On
this subject Max Heindel wrote the following:
«
ENTRY INTO THE PURGATORY
If the dying man could leave all
desires behind, the desire body would very quickly fall away from him, leaving
him free to proceed into the heaven world, but that is not generally the case.
Most people, especially if they die in the prime of life, have many ties and
much interest in life on earth.
They have not altered their
desires because they have lost their physical bodies. In fact often their
desires are even augmented by a very intense longing to return. This acts in
such a manner as to bind them to the Desire World in a very unpleasant way,
although unfortunately, they do not realize it.
On the other hand, old and
decrepit persons and those who are weakened by long illness and are tired of
life, pass on very quickly. The matter may be illustrated by the ease with
which the seed falls out of the ripe fruit, no particle of the flesh clinging
to it, while in the unripe fruit the seed clings to the flesh with the greatest
tenacity.
(This
is not necessarily true, because there may be young people who are very
detached from terrestrial life, and conversely elderly people who are very
attached to earthly life, and in particular to their possessions.)
Thus it is especially hard for
people to die who were taken out of their bodies by accident while at the
height of their physical health and strength, engaged in numerous ways in the
activities of physical life; held by the ties of wife, family, relatives,
friends, pursuits of business and pleasure.
(Indeed, accidents or murders in full force of life
generate many disorders.)
The suicide, who tries to get
away from life, only to find that he is as much alive as ever, is in the most
pitiable plight. He is able to watch those whom he has, perhaps, disgraced by
his act, and worst of all, he has an unspeakable feeling of being “hollowed
out.”
The part in the ovoid aura where
the dense body used to be is empty and although the desire body has taken the form
of the discarded dense body, it feels like an empty shell, because the creative
archetype of the body in the Region of Concrete Thought persists as an empty
mold, so to speak, as long as the dense body should properly have lived.
(This
is incorrect because the Theosophical instructors explained that the individual
who commits suicide generally continues to be overwhelmed by all the despair
that led him to commit suicide. And this is why the Theosophists explained that
suicide does not free you from suffering.)
When a person meets a natural
death, even in the prime of life, the activity of the archetype ceases, and the
desire body adjusts itself so as to occupy the whole of the form, but in the
case of suicide that awful feeling of “emptiness” remains until the time comes
when, in the natural course of events, his death would have occurred.
(Master
Pastor explained that not only the suicides, but also all the other people who
die before the expected time, must wait in the astral plane until their vital
body finishes functioning, and only after, they can go up to World of Desire.)
THE PURIFICATION OF THE DESIRES
As long as the man entertains the
desires connected with earth life he must stay in his desire body and as the
progress of the individual requires that he pass on to higher Regions, the
existence in the Desire World must necessarily become purgative, tending to
purify him from his binding desires.
How this is done is best seen by
taking some radical instances.
1) The miser who loved his gold
in earth life loves it just as dearly after death; but in the first place he
cannot acquire any more, because he no longer has a dense body wherewith to
grasp it and worst of all, he cannot even keep what he hoarded during life.
He will, perhaps, go and sit by
his safe and watch the cherished gold or bonds; but the heirs appear and with,
it may be, a stinging jeer at the “stingy old fool” (whom they do not see, but
who both sees and hears them), will open his safe, and though he may throw
himself over his gold to protect it, they will put their hands through him,
neither knowing nor caring that he is there, and will then proceed to spend his
hoard, while he suffers in sorrow and impotent rage.
He will suffer keenly, his
sufferings all the more terrible on account of being entirely mental, because
the dense body dulls even suffering to some extent. In the Desire World,
however, these sufferings have full sway and the man suffers until he learns
that gold may be a curse. Thus he gradually becomes contented with his lot and
at last is freed from his desire body and is ready to go on.
2) Or take the case of the
drunkard. He is just as fond of intoxicants after death as he was before. It is
not the dense body that craves drink. It is made sick by alcohol and would
rather be without it.
It vainly protests in different
ways, but the desire body of the drunkard craves the drink and forces the dense
body to take it, that the desire body may have the sensation of pleasure
resulting from the increased vibration.
