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

is to break up, and with the disintegration of its cells and molecules, its particles pass away into other combinations.

On our return to Earth we may meet again some of those same countless lives that in a previous incarnation made of our then body their passing dwelling; but all that we are just now concerned with is the breaking up of the body whose life-span is over, and its fate is complete disintegration. To the dense body, then, Death means dissolution as an organism, the loosing of the bonds that united the many into one.



THE FATE OF THE ETHERIC DOUBLE.

The etheric double is the ethereal counterpart of the gross body of man. It is the double that is sometimes seen during life in the neighbourhood of the body, and its absence from the body is generally marked by the heaviness or semi-lethargy of the latter. Acting as the reservoir, or vehicle, of the life-principle during earth-life, its withdrawal from the body is naturally marked by the lowering of all vital functions, even while the cord which unites the two is still unbroken. As has been already said, the snapping of the cord means the death of the body.

When the etheric double finally quits the body, it does not travel to any distance from it. Normally it remains floating over the body, the state of consciousness being dreamy and peaceful, unless tumultuous distress and violent emotion surround the corpse from which it has just issued. And here it may be well to say that during the slow process of dying, while the etheric double is withdrawing from the body, taking with it the higher principles, as after it has withdrawn, extreme quiet and self-control should be observed in the chamber of Death. For during this time the whole life passes swiftly in review before the Ego, the individual, as those have related who have passed in drowning into this unconscious and pulseless state. A Master has written:

_At the last moment the whole life is reflected in our
memory, and emerges from all the forgotten nooks and corners,
picture after picture, one event after another.... The man
may often appear dead, yet from the last pulsation, from and
between the last throbbing of his heart and the moment when
the last spark of animal heat leaves the body_, the brain
thinks, _and the Ego lives over in those few brief seconds
his whole life. Speak in whispers, ye who assist at a
deathbed, and find yourselves in the solemn presence of
death. Especially have ye to keep quiet just after death has
laid her clammy hand upon the body. Speak in whispers, I say,
lest ye disturb the quiet ripple of thought, and hinder the
busy work of the past, casting its reflection upon the veil
of the future._[12]

This is the time during which the thought-images of the ended earth-life, clustering around their maker, group and interweave themselves into the completed image of that life, and are impressed in their totality on the Astral Light. The dominant tendencies, the strongest thought-habits, assert their pre-eminence, and stamp themselves as the characteristics which will appear as "innate qualities" in the succeeding incarnation. This balancing-up of the life-issues, this reading of the karmic records, is too solemn and momentous a thing to be disturbed by the ill-timed wailings of personal relatives and friends.

At the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is
sudden, sees the whole of his past life marshalled before
him, in its minutest details. For one short instant the
_personal_ become one with the _individual_ and all-knowing
Ego. But this instant is enough to show to him the whole
chain of causes which have been at work during his life. He
sees and now understands himself as he is, unadorned by
flattery or self-deception. He reads his life, remaining as a
spectator, looking down into the arena he is quitting.[13]

This vivid sight is succeeded, in the ordinary person, by the dreamy, peaceful semi-consciousness spoken of above, as the etheric double floats above the body to which it has belonged, now completely separated from it.

Sometimes this double is seen by persons in the house, or in the neighbourhood, when the thought of the dying has been strongly turned to some one left behind, when some anxiety has been in the mind at the last, something left undone which needed doing, or when some local disturbance has shaken the tranquillity of the passing entity. Under these conditions, or others of a similar nature, the double may be seen or heard; when seen, it shows the dreamy, hazy consciousness alluded to, is silent, vague in its aspect, unresponsive.

As the days go on, the five higher principles gradually disengage themselves from the etheric double, and shake this off as they previously shook off the grosser body. They pass on, as a fivefold entity, into a state to be next studied, leaving the etheric double, with the dense body of which it is the counterpart, thus becoming an ethereal corpse, as much as the body had become a dense corpse. This ethereal corpse remains near the dense one, and they disintegrate together; clairvoyants see these ethereal wraiths in churchyards, sometimes showing likeness to the dead dense body, sometimes as violet mists or lights. Such an ethereal corpse has been seen by a friend of my own, passing through the horribly repulsive stages of decomposition, a ghastly vision in face of which clairvoyance was certainly no blessing. The process goes on _pari passu_, until all but the actual bony skeleton of the dense body is completely disintegrated, and the particles have gone to form other combinations.

