soul is imagined as slipping at once into a Heaven which is thought of as a homogeneous Heaven for the whole cosmos, in which we are all to be in the presence of and sharing the omniscience of absolute Divinity. Occult science dealing with the facts of Nature, which it is in a position to probe, interprets for us the spiritual plane of this world into which most assuredly the souls of people dying on this world do actually pass, existing there for such and such periods and then as certainly returning to incarnation on earth. It perceives therefore the absurdity of the notion that the immediate Heaven of humanity is either co-extensive with the universe or designed for eternity. Within the limits of eternity who shall say what heights may not be reached, what realms of existence and consciousness touched? The real occultist is as careful to avoid dogmatic denials as the real scientist to steer clear of those intellectual pitfalls. But just as the real scientist avows that a great deal lies beyond his ken, and contents himself with affirmations concerning what knowledge he can reach, so exactly with occult science. The observer who is adequately gifted can actually get into relation with the spiritual plane of the earth, and can there recognise the souls of men who have lived and died existing under the conditions I am in course of describing. He can understand and appreciate that plane as entering into the great scheme of human evolution, as constituting the reality which is dimly reached after by those people who aspire to the joys of Heaven, and as most certainly responding with abundant success to the cravings for happiness which are associated with those aspirations. But so also does the real occultist know that many fancies concerning Heaven which have possessed the imagination of men are, to say the least, premature, while some others of course are grotesque and nonsensical.

The realities of human growth and evolution and of human experience, whether in or out of the body, are always concerned with gradual transitions, however infinite may be the horizon of possibility stretching on in the remote distance. Let it not be supposed that because the Heaven which human beings of this present race enjoy when they rest for a while between two incarnations, is subject to limitations, spiritual progress beyond these limitations is for ever denied to mankind. The entanglements of modern thought on such subjects have largely arisen from the way modern culture has forgotten the great law of Re-incarnation, which makes a long series of lives play the part in Nature erroneously assigned by popular notions to one such life. The spiritual plane of the world on which human beings, such as we are now, may exist, and on which they will in that case enjoy the most intense felicity their minds are capable of imagining for ten or twenty centuries between each incarnation, may be looked back upon as a mere resting-place from the point of view of a higher consciousness to be attained in some remote future, or indeed from the point of view which some exalted souls, greatly hastening the normal process, have already attained. But the truth of the matter is that if, when the design of Nature is correctly described, people who are used to thinking that the Heaven to which they will pass after death is co-extensive with the universe, are inclined to be discontented on that account with the prospect actually before them, their discontentment can only be due to an imperfect understanding of the relations between their own present consciousness and infinity. The child that puts out its hand to grasp at the moon is a feeble illustration of that miscalculation of their own spiritual range, which leads some incarnate thinkers to imagine that nothing will satisfy them after death but alt the spiritual potentialities the cosmos contains.

And these reflections bring me back to the case of the soul who, even on the spiritual plane of which I have been speaking, may be aware of aspirations towards an even higher knowledge than its resources may provide for. Within the limits of the spiritual Heaven, which is still no more than the spiritual aspect of this world, there are many widely differing ranges of condition. The state I have been endeavouring to describe, in which the resources of the spiritual plane respond to the ordinary human thirst for happiness by providing the vivid consciousness of all desired companionships and the opportunities of an almost boundless expansion of knowledge, is after all but the first stage of the spiritual life. It is a stage which so entirely suffices for the normal condition of human consciousness that great myriads of people can never be capable of an aspiration beyond it. But for those whose latent aspirations have been highly spiritualised during the earth life the spiritual plane will gradually reveal possibilities beyond its own first stage. The soul may spend centuries bathed in the rapture of that first stage, but the latent craving for an even purer condition of spiritual consciousness may eventually assert itself. And the perception of the soul will then be wakened to the fact that in advance, as it were, of the bright light in which it exists, there is a brighter light shining, the mysteries of which may be explored.

