Theos-Talk Archives (February 2003 Message tt00133)

PART 1 - DEVACHAN



February 9th 2003

Dear Friends:

Some questions concerning Devachan arose.

Here are some statements made in Theosophy about this.

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


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



WHERE IS DEVACHAN LOCATED ?


"The center of Devachanic activity cannot be localized...Monads during
that time even when connected with their five Kosas (sheaths or
principles) know neither space nor time, but are diffused throughout
the former, are omnipresent and ubiquitous. Manas in its higher
aspect is...-- an eternal "substance" as well as the Buddhi, the
spiritual soul--when this aspect is developed; and united with the
Soul Manas becomes spiritual self-consciousness, which is
a...production of its original "producer" Buddhi...Thus the higher
human triad, drawn by its affinity to those triads it loved most, with
Manas in its highest aspect of self-consciousness--(which is entirely
disconnected with, and has no need as a channel of the internal organ
of physical sense called antah-karana)--helping, it is ever associated
with, and enjoys the presence of all those it loves--in death as much
as it did in life." T A & N, p. 22


"...the highest state permitted to it (personal or animal soul) on
earth being samadhi. It is only its essence that has followed the
monad into Devachan, to serve it there as its ground-tone, or as the
background against which its future dream-life and development will
move...That which is in Devachan is...the smell of the flower...its
aroma will never die, and may be recalled and resurrected ages
thence..." T. A. & N., p 24



DEVACHANIC REST AND RECUPERATION


"Devachan...is--a blissful rest, a heavenly oasis during the laborious
journey of the Monad toward a higher evolution...One has to sense
intuitionally its logical necessity; to perceive in it, untaught and
unguided, the outcome and perpetuation of that strictest justice
absolutely consonant with the harmony of the universal law...(27) The
bliss of a Devachanee is complete..." T. A. & N., p. 26-7



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



BENEVOLENCE IN EARTH LIFE & STAY IN DEVACHAN


"The stay in Devachan is proportionate to the unexhausted psychic
impulses originating in earth life. Those whose attractions were
preponderatingly material will sooner be drawn back into rebirth by
the force of Tanha." (the desire for living on earth) T. A.
& N., p. 243-4


"The reward provided by nature for men who are benevolent in a large,
systematic way, and who have not focused their affections on an
individual or specialty, is that if pure they pass the quicker for
that thro' the Kama and Rupa lokas into the higher sphere of
Tribuvana, since it is one where the formulation of abstract ideas and
the consideration of general principles fill the thought of its
occupant." THEOS. A. & N., p. 244


"In some cases, it is evident that the state of consciousness of one
monad whether in Devachan or yet on earth, may blend with, as it were,
and influence the ideation of another monad also in Devachan. Such
will be the case if there is strong, affectionate sympathy between
the two egos arising from participation in the same feelings or
emotions, or from similar intellectual pursuits or spiritual
aspirations. Just as the thoughts of a mesmerizer standing at a
distance are communicated to his subject by the emanation of a current
of magnetic energy attracted readily towards the subject, the train of
ideas of a Devachanee are communicated by a current of magnetic or
electric force attracted towards another Devachanee by reason of the
strong sympathy existing between the two monads, especially when the
said ideas relate to things which are subjectively associated with the
Devachanee in question." T. A. & N., p. 26


"Even in the case of a man still living on earth, or even of one
suffering in Avitchi, the ideation of a monad in Devachan may still
affect his monad if there is strong sympathy between the two... yet
the Devachanee will remain ignorant of the mental suffering of the
other." T. A. & N. p. 26



DREAMS: IN AND OUT OF DEVACHAN


"...Devachan being "but a dream," we should agree upon a definition of
the phenomena of dreams...(20)the Occultist [states] there is a
difference between a dream produced by outward physiological causes
and the one which reacts and becomes in its turn the producer of
super-sensuous perceptions and feelings...he divides dream into the
phenomenal and the noumenal...the physiologist is entirely unfit to
comprehend the ultimate constitution of a disembodied Ego--hence the
nature of its "dreams."
T A & N pp. 19-20


"...a man may experience the devachanic condition while yet alive, and
call it delusion, if he pleases, when he comes back to his ordinary
state of objective consciousness and compares it to the said
condition. Nevertheless he will not know that it is a dream, either
when he experiences it a second time (for the time being) while still
living, or when he dies and goes to Devachan." T. A. & N., p. 28


