Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt01316)

Dallas
In the footnote it was stated western science as a rule maintains animals have not conscious ego. You may be interested in an article in this month's Discover magazine (a science magazine) called what animals think. It is about an autistic professor who maintains animals are autistic. She has written books on this subject and even is highly sought after her design of humane barns for livestock, as well as the chutes that lead them to slaughter.

David B.
-------------- Original message -------------- 

> 
> 
> 
> Apl 17 2005 
> 
> 
> Dear Mark and Friends: 
> 
> In regard t the separation of human principles after physical death we have 
> the following early teachings from the THEOSOPHIST 1880-81 (reprinted in A 
> MODERN PANARION -- H P B's writings) . 
> 
> 
> 
> AFTER DEATH PRINCIPLES 7 
> ============================= 
> 
> 
> From: FRAGMENTS OF OCCULT TRUTH, Modern Panarion, pp. 439 - 443 
> 
> 
> 
> Spiritualists vs Theosophists - After Death 
> "spirits" 
> 
> 
> Kamaloka -- Devachan and 7 Principles 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In order to understand clearly the view of the occultists, it is 
> necessary to glance at the constitution of the living human being. Even the 
> spiritualistic theory teaches that man is a trinity, composed of (1) a 
> higher spirit or the "spiritual soul" as ancient philosophers designated it; 
> (2) its envelope-the ethereal form or shadow of the body- called by the 
> Neo-platonists the "animal soul"; and (3) the physical body. 
> 
> Although from one point of view this is broadly correct, yet, accord ing 
> to occultists, to render our conceptions of this truth clearer and follow 
> out successfully the course of man after death, it is necessary to further 
> subdivide these three entities and resolve them into their constituent 
> principles. This analysis being almost wholly unknown to western nations,it 
> is difficult in some cases to find any English words by which to represent 
> the occult subdivisions, but we give them in the least obscure phraseology 
> that we can command. 
> 
> 
> 
> DIVISIONS OF THE SPIRITUALISTS. 
> 
> 
> 1. The Body. 
> SUBDIVISIONS OF THE OCCULTISTS. 
> 1. The Physical Body composed wholly of matter in its grossest and most 
> tangible form. 
> 2. The Vital Principle (or Jivatman) a form of force, indestructible. When 
> it is disconnected with one set of atoms, it immediately becomes attracted 
> by others. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 2. The Animal Soul or Perisprit. 3. The Astral Body (Linga Sharira)- 
> composed of highly etherealized matter. In its habitual passive state the 
> perfect but very shadowy duplicate of the body; its activity, consolidation, 
> and form depend entirely on the Kama Rupa. 
> 4. The Astral Shape (Kama Rupa) or body of desire-a principle defining the 
> configuration of 
> 5. The Animal or Physical Intelligence or Consciousness or Ego-analogous to, 
> though proportionally higher in degree than the reason, instinct, memory, 
> imagination, etc., existing in the higher animals. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 3. The Spiritual Soul or Spirit, 6. The Higher or Spiritual 
> Intelligence 
> or Consciousness, or Spiritual Ego-in 
> which mainly resides the state of consciousness of the perfect man, though 
> the lower dimmer animal consciousness coexists in No. 5. 
> 7. The Spirit-an emanation from the Absolute; uncreate, eternal; a state 
> rather than a being. 
> 
> 
> 
> Now the change that we call death only immediately affects the first 
> three constituents; the body decomposes to enter into new combinations, and 
> the vital force is dissipated to help to animate new organisms, and the 
> astral human form (Linga Sharira) dies with the body. 
> 
> There remain four principles. As a rule (we except the cases of the 
> higher adepts), one of two things occurs in accordance with the universal 
> law of affinity. 
