Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt00069)

Thus, when man dies, his "Soul" (5th principle) 
becomes unconscious and loses all remembrance of 
things internal as well as external. Whether his 
stay in Kama Loka has to last but a few moments, 
hours, days, weeks, months or years; whether he died 
a natural or a violent death; whether it occurred in 
his young or old age, and whether the Ego was good, 
bad, or indifferent, - his consciousness leaves him 
as suddenly as the flame leaves the wick, when 
blown out. When life has retired from the last 
particle in the brain matter, his perceptive 
faculties become extinct forever, his spiritual 
powers of cogitation and volition - (all those 
faculties in short, which are neither inherent 
in, nor acquirable by organic matter) - for the 
time being. Koot Hoomi, ML 125

Every just disembodied four-fold entity - whether it died a natural 
or a violent death, from suicide or accident, mentally sane or 
insane, young or old, good, bad, or indifferent - loses at the 
instant of death all recollection, it is mentally annihilated; it 
sleeps its akasic sleep in the Kama Loka. This state lasts from a 
few hours (rarely less), days, weeks, months - sometimes to several 
years. All this according to the entity, to its mental status at the 
moment of death, to the character of its death, etc. Koot Hoomi, ML 
184

His Mayavi-rupa may be often thrown into objectivity, as in the 
cases of apparitions after death; but, unless it is projected with 
the knowledge of [the projector] (whether latent or potential), or, 
owing to the intensity of the desire to see or appear to someone, 
shooting through the dying brain, the apparition will be simply - 
automatical; it will not be due to any sympathetic attraction, or to 
any act of volition, and no more than the reflection of a person 
passing unconsciously near a mirror, is due to the desire of the 
latter. Koot Hoomi, ML 125

In Kama Loka those who retain their remembrance, will not enjoy it 
at the supreme hour of recollection. Those who know they are dead in 
their physical bodies can only be either adepts - or sorcerers; and 
these two are the exceptions to the general rule. Both having 
been "co-workers with nature", the former for good, the latter - for 
bad, in her work of creation and in that of destruction, they are 
the only ones who may be called immortal - in the Kabalistic and the 
esoteric sense of course. Koot Hoomi ML 124

Our correspondent seems to have been misled as to the state of 
consciousness which entities experience in Kama-loka. He seems to 
have formed his conceptions on the visions of living psychics and 
the revelations of living mediums. But all conclusions drawn from 
such data are vitiated by the fact, that a living organism 
intervenes between the observer and the Kama-loka state per se. 
There can be no conscious meeting in Kama-loka, hence no grief. 
There is no astral disintegration pari passu with the separation of 
the shell from the spirit.

According to the Eastern teaching the state of the deceased in Kama-
loka is not what we, living men, would recognize as "conscious". It 
is rather that of a person stunned and dazed by a violent blow, who 
has momentarily "lost his senses". Hence in Kama-loka there is as a 
rule (apart from vicarious life and consciousness awakened through 
contact with mediums) no recognition of friends or relatives.

We meet those we loved only in Devachan, that subjective world of 
perfect bliss, the state which succeeds the Kama-loka, after the 
separation of the principles. In Devachan all our personal, 
unfulfilled spiritual desires and aspirations will be realized; for 
we shall not be living in the hard world of matter but in those 
subjective realms wherein a desire finds its instant realization; 
because man himself is there a god and a creator.

In dealing with the dicta of psychics and mediums, it must always be 
remembered that they translate, automatically and unconsciously, 
their experiences on any plane of consciousness, into the language 
and experience of our normal physical plane. And this confusion can 
only be avoided by the special study-training of occultism, which 
teaches how to trace and guide the passage of impressions from one 
plane to another and fix them on the memory.

Kama-loka may be compared to the dressing-room of an actor, in which 
he divests himself of the costume of the last part he played before 
rebecoming himself properly - the immortal Ego of the Pilgrim 
cycling in his Round of Incarnations. The Eternal Ego being stripped 
in Kama-loka of its lower terrestrial principles, with their 
passions and desires, it enters into the state of Devachan. And 
therefore it is said that only the purely spiritual, the non-
material emotions, affections and aspirations accompany the Ego into 
that state of Bliss. But the process of stripping off the lower, the 
fourth and part of the fifth, principles is an unconscious one in 
all normal human beings. It is only in very exceptional cases that 
there is a slight return to consciousness in Kama-loka: and this is 
the case of very materialistic unspiritual personalities, who, 
devoid of the conditions requisite, cannot enter the state of 
absolute Rest and Bliss. H.P. Blavatsky, CW IX, 163

A mother dies, leaving behind her little helpless children -- 
orphans whom she adores -- perhaps a beloved husband also. We say 
that her "Spirit" or Ego. . . is now entirely separated from 
the "vale of tears," that its future bliss consists in that blessed 
ignorance of all the woes it left behind. Spiritualists say, on the 
contrary, that it is as vividly aware of them, and more so than 
before, for "Spirits see more than mortals in the flesh do." . . . 
According to their [spiritualists'] doctrine, unfortunate man is not 
liberated even by death from the sorrows of this life. Not a drop 
from the life-cup of pain and suffering will miss his lips; and 
nolens volens, since he sees everything now, shall he drink it to 
the bitter dregs. Thus, the loving wife, who during her lifetime was 
ready to save her husband sorrow at the price of her heart's blood, 
is now doomed to see, in utter helplessness, his despair, and to 
register every hot tear he sheds for her loss. . . . [But according 
to the esoteric teaching] the spirit is dazed after death and falls 
very soon into what we call "pre-devachanic 
unconsciousness." . . . . H.P. Blavatsky The Key to Theosophy, 
original 1889 edition, pp. 146-147 & 151.

Reviving consciousness begins after the struggle in Kama-Loka at the 
door of Devachan, and only after the "gestation period." . . . 
Master K.H. The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, 3rd edition, p.197.

. . . In that world. . . we find but unconscious, self-acting, ex-
human machines, souls in their transition state, whose dormant 
faculties and individuality lie as a butterfly in its chrysalis; and 
Spiritualists would yet have them talk sense! . . . Master K.H. The 
Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, 3rd edition, p. 48.

But why should they [the dead] "communicate" [with the 
living]? . . . how can an unconscious 5th principle [Manas - the 
Mind] . . . impress or communicate with a living organism . . . ? 
Master K.H. The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, 3rd edition, p. 
129-130

Daniel
Blavatsky Study Center
http://hpb.cc