THE EFFICACY OF FUNERAL CEREMONIES EXPLAINED BY BLAVATSKY

In The Theosophist magazine, June 1883, a reader wrote the following letter:

« To the writer of the “Occult Fragments.”

Dear Sir And Brother,

In your article on “Devachan” you have explained at length the enjoyment that the Spiritual Ego in combination with the higher essence of the fifth principle, feels in a sort of rosy sleep extending over an enormous period.

The Ego that takes its birth in Devachan, after the period of gestation, is unconscious of what passes here on earth to which it cannot be attracted. It is only the shell formed of the fourth and the lower remnant of the fifth principle that remains wandering in Kama-Loka, and it is this reliquiae that often makes its appearance under certain conditions in the Séance room of the Spiritualist.

All this has been clearly taught in the “Fragments” which will help to dispel many a doubt. The information however that could be gathered from the “Fragments” does not explain how far the shell made up of the 4th and lower 5th is conscious of its past existence, and whether it consciously suffers for its past misdeeds in any shape.

To the Hindus and Parsees again it is of the highest importance to know whether any obsequial ceremonies are of any the least benefit to this shell or to the Ego resting in Devachan.

Enlightened reason rejects the idea that the blundering ceremonial acts performed mechanically could be of any avail to the disembodied portion of man, and yet the Parsees and the Hindus have to spend large sums of money from year to year to allay a superstitious dread lest they might unconsciously do injury to the departed soul.

The funeral ceremonies are a real curse to the Parsee, and the middle classes are ground down by needless expenses which lie heavy upon them. Their civilization has been greatly retarded by this crushing superstition. It will therefore be no small boon to learn the opinion of the Occultists as to how far men on earth can if at all—benefit the four remaining principles of a deceased person.

At page 179 of the 4th volume of The Theosophist Mr. Chidambaram Iyer quotes a Shastra which says that “he who omits to perform Sraddha on the anniversary of the day of death will be born a chandala a crore of times.”

This is evidently the writing of an uninitiated priest† who scarcely knew anything about the true doctrine of rebirths. But sentences like these sway the populace, and thoughtful persons for want of a correct knowledge of the occult teaching on this point are themselves troubled with doubts.

This subject very conveniently falls in with the subject of “Devachan” and the promised article on “Avitchi,” and I sincerely trust you will be good enough to enlarge upon this point as it is of the highest moment to the Asiatic races to know what their funeral ceremonies are really worth.

Yours fraternally,

“N. D. K.,” F.T.S. »

Below that letter, Blavatsky responded as follows:

« The writer of the “Fragments” having gone to England, some time has to elapse of course before he can answer the questions. Until then as a student of the same school we may, perhaps, be permitted to say a few words upon the subject.

In every country, as among all the peoples of the world from the beginning of history, we see that some kind of burial is performed — but that very few among the so-called savage primitive races had or have any funeral rites or ceremonies.

The well-meaning tenderness felt by us for the dead bodies of those whom we loved or respected, may have suggested, apart from the expression of natural grief, some additional marks of family respect for them who have left us forever.

But rites and ceremonies as prescribed by our respective Churches and their theologians, are an afterthought of the priest, an outgrowth of theological and clerical ambition, seeking to impress upon the laity a superstition, a well-paying awe and dread of a punishment of which the priest himself knows nothing beyond mere speculative and often very illogical hypotheses.

The Brahmin, the Mobed, the Augur, the Rabbi, the Moolah and the Priest, impressed with the fact that their physical welfare depended far more upon his parishioners, whether dead or alive, than the spiritual welfare of the latter on his alleged mediatorship between men and God, found the device expedient and good, and ever since worked on this line.

Funeral rites have originated among the theocratically governed nations, such as the ancient Egyptians, Aryans, and Jews. Interwoven with, and consecrated by the ceremonies of theology, these rites have been adopted by the respective religions of nearly all the nations, and are preserved by them to this day; for while religions differ considerably among themselves, the rites often surviving the people as the religion to which they owed their origin have passed from one people to another.

Thus, for instance, the threefold sprinkling with earth with which the Christian is consigned to the tomb, is handed down to the Westerners from the Pagan Greeks, and Romans; and modern Parseeism owes a considerable portion of its prescribed funeral rites, we believe, to the Hindus, much in their present mode of worship being due to the grafts of Hinduism.