> 
> If the spiritual Ego has been in life material in its tendencies, placing 
> its main enjoyment in, and centering its desires on, material objects and 
> the gratification of earthly desires, then, at death, it 
> 
> ---------Footnote ------------- 
> * Western science, of course, as a rule, holds that animals have no 
> conscious ego, but this we know to be erroneous; they possess no spiritual, 
> but they do possess an animal consciousness, Could men communicate with them 
> they would discover not only this, but also that many of the anthropoid apes 
> possess an intelligence, consciousness, etc., little inferior to that of 
> lunatics, madmen, and some desperately wicked and depraved men who have, in 
> fact, become animals, through the loss, temporary or permanent, of their 
> sixth and seventh principles, even while the combination of the other five 
> principles is still intact, i.e., even during life. Was it some hazy 
> tradition of the truth handed down through the Romish church, which has ever 
> possessed some secret knowledge of the teachings of the ancient mysteries, 
> or was it the great poet's soul's own glimpses into the Astral Light, that 
> made Dante represent the souls of several of his enemies as already in the 
> "Inferno" though the men themselves still lived upon earth? Of course this 
> fragment of truth was utterly distorted by the malign influence of the then 
> prevalent material hell superstition, but it was quite possible, as the 
> modern west has still to realize, that the souls of some of these evil men 
> might have already passed away (though not to the fabled Inferno), whilst 
> the men themselves still lived. 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> -- 
> 
> continues to cling blindly to the lower elements of its late combination, 
> and the true spirit severs itself from these and passes away elsewhere. To 
> follow its course is beside the question at present, since the remaining 
> principles in which personal or animal consciousness remains have parted 
> with it for ever, and it would require a complete exposition of the entire 
> philosophy of occultism to fully explain its course; suffice it to say now, 
> that it passes away-taking with it no fragment of the individual 
> consciousness of the man with which it was temporarily associated-to fulfill 
> its mission, still guided and governed, by the irresistible cyclic impulse 
> which first projected it through the veil of primitive cosmic matter. 
> 
> But if, on the other hand, the tendencies of the Ego have been towards 
> things spiritual, if its aspirations have been heavenwards-we use a 
> conventional term-if it has, when weighed, as it were, in the balance, a 
> greater affinity for the spiritual than for the earthly constituents, with 
> their accompanying desires, of the combination in which it recently took 
> part, then will it cling to the spirit, and with this pass into the 
> adjoining so-called world of effects, in reality a state, and not a place, 
> and there, purified of much of its still remaining material taints, evolve 
> out of itself by the spirit's aid a new Ego, to be reborn, after a brief 
> period of freedom and enjoyment, in the next higher world of causes, an 
> objective world similar to this present globe of ours, but higher in the 
> spiritual scale, where matter and material tendencies and desires play a far 
> less important part than here. 
> 
> In either case, it is not a matter of judgment, of salvation and 
> damnation, of heaven and hell, but solely the operation of the universal law 
> of affinity or attraction, which makes the Ego cling in one case to the more 
> material, in the other to the spiritual components of the late aggregation 
> now separated by death. Now neither during gestation in the subjective world 
> of effects, nor during the temporary period of enjoyment, in its newly 
> evolved Ego-hood, of the fruits of good deeds, its karma on earth, nor after 
> its entry into the higher objective world of causes, can the Ego reenter 
> this present world. 
> 
> During the first period it is, so to speak, dormant, and can no more issue 
> from the state in which it is developing than a child can come out of its 
> mother's womb to pay a visit before the period of pregnancy concludes. 
> 
> During the second period, however ethereal and purified of gross matter the 
> regenerated Ego may be, it is still subject to the physical and universal 
> laws of matter. It cannot, even if it would, span the abyss that [442 ] 
> separates its state from ours. 
> 
> It can be visited in spirit by men, but it cannot descend into our grosser 
> atmosphere and reach us. It attracts, it cannot be attracted; its spiritual 
> polarity presenting an insuperable obstacle. 
> 
> Once reborn into the higher world, and apart from the physical impossibility 
> of any communication between its world and ours, to all but the very highest 
> adepts, the new Ego has become a new person; it has lost its old 
> consciousness linked with earthly experiences, and has acquired a new 
> consciousness, which, as time rolls on, will be interpenetrated by its 
> experiences in that higher sphere. The time will come, no doubt, but many 
> steps higher on the ladder, when the Ego will regain its consciousness of 
> all its past stages of existence; but in the next higher world of causes,or 
> activity, to our own, the new Ego has no more remembrance of its earthly 
> career than we here have of the life that preceded this present one. 
