Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00638)

Dec 21 2002

Dear Friends:

Re The Astral Body and After Death States


LUCIFER magazine began in 1877 and H P B published it in London with
Mabel Collins as co-Editor.

Some of their conversations were recorded.

And they seem to be of general interest to students who, by then were
familiar with ISIS UNVEILED and with H P B's articles in THEOSOPHIST
(began publication in Bombay 1n 1979) and in LUCIFER (began
publication in 1887).

Some of these articles had been reprinted (with editorial
modifications from the original articles) in a book: A MODERN
PANARION --by H P Blavatsky. [Available through
http://www.blavatsky.net and from the Theosophy Company, Los
Angeles -=- the publishers of a photo-reprint.]

Here is one of them:

---------------------------

From	DIALOGUES BETWEEN THE TWO EDITORS
Lucifer. December 1888


by H. P. Blavatsky


M C. Great confusion exists in the minds of people about the various
kinds of apparitions, wraiths, ghosts or spirits. Ought we not to
explain once for all the meaning of these terms? You say there are
various kinds of "doubles"--what are they?

H.P.B. Our occult philosophy teaches us that there are three kinds of
"doubles," to use the word in its widest sense. (I) Man has his
"double" or shadow, properly so called, around which the physical body
of the fœtus--the future man--is built. The imagination of the mother,
or an accident which affects the child, will affect also the astral
body.

The astral and the physical both exist before the mind is developed
into action, and before the Atma awakes. This occurs when the child is
seven years old, and with it comes the responsibility attaching to a
conscious sentient being.

This "double" is born with man, dies with him and can never separate
itself far from the body during life, and though surviving him, it
disintegrates, pari passu, with the corpse. It is this which is
sometimes seen over the graves like a luminous figure of the man that
was, during certain atmospheric conditions. From its physical aspect
it is, during life, man's vital double, and after death, only the
gases given off from the decaying body.

But, as regards its origin and essence, it is something more. This
"double" is what we have agreed to call linga sarira, but which I
would propose to call, for greater convenience, "Protean" or "Plastic
Body."


M.C. Why Protean or Plastic?

H.P.B. Protean, because it can assume all forms; e.g. the "shepherd
magicians" whom popular rumor accuses, perhaps not without some
reason, of being "were-wolves," and "mediums in cabinets," whose own
"Plastic Bodies" play the part of materialized grandmothers and "John
Kings." Otherwise, why the invariable custom of the "gear departed
angels" to come out but little further than arm's length from the
medium, whether entranced or not? Mind, I do not at all deny foreign
influences in this kind of phenomena.

But I do affirm that foreign interference is rare, and that the
materialized form is always that of the medium's "Astral" or Protean
body.


M.C. But how is this astral body created?

H.P.B. It is not created; it grows, as I told you, with the man and
exists in the rudimentary condition even before the child is born.


M.C. And what about the second?

H.P.B. The second is the "Thought" body, or Dream body, rather; known
among Occultists as the Mayavi-rupa, or "Illusion-body."

During life this image is the vehicle both of thought and of the
animal passions and desires, drawing at one and the same time from the
lowest terrestrial manas (mind) and Kama, the element of desire.

It is dual in its potentiality, and after death forms what is called
in the East, Bhoot, or Kama-rupa, but which is better known to
theosophists as the "Spook."


M.C. And the third?

H.P.B. The third is the true Ego, called in the East by a name
meaning "causal body" but which in the trans-Himalayan schools is
always called the "Karmic body," which is the same. For Karma or
action is the cause which produces incessant rebirths or
"reincarnations."

It is not the Monad, nor is it Manas proper; but is, in a way,
indissolubly connected with, and a compound of the Monad and Manas in
Devachan.


M.C. Then there are three doubles?

H.P.B. If you can call the Christian and other Trinities "three
Gods," then there are three doubles. But in truth there is only one
under three aspects or phases: the most material portion disappearing
with the body; the middle one, surviving both as an independent, but
temporary entity in the land of shadows; the third, immortal,
throughout the manvantara unless Nirvana puts an end to it before.


