Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt00265)

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.

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

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

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://blavatskyarchives.com