That desire remains after the
death of the dense body, but the drunkard has in his desire body neither mouth
to drink nor stomach to contain physical liquor.
He may and does get into saloons,
where he interpolates his body into to bodies of the drinkers to get a little
of their vibrations by induction, but that is too weak to give him much
satisfaction.
He may and also does sometimes
get inside a whiskey cask, but that is of no avail either for there are in the
cask no such fumes as are generated in the digestive organs of a tippler. It
has no effect upon him and he is like a man in an open boat on the ocean.
“Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink;” consequently he suffers
intensely.
(This
is false because the masters explained that aromas can be perceived in the
higher planes of existence.)
In time, however, he learns the
uselessness of longing for drink which he cannot obtain.
As with so many of our desires in
the Earth life, all desires in the Desire World die for want of opportunity to
gratify them. When the drunkard has been purged, he is ready, so far as this
habit is concerned, to leave this state of “purgatory” and ascend into the
heaven world.
Thus we see that it is not an avenging
Deity that makes purgatory or hell for us, but our own individual evil habits
and acts. According to the intensity of our desires will be the time and
suffering entailed in their expurgation.
(This is
false because in the Desires World, i.e. the Kama-Loka, the "purgatory",
there is no purification from our lower tendencies, but a temporary separation
from our bad nature that we have fomented, so that our good nature that we have
developed, can enter in Heaven.
This
separation is done unconsciously since the soul of the person is asleep. And it
is only in their next reincarnation that the person will reactivate again his
bad nature with which he will have to confront — because it is part of his personal
Karma.
So, contrary
to what Max Heindel asserts, the purification of our negative tendencies takes
place in the physical world and not in the desire world.)
KARMA IN THE WORLD OF DESIRES
This is the law that is
symbolized in the scythe of the reaper, Death; the law that says, “whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also reap.” It is the law of cause and effect, which
rules all things in the three Worlds, in every realm of nature — physical,
moral and mental. Everywhere it works inexorably, adjusting all things,
restoring the equilibrium wherever even the slightest action has brought about
a disturbance, as all action must.
The result may be manifested
immediately or it may be delayed for years or for lives, but sometime,
somewhere, just and equal retribution will be made. The student should
particularly note that its work is absolutely impersonal. There is in the
universe neither reward nor punishment. All is the result of invariable law.
The action of this law will be
more fully elucidated in the next chapter, where we shall find it associated
with another Great Law of the Cosmos, which also operates in the evolution of
man. The law we are now considering is called the Law of Consequence.
In the Desire World it operates
in purging man of the baser desires and the correction of the weaknesses and
vices which hinder his progress, by making him suffer in the manner best
adapted to that purpose. If he has made others suffer, or has dealt unjustly
with them, he will be made to suffer in that identical way.
Be it noted, however, that if a
person has been subject to vices, or has done wrong to others, but has overcome
his vices, or repented and, as far as possible, made right the wrong done, such
repentance, reform and restitution have purged him of those special vices and
evil acts. The equilibrium has been restored and the lesson learned during that
incarnation, and therefore will not be a cause of suffering after death.
(Here,
Max Heindel distorts the teaching because the masters explained that karma is
temporarily paused when the person dies, then pursues her again when the person
returns to reincarnation.
And
this is because the Physical World is the place of action and learning, while
the Heaven World is the place of rest and assimilation. And the
World of Desires is simply a bridge between those two worlds.)
DURATION IN THE WORLD OF DESIRES
In the Desire World life is lived
about three times as rapidly as in the Physical World. A man who has lived to
be fifty years of age in the Physical World would live through the same life
events in the Desire World in about sixteen years.
This is, of course, only a
general gauge. There are persons who remain in the Desire World much longer
than their term of physical life. Others again, who have led lives with few
gross desires, pass through in a much shorter period, but the measure above
given is very nearly correct for the average man of present day.
(It
is true that the duration in the World of Desires varies for each person based
on several factors, but the masters did not specify that this duration
correspond to a third of what the person had lived on Earth, so I suspect that
It is an invention of Max Heindel.)
