To
this question, William Atkinson in his book "Life beyond death" answered the following:
«
Regarding
the question of occupation in the heaven-world
—the Astral Plane— the following from a well-known
writer on the subject, Mr. A.P. Sinnett, will prove interesting and
instructive:
« Readers,
however, who may grant that a purview of earthly life from heaven would render
happiness in heaven impossible, may still doubt whether true happiness is
possible in the state of monotonous isolation now described. The objection is
merely raised from the point of view of an imagination that cannot escape from
its present surroundings.
To begin
with, about monotony. No one will complain of having experienced monotony
during the minute, or moment, or half-hour, as
it may have been, of the greatest happiness he may have enjoyed in life. Most
people have had some happy moments, at all events, to look back to for the purpose
of this comparison; and let us take even one such minute or moment, too short
to be open to the least suspicion of monotony, and imagine its sensations
immensely prolonged without any external events in progress to mark the lapse
of time.
There is
no room, in such a condition of things, for the conception of weariness. The
unalloyed, unchangeable sensation of intense happiness goes on and on, not
forever, because the causes which have produced it are not infinite themselves,
but for very long periods of time, until the efficient impulse has exhausted
itself. »
(This text is located in chapter five of the book “Esoteric Buddhism”.)
Another
high authority on the subject (quoted by Sinnett) says:
« The
moral and spiritual qualities have to find a field in which their energies can
expand themselves. Devachan (the higher Astral Plane) is such a field. Hence,
all the great planes of moral reform, of intellectual research into abstract
principles of Nature — all the divine, spiritual, aspirations that so fill the
brightest part of life, in Devachan come to fruition; and the abstract entity
occupies itself in this inner world, also of its own preparation, in enjoying
the effects of the grand beneficial spiritual causes sown in life. It lives a
purely and spiritually conscious existence —a dream of realistic vividness— until
Karma, being satisfied in that direction…the being moves into its next era of
causes, either in this same world or another, according to its stage of
progression….
Therefore,
there is a “change of occupation,” a continual change, in Devachan. For that
dream-life is but the fruition, the harvest-time,
of those psychic germs dropped from the tree of physical existence in our
moments of dream and hope — fancy glimpses of bliss and happiness, stifled in
an ungrateful social soil, blooming in the rosy dawn of Devachan, and ripening
under its ever-fructifying sky. If man had but a
single moment of ideal experience, not even then could it be, as erroneously
supposed, the indefinite prolongation of that “single moment.”
That one
note struck from the lyre of life, would form the key-note
of the being’s subjective state, and work out into numberless harmonic tones
and semi‑tones of
psychic phantasmagoria. There all unrealized hopes, aspirations and dreams,
become fully realized, and the dreams of the objective become the realities of
the subjective existence. And there, beyond the curtain of Maya, its vaporous
and deceptive appearances are perceived by the Initiate, who has learned the
great secret how to penetrate thus deep into the Arcana of Being. »
The same
authority continues:
« To
object to this on the ground that one is thus “cheated by Nature,” and to call
it “a delusive sensation of
enjoyment which has
no reality” is to
show oneself utterly unfit to comprehend the conditions of life and being
outside of our material existence. For how can the same distinction be made in
Devachan — i.e. outside of the conditions of earth-life
— between what we call a reality, and a fictitious or an artificial counterfeit
of the same, in this, our world. The same principle cannot apply to the two
sets of conditions.… The spiritual soul has no substance…nor is it confined to
one place with a limited horizon of perceptions around it.
Therefore,
whether in or out of its mortal body, it is ever distinct, and free from its
limitations; and, if we call its Devanchanic experiences “acheating of nature,”
then we should never be allowed to call “reality” any of those purely abstract
feelings that belong entirely to, and are reflected and assimilated by, our
higher soul — such, for instance, as an ideal perception of the beautiful,
profound philanthropy, love, etc., as well as every other purely spiritual
sensation that during life fills our inner being with either immense pain or
joy. »
(These
two texts are excerpts from the letters that Master Kuthumi wrote to Mr.
Sinnett, and later Mr. Sinnett transcribed a small portion in his book “Esoteric Buddhism”.
And
below, William Atkinson added his reflection, but I believe that he did not
really understand what Master Kuthumi explained, because I feel that the
argumentation he put down is largely empty chatter.)