M.C. But shall not we be asked what difference there is between the
Mayavi and Kama rupa, or as you propose to call them the "I)ream body"
and the "Spook"?

H.P.B. Most likely, and we shall answer, in addition to what has been
said, that the "thought power" or aspect of the Mayavi or "Illusion
body," merges after death entirely into the causal body or the
conscious, thinking EGO.

The animal elements, or power of desire of the "Dream body," absorbing
after death that which it has collected (through its insatiable desire
to live) during life; i.e., all the astral vitality as well as all the
impressions of its material acts and thoughts while it lived in
possession of the body, forms the "Spook" or Kama rupa.

Our Theosophists know well enough that after death the higher Manas
unites with the Monad and passes into Devachan, while the dregs of the
lower manas or animal mind go to form this Spook. This has life in it,
but hardly any consciousness, except, as it were by proxy, when it is
drawn into the current of a medium.


M.C. Is it all that can be said upon the subject?

H.P.B. For the present this is enough metaphysics, I guess. Let us
hold to the "Double" in its earthly phase. What would you know?


M.C. Every country in the world believes more or less in the "double"
or doppelganger. The simplest form of this is the appearance of a
man's phantom, the moment after his death, or at the instant of death,
to his dearest friend. Is this appearance the mayavi rupa?

H.P.B. It is; because produced by the thought of the dying man.


M.C. Is it unconscious?

H.P.B. It is unconscious to the extent that the dying man does not
generally do it knowingly; nor is he aware that he so appears. What
happens is this. If he thinks very intently at the moment of death of
the person he either is very anxious to see, or loves best, he may
appear to that person.

The thought becomes objective; the double, or shadow of a man, being
nothing but the faithful reproduction of him, like a reflection in a
mirror, that which the man does, even in thought, that the double
repeats. This is why the phantoms are often seen in such cases in the
clothes they wear at the particular moment, and the image reproduces
even the expression on the dying man's face. If the double of a man
bathing were seen it would seem to be immersed in water; so when a man
who has been drowned appears to his friend, the image will be seen to
be dripping with water.

The cause for the apparition may be also reversed; i.e., the dying man
may or may not be thinking at all of the particular person his image
appears to, but it is that person who is sensitive. Or perhaps his
sympathy or his hatred for the individual whose wraith is thus evoked
is very intense physically or psychically; and in this case the
apparition is created by, and depends upon, the intensity of the
thought. What then happens is this. Let us call the dying man A, and
him who sees the double B. The latter, owing to love, hate, or fear,
has the image of A so deeply impressed on his psychic memory, that
actual magnetic attraction and repulsion are established between the
two, whether one knows of it and feels it, or not. When A dies, the
sixth sense or psychic spiritual intelligence of the inner man in B
becomes cognizant of the change in A, and forthwith apprises the
physical senses of the man, by projecting before his eye the form of
A, as it is at the instant of the great change. The same when the
dying man longs to see some one; his thought telegraphs to his friend,
consciously or unconsciously along the wire of sympathy, and becomes
objective. This is what the "Spookical" [Psychical] Research Society
would pompously, but none the less muddily, call telepathic impact.


M.C. This applies to the simplest form of the appearance of the
double. What about cases in which the double does that which is
contrary to the feeling and wish of the man?

H.P.B. This is impossible. The "Double" cannot act, unless the
keynote of this action was struck in the brain of the man to whom the
"Double" belongs, be that man just dead, or alive, in good or in bad
health. If he paused on the thought a second, long enough to give it
form, before he passed on to other mental pictures, this one second is
as sufficient for the objectivizations of his personality on the
astral waves, as for your face to impress itself on the sensitized
plate of a photographic apparatus. Nothing prevents your form, then,
being seized upon by the surrounding Forces--as a dry leaf fallen from
a tree is taken up and carried away by the wind--being made to
caricature or distort your thought.


