Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt00680)

Apl 14 2005

Astral World: Who lives there?


Part I


ASTRAL LIGHT ENTITIES


Every country and nation has its traditions and myths concerning this
mysterious realm that is said to surround us all.

THEOSOPHY teaches:

1	The Astral Light and the Astral Body exist. There are a vast number
of entities that exist in the “Astral Sphere” fulfilling various functions
there. They are known variously as (1) “elementals,” (nature-spirits and
powers), (2) elementaries ( living entities that embody and practice
selfish, evil powers also know of as “black-magic”), and (3) several levels
of high and divine Spiritual Men, ( known as Nirmanakayas, Bodhisattvas,
Buddhas, Sages, Magi, Rishis, etc., who practice benevolence, generosity,
wisdom, compassion, and embody all the altruistic and noble aspects of
“white magic.”).

2	The Astral Models serve as electro-magnetic force fields (or models)
for all physical forms without exception. While physical forms constantly
change, the astral models retain their shape more permanently.

3	The astral form of a man can sometimes, and in part, be dissociated
from the physical.  

4	THEOSOPHY warns that meddling by untrained and unprepared
individuals with the Astral Body may cause by repercussion, severe
dislocations in the physical -- resulting in ailments, both physical and
psychic, as well as mental and consciousness aberrations. (Hence THEOSOPHY
recommends that no practices be indulged in that involve the astral Body or
the Astral Light.)

5	Channeling, mediumship, astral projection, clairvoyance,
clairaudience, second-sight, apportation, the perceiving of “ghosts,” are
all phenomena and faculties associated with the Astral world. THEOSOPHY
explains them, and gives clues to the nature of those processes. 

6	Astral faculties are potent and dangerous in the hands of the 
un-initiated, and are not to be used as a “pass-time,” or curiosity and
amusement, or for personal “experiment,” “trance,” “metaphysical
investigation,” etc., except under the most rigid and controlled
circumstances by those who KNOW that field in all details, and are morally,
entirely PURE. 

7	Hypnotism and mesmerism are powers that relate to the Astral sphere,
body and world; and as such, severe damage to the psyche (mental faculties
and capacity) of both patient and professor can result.


INDIA

If, turning from Greece and Egypt to the cradle of universal civilization,
India, we interrogate the Brâhmans and their most admirable Philosophies,we
find them calling their Gods and their Daimonia by such a number and variety
of appellations, that the thirty-three millions of these Deities would
require a whole library to contain only their names and attributes. We will
choose for the present time only two names out of the Pantheon. These groups
are the most important as well as the least understood by the
Orientalists--their true nature having been all along wrapped in obscurity
by the unwillingness of the Brâhmans to divulge their philosophical secrets.
We will speak of but the Devas and the Pitris. 


DEVA

The former aerial beings are some of them superior, others inferior, to man.
The term means literally the Shining Ones, the resplendent; and it covers
spiritual beings of various degrees, including entities from previous
planetary periods, who take active part in the formation of new solar
systems and the training of infant humanities, as well as unprogressed
Planetary Spirits, who will, at spiritualistic séances, simulate human
deities and even characters on the stage of human history. 

As to the Deva Yonis, they are Elementals of a lower kind in comparison with
the Kosmic "Gods," and are subjected to the will of even the sorcerer. To
this class belong the gnomes, sylphs, fairies, djins, etc. They are the Soul
of the elements, the capricious forces in Nature, acting under one immutable
Law, inherent in these Centres of Force, with undeveloped consciousness and
bodies of plastic mould, which can be shaped according to the conscious or
unconscious will of the human being who puts himself en rapport with them.
It is by attracting some of the beings of this class that our modern
spiritualistic mediums invest the fading shells of deceased human beings
with a kind of individual force. These beings have never been, but will, in
myriads of ages hence, be evolved into men. They belong to the three lower
kingdoms, and pertain to the Mysteries on account of their dangerous nature.