Abraham and other Patriarchs were buried without any rites, and even in Leviticus (chap. xix, 28) the Israelites are forbidden to “make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks” upon themselves.

In the same manner the oldest Zoroastrian books, the old and the new Desatir, with the exception of a few acts of charity (to the poor, not to the Mobeds) and the reading of sacred books, prescribe no special ceremonies. We find in the Book of the Prophet Abad (Desatir) simply the following:

-      “154. A corpse you may place in a vase of aqua fortis, or consign it to the fire, or to the earth, (when cleansed of its Nasâ or dead matter).”

And again:

-      “At the birth of a child or the death of a relative, read the Nosk, and give something in the road of Mazdam (for Ormuzd's sake, or in charity).”

That's all, and nowhere will one find in the oldest books the injunction of the ceremonies now in use, least of all that of spending large sums of money which often entails ruin upon the survivors.

Nor, from the occult standpoint, do such rites benefit in the least the departed soul. The correct comprehension of the law of Karma is entirely opposed to the idea.

As no person's karma can be either lightened or overburdened with the good or bad actions of the next of kin of the departed one, every man having his karma independent and distinct from that of his neighbour—no more can the departed soul be made responsible for the doings of those it left behind. As some make the credulous believe that the four principles may be made to suffer from colics, if the survivors ate immoderately of some fruit.

Zoroastrianism and Hinduism have wise laws — far wiser than those of the Christians — for the disposal of their dead, but their superstitions are still very great. For while the idea that the presence of the dead brings pollution to the living is no better than a superstition, unworthy of the enlightened age we live in, the real cause of the religious prohibition to handle too closely the dead and to bury them without first subjecting the bodies to the disinfectant process of either fire, vultures or aqua fortis (the latter the prevailing method of the Parsees in days of old) was as beneficent in its results as it was wise, since it was the best and most necessary sanitary precaution against epidemics.

The Christians might do worse than borrow that law from the “Pagans,” since no further than a few years back, a whole province of Russia was nearly depopulated, in consequence of the crowded condition of its burial ground.

Too numerous interments within a limited space and a comparatively short time saturate the earth with the products of decomposition to such a degree, as to make it incapable of further absorbing them, and the decomposition under such a condition being retarded its products escape directly into the atmosphere, bringing on epidemic diseases and plagues.

“Let the dead bury their dead” — were wise words, though to this day no theologian seems to have understood their real and profound meaning. There were no funeral rites or ceremonies at the death of either Zoroaster, Moses, or Buddha, beyond the simple putting out of the way of the living the corpses of them who had gone before.

Though neither the Dabistan nor the Desatir can, strictly speaking, be included in the number of orthodox Parsee books — the contents of both of these if not the works themselves anteceding by several millenniums the ordinances in the Avesta as we have now good reasons to know — we yet find the first command repudiated but the second corroborated in the latter.

In Fargard VIII, 74(233) of the Vendidad, Ahura Mazda's command:

-      “They shall kill the man that cooks the Nasâ,” etc., is thus commented upon: “He who burns Nasâ [dead matter] must be killed. Burning or cooking Nasâ from the dead is a capital crime,” for: “Thereupon came Angra-Mainyu, who is all death, and he counter-created a sin for which there is no atonement, the [immediate] cooking of corpses.”

Ahriman being man's own ignorance and selfishness.

But as regards the rites observed after the funeral of the corpse, we find no more than this — a repetition of the injunction given in the Book of Abad (Desatir), “An Âthravan shall first go along the way and shall say aloud these victorious words: 'Yathâ ahû vairyô' — The will of the Lord is the law of righteousness. The gifts of Vohu-Manô [paradise; Vohu-Manô or Good Thought being the doorkeeper of heaven — see Farg. XIX, 31] to the deeds done in this world for Mazda. He who relieves the poor makes Ahura king.”