M. C.	Supposing the double expresses in actual words a thought
uncongenial to the man, and expresses it--let us say to a friend far
away, perhaps on another continent? I have known instances of this
occurring.

H.P.B. Because it then so happens that the created image is taken up
and used by a "Shell." Just as in seance-rooms when "images" of the
dead--which may perhaps be lingering unconsciously in the memory or
even the auras of those present--are seized upon by the Elemental or
Elemental Shadows and made objective to the audience, and even caused
to act at the bidding of the strongest of the many different wills in
the room. In your case, moreover, there must exist a connecting
link--a telegraph wire--between the two persons, a point of psychic
sympathy, and on this the thought travels instantly.

Of course there must be, in every case, some strong reason why that
particular thought takes that direction; it must be connected in some
way with the other person. Otherwise such apparitions would be of
common and daily occurrence.


M.C. This seems very simple; why then does it only occur with
exceptional persons?

H.P.B. Because the plastic power of the imagination is much stronger
in some persons than in others. The mind is dual in its potentiality:
it is physical and metaphysical. The higher part of the mind is
connected with the spiritual soul or Buddhi, the lower with the animal
soul, the Kama principle.

There are persons who never think with the higher faculties of their
mind at all; those who do so are the minority and are thus, in a way,
beyond, if not above, the average of human kind. These will think even
upon ordinary matters on that higher plane.

The idiosyncrasy of the person determines in which "principle" of the
mind the thinking is done, as also the faculties of a preceding life,
and sometimes the heredity of the physical. This is why it is so very
difficult for a materialist--the metaphysical portion of whose brain
is almost atrophied--to raise himself, or for one who is naturally
spiritually minded, to descend to the level of the matter-of-fact
vulgar thought. Optimism and pessimism depend on it also in a large
measure.


M.C. But the habit of thinking in the higher mind can be
developed--else there would be no hope for persons who wish to alter
their lives and raise themselves? And that this is possible must be
true, or there would be no hope for the world.

H.P.B. Certainly it can be developed, but only with great difficulty,
a firm determination, and through much self-sacrifice. But it is
comparatively easy for those who are born with the gift. Why is it
that one person sees poetry in a cabbage or a pig with her little
ones, while another will perceive in the loftiest things only their
lowest and most material aspect, will laugh at the "music of the
spheres," and ridicule the most sublime conceptions and philosophies?

This difference depends simply on the innate power of the mind to
think on the higher or on the lower plane, with the astral (in the
sense given to the word by St. Martin), or with the physical brain.
Great intellectual powers are often no proof of, but are impediments
to spiritual and right conceptions; witness most of the great men of
science. We must rather pity than blame them.


M.C. But how is it that the person who thinks on the higher plane
produces more perfect and more potential images and objective forms by
his thought?

H.P.B. Not necessarily that "person" alone, but all those who are
generally sensitive. The person who is endowed with this faculty of
thinking about even the most trifling things from the higher plane of
thought has, by virtue of that gift which he possesses, a plastic
power of formation, so to say, in his very imagination.

Whatever such a person may think about, his thought will be so far
more intense than the thought of an ordinary person, that by this very
intensity it obtains the power of creation.

Science has established the fact that thought is an energy. This
energy in its action disturbs the atoms of the astral atmosphere
around us. I already told you; the rays of thought have the same
potentiality for producing forms in the astral atmosphere as the
sun-rays have with regard to a lens. Every thought so evolved with
energy from the brain, creates nolens volens a shape.


M.C. Is that shape absolutely unconscious?

H.P.B. Perfectly unconscious unless it is the creation of an adept,
who has a pre-conceived object in giving it consciousness, or rather
in sending along with it enough of his will and intelligence to cause
it to appear conscious. This ought to make us more cautious about our
thoughts.