PITRI

We have found a very erroneous opinion gaining ground not only among
Spiritualists--who see the spirits of their disembodied fellow creatures
everywhere--but even among several Orientalists who ought to know better. It
is generally believed by them that the Sanskrit term Pitris means the
spirits of our direct ancestors; of disembodied people. Hence the argument
of some Spiritualists that fakirs, and other Eastern wonder-workers, are
mediums; that they themselves confess to being unable to produce anything
without the help of the Pitris, of whom they are the obedient instruments.
This is in more than one sense erroneous, the error being first started, we
believe, by M. L. Jacolliot, in his Spiritisme dans le Monde, and Govinda
Swami; or, as he spells it, "the fakir Kovindasami's" phenomena. [from ISIS
UNVEILED ]

The Pitris are not the ancestors of the present living men, but those of the
human kind or primitive race; the spirits of human races which, on the great
scale of descending evolution, preceded our races of men, and were
physically, as well as spiritually, far superior to our modern pigmies. In
Mânava-Dharma-Shâstra they are called the Lunar Ancestors. The Hindű--least
of all the proud Brâhman--has no such great longing to return to this land
of exile after he has shaken off his mortal coil, as has the average
Spiritualist; nor has death for him any of the great terrors it has for the
Christian. Thus, the most highly developed minds in India will always take
care to declare, while in the act of leaving their tenements of clay,
"Nachapunarâvarti," "I shall not come back," and by this very declarationis
placed beyond the reach of any living man or medium. But, it may be asked,
what then is meant by the Pitris? They are Devas, lunar and solar, closely
connected with human evolution, for the Lunar Pitris are they who gave their
Chhâyâs as the models of the First Race in the Fourth Round, while the Solar
Pitris endowed mankind with intellect. Not only so, but these Lunar Devas
passed through all the kingdoms of the terrestrial Chain in the First Round,
and during the Second and Third Rounds "lead and represent the human
element."  


VISHNU - Fire-Ether

A brief examination of the part they play will prevent all future confusion
in the student's mind between the Pitris and the Elementals. In the Rig
Veda, Vishnu (or the pervading Fire, Ćther) is shown first striding through
the seven regions of the World in three steps, being a manifestation of the
Central Sun. Later on, he becomes a manifestation of our solar energy, and
is connected with the septenary form and with the Gods, Agni, Indra and
other solar deities. 

Therefore, while the "Sons of Fire," the primeval Seven of our System, [S D
I 570 - 575] emanate from the primordial Flame, the "Seven Builders" of
our Planetary Chain are the "Mind-born Sons" of the latter, and--their
instructors likewise. For, though in one sense they are all Gods and are all
called Pitris (Pitara, Patres, Fathers), a great though very subtle
distinction (quite Occult) is made which must be noticed. In the Rig Veda
they are divided into two classes--the Pitris Agni-dagdha ("Fire-givers"),
and the pitris Anagni-dagdha ("non-Fire-givers") 5 i.e., as explained
exoterically--Pitris who sacrificed to the Gods and those who refused to do
so at the "fire-sacrifice." But the Esoteric and true meaning is the
following. 

1.	The first or primordial Pitris, the "Seven Sons of Fire" or of the
Flame, are distinguished or divided into seven classes (like the Seven
Sephiroth, and others, see Vâyu Purâna and Harivamsha, also Rig Veda); three
of which classes are Arűpa, formless, "composed of intellectual not
elementary substance," and four are corporeal. The first are pure Agni
(fire) or Sapta-jiva ("seven lives," now become Sapta-jihva, seven-tongued,
as Agni is represented with seven tongues and seven winds as the wheels of
his car). As a formless, purely spiritual essence, in the first degree of
evolution, they could not create that, the prototypical form of which was
not in their minds, as this is the first requisite. They could only give
birth to "mind-born" beings, their "Sons," 

2.	the second class of Pitris (or Prajâpati, or Rishis, etc.), one
degree more material; these, to the third--the last of the Arűpa class. It
is only this last class that was enabled with the help of the Fourth
principle of the Universal Soul (Aditi, Âkâsha) to produce beings that
became objective and having a form. 6 But when these came to existence, they
were found to possess such a small proportion of the divine immortal Soul or
Fire in them, that they were considered failures. "

3.	The third appealed to the second, the second to the first, and the
Three had to become Four (the perfect square or cube representing the
'Circle Squared' or immersion of pure Spirit), before the first could be
instructed" (Sansk. Comment.). Then only, could perfect
Beings--intellectually and physically--be shaped. This, though more
philosophical, is still an allegory. But its meaning is plain, however
absurd may seem the explanation from a scientific standpoint. The Doctrine
teaches the Presence of a Universal Life (or motion) within which all is,
and nothing outside of it can be. This is pure Spirit. 