Thus while abrogating the Fersendajian usage of burning the dead among the devotees of Mah-Abad, Zerdusht the 13th (of the Persian prophets), who introduces many improvements and reforms, commands yet no other rites than charity. »

(The Theosophist, Vol. IV, No. 9, June, 1883, p.221-222; Collected Writings 4, p.504-508)

OBSERVATIONS

There are certain rituals that were established in religions, by true initiates, to help the soul in its encounter with death. But unfortunately, over time, these rituals have been altered, and mercantilism has also led to the creation of new rituals that only serve to get money from believers.

For example, in Christianity, the sacrament of the anointing, yes, it serves, but not to free the dying man from his sins as he has subsequently ensured, but to help the soul to be able to make that transition from separating from his physical body with greater ease.

On the other hand, all the paraphernalia that has been invented later, with the embalming of the body, makeup, decorating it, putting it inside a coffin and burying it in a cemetery. Not only does it not serve, but on the contrary, it is detrimental to society because of the heavy expenses that it implies, plus the physical and vibratory contamination that the corpse produces.

MEMORY IN THE DYING BY BLAVATSKY

On this subject, Blavatsky wrote the following:

« We find in a very old letter from a Master, written years ago to a member of the Theosophical Society, the following suggestive lines on the mental state of a dying man:

« 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 the other.

The dying brain dislodges memory with a strong supreme impulse, and memory restores faithfully every impression entrusted to it during the period of the brain’s activity. That impression and thought which was the strongest naturally becomes the most vivid and survives so to say all the rest which now vanish and disappear for ever, to reappear but in Devachan.

No man dies insane or unconscious — as some physiologists assert. Even a madman, or one in a fit of delirium tremens will have his instant of perfect lucidity at the moment of death, though unable to say so to those present.

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 again.

Speak in whispers, ye, who assist at a death-bed and find yourselves in the solemn presence of Death. Especially have you to keep quiet just after Death has laid her clammy hand upon the body.

Speak in whispers, I say, lest you disturb the quiet ripple of thought, and hinder the busy work of the Past casting on its reflection upon the veil of the Future...»

The above statement has been more than once strenuously opposed by materialists; Biology and (Scientific) Psychology, it was urged, were both against the idea, and while the latter had no well-demonstrated data to go upon in such a hypothesis, the former dismissed the idea as an empty “superstition.” Meanwhile, even biology is bound to progress, and this is what we learn of its latest achievements.

Dr. Ferré has communicated quite recently to the Biological Society of Paris a very curious note on the mental state of the dying, which marvellously corroborates the above lines. For, it is to the special phenomenon of life-reminiscences, and that sudden re-emerging on the blank walls of memory, from all its long neglected and forgotten “nooks and corners,” of “picture after picture” that Dr. Ferré draws the special attention of biologists.

We need notice but two among the numerous instances given by this Scientist in his Rapport, to show how scientifically correct are the teachings we receive from our Eastern Masters.

1) The first instance is that of a moribund consumptive whose disease was developed in consequence of a spinal affection. Already consciousness had left the man, when, recalled to life by two successive injections of a gramme of ether, the patient slightly lifted his head and began talking rapidly in Flemish, a language no one around him, nor yet himself, understood.

Offered a pencil and a piece of white cardboard, he wrote with great rapidity several lines in that language (very correctly, as was ascertained later on) fell back, and died. When translated — the writing was found to refer to a very prosaic affair. He had suddenly recollected, he wrote, that he owed a certain man a sum of fifteen francs since 1868 (hence more than twenty years) and desired it to be paid.

But why write his last wish in Flemish?

The defunct was a native of Antwerp, but had left his country in childhood, without ever knowing the language, and having passed all his life in Paris, could speak and write only in French.

Evidently his returning consciousness, that last flash of memory that displayed before him, as in a retrospective panorama, all his life, even to the trifling fact of his having borrowed twenty years back a few francs from a friend, did not emanate from his physical brain alone, but rather from his spiritual memory, that of the Higher Ego (Manas or the re-incarnating individuality).

The fact of his speaking and writing Flemish, a language that he had heard at a time of life when he could not yet speak himself, is an additional proof. The EGO is almost omniscient in its immortal nature. For indeed matter is nothing more than “the last degree and as the shadow of existence,” as Ravaisson, member of the French Institute, tells us.

2) But to our second case.

