Death - and After? by Annie Besant (dark books to read txt) 📖

_May be often thrown into objectivity, as in the case of
apparitions after death; but, unless it is projected with the
knowledge of (whether latent or potential), or owing to the
intensity of the desire to see or appear to some one shooting
through, the dying brain, the apparition will be simply
automatical; it will not be due to any sympathetic
attraction, or to any act of volition, any more than the
reflection of a person passing unconsciously near a mirror is
due to the desire of the latter._

When the Soul has left the etheric double, shaking it off as it shook off the dense body, the double thus left as a mere empty corpse may be galvanised into an "artificial life"; but fortunately the method of such galvanisation is known to few.

II. While the Soul is in Kamaloka. This period is of very variable duration. The Soul is clad in an astral body, the last but one of its perishable garments, and while thus clad it can utilise the physical bodies of a medium, thus consciously procuring for itself an instrument whereby it can act on the world it has left, and communicate with those living in the body. In this way it may give information as to facts known to itself only, or to itself and another person, in the earth-life just closed; and for as long as it remains within the terrestrial atmosphere such communication is possible. The harm and the peril of such communication has been previously explained, whether the Lower Manas be united with the Divine Triad and so on its way to Devachan, or wrenched from it and on its way to destruction.

III. While the Soul is in Devachan, if an embodied Soul is capable of rising to its sphere, or of coming into _rapport_ with it. To the Devachani, as we have seen, the beloved are present in consciousness and full communication, the Egos being in touch with each other, though one is embodied and one is disembodied, but the higher consciousness of the embodied rarely affects the brain. As a matter of fact, all that we know on the physical plane of our friend, while we both are embodied, is the mental image caused by the impression he makes on us. This is, to our consciousness, our friend, and lacks nothing in objectivity. A similar image is present to the consciousness of the Devachani, and to him lacks nothing in objectivity. As the physical plane friend is visible to an observer on earth, so is the mental plane friend visible to an observer on that plane. The amount of the friend that ensouls the image is dependent on his own evolution, a highly evolved person being capable of far more communication with a Devachani than one who is unevolved. Communication when the body is sleeping is easier than when it is awake, and many a vivid "dream" of one on the other side of death is a real interview with him in Kamaloka or in Devachan.

Love beyond the grave, illusion though you may call it,[44]
has a magic and divine potency that re-acts on the living. A
mother's Ego, filled with love for the imaginary children it
sees near itself, living a life of happiness, as real to it
as when on earth--that love will always be felt by the
children in flesh. It will manifest in their dreams and often
in various events--in providential protections and escapes,
for love is a strong shield, and is not limited by space or
time. As with this Devachanic "mother", so with the rest of
human relationships and attachments, save the purely selfish
or material.[45]

Remembering that a thought becomes an active entity, capable of working good or evil, we easily see that as embodied Souls can send to those they love helping and protecting forces, so the Devachani, thinking of those dear to him, may send out such helpful and protective thoughts, to act as veritable guardian angels round his beloved on earth. But this is a very different thing from the "Spirit" of the mother coming back to earth to be the almost helpless spectator of the child's woes.

The Soul embodied may sometimes escape from its prison of flesh, and come into relations with the Devachani. H.P. Blavatsky writes:

Whenever years after the death of a person his spirit is
claimed to have "wandered back to earth" to give advice to
those it loved, it is always in a subjective vision, in dream
or in trance, and in that case it is the Soul of the living
seer that is drawn to the _disembodied_ spirit, and not the
latter which wanders back to our spheres.[46]

Where the sensitive, or medium, is of a pure and lofty nature, this rising of the freed Ego to the Devachani is practicable, and naturally gives the impression to the sensitive that the departed Ego has come back to him. The Devachani is wrapped in its happy "illusion", and

_The Souls, or astral Egos, of pure loving sensitives,
labouring under the same delusion, think their loved ones
come down to them on earth, while it is their own spirits
that are raised towards those in the Devachan._[47]

This attraction can be exercised by the departed Soul from Kamaloka or from Devachan:

A "spirit" or the spiritual Ego, cannot _descend_ to the
medium, but it can _attract_ the spirit of the latter to
itself, and it can do this only during the two
intervals--before and after its "gestation period". Interval
the first is that period between the physical death and the
merging of the spiritual Ego into that state which is known
in the Arhat Esoteric Doctrine as "Bar-do". We have
translated this as the "gestation period", and it lasts from
a few days to several years, according to the evidence of the
Adepts. Interval the second lasts so long as the merits of
the old [personal] Ego entitle the being to reap the fruit of
its reward in its new regenerated Egoship. It occurs after
the gestation period is over, and the new spiritual Ego is
reborn--like the fabled Phoenix from its ashes--from the
old one. The locality which the former inhabits is called by
the northern Buddhist Occultists "Devachan."[48]

So also may the incorporeal principles of pure sensitives be placed _en rapport_ with disembodied Souls, although information thus obtained is not reliable, partly in consequence of the difficulty of transferring to the physical brain the impressions received, and partly from the difficulty of observing accurately, when the seer is untrained.[49]

A pure medium's Ego can be drawn to and made, for an instant,
to unite in a magnetic(?) relation with a real disembodied
spirit, whereas the soul of an impure medium can only
confabulate with the _Astral Soul_, or Shell, of the
deceased. The former possibility explains those extremely
rare cases of direct writing in recognised autographs, and of
messages from the higher class of disembodied intelligences.

But the confusion in messages thus obtained is considerable, not only from the causes above-named, but also because

Even the best and purest sensitive can at most only be placed
at any time _en rapport_ with a particular spiritual entity,
and can only know, see, and feel what that particular entity
knows, sees, and feels.

Hence much possibility of error if generalisations are indulged in, since each Devachani lives in his own paradise, and there is no "peeping down to earth,"

Nor is there any _conscious_ communication with the flying
Souls that come as it were to learn where the Spirits are,
what they are doing, and what they think, feel, and see.

What then is being _en rapport_? It is simply an identity of
molecular vibration between the astral part of the
incarnated sensitive and the astral part of the
dis-incarnated personality. The spirit of the sensitive gets
"odylised", so to speak, by the aura of the spirit, whether
this be hybernating in the earthly region or dreaming in the
Devachan; identity of molecular vibration is established, and
for a brief space the sensitive becomes the departed
personality, and writes in its handwriting, uses its
language, and thinks its thoughts. At such times sensitives
may believe that those with whom they are for the moment _en
rapport_ descend to earth and communicate with them, whereas,
in reality, it is merely their own spirits which, being
correctly attuned to those others, are for the time blended
with them.[50]

In a special case under examination, H.P. Blavatsky said that the communication might have come from an Elementary, but that it was

Far more likely that the medium's spirit really became _en
rapport_ with some spiritual entity in Devachan, the
thoughts, knowledge, and sentiments of which formed the
substance, while the medium's own personality and
pre-existing ideas more or less governed the forms of the
communication.[51]

While these communications are not reliable in the facts and opinions stated,

We would remark that it may _possibly_ be that there really
is a distinct spiritual entity impressing our correspondent's
mind. In other words, there may, for all we know, be some
spirit, with whom his spiritual nature becomes habitually,
for the time, thoroughly harmonised, and whose thoughts,
language, &c., become his for the time, the result being that
this spirit seems to communicate with