Its manifested aspect is cosmic primordial Matter coeval with, since it is,
itself. Semi-spiritual in comparison to the first, this vehicle of the
Spirit-Life is what Science calls Ether, which fills the boundless space,
and it is in this substance, the world-stuff, that germinates all the atoms
and molecules of what is called matter. However homogeneous in its eternal
origin, this Universal Element, once that its radiations were thrown into
the space of the (to be) manifested Universe, the centripetal and
centrifugal forces of perpetual motion, of attraction and repulsion, would
soon polarize its scattered particles, endowing them with peculiar
properties now regarded by Science as various elements distinct from each
other. As a homogeneous whole, the world-stuff in its primordial state is
perfect; disintegrated, it loses its property of conditionless creative
power; it has to associate with its contraries. [see NOTES ON THE BHAGAVAD
GITA, pp, 132-3]

Thus, the first worlds and Cosmic Beings, save the "Self-Existent"--a
mystery no one could attempt to touch upon seriously, as it is a mystery
perceived by the divine eye of the highest Initiates, but one that no human
language could explain to the children of our age--the first worlds and
Beings were failures; inasmuch as the former lacked that inherent creative
force in them necessary for their further and independent evolution, and
that the first orders of Beings lacked the immortal soul. Part and parcel of
Anima Mundi in its Prâkritic aspect, the Purusha element in them was too
weak to allow of any consciousness in the intervals (entr' actes) between
their existences during the evolutionary period and the cycle of Life. The
three orders of Beings, the Pitri-Rishis, the Sons of Flame, had to merge
and blend together their three higher principles with the Fourth (the
Circle), and the Fifth (the microcosmic) principle before the necessary
union could be obtained and result therefrom achieved. 

"There were old worlds, which perished as soon as they came into existence;
were formless, as they were called sparks. These sparks are the primordial
worlds which could not continue because the Sacred Aged had not as yet
assumed the form" 7 (of perfect contraries not only in opposite sexes but of
cosmical polarity). "Why were these primordial worlds destroyed? Because,"
answers the Zohar, "the man represented by the ten Sephiroth was not as yet.
The human form contains everything {spirit, soul and body}, and as it did
not as yet exist the worlds were destroyed."  

Far removed from the Pitris, then, it will readily be seen are all the
various feats of Indian fakirs, jugglers and others, phenomena a hundred
times more various and astounding than are ever seen in civilized Europe and
America. The Pitris have naught to do with such public exhibitions, nor are
the "spirits of the departed" concerned in them. 


ELEMENTAL SPIRITS

We have but to consult the lists of the principal Daimons or Elemental
Spirits to find that their very names indicate their professions, or, to
express it clearly, the tricks for which each variety is best adapted. So we
have the Mâdan, a generic name indicating wicked elemental spirits, half
brutes, half monsters, for Mâdan signifies one that looks like a cow. He is
the friend of the malicious sorcerers and helps them to effect their evil
purposes of revenge by striking men and cattle with sudden illness and
death. 

1.	The Shudâla-Mâdan, or graveyard fiend, answers to our ghouls. He
delights where crime and murder were committed, near burial-spots and places
of execution. He helps the juggler in all the fire phenomena as well as
Kutti Shâttan, the little juggling imps. Shudâla, they say, is a half-fire,
half-water demon, for he received from Shiva permission to assume any shape
he chose, to transform one thing into another; and when he is not in fire,
he is in water. It is he who blinds people "to see that which they do not
see." 

2.	Shűla Mâdan is another mischievous spook. He is the furnace-demon,
skilled in pottery and baking. If you keep friends with him, he will not
injure you; but woe to him who incurs his wrath. Shűla likes compliments and
flattery, and as he generally keeps underground it is to him that a juggler
must look to help him raise a tree from a seed in a quarter of an hour and
ripen its fruit. 

3.	Kumil-Mâdan, is the undine proper. He is an Elemental Spirit of the
water, and his name means blowing like a bubble. He is a very merry imp, and
will help a friend in anything relative to his department; he will shower
rain and show the future and the present to those who will resort to
hydromancy or divination by water. 

