Theos-Talk Archives (February 1999 Message tt00055)

Feb 5th 1999

Some more quotations from Theosophical sources on Devachan are
offered:
List II.


	How is Devachan Created ?

"...we ourselves create our Devachan...while yet on earth, and
mostly during the latter days and even moments of our
intellectual sentient lives.  That feeling which is strongest in
us at that supreme hour, when as in a dream, the events of a long
life to their minutest detail are marshaled in the greatest order
in a few seconds in our vision, (Fn.:--That vision takes place
when a person is already proclaimed dead.  The brain is the last
organ that dies.) that feeling will become the fashioner of our
bliss or woe, the life-principle of our future existence...The
real full remembrance of our lives will come but at the end of
the minor cycle,--not before..."	Theos. Articles & Notes, p. 246



	Who Goes to Devachan


"The personal Ego, of course, but beatified, purified, holy.
Every Ego--the combination of the 6th and 7th principles--which
after the period of unconscious gestation is reborn into the
Devachan, is of necessity as innocent as a new born babe.  The
fact of his being reborn at all shows the preponderance of good
over evil in his old personality...he brings along with him but
the Karma of his good deeds, words, and thoughts into this
Devachan...all those who have not slipped down into the mire of
unredeemable sin and bestiality go to the Devachan...Meanwhile
they are rewarded;  receive the effects of the causes produced by
them."		Theos. Art. & Notes, p. 244-5



  	Reason for Devachanic Experience


"The 'dream of Devachan' lasts until Karma is satisfied in that
direction.  In Devachan there is a gradual exhaustion of
force..."The stay in D- is proportionate to the unexhausted
psychic [ spiritual and of the nature of the soul ] impulses
originating in earth life.  Those whose attractions were
preponderatingly material will be sooner brought back into
rebirth by the force of Tanha...In such a case the average rule
has no application, since the whole effect either way is due to a
balancing of forces and is the outcome of action and reaction."
T. A. & N.p.249


	What is Conscious in Devachan ?


"As to the personal Soul--by which we mean the spark of
consciousness that preserves in the Spiritual Ego the idea of the
personal "I" of the last incarnation--this lasts, as a separate
distinct recollection, only throughout the Devachanic period;
after which time it is added to the innumerable incarnations of
the Ego...(108)  Immortality is but one's unbroken consciousness;
and the personal consciousness can hardly last longer than the
personality itself...and such consciousness...survives only
throughout Devachan, after which it is reabsorbed, first, in the
individual, and then in the universal consciousness."	 Key 107-8


["Manas...the Ego"] ..."It has not forgotten them [deeds in past
lives] ...it knows and remembers its misdeeds as well as you
remember what you have done yesterday."		Key  136



	Death Vision - A Review


"That particular one moment which will be most intense and
uppermost in the thoughts of the dying brain at the moment of
dissolution, will regulate all subsequent moments.  The moment
thus selected becomes the key-note of the whole harmony, around
which cluster in endless variety all the aspirations and desires
which in connection with that moment had ever crossed the
dreamer's brain during his lifetime, without being realized on
earth,--the theme modeling itself on, and taking shape from, that
group of desires which was most intense during life."	Theos. Art.
& Notes., p. 242



	Basis for Devachanic "Dream"


[The force of unfinished mental work]... "an intense and purely
spiritual passion for intellectual pursuit," is called "an
unsatisfied yearning which must exhaust itself before the entity
can move on to the purely a-rupa (formless-impersonal) condition.
A provision is made for every case, and, in each case it is
created by the dying man's last, uppermost desire..." [not
"thought"]	Theos. Art. & Notes, p. 32



"Life in Devachan is the function of the aspirations of earth
life;  not the indefinite prolongation of that "single instant,"
but its infinite developments, the various incidents and events
based upon and outflowing from that one "single moment" or
moments."		Key  162