"...the intercourse between the monads is real, mutual, and as actual
in the world of subjectivity, as it is in this our world of deceptive
reality..." T. A. & N., p. 29


"The Devachanic condition in all its aspects is no doubt similar to a
dreamy state when considered from the standpoint of our present
objective consciousness when we are in our waking condition.
Nevertheless it is real to the Devachanee himself as our waking state
is to us... A monad in Devachan has but one state of consciousness,
and the contrast between a waking state and a dreamy state is never
presented to it so long as it is in that condition." T. A. &
N., p. 24



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



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... 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



PRINCIPLES ACTIVE & CONSCIOUSNESS IN DEVACHAN


"...the physiologist rejects a priori WILL, the chief and
indispensable factor of the inner man. He refuses to recognize it
apart from particular acts of volition, and declares that he known
only the latter, viewed by him simply as a reaction or desire of
determination of energy outward...Hence the physiologist would have to
reject at once the possibility of consciousness--minus memory..."
T A & N p. 20


"Unfettered from the personal sensations of the manas, the devachanic
consciousness would certainly have to become universal or absolute
consciousness, with no past as with no future, the two merging into
one eternal PRESENT--but for the trammels of the personal Ego...the
ethereal atoms that act in the spiritual consciousness of the monad,
during its bliss wholly based and depending upon the degree of its
connections with only the essence of the personal Ego." T A & N
p. 20


"...the spiritual consciousness...sense pertaining to the immutable
can never sleep of even be dormant per se, and is always in the
"Light" of reality [ enables the occultist ] to perceive that reality
in the subjective world which was hidden from it in waking hours..."
T A & N, p. 21


"...the participations of the manas in the Devachanic bliss...takes
away from, the reality that would fall to the lot of the monad were it
altogether free from its presence. Its bliss is an outcome of...the
delusion or "heresy of individuality," which...together with
the...chain of causes, is necessary for the monad's future birth...all
this leads the occultist to regard the association of "intercourse"
between two disembodied entities in the Devachan...as an illusion..."
T A & N, p. 21



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



DEATH VISION - A 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



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 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



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



MATERIALIST IN DEVACHAN


"And this sort of materialistic thinker might emerge to rebirth out of
the Devachanic state in about a month, because we have to allow for
the expending of certain psychic impulses generated in childhood
before materialism obtained full sway. But as every one varies in his
force, and in respect to the impulses he may generate, some in this
class might stay in the Devachanic state one, five, ten, twenty years,
and so on, in accordance with the power of the forces generated in
earth life." T A & N p. 249



CREATIVE ARTIST, POET, ETC., IN DEVACHAN


"The artist, poet, musician, and day-dreamer...when rapt in melody,
composition, color arrangement, and even foolish fancy, they are in a
sort of living Devachanic state wherein they often lose consciousness
of time and sense impressions. Their stay in that condition
depends...on the impulses toward it which they have amassed. If they
were not subject to the body and its forces they might remain years in
their "dream." The same laws, applied to the man divested of a body,
will give us exactly the results for Devachan. But no one save a
trained mathematical Adept could sum up the forces and give us the
total number of years or minutes which might measure Devachan. On the
Adepts, therefore, we have to depend for a specific time-statement,
and they have declared 1000 to 1500 years to be a good general
average...[gives the Cycle of Reincarnation for the average mass of
units in any civilization.]" T A & N p. 250



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



QUICK REBIRTH


"Unless a man loves well, or hates well, he need not trouble himself
about Devachan; he will be neither in Devachan nor Avitchi, "Nature
spews the lukewarm out of her mouth" means only that she annihilates
their personal Egos (not the Shells, nor yet the 6th principle) in the
Kama-loka and the Devachan. This does not prevent them from being
immediately reborn, and if their lives were not very, very bad, there
is no reason why the eternal Monad should not find the page of that
life intact in the Book of Life."
T A & N, p. 246-7


"...all workers for the Lodge, no matter of what degree, are helped
out of Devachan if they themselves permit it." WQJ ART I p.418



CONTRAST IN DEVACHAN -- WISDOM


"...first necessity: to know the esoteric views of the ultimate
nature of Spirit, of Matter, Force and Space; the fundamental and
axiomatic theories as to the Reality and Unreality, Form and the
Formless (rupa and a-rupa), dream and waking...the distinction between
the "objective" and the "subjective" in the living man's sensuous
perceptions and the same as they appear [to a disembodied entity] to
the psychic perceptions of a...Devachanee." T A & N p. 17-18



