Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt00608)

[ www.AnandGholap.net - Online Books on Theosophy ]
"In the astral life we are absolutely the same persons as we are down here,but with certain limitations removed. Our interests and activities on thatplane resemble those on the physical; a student is still studious; an idleperson is still idle; an active helper on the physical plane is still a helper there. Some people still gossip there just as venomously as ever, and are still continuing to make just the same bad karma by doing so. Most deadpeople haunt for a long time the places to which they have been accustomedin life. Many a man hovers round his ancestral home, and continues daily to visit the astral counterpart of the temple which he used to support. Others drift round and make pilgrimages, without trouble or expense, to all thegreat shrines which during life they have in vain wished to visit. 
130. There is perfect continuity in the astral life. That life is in many ways much more realthan this, or at least much nearer to reality, and this physical existenceis only a series of breaks in it during which our activity is greatly limited and our consciousness but partially operative. To most of us in this lower life the night seems a blank, and in the morning we remember nothing ofwhat we have done; but we must not therefore suppose that we are equally dense on the astral plane. That wider consciousness fully includes this, andevery night we remember vividly not only what we did on all previous nights, but also all that we have done on the intermediate days. It is the physical brain which is dull and clogged, and it is upon return to it that we lose our memory of all except that with which it has been directly concerned.The astral life is much more vivid and its emotions are far stronger than any that we know down here. What we ordinarily call an emotion is only the comparatively small fragment of one which remains after the greater part ofit has been exhausted in setting in motion the clumsy physical particles, so it is not difficult to see how far more intense and real that other lifemust be. 

131. And yet, although this is quite true, and true of everybody, ordinary people usually do very little in the way of real work on the astral plane. They do not know, in fact, that they can work, and even if they did know they would probably see no particular reason why they should. A man may spend a very enjoyable time in the astral world, just drifting about and experiencing various pleasurable emotions. That seems to most people the only thing to do, and it needs a powerful motive to rouse them out of that, and make them take the trouble of devoting their time to the helping of others. We must admit that for the ordinary man this motive does not exist; but when we have begun to study Theosophy, and in that way learn the course of evolution and the purpose of things, there arises within us an earnest desire to help forward that evolution, to accomplish that purpose, and to put our fellow-men in the wayof understanding it also, in order that thereby their troubles may be lightened and the path of their progress made easier."

Complete book can be read at

http://www.anandgholap.net/Inner_Life_Vol_II-CWL.htm