Theosophy Cardiff, Wales, UK:- Death & How to Get Through It

THEOSOPHY

CARDIFF

Theosophical Society, Cardiff Lodge

206 Newport Road,

Cardiff, Wales, UK, CF24 1DL

Death

How to Get Through It

Lentil burgers, a thousand press ups before breakfast and

the daily 25 mile run may put it off for a while but death

seems to get most of us in the end. We are pleased to

present for your consideration, a definitive work on the

subject by a Student of Katherine Tingley entitled

“Man After Death”

Katherine Tingley

1847 – 1929

Founder & President of the

Point Loma Theosophical Society 1896 -1929

She and her students produced a series of informative

Theosophical works in the early years of the 20^th century

Man After Death

A Student of

Katherine Tingley

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Chapter 6

The Preparation for

the Next Incarnation

In Devachan the higher energies or causes set in motion in earth-life are carried to their completion. The very nature of the manasic principle requires the time and peaceful conditions provided in Devachan to work out the effects of what it has stored. While in a body these higher fruitions cannot manifest themselves, for the environment and structure of the brain are too material.

In Devachan the higher ego, overshadowed by buddhi -- i.e., the buddhi-manas -- by the assimilation of the lower manasic personal ideations and such consciousness of the better things like compassion, patience, the higher side of art and music, and ideals of service for humanity, draws up to itself the enduring part of the former personality.

The higher ego is the bearer of all the alter egos threaded on its silver line of successive incarnations, which blend into one at last; but in the Devachan immediately succeeding any one life, the spiritual aroma of the events of that particular lifetime is what colors it with the greatest distinctness. Personal immortality for the alter ego is so far conditional that it depends upon the quality of its aspirations to make its union with the Father, the True Vine, possible.

Like to like is the rule in all worlds, and the law of least resistance bears sway everywhere; it would be obviously preposterous to imagine an utter sensualist in the higher and more refined degrees of kama-loka or until purged on the spiritual plane of Devachan.

The descent of the higher ego through its shadow is symbolized in the Christian story by the incarnation of the Christos in Jesus of Nazareth and his subsequent ascent to his Father, after being crucified on the cross of matter. The penitent thief stands for the higher aspiration of the past life, as he is promised Paradise with the Christos, but not so the other who represents the unredeemable passions which go to the pit.

The ego in Devachan, now a trinity in unity, is not omniscient nor free from illusion; it has ages of necessary experience to go through first.

We ought really to regard Devachan from the standpoint of the lower manas, or more properly and correctly, from the standpoint of the bridge or antaskarana, the part of the higher ego that has been the connecting link between the two manases in life and which now bears all that essence of the late personality which can be united with its Father in Heaven. From this position, looking up, the mystic union with the higher ego in Devachan will be, to the purified antaskarana -- all that we canrecognize as worth preserving of the personality -- a tremendous increase of life and light, of glory, of bliss beyond anything in our most exquisite dreams.

The imagination comes into action with a thousandfold the power it ever had on earth, and the rich and satisfying dream, which is more than a dream, abundantly rewards the pilgrim for those distressing events on earth for which it may not have been responsible in that particular incarnation and which had left a sense of injustice.

Although Devachan is much nearer the reality of things than any ordinary dream, yet it is sufficiently illusory for the soul to be able to build up its castles in the air without fear of disturbance by anything outside. It is surrounded in imagination by friends, relatives, and all it held dear; as the creative imagination builds exactly what it desires so vividly as to appear more real than the most intense experiences while embodied, everyone gets precisely what is to him the highest joy.

The soul in the Devachanic state is, in fact, practically in that wondrous condition of rapture that the poet or the musician or even perhaps the mathematician enjoy when absorbed in their highest creative states, in which the body, the earth, and all other externals cease for the time to exist.

The actor [in Devachan] is so imbued with the role be has lately played that he dreams of it during the whole Devachanic night, and this vision continues until the hour strikes for him to return to the stage of life to enact another part. -- The Key to Theosophy, p. 181

Glorious as the state of Devachan is, it is not equal in importance to the condition of earth-life. Necessary it is, joyous exceedingly, but it is on earth that liberation from the chains of illusion and passion has to be gained. Here, where the whole nature of man is crying to be used wisely, is the real school, here it is that the perfected man must arise.

When this is done the time spent in the spiritual state of Devachan will be unnecessary; that condition is now needed by the soul for recuperation, for without it the strain of earthly existence could not be endured.

When the whole nature has been purified in the fires of trial, and absolute impersonality is gained, the divine man will be as one of the gods and will in his turn become a fully conscious creator and guide to the unprogressed beings below him on the upward march.

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Cardiff Theosophical Society

206 Newport Road,

Cardiff, Wales, UK, CF24 1DL

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