4.	Poruthű Mâdan is the "wrestling" demon; he is the strongest of all;
and whenever there are feats shown in which physical force is required, such
as levitations, or taming of wild animals, he will help the performer by
keeping him above the soil, or will over-power a wild beast before the tamer
has time to utter his incantation. 

So, every "physical manifestation" has its own class of Elemental Spirits to
superintend it. Besides these there are in India the Pisâchas, Daimons of
the races of the gnomes, the giants and the vampires; the Gandharvas, good
Daimons, celestial seraphs, singers; and Asuras and Nâgas, the Titanic
spirits and the dragon or serpent-headed spirits. 


ELEMENTARIES  

These must not be confused with Elementaries, the souls and shells of
departed human beings; and here again we have to distinguish between what
has been called the astral soul, i.e., the lower part of the dual Fifth
Principle [manas], joined to the animal [kama], and the true Ego. 

For the doctrine of the Initiates is that no astral soul, even that of a
pure, good, and virtuous man, is immortal in the strictest sense, "from
elements it was formed--to elements it must return." We may stop here and
say no more: every learned Brâhman, every Chelâ and thoughtful Theosophist
will understand why. For he knows that while the soul of the wicked
vanishes, and is absorbed without redemption, that of every other person,
even moderately pure, simply changes its ethereal particles for still more
ethereal ones; and, while there remains in it a spark of the Divine, the
god-like man, or rather, his individual Ego, cannot die.

Says Proclus: 

“After death, the soul (the spirit) continueth to linger in the aërial body
(astral form), till it is entirely purified from all angry and voluptuous
passions . . . then doth it put off by a second dying the aërial body as it
did the earthly one. Whereupon, the ancients say that there is a celestial
body always joined with the soul, which is immortal, luminous, and
star-like--…”

while the purely human soul [kama-manas] or the lower part of the Fifth
Principle is not. The above explanations and the meaning and the real
attributes and mission of the Pitris, may help to better understand this
passage of Plutarch: 

“And of these souls the moon is the element, because souls resolve into her,
as the bodies of the deceased do into earth. Those, indeed, who have been
virtuous and honest, living a quiet and philosophical life, without
embroiling themselves in troublesome affairs, are quickly resolved; being
left by the nous (understanding) and no longer using the corporeal passions,
they incontinently vanish away.” 8 


LARVAE -- KAMA-RUPAS

There are many distinct classes of "Elementaries" and "E1ementals." The
highest of the former in intelligence and cunning are the so-called
"terrestrial spirits." Of these it must suffice to say, for the present,
that they are the Larvć, or shadows of those who have lived on earth, alike
of the good and of the bad. They are the lower principles of all disembodied
beings, and may be divided into three general groups. 

1.	The first are they who having refused all spiritual light, have died
deeply immersed in the mire of matter, and from whose sinful Souls the
immortal Spirit has gradually separated itself. These are, properly, the
disembodied Souls of the depraved; these Souls having at some time prior to
death separated themselves from their divine Spirits, and so lost their
chance of immortality. 

Eliphas Levi and some other Kabalists make little, if any, distinction
between Elementary Spirits who have been men, and those beings which people
the elements, and are the blind forces of nature. Once divorced from their
bodies, these Souls (also called "astral bodies"), especially those of
purely materialistic persons, are irresistibly attracted to the earth, where
they live a temporary and finite life amid elements congenial to their gross
natures. From having never, during their natural lives, cultivated their
spirituality, but subordinated it to the material and gross, they are now
unfitted for the lofty career of the pure, disembodied being, for whom the
atmosphere of earth is stifling and mephitic. Its attractions are not only
away from earth, but it cannot, even if it would, owing to its Devachanic
condition, have aught to do with earth and its denizens consciously.
Exceptions to this rule will be pointed out later on. After a more or less
prolonged period of time these material souls will begin to disintegrate,
and finally, like a column of mist, be dissolved, atom by atom, in the
surrounding elements. 

These are the "shells" which remain the longest period in the Kâma Loka; all
saturated with terrestrial effluvia, their Kâma Rűpa (body of desire) thick
with sensuality and made impenetrable to the spiritualizing influence of
their higher principles, endures longer and fades out with difficulty. We
are taught that these remain for centuries sometimes, before the final
disintegration into their respective elements. 