Another patient, dying of pulmonary consumption and likewise re-animated by an injection of ether, turned his head towards his wife and rapidly said to her:

-      “You cannot find that pin now; all the floor has been renewed since then.”

This was in reference to the loss of a scarf pin eighteen years before, a fact so trifling that it had almost been forgotten, but which had not failed to be revived in the last thought of the dying man, who having expressed what he saw in words, suddenly stopped and breathed his last.

Thus any one of the thousand little daily events, and accidents of a long life would seem capable of being recalled to the flickering consciousness, at the supreme moment of dissolution. A long life, perhaps, lived over again in the space of one short second!

3) A third case may be noticed, which corroborates still more strongly that assertion of Occultism which traces all such remembrances to the thought-power of the individual, instead of to that of the personal (lower) Ego.

A young girl, who had been a sleepwalker up to her twenty-second year, performed during her hours of somnambulic sleep the most varied functions of domestic life, of which she had no remembrance upon awakening.

Among other psychic impulses that manifested themselves only during her sleep, was a secretive tendency quite alien to her waking state. During the latter she was open and frank to a degree, and very careless of her personal property; but in the somnambulic state she would take articles belonging to herself or within her reach and hide them away with ingenious cunning.

This habit being known to her friends and relatives, and two nurses, having been in attendance to watch her actions during her right rambles for years, nothing disappeared but what could be easily restored to its usual place.

But on one sultry night, the nurse falling asleep, the young girl got up and went to her father's study. The latter, a notary of fame, had been working till a late hour that night. It was during a momentary absence from his room that the somnambule entered, and deliberately possessed herself of a will left open upon the desk, as also of a sum of several thousand pounds in bonds and notes.

These she proceeded to hide in the hollow of two dummy pillars set up in the library to match the solid ones, and stealing from the room before her father’s return, she regained her chamber and bed without awakening the nurse who was still asleep in the armchair.

The result was, that, as the nurse stoutly denied that her young mistress had left the room, suspicion was diverted from the real culprit and the money could not be recovered.

The loss of the will involved a lawsuit which almost beggared her father and entirely ruined his reputation, and the family were reduced to great straits.

About nine years later the young girl who, during the previous seven years had not been somnambulic, fell into consumption of which she ultimately died. Upon her death-bed, the veil which had hung before her physical memory was raised; her divine insight awakened; the pictures of her life came streaming back before her inner eye; and among others she saw the scene of her somnambulic robbery.

Suddenly arousing herself from the lethargy in which she had lain for several hours, her face showed signs of some terrible emotion working within, and she cried out:

-      “Ah! what have I done? . . . It was I who took the will and the money . . . Go search the dummy pillars in the library, I have . . .”

She never finished her sentence for her very emotion killed her. But the search was made and the will and money found within the oaken pillars as she had said.

What makes the case more strange is, that these pillars were so high, that even by standing upon a chair and with plenty of time at her disposal instead of only a few moments, the somnambulist could not have reached up and dropped the objects into the hollow columns.

It is to be noted, however, that ecstatics and convulsionists (Vide the Convulsionnaires de St. Médard et de Morzîne) seem to possess an abnormal facility for climbing blank walls and leaping even to the tops of trees.

Taking the facts as stated, would they not induce one to believe that the somnambulic personage possesses an intelligence and memory of its own apart from the physical memory of the waking lower Self; and that it is the former which remembers in articulo mortis, the body and physical senses in the latter case ceasing to function, and the intelligence gradually making its final escape through the avenue of psychic, and last of all of spiritual consciousness?

And why not?

Even materialistic science begins now to concede to psychology more than one fact that would have vainly begged of it recognition twenty years ago.

Ravaisson tells us:

-      “The real existence, the life of which every other life is but an imperfect outline, a faint sketch, is that of the Soul.”

That which the public in general calls “soul,” we speak of as the “reincarnating Ego.”

“To be, is to live, and to live is to will and think,” says the French Scientist. But, if indeed the physical brain is of only a limited area, the field for the containment of rapid flashes of unlimited and infinite thought, neither will nor thought can be said to be generated within it, even according to materialistic Science, the impassable chasm between matter and mind having been confessed both by Tyndall and many others.