_ _ _
Surely to
the aspiring soul there is a far greater happiness in the thought of a heaven-world
in which shall be worked out the problems of this life — in which the creative
impulse shall be given full opportunity for unfoldment and development, to the
end that in a newer and fuller life to come there shall be a putting forth of
blossom and fruit, of heart’s desires come true, of ideals made real — than in
a heaven of the cessation of unfoldment and creative endeavor, where all is
finished, where there is nothing to be done or created, where there is no
occupation but to fold hands end enjoy the bliss of eternal idleness.
The
creative instinct is from the very heart of Nature herself, the throbbing of
her own life‑blood, for
Nature is ever at work, creating, doing, performing, becoming, making, achieving
— forever, and ever, and ever, on, and on, and on, without ceasing, rising from
greater to greater achievement, as the aeons of time fly by. Verily this alone
is life, and:
“All other life is
living death, a land where none but phantoms dwell;
A wind, a sound, a
breath, a voice; the tinkling of the Camel’s bell.”
And yet so
grounded in materiality is the world of men, that they would speak of the
heaven-world of the higher Astral Plane as a
mirage, a mere dream, a phantasm. They consider nothing “real” unless it is on
the material plane. Poor mortals, they do not realize that, at the last, there
can be nothing more unreal, more dreamlike, more transitory, more phantasmal,
than this very world of material substance. They are not aware that in it there
is absolutely no permanence — that the mind itself is not quick enough to catch
a glimpse of material reality, for, before the mind can grasp a material fact,
the fact has merged into something else.
The world
of mind, and still more true, the world of spirit, is far more real than is the
world of materiality. From the spiritual viewpoint there is nothing at all real
but Spirit; and matter is regarded as the most fleeting and unreal of all
illusory appearances. From the same viewpoint, the higher in the scale one
rises above the material plane, the more real becomes the phenomena
experienced.
Therefore,
it follows, that the experiences of the soul on the higher Astral Plane are not
only not unreal in nature, but, by comparison, are far more real than the
experiences of life on the material plans. As the writers just quoted have well
said, Nature is not cheated on the Astral Plane — but Nature herself manifests
with more real effect on that plane than on the material plane. This is a hard
saying for the uninitiated — but the advanced soul becomes more and more
convinced of its truth every succeeding hour of its experience.
It is a
grievous error to regard the experiences of the soul in the heaven-world
as little more than a “playing at reality,” as some materialistic critics has
termed it. One has but to turn to the experiences even of the earth-life
to see that some of the world’s best work is performed in the hours other than
those employed in the actual fashioning of the things. There are times in the
everyday life of the most active workers of the world which may be called “the
ideal period” — that is, the time in which the mind creates and forms that
which is afterward manifested in material form.
There has
never been a building, nor a bridge, nor any other great work of human hands,
erected, unless first it has been created in the mind of some man or men. It
has had its first existence in the creative faculties of the mind — the
material building is merely the reproduction of the mental creation. This,
being remembered, which shall we consider the real creation, the mental or the
material?
The soul,
in its activities on the higher Astral Plane, performs a work similar to that
of the mind of the inventor, designer, builder, when it fashions and designs
that which will afterward be objectified in material form. It may be called the
period or stage of forming the model, or pattern, or mould, which shall
afterward serve for the material manifestation. Ignorance, alone, can conceive
of such a stage of existence as being a “mere dream.”
Verily,
the scales of matter serve to blind the eyes of man, so that he sees the real
as the unreal — the unreal as the real. The higher in the scale of existence
the soul rises, the more real are its experiences — the nearer it approaches
matter, in its descent of the scale, the more unreal are its experiences. Ah,
Maya! Maya! thou mother of illusion, when shall we learn to rise above thy
spell! Those who play in the clay, are besmeared by it, and can see nothing
finer and higher than its sticky substance. »
(Chapter
13)
OBSERVATION
Once again
I perceive that William Atkinson did not study seriously, because if he had
investigated more carefully, then he would have discovered that the word
Devachan means in Sanskrit “the dwelling of the gods”
and then he would know that Devachan is located in the divine world and not in
the higher astral as he claimed.
And
clearly master Kuthumi specified that the devachanic dream is based on what the
soul experienced during its life on the physical plane, and therefore is false what
William Atkinson asserted later in chapter 18, where he assures that the
"dream heavenly soul” is based on what the soul experienced during its
life on the astral plane.
And
this is one more example that shows that William Atkinson's explanations of
what happens after death are full of errors.
No comments:
Post a Comment