In this way, although the spiritual plane is not a region of Nature with which effort or struggle is compatible, the old efforts and internal struggles of the earth life will have invested the soul with an onward impulse, which provides for a conscious progress within the spiritual realm. Language is all but paralysed in the attempt to suggest the nature of the results that such progress may then lead to, but this much can be said: the expansion of the soul's consciousness on the spiritual plane — provided the appropriate force making such progress possible has been engendered during life — will conduct it to a state of consciousness in which the appreciation of objective form is actually transcended. There is a spiritual condition possible for man in the intervals between incarnations, in which consciousness becomes so all-embracing that it obliterates the distinction of objective forms and goes far even towards obliterating the separateness of objective individualities considered as distinct from itself. The teaching of those who have penetrated this state of consciousness is to the effect that it cannot be realised in the imagination of any mind that has not actually touched it, but its sublimity, we are assured, eclipses the finite bliss of the earlier spiritual condition, just as that eclipses the purest happiness imagined by the incarnate thinker. We can only, from the earthly point of view, dwell in imagination on this lofty state of being with an expectant reverence, assured that if we reach it, the sense of exaltation it brings in its train will be something that transcends happiness. From that point of view neither happiness nor knowledge must be thought of as acquired by the individuality concerned. The individuality is identified with the essence of those ideas. The idea of companionship is lost or merged in the unity of all spiritual individualities, which, if not completely realised as yet in even the highest Devachan, is foreshadowed by the state of consciousness on its "Arupa" level. The individual spirit has almost got behind the planes of manifestation to that of intense essential realities. I only avoid saying of "absolute realities" because nothing within the scheme of a human evolution as yet far from complete can touch "the absolute," in the proper signification of that phrase, which refers it to the absolute spirit of the whole cosmos; but certainly no incarnate human understanding venturing to concern itself with these overmastering problems of infinity can reach in thought beyond such an approximation to the absolute as the higher conditions of spiritual consciousness in the formless region of actuality may furnish.

And now let us compare still further with the magnificent realities of the spiritual plane, as initiated insight is enabled to unveil them for us, the conceptions which exoteric religion attaches to the idea of Heaven. And in so doing this, let us not for a moment treat with any failure of respect the personal and anthropomorphic belief that exoteric forms of religious enthusiasm suggest to the devout though perhaps imperfectly instructed worshipper. Of course the teachings of real spiritual science sublimate and spiritualise the conceptions which represent Heaven as an extra cosmic abode of Divinity, and of those personifications of Divinity which are evolved by conventional religious thinking for the satisfaction of incarnate imaginations. But although pious emotions directed towards these personifications are not the only feelings that deserve the name of spiritual aspiration, they are undoubtedly included in that condition of mind. There are myriads of people so saturated with definite beliefs as to the personalities with which existence in Heaven must be associated, that Heaven for them would not be Heaven if it did not include such beings. But what if the notions they have formed of such beings are really unworthy of the true sublimities of the spiritual plane; what if the Truth is purer and more impersonal than their narrow and earthly imaginations have represented it? Is it to be supposed that, translated to the spiritual region, their expectations and aspirations will be at once harmonised with a more truly spiritualised stage of evolution? To imagine this would be to ignore the fundamental lesson of occult teaching — that the human creature grows upward in the scale of Nature gradually as a consequence of efforts in the direction of growth accomplished during successive earth lives. The translation of the Ego's consciousness from one plane of Nature to another may bring latent capacities into operation, but it does not engender new capacities.

Therefore the soul which has never spiritualised the personifications of exoteric religion will not be suddenly enabled to spiritualise them by coming into consciousness on the spiritual plane. It will simply deal with them as it deals with the beloved companions of earth who may not — according to the first hypothesis put forward a few pages back — be in true spiritual relations with itself. Its thought and aspiration will have the usual creative force, and the devotee to whom the idea of God has been that of a sublime monarch on a throne, will behold and worship at the foot of that throne, within the subjective though apparently boundless sphere of its own spiritual life. If the Virgin or the saints have played a part in the religious imagination of the human Ego in question on earth, the Virgin and the saints will be visible to its enraptured gaze on the threshold of the spiritual plane. Nothing but a highly refined and purified body of religious beliefs will introduce the Ego on that plane to pure realities and the truth of things.

So far we have been chiefly considering the spiritual plane from the point of view of those who pass on to it in the ordinary course of events after death — a long time after death, perhaps, if the astral plane has, in the first instance, exacted a considerable delay. But now, to expand as far as possible our comprehension of the sublime aspect of Nature on which we are engaged, let us turn to the question, how Devachanic conditions of consciousness affect a soul or Higher Ego enabled to touch them during earth life.

