Death - and After? - Annie Besant (e book reading free .TXT) 📗

promote him to the rank of angels.

Every person in proportion to his wisdom and piety will find
a place in the rank of wise men, among the heavens and stars.
And in that region of happiness he will remain for ever.[4]

In China, the immemorial custom of worshipping the Souls of ancestors shows how completely the life of man was regarded as extending beyond the tomb. The _Shu King_--placed by Mr. James Legge as the most ancient of Chinese classics, containing historical documents ranging from B.C. 2357-627--is full of allusions to these Souls, who with other spiritual beings, watch over the affairs of their descendants and the welfare of the kingdom. Thus Pan-kang, ruling from B.C. 1401-1374, exhorts his subjects:

My object is to support and nourish you all. I think of my
ancestors (who are now) the spiritual sovereigns.... Were I
to err in my government, and remain long here, my high
sovereign (the founder of our dynasty) would send down on me
great punishment for my crime, and say, "Why do you oppress
my people?" If you, the myriads of the people, do not attend
to the perpetuation of your lives, and cherish one mind with
me, the One man, in my plans, the former kings will send down
on you great punishment for your crime, and say, "Why do you
not agree with our young grandson, but go on to forfeit your
virtue?" When they punish you from above, you will have no
way of escape.... Your ancestors and fathers will (now) cut
you off and abandon you, and not save you from death.[5]

Indeed, so practical is this Chinese belief, held to-day as in those long-past ages, that "the change that men call Death" seems to play a very small part in the thoughts and lives of the people of the Flowery Land.

These quotations, which might be multiplied a hundred-fold, may suffice to prove the folly of the idea that immortality came to "light through the gospel". The whole ancient world basked in the full sunshine of belief in the immortality of man, lived in it daily, voiced it in its literature, went with it in calm serenity through the gate of Death.

It remains a problem why Christianity, which vigorously and joyously re-affirmed it, should have growing in its midst the unique terror of Death that has played so large a part in its social life, its literature, and its art. It is not simply the belief in hell that has surrounded the grave with horror, for other Religions have had their hells, and yet their followers have not been harassed by this shadowy Fear. The Chinese, for instance, who take Death as such a light and trivial thing, have a collection of hells quite unique in their varied unpleasantness. Maybe the difference is a question of race rather than of creed; that the vigorous life of the West shrinks from its antithesis, and that its unimaginative common-sense finds a bodiless condition too lacking in solidity of comfort; whereas the more dreamy, mystical East, prone to meditation, and ever seeking to escape from the thraldom of the senses during earthly life, looks on the disembodied state as eminently desirable, and as most conducive to unfettered thought.

Ere passing to the consideration of the history of man in the post-mortem state, it is necessary, however briefly, to state the constitution of man, as viewed by the Esoteric Philosophy, for we must have in mind the constituents of his being ere we can understand their disintegration. Man then consists of

_The Immortal Triad_:

Atma. Buddhi. Manas.

_The Perishable Quaternary_:

Kama. Prana. Etheric Double. Dense Body.

The dense body is the physical body, the visible, tangible outer form, composed of various tissues. The etheric double is the ethereal counterpart of the body, composed of the physical ethers. Prana is vitality, the integrating energy that co-ordinates the physical molecules and holds them together in a definite organism; it is the life-breath within the organism, the portion of the universal Life-Breath, appropriated by the organism during the span of existence that we speak of as "a life". Kama is the aggregate of appetites, passions, and emotions, common to man and brute. Manas is the Thinker in us, the Intelligence. Buddhi is the vehicle wherein Atma, the Spirit, dwells, and in which alone it can manifest.

Now the link between the Immortal Triad and the Perishable Quaternary is Manas, which is dual during earth life, or incarnation, and functions as Higher Manas and Lower Manas. Higher Manas sends out a Ray, Lower Manas, which works in and through the human brain, functioning there as brain-consciousness, as the ratiocinating intelligence. This mingles with Kama, the passional nature, the passions and emotions thus becoming a part of Mind, as defined in Western Psychology. And so we have the link formed between the higher and lower natures in man, this Kama-Manas belonging to the higher by its manasic, and to the lower by its kamic, elements. As this forms the battleground during life, so does it play an important part in post-mortem existence. We might now classify our seven principles a little differently, having in view this mingling in Kama-Manas of perishable and imperishable elements:

{ Atma.
_Immortal_. { Buddhi.
{ Higher-Manas.