But the wide distinction that obtains between the adept in this matter
and the ordinary man must be borne in mind. The adept may at his will
use his Mayavi rupa, but the ordinary man does not, except in very
rare cases. It is called Mayavi rupa because it is a form of illusion
created for use in the particular instance, and it has quite enough of
the adept's mind in it to accomplish its purpose. The ordinary man
merely creates a thought-image, whose properties and powers are at the
time wholly unknown to him.


M.C. Then one may say that the form of an adept appearing at a
distance from his body, as for instance Ram Lal in Mr. Isaacs, is
simply an image?

H.P.B. Exactly. It is a walking thought.


M.C. In which case an adept can appear in several places almost
simultaneously .

H.P.B. He can. Just as Apollonius of Tyana, who was seen in two
places at once, while his body was at Rome. But it must be understood
that not all of even the astral adept is present in each appearance.
[H P B wrote an article titled: APOLLONIUS TYANEUS and SIMON MAGUS --
published in Theosophist for June 1881; BLAVATSKY: Collected Works
(TPH) Vol. III, p. 174; U L T H P B Articles, III 161 -- in which
this is described in detail.]


M.C. Then it is very necessary for a person of any amount of
imagination and psychic powers to attend to his thoughts?

H.P.B. Certainly, for each thought has a shape which borrows the
appearance of the man engaged in the action of which he thought.
Otherwise how can clairvoyants see in your aura your past and present?
What they see is a passing panorama of yourself represented in
successive actions by your thoughts.

You asked me if we are punished for our thoughts. Not for all, for
some are still-born; but for others, those which we call "silent" but
potential thoughts--yes. Take an extreme case, such as that of a
person who is so wicked as to wish the death of another. Unless the
evil-wisher is a Dugpa, a high adept in black magic, in which case
Karma is delayed, such a wish only comes back to roost.


M.C. But supposing the evil-wisher to have a very strong will,
without being a dugpa, could the death of the other be accomplished?

H.P.B. Only if the malicious person has the evil eye, which simply
means possessing enormous plastic power of imagination working
involuntarily, and thus turned unconsciously to bad uses. For what is
the power of the "evil eye"? Simply a great plastic power of thought,
so great as to produce a current impregnated with the potentiality of
every kind of misfortune and accident, which inoculates, or attaches
itself to any person who comes within it.

A jettatore (one with the evil eye) need not be even imaginative, or
have evil intentions or wishes. He may be simply a person who is
naturally fond of witnessing or reading about sensational scenes, such
as murder, executions, accidents, etc., etc. He may be not even
thinking of any of these at the moment his eye meets his future
victim. But the currents have been produced and exist in his visual
ray ready to spring into activity the instant they find suitable soil,
like a seed fallen by the way and ready to sprout at the first
opportunity.


M.C. But how about the thoughts you call "silent"? Do such wishes or
thoughts come home to roost?

H.P.B. They do; just as a ball which fails to penetrate an object
rebounds upon the thrower. This happens even to some dugpas or
sorcerers who are not strong enough, or do not comply with the
rules -- for even they have rules they have to abide by -- but not
with those who are regular, fully developed "black magicians," for
such have the power to accomplish what they wish.


M.C. When you speak of rules it makes me want to wind up this talk by
asking you what everybody wants to know who takes any interest in
occultism.

What is a principal or important suggestion for those who have these
powers and wish to control them rightly--in fact to enter occultism?


H.P.B. The first and most important step in occultism is to learn how
to adapt your thoughts and ideas to your plastic potency.


M.C. Why is this so important?

H.P.B. Because otherwise you are creating things by which you may be
making bad Karma.

No one should go into occultism or even touch it before he is
perfectly acquainted with his own powers, and that he knows how to
commensurate it with his actions. And this he can do only by deeply
studying the philosophy of Occultism before entering upon the
practical training. Otherwise, as sure as fate--HE WILL FALL INTO
BLACK MAGIC. " --- H P B


From	DIALOGUES BETWEEN THE TWO EDITORS --- H P B

Lucifer. December 1888







---------------------------