In discussing the very different conditions of astral existence I had continually to emphasise the principle that the region presented one aspect to the soul after death, and another to the soul set free from the body temporarily. There will be much to say about such temporary freedom later on, as that has to do with the grand achievements of abnormal spiritual development, so I need not anticipate another branch of my subject by stopping here to explain how such freedom is procured and what lofty purposes it subserves. But for the moment let us deal with the results of occult progress, — with the experience gained in temporary flights to the spiritual plane, undertaken by an Ego with a body still going on in the earth life. How would the spiritual plane, rich in the characteristics I have described, present itself to the consciousness of such an Ego?

The sense of rapture and intense felicity which the Devachanic condition imparts would be the same in both cases. That is an inherent attribute of consciousness on the spiritual plane. Then the sense of companionship of whoever might be loved by the person ascending to that plane would be the same as in the other case. But assuming that such ascents became of frequent occurrence with a highly spiritualised soul, a condition of things would set in, in which the activity of mind of the incarnate being would assert itself through the passive receptiveness that the all-sufficing character of the spiritual consciousness would otherwise tend to engender. The Higher Ego would, as it were, be continually prompted, from the incarnate phase of its own being, to seek out the solution of mysteries, to unravel problems on which its speculation had been bent, to avail itself, in short, of the almost infinite resources of the Akasic records. These would on that account be far more valuable to the Ego still in touch with earth than to the other, which would float undisturbed by any desire, for long periods of time, in a mere bath of unalloyed and complete felicity.

Then the earth-attached Ego would be in a position to be making comparisons the whole time. Like the other, it would be bathed in felicity, but it would never lose sight of the complexities of the whole situation, nor of the earth life; so that its command of the resources of knowledge inherent in the spiritual condition would be applicable to earthly things in a way which would give it a marvellous power of insight in respect to the affairs of this world. A very important distinction must always be drawn in connexion with consciousness, between consciousness pure and simple and self-consciousness — the condition in which the fact of consciousness becomes an object of consideration. Thus an animal may be as conscious as a man, but is not self-conscious — not qualified to turn its mental gaze inward and reflect upon the phenomena of its own mind. In the same way the soul on the spiritual plane after death, at all events while in the threshold state in which the sense of felicity and of complete satisfaction in regard to its aspirations swallows up everything else, may be regarded as conscious; while the emancipated Ego, enabled to reach the spiritual plane during trances of the body, is self-conscious in the highest signification of the phrase.

Thus the opportunities afforded by Devachanic consciousness to such an entity are stupendously greater than for one who is just qualified to exist there. The situation is but faintly hinted at if we consider the different meaning, for a highly educated man and for a savage, of books and philosophical instruments. A Bushman in the British Museum would not be so far from being able to avail himself of all the resources around him, as a human being after death just qualified to touch the spiritual plane, would be unable to take advantage of its infinite possibilities.

We have seen how on the astral plane itself, matter is already infinitely more plastic to the influence of thought and will than the grosser matter we have to deal with on the physical plane. It may seem somewhat strained language to speak of the matter of the astral plane when it is wholly beyond the reach of our present senses nor capable, as far as we know, of affecting the most delicate instruments of the physical laboratory, but it is material, as truly as gold or iron are material, to the senses adapted to its perception. And on the Devachanic plane again the thought of the universe has taken manifestation in matter, though this, in its turn, will be beyond the range of the astral senses for those on intervening levels. Nor, indeed, are the various phases of material nature entirely disconnected the one from the other, they melt as it were, the one into the other like the colours of the spectrum. The principle on which this transition is accomplished has even been discerned by those occult students who have advanced a certain distance on the upward path of evolution. The molecule of physical matter is utterly beyond microscopic reach in the direction of the infinitely little and constitutes the finest manifestation of physical matter whose characteristics can be discerned by physical means. But our molecule of physical matter is a congeries of ultimate physical atoms, and the ultimate atom itself constitutes the ether of the physical plane and is still of the physical plane, although already beyond the reach of any instrument of research designed up to the present time. That ultimate physical atom, however, is found to be itself a highly complicated structure, consisting of atoms of astral matter. These atoms in turn, we may feel sure, from reasoning and the analogies of nature, are themselves constituted of similar aggregations of Devachanic matter. A great region of thought is opened out in connexion with this branch of superphysical science, before we begin to get touch with the nature of force on each plane. Force, it is sometimes said, is matter, although the expression in that bald shape is not calculated to convey any acceptable idea to the mind, but the matter which it is, is in all cases the matter of a superior plane. Astral matter may become force on the physical plane, or to express the idea with greater precision, may become the vehicle of force on the physical plane, and Devachanic matter in the same way may become the vehicle of a force on the astral plane.

