Theos-Talk Archives (August 2001 Message tt00193)

At 06:48 PM 8/18/01 -0700, you wrote:
> By what mechanism does the soul leave Devachan and
> re-enter the physical body? When is it decided that
> this occurs?
>
> Regards,
> Mic
After the death of the physical body, the remaining
life energies take time to dissipate themselves.
The desires of an animal nature burn themselves off
first, followed by subtler and more abstract longings.
The last to go are the highest, the most lofty of
thought, the most spiritual in nature. It is only
when we're fully freed of all attachment to our
former life that we're ready to return and start
anew.

This process of letting go is entirely subjective,
and happens as we deal with the contents of our
own desire nature, thought life, and unspent
spiritual energies. It's like going to a week-long
Zen retreat. The first experience may be a discomfort
of giving up physical activity. Then we peel off
various layers of wanting to do things. Then come
various stages of letting go of wanting to think
about various things, some of which haven't made it
to the mind's surface in a long time. Finally, we
can sit in quiet, just happy to be there.

The Devachan is the highest and final stage of our
typical after-death experiences. When we tire of
it, when there's no further inner momentum in that
direction, the desire to taste life again, tanha,
starts to overtake us, leading us to eventual
rebirth here on earth again.

While dead, in Kamaloka and then Devachan, we are
in subjective states. Why is that? It's because our
evolution is here on physical earth. We're not ready
for objective existence on another plane. That will
come in due time when we're progressed further. For
now, if we exist somewhere while passing through
our subjective after-death states, it's because,
I think, we're in an embryonic state on those other
planes, and have not reached the point where we
would have independent, sentient, self-conscious
existence.

How we leave Devachan and take on a new physical
body are simple in concept, but become difficult
to understand when we get into too much detail
about the process. It has not been explained very
completely. There are many questions that could be
asked, like how parents are chosen, how an incoming
soul associates with a particular child, at what
age and how quickly the soul takes possession of
the embryo, baby, and child.

The simple answer is tanha. We come back because
the thirst for life becomes so strong that we
cannot help ourselves. We just do it. We don't
have to know how anymore than we need to know
how to pee, eat food, or breath air. It's just
a natural mechanism that we unconsciously take
advantage of.

You might ask whom design that mechanism? Why
is it the way that it is? That gets back to the
mysteries of nature, to the laws of the universe,
to the rules of how life operates. Who makes the
laws? The law-givers (e.g. Dhyani-Chohans).
Who are they? What do they do? How do they do
it? ... You can see that even with a simple
question, with a little probing every new
attempt at an answer leaves more unanswered
questions that before. But that's the wonder of it!

-- Eldon