One of the great advantages of cremation--apart from all sanitary conditions--lies in the swift restoration to Mother Nature of the physical elements composing the dense and ethereal corpses, brought about by the burning. Instead of slow and gradual decomposition, swift dissociation takes place, and no physical remnants are left, working possible mischief.

The ethereal corpse may to some extent be revivified for a short period after its death. Dr. Hartmann says:

The fresh corpse of a person who has suddenly been killed may
be galvanised into a semblance of life by the application of
a galvanic battery. Likewise the astral corpse of a person
may be brought back into an artificial life by being infused
with a part of the life principle of the medium. If that
corpse is one of a very intellectual person, it may talk
very intellectually; and if it was that of a fool it will
talk like a fool.[14]

This mischievous procedure can only be carried out in the neighbourhood of the corpse, and for a very limited time after death, but there are cases on record of such galvanising of the ethereal corpse, performed at the grave of the departed person. Needless to say that such a process belongs distinctly to "Black" Magic, and is wholly evil. Ethereal corpses, like dense ones, if not swiftly destroyed by burning, should be left in the silence and the darkness, a silence and a darkness that it is the worst profanity to break.



KAMALOKA, AND THE FATE OF PRANA AND KAMA.

Loka is a Sanskrit word that may be translated as place, world, land, so that Kamaloka is literally the place or the world of Kama, Kama being the name of that part of the human organism that includes all the passions, desires, and emotions which man has in common with the lower animals.[15] In this division of the universe, the Kamaloka, dwell all the human entities that have shaken off the dense body and its ethereal double, but have not yet disentangled themselves from the passional and emotional nature. Kamaloka has many other tenants, but we are concerned only with the human beings who have lately passed through the gateway of Death, and it is on these that we must concentrate our study.

A momentary digression may be pardoned on the question of the existence of regions in the universe, other than the physical, peopled with intelligent beings. The existence of such regions is postulated by the Esoteric Philosophy, and is known to the Adepts and to very many less highly evolved men and women by personal experience; all that is needed for the study of these regions is the evolution of the faculties latent in every man; a "living" man, in ordinary parlance, can leave his dense and ethereal bodies behind him, and explore these regions without going through Death's gateway. Thus we read in the _Theosophist_ that real knowledge may be acquired by the Spirit in the living man coming into conscious relations with the world of Spirit.

As in the case, say, of an initiated Adept, who brings back
upon earth with him the clear and distinct
recollection--correct to a detail--of facts gathered, and the
information obtained, in the invisible sphere of
_Realities_.[16]

In this way those regions become to him matters of knowledge as definite, as certain, as familiar, as if he should travel to Africa in ordinary fashion, explore its deserts, and return to his own land the richer for the knowledge and experience gained. A seasoned African explorer would care but little for the criticisms passed on his report by persons who had never been thither; he might tell what he saw, describe the animals whose habits he had studied, sketch the country he had traversed, sum up its products and its characteristics. If he was contradicted, laughed at, set right, by untravelled critics, he would be neither ruffled nor distressed, but would merely leave them alone. Ignorance cannot convince knowledge by repeated asseveration of its nescience. The opinion of a hundred persons on a subject on which they are wholly ignorant is of no more weight than the opinion of one such person. Evidence is strengthened by many consenting witnesses, testifying each to his knowledge of a fact, but nothing multiplied a thousand times remains nothing. Strange, indeed, would it be if all the Space around us be empty, mere waste void, and the inhabitants of earth the only forms in which intelligence could clothe itself. As Dr. Huxley said:

Without stepping beyond the analogy of that which is known,
it is easy to people the cosmos with entities, in ascending
scale, until we reach something practically indistinguishable
from omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience.[17]

If these entities did not have organs of sense like our own, if their senses responded to vibrations different from those which affect ours, they and we might walk side by side, pass each other, meet each other, pass through each other, and yet be never the wiser as to each other's