_Conditionally Immortal_. Kama-Manas.

{ Prana.
_Mortal_. { Etheric Double.
{ Dense Body.

Some Christian writers have adopted a classification similar to this, declaring Spirit to be inherently immortal, as being Divine; Soul to be conditionally immortal, _i.e._, capable of winning immortality by uniting itself with Spirit; Body to be inherently mortal. The majority of uninstructed Christians chop man into two, the Body that perishes at Death, and the something--called indifferently Soul or Spirit--that survives Death. This last classification--if classification it may be called--is entirely inadequate, if we are to seek any rational explanation, or even lucid statement, of the phenomena of post-mortem existence. The tripartite view of man's nature gives a more reasonable representation of his constitution, but is inadequate to explain many phenomena. The septenary division alone gives a reasonable theory consistent with the facts we have to deal with, and therefore, though it may seem elaborate, the student will do wisely to make himself familiar with it. If he were studying only the body, and desired to understand its activities, he would have to classify its tissues at far greater length and with far more minuteness than I am using here. He would have to learn the differences between muscular, nervous, glandular, bony, cartilaginous, epithelial, connective, tissues, and all their varieties; and if he rebelled, in his ignorance, against such an elaborate division, it would be explained to him that only by such an analysis of the different components of the body can the varied and complicated phenomena of life-activity be understood. One kind of tissue is wanted for support, another for movement, another for secretion, another for absorption, and so on; and if each kind does not have its own distinctive name, dire confusion and misunderstanding must result, and physical functions remain unintelligible. In the long run time is gained, as well as clearness, by learning a few necessary technical terms, and as clearness is above all things needed in trying to explain and to understand very complicated post-mortem phenomena, I find myself compelled--contrary to my habit in these elementary papers--to resort to these technical names at the outset, for the English language has as yet no equivalents for them, and the use of long descriptive phrases is extremely cumbersome and inconvenient.

For myself, I believe that very much of the antagonism between the adherents of the Esoteric Philosophy and those of Spiritualism has arisen from confusion of terms, and consequent misunderstanding of each others meaning. One eminent Spiritualist lately impatiently said that he did not see the need of exact definition, and that he meant by Spirit all the part of man's nature that survived Death, and was not body. One might as well insist on saying that man's body consists of bone and blood, and asked to define blood, answer: "Oh! I mean everything that is not bone." A clear definition of terms, and a rigid adherence to them when once adopted, will at least enable us all to understand each other, and that is the first step to any fruitful comparison of experiences.



THE FATE OF THE BODY.

The human body is constantly undergoing a process of decay and of reconstruction. First builded into the etheric form in the womb of the mother, it is built up continually by the insetting of fresh materials. With every moment tiny molecules are passing away from it; with every moment tiny molecules are streaming into it. The outgoing stream is scattered over the environment, and helps to rebuild bodies of all kinds in the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms, the physical basis of all these being one and the same.

The idea that the human tabernacle is built by countless
_lives_, just in the same way as the rocky crust of our Earth
was, has nothing repulsive in it for the true mystic....
Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead
organism of both man and animal are swarming with bacteria of
a hundred various kinds; that from without we are threatened
with the invasion of microbes with every breath we draw, and
from within by leucomaines, robes, aerobes, anaerobes, and what
not. But Science never yet went so far as to assert with the
Occult Doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals,
plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of
such beings, which, except larger species, no microscope can
detect. So far as regards the purely animal and material
portion of man, Science is on its way to discoveries that
will go far towards corroborating this theory. Chemistry and
physiology are the two great magicians of the future, who are
destined to open the eyes of mankind to the great physical
truths. With every day, the identity between the animal and
physical man, between the plant and man, and even between the
reptile and