Vehicles of force on the Devachanic plane are of a potency in inverse ratio to their tenuity, because they become the souls, so to speak, of forces on the lower planes, and this thought may suggest one of the ways in which a capacity to exercise consciousness on the Devachanic plane becomes a priceless privilege for a human being still in life, who ascends to that plane not for the sake of bathing in its blissful sensations but for the purpose of accomplishing results that may benefit his fellow creatures. We are in contact here with ideas so far out of touch with commonplace thinking, that it is not easy to render such results as I am now referring to intelligible in everyday language. They would have to do largely with engendering states of mind on the part of the people towards whom the good intention might be directed. Conventional thinking is apt to confine its attention to external conditions of well-being or suffering. It leaves the internal condition to take care of itself through entire ignorance concerning the invisible influences for good and evil by which it may be assailed. The Adept will often be enabled to recognise these as by far more important than the relatively evanescent circumstances that make for good or evil physically. In that way by help rendered from the Devachanic plane to people in this life, the whole current of their spiritual evolution, carrying with it innumerable Karmic developments that, amongst other effects, will materially qualify even the physical plane well-being of future lives, — may be modified in an important degree. Foremost, therefore, in endeavouring to form some notion of what the opportunities of the Devachanic plane are like for advancing pupils of the Adepts who may be enabled to reach it in consciousness during life, we may set the opportunities of taking an early part in the spiritual work of that plane — with which the entities reaching it in the normal course of existence between two earth lives have nothing to do. Nor is such spiritual work, however difficult itself to appreciate from the ordinary mundane standpoint, the subtlest in its nature of that which the enlightened occultist having access to the Devachanic plane is enabled to undertake. For those to whom the whole after life is at best a vague hypothesis enshrouded with doubt, we may seem to be venturing indeed beyond the limits of the knowable in discussing the question of beneficial influence that may be brought to bear on those who have actually passed through the gateway of death. But the modern theosophic student, vividly alive to the fact that death is but a change of state, is enabled to get a clear view of much that passes in the later state — as, for one thing, the account I have already given of the normal Devachanic vision will have shown. And one thing he is enabled to see has reference to the curious bearing in some cases on the character of the Devachanic vision of a possible condition of things I will now attempt to explain.

Suppose a deceased person has been attached during life to some one who has got on, along the path of occult development, sufficiently to assign him a part in his own subjectively created Devachanic vision. In ordinary cases the real individual consciousness of the friend concerned would not be engaged in the process. But if that friend is capable of activity on the Devachan plane, the situation is very different. He may then, at will, at any time, actually vivify and animate the living picture of himself in the vision, so that such picture becomes himself, and is thus capable not merely of reflecting the thoughts concerning him evolved by its creator, but of conveying his own independent thoughts. Thus the deceased person in the midst of the bliss of his normal Devachan derives the advantage of new spiritual teaching from his friend, and may actually get on in this way along the great highway of evolution beyond the degree to which the efforts of his previous life had directly conduced. And the progress so made becomes assimilated with his true Ego, never to be forfeited.

This condition of things, let me add for the benefit of any reader who may fancy it an infringement, in favour of the person so influenced, of the laws of Karma, is not such an infringement really. It is the Karma of his attachment to and affection for a fellow being on a higher level of spiritual advancement than himself. And in some measure the law just described holds good in reference to people who, without being so highly developed as to be able to function freely on the Devachanic plane during life, are nevertheless developed spiritually to a degree which enables them unconsciously to vitalise the ideal image of themselves which the Devachanic thinker has evolved. The scientific explanation of this possibility has to be sought for in very subtle explanations concerning the unity, on higher planes, of all truly spiritual natures, but into that obscure region of occult metaphysics it is hardly necessary to diverge just here. At all events, the occult student, who may not yet regard himself as "on the path" as a regular disciple — and thus provided for as regards the future on principles which differ from those regulating the Devachanic life of the normal majority — may derive a good deal of satisfaction from the possibility just referred to. Supposing his spiritual fervour to gravitate strongly in the direction of some great Adept, of whom he knows by repute and in the exaltation of whose nature he has an appreciative trust; even though the time may not be ripe for him to enter distinctly on the path of initiation, his Devachanic experiences will be glorified by the presence of that great Adept in his Devachanic vision, under circumstances in the reality of which there is no conceivable flaw. From his teaching he may not be in a position to derive, so far, all that may come to him in that way at a later stage of his growth, but the relationship so established will be one which nothing but his own serious degeneration in later lives will ever again interrupt.