"...the Higher Triad, Manas, Buddhi, and Atma,--the real man,
immediately go into [the state] of Devachan...they are the immortal
part of us; they, in fat, and no other are we. This should be firmly
grasped by the mind, for upon its clear understanding depends the
comprehension of the entire doctrine." Ocean, p. 65



AWARENESS OF TIME AND SPACE IN DEVACHAN


"In Devachan there is no cognizance of time, of which the Devachanee
loses all sense...The a priori ideas of space and time do not control
his perceptions; for he absolutely creates and annihilates them at
the same time. Physical existence has its cumulative intensity from
infancy to prime, and its diminishing energy to dotage and death; so
the dream-life of Devachan is lived correspondentially. Nature cheats
no more the devachanee than she does the living physical man. Nature
provides for him far more real bliss and happiness there than she does
here, where all the conditions of evil and chance are against him...As
in actual earth life, so there is for the Ego in Devachan the first
flutter of psychic life, the attainment of prime, the gradual
exhaustion of force passing into semi-consciousness and lethargy,
total oblivion, and--not death, but birth, birth into another
personality..." THEOS ART. & NOTES, p. 242-3


"There is a change of occupation, a continual change in Devachan, just
as much and far more than there is in any life...with this difference,
that to the Devachanee this spiritual occupation is always pleasant
and fills his life with rapture. 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 the outflowing from that one "single
moment" or moments. The dreams of the objective become the realities
of the subjective existence." T. A. & N. p. 243


"...Devachan is a state where the Ego enjoys and does not suffer,
suffering being reserved for the earth life. It is not a question of
memory strictly speaking, but is a state where the causes generated on
this earth which can exhaust in no other state, do so exhaust
themselves, leaving the causes relating to this plane of earth life to
be afterwards exhausted here, and as it is, like this life, a state of
illusion, the Ego naturally enlarges all its conceptions of what it
thought best and highest when it was alive, for such are the causes
that relate to that state." Practical Occultism, p. 258-9



DEVACHANIC REST AND RECUPERATION


"Devachan...is--a blissful rest, a heavenly oasis during the laborious
journey of the Monad toward a higher evolution...One has to sense
intuitionally its logical necessity; to perceive in it, untaught and
unguided, the outcome and perpetuation of that strictest justice
absolutely consonant with the harmony of the universal law...(27) The
bliss of a Devachanee is complete..." T. A. & N., p. 26-7



LEAVING DEVACHAN - A NEW PERSONALITY and KARMA


"Good Karma is that kind which the Ego desires and requires; bad,
that which the Ego neither desires nor requires. And in this the Ego,
being guided and controlled by law, by justice, by the necessities of
upward evolution, and not by fancy or selfishness or revenge or
ambition, is sure to choose the earthly habitation that is most
likely, out of all possible of selection, to give the karma for the
real advantage in the end...we see that the "advantages" which one
would seek were he looking for the strengthening of character, the
unloosing of soul force and energy, would be called by the selfish and
personal world "disadvantages." Struggle is needed for the gaining of
strength; buffeting adverse eras is for the gaining of depth; meager
opportunities may be used for acquiring fortitude; poverty should
breed generosity.

The middle ground in all this, and not the extreme is what we speak
of... the Ego has drawn about itself in a former life some tendencies
which cannot be eliminated in any other way...sometimes...a pure,
powerful Ego incarnates in just such awful surroundings, remaining
good and pure all the time, and staying there for the purpose of
uplifting and helping others." WQJ ART. I 138-9



"...the monad is not like a seed dropped from a tree, but its nature
is ubiquitous, all-pervading, omnipresent; though in the subjective
state time space and locality are not factors in its
experiences...there are states and states and degrees upon degrees in
Devachan, in all of which, notwithstanding (to us) the objective
isolation of the principal hero, he is surrounded by a host of actors
in conjunction with whom he had during his last earth-life created and
worked our the causes of those effects that are produced first on the
field of Devachanic or Avitchian subjectivity, and then used to
strengthen the karma to follow on the objective (?) plane of
subsequent rebirth. Earth life is...the Prologue of the
drama...mystery...that is enacted in the rupa and arupa lokas." T A &
N. 30


"...the devachanic mind is capable only of the highest spiritual
ideation; that neither objects of the grosser senses nor any thing
provocative of displeasure could ever be apprehended by it--for
otherwise, Devachan would be merging into Avitchi, and the feeling of
unalloyed bliss destroyed for ever."	T A & N, 31

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On to Part 2

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