2.	The second group includes all those, who, having had their common
share of spirituality, have yet been more or less attached to things earthly
and terrestrial life, having their aspirations and affections more centred
on earth than in heaven; the stay in Kâma Loka of the reliquić of this class
or group of men, who belonged to the average human being, is of a far
shorter duration, yet long in itself and proportionate to the intensity of
their desire for life. 

3.	Remains, as a third class, the disembodied souls of those whose
bodies have perished by violence, and these are men in all save the physical
body, till their life-span is complete. 
Among Elementaries are also reckoned by Kabalists what we have called
psychic embryos, the "privation" of the form of the child that is to be.
According to Aristotle's doctrine there are three principles of natural
bodies: privation, matter, and form. 


INCOMING EGOS -- FUTURE HUMANS

These principles may be applied in this particular case. The "privation" of
the child which is to be, we locate in the invisible mind of the Universal
Soul, in which all types and forms exist from eternity--privation not being
considered in the Aristotelic philosophy as a principle in the composition
of bodies, but as an external property in their production; for the
production is a change by which the matter passes from the shape it has not
to that which it assumes. 

Though the privation of the unborn child's form, as well as of the future
form of the unmade watch, is that which is neither substance nor extension
nor quality as yet, nor any kind of existence, it is still something which
is, though its outlines, in order to be, must acquire an objective form--the
abstract must become concrete, in short. Thus, as soon as this privation of
matter is transmitted by energy to universal Ćther, it becomes a material
form, however sublimated. 

If modern Science teaches that human thought "affects the matter of another
universe simultaneously with this," how can he who believes in a Universal
Mind deny that the divine thought is equally transmitted, by the same law of
energy, to our common mediator, the universal Ćther--the lower World-Soul?
Very true, Occult Philosophy denies it intelligence and consciousness in
relation to the finite and conditioned manifestations of this phenomenal
world of matter. But the Vedântin and Buddhist Philosophies alike, speaking
of it as of Absolute Consciousness, show thereby that the form and progress
of every atom of the conditioned universe must have existed in it throughout
the infinite cycles of Eternity. And, if so, then it must follow that once
there, the Divine Thought manifests itself objectively, energy faithfully
reproducing the outlines of that whose "privation" is already in the divine
mind. 

Only it must not be understood that this Thought creates matter, or even the
privations. No; it develops from its latent outline but the design for the
future form; the matter which serves to make this design having always been
in existence, and having been prepared to form a human body, through a
series of progressive transformations, as the result of evolution. 


PSYCHIC EMBRYOS

Forms pass; ideas that created them and the material which gave them
objectiveness, remain. These models, as yet devoid of immortal spirits, are
"Elementals"--better yet, psychic embryos--which, when their time arrives,
die out of the invisible world, and are born into this visible one as human
infants, receiving in transitu that Divine Breath called Spirit which
completes the perfect man. This class cannot communicate, either
subjectively or objectively, with men. 

The essential difference between the body of such an embryo and an Elemental
proper is that the embryo--the future man--contains in himself a portion of
each of the four great kingdoms, to wit: fire, air, earth and water; while
the Elemental has but a portion of one of such kingdoms. As for instance,
the salamander, or the fire Elemental, which has but a portion of the
primordial fire and none other. Man, being higher than they, the law of
evolution finds its illustration of all four in him. It results therefore,
that the Elementals of the fire are not found in water, nor those of air in
the fire kingdom. And yet, inasmuch as a portion of water is found not only
in man but also in other bodies, Elementals exist really in and among each
other in every substance just as the spiritual world exists and is in the
material. But the last are the Elementals in their most primordial and
latent state. 



DAIMONS

We may pass now to the "Gods," or Daimons, of the ancient Egyptians and
Greeks, and from these to the Devas and Pitris of the still more ancient
Hindű Âryans. 