The fact is that the human brain is simply the canal between two planes — the psycho-spiritual and the material — through which every abstract and metaphysical idea filters from the Manasic down to the lower human consciousness. Therefore, the ideas about the infinite and the absolute are not, nor can they be, within our brain capacities.

They can be faithfully mirrored only by our Spiritual consciousness, thence to be more or less faintly projected onto the tables of our perceptions on this plane.

Thus while the records of even important events are often obliterated from our memory, not the most trifling action of our lives can disappear from the “Soul’s” memory, because it is no MEMORY for it, but an ever present reality on the plane which lies outside our conceptions of space and time.

  “Man is the measure of all things,” said Aristotle; and surely he did not mean by man, the form of flesh, bones and muscles!

Of all the deep thinkers Edgard Quinet, the author of La Création, expressed this idea the best. Speaking of man, full of feelings and thoughts of which he has either no consciousness at all, or which he feels only as dim and hazy impressions, he shows that man realizes quite a small portion only of his moral being.

“The thoughts we think, but are unable to define and formulate, once repelled, seek refuge in the very root of our being.” . . . When chased by the persistent efforts of our will “they retreat before it, still further, still deeper into — who knows what — fibres, but wherein they remain to reign and impress us unbidden and unknown to ourselves . . .”

Yes; they become as imperceptible and as unreachable as the vibrations of sound and colour when these surpass the normal range. Unseen and eluding grasp, they yet work, and thus lay the foundations of our future actions and thoughts, and obtain mastery over us, though we may never think of them and are often ignorant of their very being and presence.

Nowhere does Quinet, the great student of Nature, seem more right in his observations than when speaking of the mysteries with which we are all surrounded:

“The mysteries of neither earth nor heaven but those present in the marrow of our bones, in our brain cells, our nerves and fibres. No need,” he adds, “in order to search for the unknown, to lose ourselves in the realm of the stars, when here, near us and in us, rests the unreachable . . . As our world is mostly formed of imperceptible beings which are the real constructors of its continents, so likewise is man.”

Verily so; since man is a bundle of obscure, and to himself unconscious perceptions, of indefinite feelings and misunderstood emotions, of ever-forgotten memories and knowledge that becomes on the surface of his plane — ignorance.

Yet while physical memory in a healthy living man is often obscured, one fact crowding out another weaker one, at the moment of the great change that man calls death — that which we call “memory” seems to return to us in all its vigour and freshness.

May this not be due as just said, simply to the fact that, for a few seconds at least, our two memories (or rather the two states, the highest and the lowest state, of consciousness) blend together, thus forming one, and that the dying finds himself on a plane wherein there is neither past nor future, but all is one present?

Memory, as we all know, is strongest with regard to its early associations, then when the future man is only a child, and more of a soul than of a body; and if memory is a part of our Soul, then, as Thackeray has somewhere said, it must be of necessity eternal.

Scientists deny this; we, Theosophists, affirm that it is so. They have for what they hold but negative proofs; we have, to support us, innumerable facts of the kind just instanced, in the three cases described by us.

The links of the chain of cause and effect with relation to mind are, and must ever remain a terra incognita to the materialist. For if they have already acquired a deep conviction that as Pope says:

-      “Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain. Our thoughts are link’d by many a hidden chain . . .”

And that they are still unable to discover these chains, how can they hope to unravel the mysteries of the higher, Spiritual, Mind! »

(This article was first publishes in Lucifer, Vol. V, No. 26, October, 1889, p.125-129; later in Blavatsky Collected Writings XI, p.446-453)

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LAST THOUGHT AT THE TIME OF DIE

On this matter, Blavatsky noted the following:

« Occult science teaches that the frame of mind in which a man dies, is of the utmost importance owing to the abnormal and psychic state in which he then is. The last thought of a dying person does much to influence his immediate future.

The arrow is ready to fly from the bow; the bow-string is abreast of the ear, and the aim will decide the immediate fate of the arrow. Happy is he for whom “Om is the bow, the Self is the arrow, the Brahman—its aim!”

(Mundaka-Upanishad II, ii, 4)

At such a sacred moment, strong spiritual aspirations, whether natural or induced by the earnest exhortation of either one who has a true conviction, or better still, of one possessed of the divine Gnosis, will protect the Soul of him who is leaving life.

