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.
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