Meanwhile, — one cannot say everything, in endeavouring to explain occult mysteries, all at once, — I have not yet touched on a question that will naturally suggest itself, — in connexion with the aspect of the Devachan plane for those who penetrate it at will, — to everyone who attempts to picture their experiences in his own mind. What does the place look like? — or as there is no "place" to be considered in the mundane sense of the term — what does Nature look like regarded from that point of view?

This brings me into relation with a very important branch of the subject, — the sub-divisional aspects of the Devachan plane. Just as in the case of the astral plane, the Devachanic is divided into regions the characteristics of which differ very widely among themselves, although it must be remembered that the "lowest" sub-plane of Devachan is already of so glorified a nature that it seems like perfection and infinity itself, for those whose perceptions are first awakened there. But in truth it is but the first stage on a new septenary ladder of perfection. There are seven distinctly marked stages in Devachanic progress, which for the convenience of description, — though all materialistic language begins to be embarrassing in dealing with such topics, — we must speak of as seven sub-planes. The first four are spoken of as the "Rupa" or form-planes of Devachan, the other three as the "Arupa" or form-less regions.

These distinctions can only be appreciated and understood by the enlightened or initiated visitor, who has acquired the complete freedom, so to speak, of the Devachanic plane. The departed entity established for his blissful rest in Devachan, finds himself in the region to which his affinities have naturally drawn him, and is not in a position to study the circumstances of Nature above or below that region. He may pass upward, indeed, from one to the other. On first awakening in Devachan, he finds himself established, — or rather, he is established, without knowing anything about the matter scientifically, — on that sub-plane which has to do with the full development of the most commanding body of emotions in his own nature, — among those, of course, which are capable of expansion on a spiritual plane of consciousness. I must go back at this point to the earlier part of the subject — but while first attempting to define the aspects of Devachan as presented to the departed entities, it was inconvenient to handle the question of the sub-planes. As I say, that division can only be understood by the enlightened visitor, so the explanation is properly taken up now.

On the first or lowest Rupa plane (some writers numbering these planes count from the top, but I prefer to follow the rule we always adopt in dealing with the Seven Principles) — the first or lowest plane has to do mainly with the development of the human affections. Of course, the rapturous and blissful atmosphere of feeling which belongs to the Devachanic condition pervades all planes. The second and third have to do with the intense developments of religious devotion — in its purest and loftiest aspect, which quite transcends the conventional ecclesiastical aspect which asserts itself on the sixth astral sub-plane. The fourth belongs pre-eminently to the loftiest kind of artistic genius, including the spiritual-intellectual development, — that which is concerned not merely with the pursuit of knowledge in its essential aspects — without excessive regard to material detail, — but which is infused with some zeal, for the benefit of mankind. There must be an altruistic touch in the intellectual fervour which conduces to the development of consciousness on the fourth Rupa plane; and so with the artistic enthusiasm concerned. This must not be infected with the ambition of being recognised as a great artist, it must be an unself-regarding love of art, ennobled by the feeling that by means of the art pursued, the world is to be elevated and improved.

Whichever enthusiasm amongst those capable of carrying a soul to Devachan is the most commanding in its force, — the soul is carried to the appropriate plane, and first awakens there. But if the first awakening is thus on one of the higher planes, that does not mean that the development of the human love emotion specially belonging to the first, is in any way denied to the individuality concerned. The higher, — for such purposes, — includes the lower, and the devout religious enthusiast will find his loved companions around him in his beatific vision on the second or third plane, just as the sublime artist will be able to enrich his vision in the same way, and to find it glorified by the religious vision also, if that is required for the perfection of his happiness.

Supposing human love is distinctly the predominant need of any given Ego's nature, he will awake on the first Devachan plane to begin with, and if his nature also includes, though in a secondary degree, the religious or artistic fervour, will pass on later, carrying his predominant vision with him. For many pages I might go on amplifying the idea of this gradual unfoldment of Devachanic consciousness, but it will be seen to have almost infinite ramifications, which it would be impossible to follow out completely, while the broad principle is easily grasped without going into details at all.

