"Suppose there exists a man who responds to the vibrations of the astral and mental worlds, and so can "see" them, and that he has also been scientifically trained in observation and judgment, what does he see? He sees a multitude of phenomena, which will take him long years to analyze and understand. The first and most striking thing will be that he sees, living in either astral or mental bodies, those friends and acquaintances of his whom he thought of as dead; they are not removed in space, in a far-off heaven or purgatory or hell, but are here, in the finer unseen extensions of this world. He will see the "dead" blissfully happy, mildly contented, bored, or utterly miserable; he will note that entities with these attributes of consciousness are localized to various sub-planes of the astral and mental worlds. He will observe how far from the earth's surface these sub-planes extend, and so he will make for himself a geography of the invisible worlds.

He will see that in the astral world, and in its lowest subdivision, live for a time men and women acutely miserable, and that that part of the astral world is evidently the "hell" described in all the religions; that a higher part of the astral world is evidently "purgatory"; and that a higher part still is the "Summerland" described by the communicating entities at spiritualistic seances. With a higher faculty of observation still, he will note a part of the invisible world where the "dead" live as intensely happy as each is capable of being, and he will note that this is evidently "heaven", though in many ways radically different and more sensible than the religious imagination has conceived heaven to be. The mystery of life and death will be solved for him as he thus observes the invisible worlds. (C. Jinarajadasa, The First Principles of Theosophy, pages 135-136 online or hardcopy)

"Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'" (Matthew 25:41)

"And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." (Matthew 25:46)

"The word 'eternity,' by which Christian theologians interpret the term 'for ever and ever,' does not exist in the Hebrew tongue -- either as a word or meaning. Oulam, says Le Clerc, only imports a time when beginning or end is not known. It does not mean 'infinite duration,' and the word for ever in the Old Testament, only signifies a 'long time.'" (H.P. Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, page 336 note online or hardcopy)

"... 'eternal damnation' ... [is not] eternal, but only, as in the original Greek of the New Testament, 'eonian', that is, for the period of an eon or dispensation. (C. Jinarajadasa, The First Principles of Theosophy, page 348 online or hardcopy)

"The length of time depends upon the amount of matter belonging to that sub-plane which he has built into his astral body during physical life. He will necessarily remain upon that sub-plane until the matter corresponding to it has dropped out of his astral body." (A.E. Powell, The Astral Body, page 120 online or hardcopy)

"The general principle is that when the astral body has exhausted its attractions to one level, the greater part of its grosser particles fall away, and it finds itself in affinity with a somewhat higher state of existence. Its specific gravity, as it were, is constantly decreasing, and so it steadily rises from the dense to the lighter strata, pausing only when it is exactly balanced for a time. (A.E. Powell, The Astral Body, page 120 online or hardcopy)

"...in order to gain ... tolerance, you must yourself first be free from bigotry and superstition. You must learn that no ceremonies are necessary; else you will think yourself somehow better than those who do not perform them. Yet you must not condemn others who still cling to ceremonies. Let them do as they will; only they must not interfere with you who know the truth- they must not try to force upon you that which you have outgrown. Make allowance for everything; be kindly towards everything.

"Now that your eyes are opened, some of your old beliefs, your old ceremonies, may seem to you absurd, perhaps, indeed, they really are so. Yet though you can no longer take part in them, respect them for the sake of those good souls to whom they are still important. They have their place, they have their use; they are like those double lines which guided you as child to write straight and evenly, until you learned to write far better and more freely without them. There was a time when you needed them; but now that time is past.

"A great Teacher once wrote: 'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.' Yet he who has forgotten his childhood and lost sympathy with the children is not the man who can teach them or help them. So look kindly, gently, tolerantly upon all; but upon all alike, Buddhist or Hindu, Jain or Jew, Christian or Muslim." (Alcyone, At The Feet of the Master, online or hardcopy)

You have transcended all superstition; you know that a man may find the light in any religion; you know that rites and ceremonies have no intrinsic value, and that all which is done by them can be done without them by knowledge and by will.... Will you seek to lift the darkness by spreading this gospel?

" The candidates answered, 'I will.'" (Charles Leadbeater, The Masters and the Path, paragraphs 803-805 online or pages 182-183 hardcopy)

"...as mens eyes are opened superstition becomes impossible. You do not know the mischief that superstition works on the other side of death. You do not know the misery and the terror that too many souls undergo when they pass from the body into the world which to them is unknown, and is crowded for them with all the imaginary terrors with which superstition dominated by pretended knowledge has peopled it; especially is this the case in the West where men talk about eternal hell, and tell people that after death there is no growth and no progress, that a sinful man is plunged into the lake of fire and brimstone, there to spend the countless ages of eternity without hope of salvation, without hope of escape. You cannot imagine what the effect of that is on souls passing into the other world through the gateway of death, and imagining that all this is, or even may be true, imagining that they may be victims of this horror that they have heard of from their ignorant teachers; great are the difficulties they have who help the souls on the other side, to gradually do away with the terror and to make them understand that law is everywhere, and that malice and malignity are not found amongst the ruling powers of the Kosmos." (Annie Besant, The Path of Discipleship, paragraph 103 online or pp. 134-135 hardcopy)

"The purely physical cravings of hunger and thirst no longer exist [in the astral world]; but the desire of the glutton to gratify the sensation of taste, and the desire of the drunkard for the exhilaration which follows, for him, the absorption of alcohol -- these are both astral, and therefore they still persist, and cause great suffering because of the absence of the physical body through which alone they could be satisfied." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, page 175 online or hardcopy)

"You probably know the myth of Tantalus. He was a man condemned to suffer in hell eternal thirst, while water surrounded him on all sides, but receded from his lips as soon as he tried to drink. The meaning of this is not difficult to see, when once we know what the astral life is. Every one who leaves this world of ours full of sensual desires of any kind -- as, for example, a drunkard, or some one who has given himself up to sensual living in the ordinary meaning of the word -- such a man finds himself on the astral plane in the position of Tantalus.