Who or what were the Gods, or Daimonia, of the Greeks and Romans? The name
has since then been monopolized and disfigured to their own use by the
Christian Fathers. Ever following in the footsteps of old Pagan Philosophers
on the well-trodden highway of their speculations, while, as ever, trying to
pass these off as new tracks on virgin soil, and themselves as the first
pioneers in a hitherto pathless forest of eternal truths--they repeated the
Zoroastrian ruse: to make a clean sweep of all the Hindű Gods and Deities,
Zoroaster had called them all Devs, and adopted the name as designating only
evil powers. So did the Christian Fathers. They applied the sacred name of
Daimonia--the divine Egos of man--to their devils, a fiction of diseased
brains, and thus dishonoured the anthropomorphized symbols of the natural
sciences of wise antiquity, and made them all loathesome in the sight of the
ignorant and the unlearned. 

What the Gods and Daimonia, or Daimons, really were, we may learn from
Socrates, Plato, Plutarch, and many other renowned Sages and Philosophers of
pre-Christian, as well as post-Christian days. We will give some of their
views. 

Xenocrates, who expounded many of the unwritten theories and teachings of
his master, and who surpassed Plato in his definition of the doctrine of
invisible magnitudes, taught that the Daimons are intermediate beings
between the divine perfection and human sinfulness, 2 and he divides them
into classes, each subdivided into many others. But he states expressly that
the individual or personal Soul is the leading guardian Daimon of every man,
and that no Daimon has more power over us than our own. Thus the Daimonion
of Socrates is the God or Divine Entity which inspired him all his life. It
depends on man either to open or close his perceptions to the Divine voice. 

Heracleides, who adopted fully the Pythagorean and Platonic views of the
human Soul, its nature and faculties, speaking of Spirits, calls them
"Daimons with airy and vaporous bodies," and affirms that Souls inhabit the
Milky Way before descending "into generation" or sublunary existence. 

Again, when the author of Epinomis locates between the highest and lowest
Gods (embodied Souls) three classes of Daimons, and peoples the universe
with invisible beings, he is more rational than either our modern
Scientists, who make between the two extremes one vast hiatus of being, the
playground of blind forces, or the Christian Theologians, who call every
pagan God, a dćmon, or devil. Of these three classes the first two are
invisible; their bodies are pure ether and fire (Planetary Spirits); the
Daimons of the third class are clothed with vapoury bodies; they are usually
invisible, but sometimes, making themselves concrete, become visible for a
few seconds. These are the earthly spirits, or our astral souls. 

The fact is, that the word Daimon was given by the ancients, and especially
by the Philosophers of the Alexandrian school, to all kinds of spirits,
whether good or bad, human or otherwise, but the appellation was often
synonymous with that of Gods or angels. For instance, the "Samothraces" was
a designation of the Fane-gods; worshipped at Samothracia in the Mysteries.
They are considered as identical with the Cabeiri, Dioscuri, and Corybantes.
Their names were mystical--denoting Pluto, Ceres or Proserpina, Bacchus, and
Ćsculapius or Hermes, and they were all referred to as Daimons.
 
Apuleius, speaking in the same symbolical and veiled language, of the two
Souls, the human and the divine, says: 

“The human soul is a demon that our language may name genius. She is an
immortal god, though in a certain sense she is born at the same time as the
man in whom she is. Consequently, we may say that she dies in the same way
that she is born.”

Eminent men were also called Gods by the ancients. Deified during life, even
their "shells" were reverenced during a part of the Mysteries. Belief in
Gods, in Larvć and Umbrć, was a universal belief then, as it is fast
becoming--now. Even the greatest Philosophers, men who have passed to
posterity as the hardest Materialists and Atheists--only because they
rejected the grotesque idea of a personal extra-cosmic God--such as
Epicurus, for instance, believed in Gods and invisible beings. Going far
back into antiquity, out of the great body of Philosophers of the
pre-Christian ages, we may mention Cicero, as one who can least be accused
of superstition and credulity. Speaking of those whom he calls Gods and who
are either human or atmospheric spirits, he says: 

“We know that of all livings beings man is the best formed, and, as the gods
belong to this number, they must have a human form. . . . I do not mean to
say that the gods have body and blood in them; but I say that they seem as
if they had bodies with blood in them. . . . Epicurus, for whom hidden
things were as tangible as if he had touched them with his finger, teaches
us that gods are not generally visible, but that they are intelligible; that
they are not bodies having a certain solidity . . . but that we can
recognize them by their passing images; that as there are atoms enough in
the infinite space to produce such images, these are produced before us . .
. and make us realize what are these happy, immortal beings. “ 3 

Part II to follow

Dallas