It would obviously be on the highest of the Rupa planes that the soul, entitled, so to speak, to such a privilege, would begin to avail itself freely of Nature's all but infinitely responsive power on Devachanic levels. Whatever thirst for knowledge in any exalted direction has stirred its consciousness during earth life will, as time goes on, evolve itself from memory and instantaneously evoke its appropriate response. For the soul so situated there can be no more possibility of an uusatisfied feeling in regard to the desire for knowledge than for an unsatisfied aspiration that has to do with human love. In the normal course of progress the realisation in this way of higher knowledge, sought for by the early stirring of thought in that direction during earth life, constitutes the actual growth of the Ego for which the earlier stirring has provided. No new Karma, to speak technically, is being engendered during the Devachanic period, no fresh causes are being set in motion, but those which are already established as force within the consciousness are thus blossoming out into the maturity of effect. Adequate attention to this thought will reconcile two views in connexion with occult teaching concerning the soul's growth which sometimes present embarrassment when ill-understood. All the work, so to speak, towards growth has been done during earth life, and the moment that is over the qualifications of the next earthly vehicle of consciousness which the Ego will occupy have been already determined. His fitness, as it were, to occupy that vehicle is provided for by the experiences he goes through during the Devachanic period, themselves the fruit of the seed he has originally planted. And now patiently endeavouring to pick up all our threads, though it is impossible to follow them up all at once, let us go back to the question what Devachan "looks like." Every one must instinctively crave for some description of its external aspect, for however matter exists, no matter how refined it may be, the mind cannot escape from the conception that it must have an external aspect. By the very terms employed, it is recognised as having an objective existence. And this inference is in no way misleading in regard to the Devachanic plane, but the aspect of nature in that region differs so widely from that with which we are familiar here, that the required conception can only be arrived at in the mind, and then but imperfectly, step by step, as we begin to realise the various features of this very exalted Nature. To every consciousness first touching the Devachanic plane, the predominant impression, in the first instance, seems to be that of light; light of a brilliancy to which the experience of physical eyes in relation to bright light can hardly be truly related, because we have to think of that light as inconceivably brilliant, but in no sense dazzling. The very thought of being dazzled, is associated with the imperfections of the sense by which, on the physical plane, the phenomenon of light is appreciated. The light of the spiritual planes is attractive in proportion, so to speak, to its brilliancy. It must be thought of as associated in some hardly imaginable way with life. It is described by those who can cognise it as " living light," and withal it is not a mere white brilliancy, but embodies an infinite and variegated play of colour, — colour running thus into a great variety of distinctions entirely beyond the range that can be appreciated by the physical senses. Even before getting on to Devachanic levels, some persons in the waking state, whose astral senses are in activity, are enabled to perceive, in what for most of us is the invisible margin of the spectrum, colours which are unlike any of those known to the painter. These in themselves are wholly indescribable, for no colour can be described except in terms of those already known. More colours than are discernible to astral sight become manifest in the marvellous iridescence of Devachanic nature, and they are not alone manifestations of beauty; they have a significance which on some levels of the Devachanic plane, becomes definitely perceptible to consciousness functioning there. As the vibrations of sound have acquired for ourselves, through the use of language, a definite intellectual signification, so the vibrations of colour on certain Devachanic levels carry significance from mind to mind, and from the lowest to the highest region of that plane, constitute one of its foremost characteristics.

Next we have ever to remember that the plasticity of matter on the Devachanic plane, and its obedience to impulse and will, is such that thought becomes a creative power there in an enormously higher degree than is the case on even the higher levels of the astral plane. We may recognise the distinction as having to do with some sense of intentional effort. On the astral plane objective results are sought for; on the Devachanic plane, no such effort intervenes between thought and its realisation. We are there in very much more direct touch, moreover, with that memory of Nature, the true medium of which, although it penetrates the lower planes, belongs in its nature to those which are definitely spiritual. So that the thought directed on the Devachanic plane towards any period in the past, instantaneously evokes an absolutely accurate picture of that period, event or episode, whatever it may be, and in this way, taking the Devachanic plane for the moment as a whole, and without regard to its subdivisions, we may recognise a species of omniscience concerning matters coming within range of this world's affairs as a necessary attribute of full consciousness on Devachanic levels.

