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

without marked evil tendencies.

When an average man or woman reaches Kamaloka, the spiritual Intelligence is clothed with a desire body, which possesses considerable vigour and vitality; the lower Manas, closely interwoven with Kama during the earth-life just ended, having lived much in the enjoyment of objects of sense and in the pleasures of the emotions, cannot quickly disentangle itself from the web of its own weaving, and return to its Parent Mind, the source of its own being. Hence a considerable delay in the world of transition, in Kamaloka, while the desires wear out and fade away to a point at which they can no longer detain the Soul with their clinging arms.

As said, during the period that the Immortal Triad and Kama remain together in Kamaloka, communication between the disembodied entity and the embodied entities on earth is possible. Such communication will generally be welcomed by these disembodied ones, because their desires and emotions still cling to the earth they have left, and the mind has not sufficiently lived on its own plane to find therein full satisfaction and contentment. The lower Manas still yearns towards kamic gratifications and the vivid highly coloured sensations of earth-life, and can by these yearnings be drawn back to the scenes it has regretfully quitted. Speaking of the possibility of communication between the Ego of the deceased person and a medium, H.P. Blavatsky says in the _Theosophist_,[23] as from the teachings received by her from the Adept Brothers, that such communication may occur during two intervals:

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 [pre-devachanic].

Some of the communications made through mediums are from this source, from the disembodied entity, thus drawn back to the earth-sphere--a cruel kindness, delaying its forward evolution and introducing an element of disharmony into what should be an orderly progression. The period in Kamaloka is thus lengthened, the desire body is fed and its hold on the Ego is maintained, and thus is the freedom of the Soul deferred, the immortal Swallow being still held down by the bird-lime of earth.

Persons who have led an evil life, who have gratified and stimulated their animal passions, and have full fed the desire body while they have starved even the lower mind--these remain for long, denizens of Kamaloka, and are filled with yearnings for the earth-life they have left, and for the animal delights that they can no longer--in the absence of the physical body--directly taste. These gather round the medium and the sensitive, endeavouring to utilise them for their own gratification, and these are among the more dangerous of the forces so rashly confronted in their ignorance by the thoughtless and the curious.

Another class of disembodied entities includes those whose lives on earth have been prematurely cut short, by their own act, the act of others, or by accident. Their fate in Kamaloka depends on the conditions which surrounded their outgoings from earthly life, for not all suicides are guilty of _felo de se_, and the measure of responsibility may vary within very wide limits. The condition of such has been thus described:

_Suicides, although not wholly dissevered from their sixth
and seventh principles, and quite potent in the seance room,
nevertheless to the day when they would have died a natural
death, are separated from their higher principles by a gulf.
The sixth and seventh principles remain passive and negative,
whereas in cases of_ accidental death _the higher and the
lower groups actually attract each other. In cases of good
and innocent Egos, moreover, the latter gravitates
irresistibly toward the sixth and seventh, and thus either
slumbers surrounded by happy dreams, or sleeps a dreamless
profound sleep until the hour strikes. With a little
reflection and an eye to the eternal justice and fitness of
things, you will see why. The victim, whether good or bad, is
irresponsible for his death. Even if his death were due to
some action in a previous life or an antecedent birth, was an
act, in short, of the Law of Retribution, still it was not
the_ direct _result of an act deliberately committed by the_
personal _Ego of that life during which he happened to be
killed. Had he been allowed to live longer he might have
atoned for his antecedent sins still more effectually, and
even now, the Ego having been made to pay off the debt of his
maker, the personal Ego is free from the blows of retributive
justice. The Dhyan Chohans, who have no hand in the guidance
of the living human Ego, protect the helpless victim when it
is violently thrust out of its element into a new one, before
it is matured and made fit and ready for it._

These, whether suicides or killed by accident, can communicate with those in earth-life, but much to their own injury. As said above, the good and innocent sleep happily till the life-period is over. But where the victim of an accident is depraved and gross, his fate is a sad one.

_Unhappy shades, if sinful and sensual, they wander about
(not shells, for their connection with their two higher
principles is not quite broken) until their_ death-_hour
comes. Cut off in the full flush of earthly passions which
bind them to familiar scenes, they are enticed by the
opportunities which mediums afford to gratify them
vicariously. They are the Pishachas, the Incubi and Succubae
of mediaeval times; the demons of thirst, gluttony, lust, and
avarice--Elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness, and
cruelty; provoking their victims to horrid crimes, and
revelling in their commission! They not only ruin their
victims, but these psychic vampires, borne along by the
torrent of their hellish impulses, at last--at the fixed
close of their natural period of life--they are carried out
of the earth's aura into regions where for ages they endure
exquisite suffering and end with entire destruction.

* * * * *

Now the causes producing the "new being" and determining the
nature of Karma are Trishna (Tanha)--thirst, desire for
sentient existence--and Upadana, which is the realisation or
consummation of Trishna, or that desire. And both of these
the medium helps to develop_ ne plus ultra _in an Elementary,
be he a suicide or a victim. The rule is that a person who
dies a natural death will remain from "a few hours to several
short years" within the earth's attraction--_i.e._, the
Kamaloka. But exceptions are the cases of suicides and those
who die a violent death in general. Hence, one of such Egos
who was destined to live, say, eighty or ninety years--but
who either killed himself or was killed by some accident, let
us suppose at the age of twenty--would have to pass in the
Kamaloka not "a few years," but in his case sixty or seventy
years, as an Elementary, or rather an "earth-walker," since
he is not, unfortunately for him, even a "Shell." Happy,
thrice happy, in comparison, are those disembodied entities
who sleep their long slumber and live in dream in the bosom
of Space! And woe to those whose Trishna will attract them to
mediums, and woe to the latter who tempt them with such an
easy Upadana. For, in grasping them and satisfying their
thirst for life, the medium helps to develop in them--is, in
fact, the cause of--a new set of Skandhas, a new body with
far worse tendencies and passions than the one they lost. All
the future of this new body will be determined thus, not only
by the Karma of demerit of the previous set or group, but
also by that of the new set of the future being. Were the
mediums and spiritualists but to know, as I said, that with
every new "angel-guide" they welcome with rapture, they
entice the latter into a Upadana, which will be productive of
untold evils for the new Ego that will be reborn under its
nefarious shadow, and that with every seance, especially for
materialization, they multiply the causes for misery, causes
that will make the unfortunate Ego fail in his spiritual
birth, or be reborn into a far worse existence than
ever--they would, perhaps, be less lavish in their
hospitality._

Premature death brought on by vicious courses, by over-study, or by voluntary sacrifice for some great cause, will bring about delay in Kamaloka, but the state of the disembodied entity will depend on the motive that cut short the life.

_There are very few, if any, of the men who indulge in these
vices, who feel perfectly sure that such a course of action
will lead them eventually to premature death. Such is the
penalty of Maya. The "vices" will not escape their
punishment; but it is the_ cause, _not the effect, that will
be punished, especially an unforeseen, though probable
effect. As well call a man a "suicide" who meets his death in
a storm at sea, as one who kills himself with "over-study".
Water is liable to drown a man, and too much brain work to
produce a softening of the brain matter which may carry him
away. In such a case no one ought to cross the_ Kalapani,
_nor even to take a