THE REVISION OF LIFE IN
THE WORLD OF DESIRES
It will be remembered that as the
man leaves the dense body at death, his past life passes before him in
pictures; but at that time he has no feeling concerning them.
During his life in the Desire
World also these life pictures roll backwards, as before; but now the man has
all the feelings that it is possible for him to have as, one by one, the scenes
pass before him.
Every incident in his past life
is now lived over again. When he comes to a point where he has injured someone,
he himself feels the pain as the injured person felt it. He lives through all
the sorrow and suffering he has caused to others and learns just how painful is
the hurt and how hard to bear is the sorrow he has caused.
(This
is not what the masters said. Master Kuthumi explained that during their stay
in the World of Desires, humans sleep. Those who were good have sweet dreams,
those who have been bad have nightmares, and those who have been materialistic,
they simply sleep, but without dreaming.)
PERCEPTIONS IN THE WORLD OF DESIRES
There is another characteristic
peculiar to this phase of postmortem existence which is intimately connected
with the fact (already mentioned) that distance is almost annihilated in the
Desire World.
When a man dies, he at once seems
to swell out in his vital body; he appears to himself to grow into immense
proportions. This feeling is due to the fact, not that the body really grows,
but that the perceptive faculties receive so many impressions from various
sources, all seeming to be close at hand. The same is true of the desire body.
The man seems to be present with
all the people with whom on earth he had relations of a nature which require
correction. If he has injured one man in San Francisco and another in New York,
he will feel as if part of him were in each place. This gives him a peculiar
feeling of being cut to pieces.
(This
is invented by Max Heindel because people are sleeping.)
THE IMPORTANCE OF NOT CRYING
WHEN SOMEONE IS DYING
The student will now understand
the importance of the panorama of the past life during the purgative existence,
where this panorama is realized in definite feelings.
If it lasted long and the man
were undisturbed, the full, deep, clear impression etched into the desire body
would make life in the Desire World more vivid and conscious and the purgation
more thorough than if, because of distress at the loud outbursts of grief on
the part of his relatives, at the death bed and during the three-day period
previously mentioned the man had only a vague impression of his past life.
The spirit which has etched a
deep clear record into its desire body will realize the mistakes of the past
life so much more clearly and definitely than if the pictures were blurred on
account of the individual's attention being diverted by the suffering and grief
around him.
His feeling concerning the things
which cause his present suffering in the Desire World will be much more
definite if they are drawn from a distinct panoramic impression than if the
duration of the process were short.
This sharp, clear-cut feeling is
of immense value in future lives. It stamps upon the seed atom of the desire
body an ineffaceable impression of itself. The experiences will be forgotten in
succeeding lives, but the Feeling remains.
When opportunities occur to
repeat the error in later lives, this Feeling will speak to us clearly and
unmistakably.
It is the “still, small voice”
which warns us, though we do not know why; but the clearer and more definite
the panoramas of past lives has been, the oftener, stronger and clearer shall
we hear this voice. Thus we see how important it is that we leave the passing
spirit in absolute quietness after death.
By so doing we help it to reap
the greatest possible benefit from the life just ended and to avoid
perpetuating the same mistakes in future lives, while our selfish, hysterical
lamentations may deprive it of much of the value of the life it has just
concluded.
(It
is true that it is advisable not to cry when a person is dying because that
hinders their transition to the subtle world, but it is false that it affects
their memories, because that process of revision of their life is automated and
the person does not intervene in it.
And
the atom-seed of the wish body does not exist because it is a lie invented by
Charles Leadbeater.)
THE PURGATORY OBJECTIVE
The mission of purgatory is to
eradicate the injurious habits by making their gratification impossible. The
individual suffers exactly as he has made others suffer through his dishonesty,
cruelty, intolerance, or what not. Because of this suffering he learns to act
kindly, honestly, and with forbearance toward others in the future. Thus, in
consequence of the existence of this beneficent state, man learns virtue and
right action.