However, throughout our study of this branch of the subject, we must constantly bear in mind the fact that Nature, even on the exalted planes of consciousness that transcend physical life, can only respond to the nature or development of the consciousness she is dealing with. This will apply to the occult pupil first penetrating the Devachanic planes as well as to the after death entities. It is only with difficulty and by degrees that the study of the circumstances concerning spiritual evolution and the growth of the soul emancipates us from the misconception embodied in the popular notion of the after state as a sudden exaltation, even of the most commonplace human beings, into angels of light in presence of eternal mysteries the moment they are set free from the body. That sort of abrupt change is no more possible than it would be for a newly born child, suddenly entering on the physical plane of life, to write Newton's "Principia" or Humboldt's "Cosmos" the following day. And while the soul's growth during its normal stages of progress is only accomplished very slowly, during physical existence; so also, though enormously more hastened, the capacity of the occult disciple winning access to Devachanic levels must also be thought of as developing by degrees. Above the four sub-divisions of Devachanic existence which have been dealt with so far, — the Rupa planes of Devachan, those that is to say in which the consciousness is still associated in some way with the idea of form, — there lie the three Arupa or formless planes, in reference to which it is exceedingly difficult it not impossible to give any coherent explanation in the language of physical life. Here the entity qualified to ascend to them in consciousness begins to realise that unity of all consciousness which is one of the most supremely important facts of nature to which occult study introduces us, but which transcends the state of consciousness of this waking life so immeasurably that it is hardly possible to deal with it in terms of the physical intellect. These higher planes are spoken of as formless rather, perhaps, because the soul rising to these levels is enabled to cognise Realities independently of any of their lower manifestations, than because on these levels we have yet lost touch entirely with form manifestation itself.

For each of us whose spiritual growth has been such as to render it possible for us at any time to have relations with the Arupa planes of Devachan, the vehicle in which alone we can enter into such relations is that which used to be described in occult terminology as the Karana Sharira and has latterly been more often referred to as the Causal body. That, so far as the present Manvantara is concerned, is the absolutely permanent vehicle of the true individuality of each man. It is the vehicle in which, divorced from all lower manifestations, he rises between the interval of death and re-birth to the highest phase of nature it is possible for him to touch, and in which he again descends through those intervening conditions, re-manifesting himself in vehicles appropriate thereto, until he reaches the physical body appertaining to his next manifestation on earth.

Entities functioning on the Arupa planes in the Causal body are objectively realisable by others on their own level, and the real reason why these planes have been described as formless is, as already stated, that they are not concerned with other forms except those which are assumed by the beings appertaining to them. By those who are capable of existence on these planes in consciousness, and of bringing back to their own recollection in the physical state a recollection of their feelings and perceptions there, these regions are described as oceans of living light and sound and colour, in the midst of which existence to begin with, before we attempt to figure in our imagination its other characteristics, is a condition of the most intense delight. But the foremost, perhaps, from the point of view of the explanation I am attempting now to give, among the characteristics of the Arupa planes is that which distinguishes it even from those lower planes of Devachanic consciousness, themselves so glorious and beautiful that the language in which they are described leaves no further superlatives at our command with which to invest the still loftier attributes of the Arupa condition. On the Rupa levels, it will have been seen, the world which surrounds each entity-cleaving for a moment out of account those entities who may merely be functioning there temporarily, by virtue of a development which enables them to look on at their phenomena without being entirely involved therein — is an ideal world, representing in a perfection, which is unchangeable for him, the sum total of his loftiest aspirations and emotions. But if his spiritual growth has been such as to render it possible for him to pass upward eventually on to the Arupa planes, he will there be in no need of an ideal that shall in any way differ from the absolute reality of things. On the Arupa planes he sees all other beings there, exactly as they are, and yet this perception in no way interferes with the perfect beatitude of each, because by the hypothesis anyone capable of conscious existence on the Arupa planes at all has so transcended the limitations of life as we think of it down here, that happiness is in no way dependent upon any unreal illusion. The thought is very difficult to assimilate in a mind unused to attempts at transcending the present conditions of existence, but even the loves and affections of our incarnate existence are the outgrowth in a certain sense of the limitations of our consciousness. They will not be dissipated or annulled by an ascent to regions of nature where the limitations, which in the first instance gave rise to them, are merged in a spiritual unity, but their character will be so completely modified in that almost unimaginable condition, that they will have lost touch with the circumstances of a transient character that constitute as it were the material out of which illusions and ideals of even the most beautiful nature are constructed. Words fail in connexion with thought of this kind to do more than convey hints and suggestions, but at all events whoever would frame in his mind a conception of the Arupa condition must bring together the two thoughts, that on that plane there is no room for any misconception of actual reality, nor is there any room for the faintest trace of regret or discontent.