	Review of the Last Life Lived


"At the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is
sudden, sees the whole of his past life marshaled before him, in
its minutest details.  For one short instant the personal becomes
one with the individual and the all-knowing Ego.  But that
instant is enough to show him the whole chain of causes which
have been at work during his life.  He sees and now understands
himself as he is, unadorned by flattery or self-deception.  He
reads his life, remaining as a spectator looking down into the
arena he is quitting;  he feels and knows the justice of all the
suffering that has overtaken him."			Key  162


"Life in Devachan is the function of the aspirations of earth
life;  not the indefinite prolongation of that "single instant,"
but its infinite developments, the various incidents and events
based upon and outflowing from that one "single moment" or
moments."	Key 162


"The last series of powerful and deeply imprinted thoughts are
those which give color and trend to the whole life in devachan.
The last moment will color each subsequent moment.  On those the
soul and mind fix themselves and weave of them a whole set of
events and experiences. expanding them to their highest limit,
carrying out all that was not possible in life."
	Ocean, p. 113


"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 and
Brahman--its aim!"  At such a sacred moment, strong spiritual
aspirations, whether natural or induced by the earnest
exhortations 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...at death we shall be judged by
our own Higher Self, and, under the conduct of the agents of the
Karmic Law (the Demiurgos 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 "Sansara."
	-Footnote by HPB--	Lucifer, Vol. 8, p. 127-8


"That flash of memory which is traditionally supposed to show a
drowning man every long-forgotten scene of his mortal life--as
the landscape is revealed to the traveler by intermittent flashes
of lightning--is simply the sudden glimpse which the struggling
soul gets into the silent galleries where his history is depicted
in imperishable colors."
	Isis  I  179


"When the frame is cold and eyes closed, all the forces of the
body and mind rush through the brain, and by a series of pictures
the whole life just ended is imprinted indelibly on the inner man
not only in a general outline but down to the smallest detail of
even the most intimate and fleeting impression."		Ocean, p. 97


"That feeling which is strongest in us at that supreme hour, when
as in a dream, the events of a long life to their minutest detail
are marshaled in the greatest order in a few seconds in our
vision, (Fn.:--That vision takes place when a person is already
proclaimed dead.  The brain is the last organ that dies.) that
feeling will become the fashioner of our bliss or woe, the
life-principle of our future existence...The real full
remembrance of our lives will come but at the end of the minor
cycle,--not before..."		T A & N, p. 246


"That particular one moment which will be most intense and
uppermost in the thoughts of the dying brain at the moment of
dissolution, will regulate all subsequent moments.  The moment
thus selected becomes the key-note of the whole harmony, around
which cluster in endless variety all the aspirations and desires
which in connection with that moment had ever crossed the
dreamer's brain during his lifetime, without being realized on
earth,--the theme modeling itself on, and taking shape from, that
group of desires which was most intense during life."
	THEOS. ART. & NOTES., p. 242



	Do Not Disturb the Dying


"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...speak in whispers...lest you disturb
the quiet ripple of thought, and hinder the busy work of the Past
casting on its reflections upon the veil of the future."		M L 170



	Two Fields of Effects:


"There are two fields of causal manifestation;  the objective and
the subjective.  The grosser energies find their outcome in the
new personality of each birth in the cycle of evoluting
individuality.  The moral and spiritual activities find their
sphere of effects in Devachan.

The dream of Devachan lasts until Karma is satisfied in that
direction, until the ripple of force reaches the edge of its
cyclic basin and the being moves into the next area of causes."
THEOS. ART. & NOTES, p. 242



	Devachan -- A State of Selfishness


"...it is a state...of intense selfishness, during which an Ego
reaps the reward if his unselfishness on earth.  He is completely
engrossed in the bliss of all his personal earthly affections,
preferences, and thoughts, and gathers in the fruit of his
meritorious actions.  No pain, no grief, not even the shadow of a
sorrow comes to darken the bright horizon of his unalloyed
happiness:  for it is a state of perpetual "Maya."  Since the
conscious perception of one's personality on Earth is but an
evanescent dream, that sense will be equally that of a dream in
the Devachan--only a hundred-fold intensified...the happy Ego is
unable to see through the veil the evils, sorrows, and woes to
which those it loved on earth may be subjected...It has them near
itself, as happy, as blissful, and as innocent as the disembodied
dreamer himself..."
	THEOS. ART. & NOTES, p. 245