(As
I explained above, the learning process takes place on the physical plane, not
in the Purgatory. The World of Desires is simply the bridge that humans have to
go through in order to reach the Heaven World.
And
the World of Desires also acts as a dump, because the Divine World vibrates
very high, there cannot be low vibrations, and that is why people have to leave
their bad part in the World of Desires to be able to enter the Celestial
World.)
When he is reborn he is free from
evil habits, at least every evil act committed is one of free will.
(This
is false because, although his previous body of desires was disintegrated, the
negative characteristics of the person are recorded in his skandhas, and
therefore the person will have to deal with those characteristics in his new
reincarnation.)
The tendencies to repeat the evil
of past lives remain, for we must learn to do right consciously and of our own
will. Upon occasion these tendencies tempt us, thereby affording us an
opportunity of ranging ourselves on the side of mercy and virtue as against
vice and cruelty.
But to indicate right action and
to help us resist the snares and wiles of temptation, we have the feeling
resulting from the expurgation of evil habits and the expiation of the wrong
acts of past lives.
If we heed that feeling and
abstain from the particular evil involved, the temptation will cease. We have
freed ourselves from it for all time. If we yield we shall experience keener
suffering than before until at last we have learned to live by the Golden Rule,
because the way of the transgressor is hard.
Even then we have not reached the
ultimate. To do good to others because we want them to do good to us is
essentially selfish. In time we must learn to do good regardless of how we are
treated by others; as Christ said, we must love even our enemies.
METHOD TO AVOID THE PURGATORY
There is an inestimable benefit
in knowing about the method and object of this purgation, because we are thus
enabled to forestall it by living our purgatory here and now day by day, thus
advancing much faster than would otherwise be possible.
An exercise is given in the
latter part of this work, the object of which is purification as an aid to the
development of spiritual sight. It consists of thinking over the happenings of
the day after retiring at night.
We review each incident of the
day, in reverse order, taking particular note of the moral aspect, considering
whether we acted rightly or wrongly in each particular case regarding actions,
mental attitude and habits. By thus judging ourselves day by day, endeavoring
to correct mistakes and wrong actions, we shall materially shorten or perhaps
even eliminate the necessity for purgatory and be able to pass to the first
heaven directly after death.
(The
Purgatory cannot be avoided, because it is like an elevator: you cannot reach
the third floor without crossing the second floor. But on the other hand, it is
true that more you purify yourself during your earthly life, and faster you
will pass through the World of Desires.)
If in this manner, we consciously
overcome our weaknesses, we also make a very material advance in the school of
evolution. Even if we fail to correct our actions, we derive an immense benefit
from judging ourselves, thereby generating aspirations toward good, which in
time will surely bear fruit in right action.
In reviewing the day's happenings
and blaming ourselves for wrong, we should not forget to impersonally approve
of the good we have done and determine to do still better. In this way we
enhance the good by approval as much as we abjure the evil by blame.
Repentance and reform are also
powerful factors in shortening the purgatorial existence, for nature never
wastes effort in useless processes. When we realize the wrong of certain habits
or acts in our past life, and determine to eradicate the habit and to redress
the wrong committed, we are expunging the pictures of them from the
subconscious memory and they will not be there to judge us after death.
Even though we are not able to
make restitution for a wrong, the sincerity of our regret will suffice. Nature
does not aim to “get even,” or to take revenge. Recompense may be given to our
victim in other ways.
(Here
Max Heindel is mixing things up, because regret will not suffice to eliminate karma.
Regret will allow you to compensate for your negative karma in a positive way.)
Much progress ordinarily reserved for future lives
will be made by the man who thus takes time by the forelock, judging himself
and eradicating vice by reforming his character. This practice is earnestly
recommended. It is perhaps the most important teaching in the present work. »
(The
Rosicrucian Cosmos Conception, Chapter 3)
CONCLUSION
Max Heindel's explanation has some positive points, such
as emphasizing the importance of seeking to purify and improve ourselves during
our life on Earth, but his explanation of what happens in the World of Desires
is very wrong if we compare it with what the masters of wisdom have really
taught.
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