Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt00264)

C.W. Leadbeater wrote:

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Do the dead then see us? may be asked; do 
they hear what we say? Undoubtedly they see 
us in the sense that they are always conscious 
of our presence, that they know whether we are 
happy or miserable; but they do not hear the 
words we say, nor are they conscious in detail 
of our physical actions. A moment's thought will 
show us what are the limits of their power to see. 
They are inhabiting, what we have called the 
"spiritual body," a body which exists in ourselves, 
and is, as far as appearance goes, an exact 
duplicate of the physical body; but while we 
are awake our consciousness is focused exclusively 
in the latter. We have already said that just as 
only physical matter appeals to the physical body, 
so only the matter of the spiritual world is 
discernible by that higher body. Therefore, what 
the dead man can see of us is only our spiritual 
body, which, however, he has no difficulty in recognizing. When we 
are what we call asleep, our consciousness is using that vehicle, 
and so to the dead man we are awake; but when we transfer our 
consciousness to the physical body, it seems to the dead man that we 
fall asleep, because though he still sees us, we are no longer 
paying any attention to him or able to communicate with him. When a 
living friend falls asleep we are quite aware of his presence, but 
for the moment we cannot communicate with him. Precisely similar is 
the condition of the living man (while he is awake) in the eyes of 
the dead. Because we cannot usually remember in our waking 
consciousness what we have seen during sleep, we are under the 
delusion that we have lost our dead; but they are never under the 
delusion that they have lost us, because they can see us all the 
time. To them the only difference is that we are with them during 
the night and away from them during the day; whereas when they were 
on earth with us, exactly the reverse was the case.

Now this which, following St. Paul, we have been calling 
the "spiritual body" (it is more usually spoken of as the astral 
body) is especially the vehicle of our feelings and emotions; it is 
therefore these feelings and emotions of ours which show themselves 
most clearly to the eyes of the dead. If we are joyous, they 
instantly observe it, but they do not necessarily know the reason of 
the joy; if sadness comes over us, they at once realize it and share 
it, even though they may not know why we are sad. All this, of 
course, is during our waking hours; when we are asleep, they 
converse with us as of yore on earth. Here in our physical life we 
can dissemble our feelings; in that higher world this is impossible, 
for they show themselves instantly in visible change. Since so many 
of our thoughts are connected with our feelings, most of these also 
are readily obvious in that world; but anything in the nature of 
abstract thought is still hidden.
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Quoted from:

To Those Who Mourn
by C W. Leadbeater
http://www.theosophical.ca/ToThoseWhoMourn.htm