This is not meant, however, to endorse the superstition of a “death-bed repentance,” for the immutable justice and harmony of the Karmic Law can only return a fleeting effect for a fleeting cause; and the rest of the Karmic debt must be paid in future earth-lives.

“Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. AMEN I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.”

(Matt., v, 25, 26).

That is to say, according to the Gnostic and esoteric interpretation, work while it is yet day, so that good Karmic action may balance the evil causes previously set in motion by the personality.

Otherwise, at death we shall be judged by our own Higher Self, and under the conduct of the agents of the Karmic Law (the Demiourgos collectively), will have to reincarnate again into the prison of the body, until the past evil Karma has been exhausted. For until the last farthing of the Karmic debt is exhausted, we can never be untied from the wheel of “Samsara.” »

(CW 13, p.74-75)

OBSERVATIONS

We see therefore that the last thought we have at the time of death is very important, but you should know that there are two "last thoughts":

1) The last thought that we can do voluntarily and intentionally, and this thought is this thought will have a great influence on our immediate future after we die.

And for example, the masters explained that most humans lose consciousness after they die and remain asleep when they enter the astral plane. But Master Pasteur taught that if at the moment you are dying, you concentrate, and you mention the mantra "So-Ham", and you focus on what that mantra means, that is, "you are a soul."

Then after dying you will stay awake and transferred directly to an elevated area of the astral plane.

2) And there is the last thought that we cannot control and that occurs after we see our whole lives pass before our eyes.

And this other last thought will be the synthesis of what we have done most during our life on Earth, and will have a great influence on our existence in the Devachan (Heaven) and also in our next reincarnation.

On this matter, Master Kuthumi wrote:

« That thought, that feeling which is the strongest in us at that supreme hour; when, as in a dream, the events of a long life, to their minutest details, are marshalled in the greatest order in a few seconds in our vision  — that feeling will become the fashioner of our bliss or woe, the life-principle of our future existence. »

(ML 20, p.127-128)

And William Judge also pointed out that:

« When a man dies, the brain dies last. Life is still busy there after death has been announced. The soul marshals up all past events, grasps the sum total, the average tendency stands out, the ruling hope is seen. Their final aroma forms the keynote of Devachanic existence. »

(Echoes of the Orient III, p.43)

And this other second thought (or tonality, or vibration, as you want to call it) we cannot manipulate it in that moment in which we are dying, but we are building it daily from the actions that we are doing throughout our Earthly life.

THE TRUE DEATH EXPLAINED BY BLAVATSKY

Theosophy explains that physical death is not a true annihilation because humans continue to exist and it is only their lower bodies that become extinct. But there are also situations where the individual immerses himself so deeply in evil that this person ends up being destroyed.

And Blavatsky detailed these particular cases, but so that you can better understand what she explained, I recommend you first to read this other article where I summarize the Masters' explanation about what happens after we die (link).

« As a corollary to this and before going into still more abstruse teachings, I must redeem my promise already given to you in my last letter. I have to illustrate by tenets you already know, the awful doctrine of personal annihilation.

Banish from your minds all that you have hitherto read and thought you understood, in such works as Esoteric Buddhism, of such hypotheses as the eighth sphere and the moon, and that man shares a common ancestor with the ape.

Even the details occasionally given out by myself in The Theosophist and Lucifer were nothing like the whole truth, but only broad general ideas, hardly touched upon in their details. Certain passages, however, give out hints, especially my footnotes on articles translated from Éliphas Lévi’s “Letters on Magic.”

Nevertheless, personal immortality is conditional, for there is such a thing as “soulless man,” a teaching barely mentioned, yet still spoken of in Isis Unveiled; and there is an Avichi, rightly called Hell, though it has no connection with, or similitude to, the good Christian Hell, either geographically or psychically.

The truth known to Occultists and Adepts in every age could not be given out to a promiscuous public; hence, though almost every mystery of occult philosophy lies half concealed in Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, I had no right to amplify or correct Mr. Sinnett’s details.

You may now compare these four volumes and especially Esoteric Buddhism with the diagrams and written explanations in the Instructions, and see for yourselves.