> 
> Therefore it is that the occultists maintain that no "spirits" of the 
> departed can appear or take part in the phenomena of séance-rooms. To what 
> can appear and take part in these, the occultists refuse the name of 
> "spirits." 
> 
> But it may be asked what is it that can appear? 
> We reply-merely the animal souls or perisprits of the deceased. 
> 
> It might appear from what we have said that, while this, according to our 
> previous exposition, would be true in the case of the spiritually-minded,in 
> that of the materially-minded we should have these and the spiritual Ego or 
> consciousness. But such is not the case. Immediately on the severance of the 
> spirit, whether at death, or, as we have already hinted is sometimes the 
> case, before death, the spiritual Ego is dissipated and ceases to exist. It 
> is the result of the action of spirit on matter, and it might, to render the 
> matter more clear, be described as a combination of spirit and matter, just 
> as flame is the result of the combination of oxygen with the substance being 
> oxygenized, and might loosely be described as the combination of the two. 
> Withdraw the oxygen and the flame ceases; withdraw the spirit, and the 
> spiritual Ego disappears. 
> 
> The sense of individuality in spirit cannot exist without combination with 
> matter. 
> 
> Thus the pure planetary spirits, when first propelled into the circle of 
> necessity, have no individual consciousness, only the absolute consciousness 
> which they share with all fragments of the spirit hitherto entirely 
> uncombined with matter. As they, entering into generation, descend the 
> ladder and grow gradually more and more hemmed in by matter and isolated 
> from the universal spirit, so the [ 443 ] sense of individuality, the 
> spiritual Ego-ship, grows. How finally, on reascending the circle, step by 
> step, they regain, on reunion with the universal, the absolute 
> consciousness, and simultaneously all the individual consciousnesses which 
> they have developed at each stage of their descending and ascending 
> progress, is one of the highest mysteries. 
> But to return to the spiritual Ego-ship developed on this earth; if too 
> tainted to follow the spirit in its upward course, it is, as it were, forth 
> with torn asunder from it. Left in the terrestrial atmosphere without the 
> sustaining spirit that gave it existence, it has to disappear as the flame 
> does when the oxygen is exhausted. All the material elements which, in 
> combination with the spirit, gave it consistency, fly by the law of affinity 
> to join the three other principles that constitute the perisprit or natural 
> soul, and the spiritual Ego ceases to exist. 
> Thus alike in all cases that remain, all that can appear are the shells 
> of the deceased, the two principles which we call the animal or surviving 
> astral souls or animal Ego. 
> 
> [ Frag of Occ Truth Mod Pan, p. 439 - 443 ] 
> 
> ================================== 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dallas 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Mark H 
> Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 9:55 AM 
> To: 
> Re: NDE while Brain dead 
> 
> 
> Theosophy teaches that there are actually not one, but seven parts of 
> man and some of them separate at death. 
> 
> What you most likely are hearing from is the astral form. It is not 
> exactly the soul, but part of the lower constitutes. The higher parts 
> of the body are eternal and go on to be reincarnated (instantly to 
> about 1500 years after the death, depending on various circumstances). 
> However the astral form dissipates over a considerable length of time 
> after a person's death. 
> 
> From what I understand the astral form is almost an exact replica of 
> what you see in the physical plane. So interacting with someone's 
> astral body will give you nearly the same impression as if they were 
> really there. 
> 
> -Mark H. 
> 
> ================================== 
> 
> On 4/17/05, Niki 
> > 
> > Hi Perry- 
> > 
> > That's not what my recently deceased mate/wife (we had 
> > a Lesbian thing) told me. She said that if I live my 
> > present life to the standard that we did together, she 
> > would be the first person to greet me on the other 
> > side. 
> > 
> cut 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yahoo! Groups Links 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]