The form spoken of as representing an entity on any of the Arupa planes is the vehicle of the Higher Self called, as I have said, in the technical language of occultism, the Karana Sharira. And just because the growth of this Higher Self as functioning in the one vehicle which is permanent throughout the Manvantara and passes from one personality to another, is the whole purpose to be accomplished during the evolution on which we are launched, it stands to reason that at any relatively early stage of the process the Karana Sharira in each case is extremely undeveloped. For the vast majority of mankind at the present level of progress, the truth is that nothing like active selfconsciousness on the Arupa levels is possible. The Karana Sharira is gradually evolving and gathering from successive lives whatever slight contributions to its permanent nature be made by each experience. For the majority of mankind, if we think of the actual numbers on the earth's surface around us, it must be recognised that the Higher Self is hardly grown sufficiently to be a nucleus of consciousness even on the Rupa planes of Devachan. It has only learnt, so to speak, to be fully conscious on the astral and physical manifestations. Even for the lowest examples of humanity it is in a certain sense established on the Arupa planes; but as consciousness is drawn back into it again after each physical existence, it fades into a feebler and feebler flame, until it may be thought of as a mere speck on the highest level to which it belongs. Thus it returns to incarnation, recovering in its passage through the lower strata of existence, as we have seen, the material vehicles required for that kind of consciousness which it has learned to exert. But for the purpose of endeavouring to comprehend the Arupa planes we must keep our attention fixed on those entities already sufficiently developed to be truly conscious there and to exercise the faculties and energies appropriate to that phase of nature.

Of course, on that level of existence all senses are merged in a single all-embracing capacity of appreciation, so that the organs of sense we think of as in association with the human being are entirely superseded. This, to begin with, is one of the most difficult ideas to realise from the point of view of ordinary thinking. People cannot emancipate their conception of existence from the conception of the human form, so that poets and painters have followed the guidance of anthropomorphic theology in all their attempts to represent beings of a celestial nature. Their highest efforts are in this way little more than grotesque for those who, either with the help of imagination or experience, are enabled to realise in some degree the nature of consciousness in realms which transcend sense, and are wholly superior to the limitations of a differentiated organism. But it will be remembered that the Aura that surrounds the human being even on this plane of life is, if we omit those elements of its constitution which have to do with the magnetic conditions of the body, itself a congeries of the actual vehicles in which it is qualified to function on the higher planes of nature. The Aura itself has no limbs or features, and yet in a far truer sense than the limbs and features is the vehicle of our thoughts and emotions, of our knowledge and our will, so that anyone who desires to realise in some measure what the conditions of the Arupa levels are like, must begin by getting rid of the false association established by the habits of physical life between consciousness and the differentiated organism.

The lowest of the three Arupa planes is that on which the Karana Sharira of every human being may be thought of as already existing in some degree or other of early development. On the intermediate Arupa plane those Karana Shariras will be found, in connexion with which a very considerable degree both of intellectual and spiritual development has been accomplished, while on the highest of all existence is only possible for those in whom such advancement has been supplemented by the actual acquisition of knowledge and power incidental to that degree of progress marked by the first, at all events, of the great steps of initiation. That process of initiation represents the accelerated accomplishment of the evolution laid out as regards humanity at large, for the second half of the Manvantara. At a later stage of that period, evolution will have brought considerable numbers to the levels, with which at present those are concerned alone who have hastened with extraordinary rapidity along the path. Thus, whatever it may be possible for us at present to learn concerning the highest of the Arupa planes has to do rather with the attempt to appreciate abnormal than with a survey of normal evolution. We may come back to this subject further on, when the course of initiation has been more distinctly traced; for the moment the highest level of the Arupa planes need not be brought into the picture which concerns itself with an appreciation of the regular course pursued by the human entity in its progress from physical death to re-birth. In conclusion of this part of our subject, however, it may be hinted that the spiritual conditions of being attainable by the human soul still in relations with this earth are not exhausted by the resources of those planes of Nature described in the foregoing pages. Occult teaching is to the effect that even above the highest region of Devachan which itself transcends the manifestations of form and objectivity, there is a spiritual state attainable by man which transcends even that. But it is useless to attempt any speculation which shall deal with the characteristics of that plane in words, and it is outside the natural cycles of human existence, so that in the ordinary course of things the soul after death would not touch it, returning instead in due time to incarnation from the spiritual realm already dealt with. So we need not take cognisance of it for the present further than to say that it constitutes the state of unimaginable spiritual sublimity referred to in Eastern theosophy by the expression. Nirvana.

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