Thus the chief and most important secret with regard to that “second death,” in the esoteric teaching, was and is to this day the terrible possibility of the death of the Soul, that is, its severance from the Ego on earth during a person’s lifetime. This is a real death (though with chances of resurrection), which shows no traces in a person and yet leaves him morally a living corpse.

It is difficult to see why this teaching should have been preserved until now with such secrecy, when, by spreading it among people, at any rate among those who believe in reincarnation, so much good might be done. But so it was, and I had no right to question the wisdom of the prohibition, but have given it hitherto, as it was given to myself, under pledge not to reveal it to the world at large.

But now I have permission to give it to all, revealing its tenets first to the Esotericists; and then when they have assimilated them thoroughly, it will be their duty to teach others this special tenet of the “second death,” and warn all the Theosophists of its dangers.

Therefore we are told that if we destroy Antaskarana (which is the connection between the high triad and the lower quaternary) before the personal is absolutely under the control of the impersonal Ego, we risk to lose the latter and be severed forever from it, unless indeed we hasten to reestablish the communication by a supreme and final effort.

It is only when we are indissolubly linked with the essence of the divine Mind, that we have to destroy Antaskarana. “Like as a solitary warrior pursued by an army, seeks refuge in a stronghold; to cut himself off from the enemy, he first destroys the drawbridge, and then only commences to destroy the pursuer; so must the Srotâpanna act before he slays Antaskarana.” Or, as an occult axiom has it: “The unit becomes three, and three generate four. It is for the latter (the quaternary) to rebecome three, and for the divine three to expand into the Absolute One.”

Monads (which become duads on the differentiated plane, to develop into triads during the cycle of incarnations), even when incarnated, know neither Space nor Time, but are diffused through the lower principles of the quaternary, being omnipresent and omniscient in their nature. But this omniscience is innate, and can manifest its reflected light only through that which is at least semi-terrestrial or material; even as the physical brain which, in its turn, is the vehicle of the lower Manas enthroned in Kâma-Rûpa. And it is this which is gradually annihilated in cases of “second death.”

But such annihilation —which is in reality the absence of the slightest trace of the doomed soul from the eternal MEMORY, and therefore signifies annihilation in eternity— does not mean simply discontinuation of human life on earth, for earth is AVICHI, and the worst Avichi possible.

Expelled forever from the consciousness of the Individuality (the reincarnating Ego), the physical atoms and psychic vibrations of the now separate personality are immediately reincarnated on the same earth, only in a lower and still more abject creature, a human being only in form, doomed to Karmic torments during the whole of its new life. Moreover, if it persists in its criminal or debauched course, it will suffer a long series of such immediate reincarnations.

Here two questions present themselves:

    1. What becomes of the Higher Ego in such cases?

    2. What kind of an animal is a human creature born soulless?

Thus, in answer to the first question, I say:

1) The Divine Ego does one of two things: either (a) it recommences immediately under its own Karmic impulses a fresh series of incarnations; or (b) it seeks and finds refuge in the “bosom of the Mother,” Alaya, the Universal Soul, of which the Manvantaric aspect is Mahat.

Freed from the life impressions of the personality, it merges into a kind of interlude of Nirvana, wherein there can be nothing but the eternal Present, which absorbs the Past and Future.

Bereft of the “laborer,” both field and harvest now being lost, the Master, in the infinitude of his thought, naturally preserves no recollection of the finite and evanescent illusion which had been his last personality. The latter, then, is indeed annihilated.

2) The future of the Lower Manas is more terrible, and still more terrible to humanity than to the now animal man. It sometimes happens that after the separation the exhausted Soul, now become supremely animal, fades out in Kama-Loka, as do all other animal souls.

But seeing that the more material the human mind, the longer it lasts, in that intermediate stage, it frequently happens that after the actual life of the soulless man is ended, he is again and again reincarnated into new personalities, each one more abject than the other. The impulse of animal life is too strong; it cannot wear itself out in one or two lives only. »

(This was originally published in the Instructions III of the Esoteric Section, and later in the Collected Writings 12, p.622-638)

Observation: Blavatsky also pointed out that not all those heartless humans end up disintegrating, but there are also cases where some of those entities are transformed into what the occultists call “the Dweller of the Threshold”, and in the previous article I put the explanation she gave about it.

THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD DESCRIBED BY BLAVATSKY

Blavatky explained (as I detailed in the following chapter) that when a human sinks very deeply into degradation or evil, he ends up separating himself from his superior triad and becomes a person without a soul.

And this heartless human will continue to incarnate becoming with each new incarnation an increasingly abject entity, until finally the life force in he is exhausted, and then he will end up disintegrating.

But Blavatsky also pointed out that sometimes those heartless humans are transformed into what the occultists call a "Dweller of the Threshold", and below I will transcribe what she said about this matter.

« In rarer cases, however, something far more dreadful may happen. When the lower Manas is doomed to exhaust itself by starvation; when there is no longer hope that even a remnant of a lower light will, owing to favorable conditions––say, even a short period of spiritual aspiration and repentance––attract back to itself its Parent Ego, then Karma leads the Higher Ego back to new incarnations. In this case the Kâma-Mânasic spook may become that which we call in Occultism the “Dweller on the Threshold.”

This “Dweller” is not like that which is described so graphically in Zanoni, but an actual fact in nature and not a fiction in romance, however beautiful the latter may be. Bulwer must have got the idea from some Eastern Initiate. Our “Dweller,” led by affinity and attraction, forces itself into the astral current, and through the Auric Envelope of the new tabernacle inhabited by the Parent Ego, and declares war to the lower light which has replaced it.

This, of course, can only happen in the case of the moral weakness of the personality so obsessed. No one strong in his virtue, and righteous in his walk of life, can risk or dread any such thing; but only those depraved in heart. Robert Louis Stevenson had a glimpse of a true vision indeed when he wrote his Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. His story is a true allegory. Every Chela would recognize in it a substratum of truth, and in Mr. Hyde a “Dweller,” an obsessor of the personality, the tabernacle of the “Parent Spirit.”

“This is a nightmare tale!” I was often told by one, now no more in our ranks, a person who had a most pronounced “Dweller,” a “Mr. Hyde,” as an almost constant companion. “How can such a process take place without one’s knowledge?”

It can and does so happen, and I have almost described it once before in The Theosophist. “The Soul, the Lower Mind, becomes as a half animal principle almost paralyzed with daily vice, and grows gradually unconscious of its subjective half, the Lord, . . . one of the mighty Host”; and “in proportion to the rapid sensuous development of the brain and nerves, sooner or later, it (the personal Soul) finally loses sight of its divine mission on earth.”

Truly, “like the vampire, the brain feeds and lives and grows in strength at the expense of its spiritual parent . . . and the personal half-unconscious Soul becomes senseless, beyond hope of redemption. It is powerless to discern the voice of its ‘God.’ It aims but at the development and fuller comprehension of natural, earthly life; and thus can discover but the mysteries of physical nature. . . . It begins by becoming virtually dead, during the life of the body; and ends by dying completely––that is, by being annihilated as a complete immortal Soul.

Such a catastrophe may often happen long years before one’s physical death: ‘We elbow soulless men and women at every step in life.’ And, when death arrives . . . there is no more a Soul (the reincarnating Spiritual Ego) to liberate, . . . for it has fled years before.”

Result: Bereft of its guiding principles, but strengthened by the material elements, Kama-Manas, from being a “derived light,” now becomes an independent Entity. After suffering itself to sink lower and lower on the animal plane, when the hour strikes for its earthly body to die, one of two things happens: either Kama-Manas is immediately reborn in Myalba (the state of Avichi on earth), or, if it become too strong in evil––“immortal in Satan” is the Occult expression––it is sometimes allowed, for Karmic purposes, to remain in an active state of Avichi in the terrestrial Aura.

Then through despair and loss of all hope it becomes like the mythical “devil” in its endless wickedness; it continues in its elements, imbued through and through with the essence of matter; for evil is coëval with matter rent asunder from spirit. And when its higher Ego has once more reincarnated, evolving a new reflection, or Kama-Manas, the doomed Lower Ego, like a Frankenstein’s monster, will ever feel attracted to its “Father,” who repudiates his Son, and will become a regular “Dweller” on the “threshold” of terrestrial life. »

(CW 12, p.637)