	Contact with Devachanees


"It is...during such a condition [ of blissful Maya ] that the
souls of astral Egos of pure loving sensitives, laboring under
the same delusion, [ of perpetual bliss ] think that their loved
ones come down to them on earth while it is their own spirits
that are raised towards those in the Devachan."	THEOS. ART. &
NOTES, p. 245


"...the new Ego, once that it is reborn (in Devachan),
retains... --proportionate to its earth life-- a complete
recollection "of his life on earth;"  but it can never visit the
earth from Devachan except in reincarnation."	THEOS. ART. &
NOTES, p. 244


"Two sympathetic souls will each work out their devachanic
sensations, making the other a sharer in its subjective bliss,
Yet each is dissociated from the other as regards mutual
intercourse;  for what companionship could there be between
subjective entities which are not even as material as that
Ethereal body--the Mayavi Rupa ?"
T. A. & N., p. 243



	Adept Using Spiritual Nature has Access to Devachanic State


"...the disembodied entity being identical in nature with the
higher triad of the living man, when obliterated as a result of
self-evolution effected by the full development of conscious and
trained will, the adept can through this triad learn all that
concerns the Devachanee;  live for the time being his mental
life, feel as he feels, and sharing thoroughly in his
super-sensuous perceptions, bring back with him on earth the
memory of the same, unwarped by mayavic deceptions..."
T A & N, p. 18


"There are two fields of causal manifestation;  the objective and
the subjective.  The grosser energies find their outcome in the
new personality of each birth in the cycle of evoluting
individuality.  The moral and spiritual activities find their
sphere of effects in Devachan.

"The dream of Devachan lasts until Karma is satisfied in that
direction, until the ripple of force reaches the edge of its
cyclic basin and the being moves into the next area of causes."
THEOS. ART. & NOTES, p. 242


	Devachan a Varied State


"As many varieties of bliss on Earth there are of perception and
of capability to appreciate such reward.  It is an ideal
paradise;  in each case of the Ego's own making, and by him
filled with the scenery, crowded with the incidents, and thronged
with the people he would expect to find in such a sphere of
compensative bliss.  And it is that variety which guides the
temporary personal Ego into the current which will lead him to be
reborn in a lower or higher condition in the next world of
causes.  Everything is so harmoniously arranged in
nature--especially in the subjective world-- that no mistake can
be ever committed by the Tathagatos who guide the impulses.
Devachan is a "spiritual condition" only as contrasted with our
own grossly material condition...[follows examples of various
instinctive and moral effects on the next incarnation]  The
savage in being reborn would simply take a low place in the
scale, by reason of his imperfect moral development;  while the
Karma of the other [wanton killer of animals] would be tainted
with moral delinquency..."
	THEOS. ART. & NOTES, p. 245-6



	Length of Devachanic Stay


[The stay in the Devachanic state] ...depends on the degree of
spirituality and the merit or demerit of the last incarnation.
The average time is from 10 to 15 centuries..."
	THEOS. ART & NOTES 248 KEY 145


"...the term between two rebirths is said to extend from ten to
15 centuries, during which time the physical consciousness is
totally and absolutely inactive, having no organs to act
through..."	KEY  132



"Here the average time means "the time for the average person..."
which depends on the subtle action of mind solely...and for most
of us impossible to lay down exact figures."		T A & N p. 148


========================================


These quotations are offered in the hope that they will answer
some of the questions that have been discussed in the past weeks.

If there are additional quotations that can be added to this
list, or questions, please do contribute them.

Thank you,

Dallas

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