"He has built up for himself this terrible desire which governs his whole being. You know how powerful the desire can be in the case of a drunkard; it conquers his feelings of honor, his love of his family, and all the better inclinations of his character. He will take money from his wife and children, will even take their clothes to sell them and obtain money to drink.

"Remember that when a man dies he does not change at all. His desire is still as powerful as ever. But it is impossible to gratify it, because his physical body, through which only he could drink, is gone. There you have your Tantalus, as you see, full of that terrible desire, always finding that the gratification recedes as soon as he thinks he has it.

"Recall also the story of Tityus, the man who was tied to a rock, his liver being gnawed by vultures, and growing again as fast as it was eaten. There you have an illustration of the effect of yielding to desire: an image of the man who is always tortured by remorse for sins committed on earth.

"As perhaps a higher example of the same we can take the story of Sisyphus. You know how he was condemned always to roll a stone up a hill, and how, when he reached the top, the stone would always roll down again. That is the condition of an ambitious man after death, a man who has spent his life in making plans for selfish ends, for attaining glory or honor. In his case also death brings no change. He goes on making plans just as he did during life. He works out his plans, he executes them, as he thinks, till the point of culmination, and then he suddenly perceives that he has no longer a physical body, and that all was but a dream. Then be begins again and again, till he has learned at last that these desires are useless and that ambition must be killed. So Sisyphus goes on uselessly rolling the stone up the hill, till at last he learns not to roll it any more. To have learned that is to have conquered that desire, and he will come back in his next life without it; without the desire, but of course not without the weakness of character which made that desire possible.

"So you see that conditions that seem terrible are but the effects in the other world of a wrong life here on earth. That is nature's method of turning wrong into good. Man does suffer, but what he suffers is only the effect of his own action and nothing else; it is not punishment inflicted upon him from outside, but entirely of his own making. And that is not all. The suffering he has to bear is the only means by which his qualities can be directed in the right way for his evolution and progress in another life. This was a point much emphasized in the teaching of the mysteries." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, pages 57-58 online or hardcopy)

"People find their own level on the astral plane, much in the same way as objects floating in the ocean do. This does not mean that they cannot rise and fall at will, but that if no special effort is made they come to their level and remain there. Astral matter gravitates towards the center of the earth just as physical matter does; both obey the same general laws." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, page 156 online or hardcopy)

" ... it is desirable to remind the reader of the very definite way in which it is divided into sub planes. (Sub-concentric spheres would be a more appropriate phrase, but the usual term 'plane' is more convenient, though we should never forget that the whole astral region with all its subdivisions is a huge concentric sphere surrounding the physical globe, as much a definite appendage to it as the atmosphere, and carried with it in its movement round the Sun.)" (page 10)

" ... because life on the higher levels of the astral plane involves the principle that people are drawn together by their real sympathies, not as in physical life by karma, that often, down here, puts people into close relations with antipathetic entities, the seventh sub-plane is a region to which those gravitate who have been in life rulers of men in one way or another, not merely by high social rank, but by virtue of characteristics that have given them sway over others either in industrial or political life. " (page 11)

[The second astral plane] " ... affords scope for genuine devotional feeling if that is the predominant element in any given character." (page 11)

" ... people in whom intellectual activity is the predominant characteristic are naturally drawn to the [third] sub-plane" (page 11)

" ... on the [third] sub-plane the intellectual region it seems possible for the literary student to help himself to copies of any book in existence down here, whether of ancient or of recent origin. And I believe that men of science on the [third] level can somehow make use of laboratories, though their new methods of research no doubt involve the use of faculties that generally supersede the necessity for using such instruments of research as they have been used to in the lower life. I know that they acquire knowledge concerning the constitution of matter, the mysteries of force, gravitation, and electricity that no instruments of ordinary research would help them to. And the vast spaces of the solar system and beyond become accessible, in some way we cannot here understand, to the investigations of the occult astronomer. That does not mean that superlative wisdom is poured into their consciousness in a flood. The new knowledge is gradually acquired as here by study and continuous effort, but it is acquirable in new ways for the full comprehension of which we who are interested in such work will mostly have to wait.." (pages 99-100)

"The fourth sub-plane is the [lowest astral sub-plane] on which existence is altogether based upon the sensation of happiness, though its experiences are themselves subject to very great variety. The higher regions again are all conditions in which happiness is the background of consciousness, but in which different mental and moral attributes find their appropriate expression. " (pages 10-11)

"Frequent mention has been made of 'houses' in which those released from physical life find themselves on awakening beyond. Such houses are the thought creations of the persons passing on, or of those who have passed on previously and stand ready to welcome new arrivals. This detail requires further elucidation. As A. R. said, there is no gravitational stress on the astral plane. Anyone there can move about, upward or downward, by the mere effort of will. How about stairs in astral houses? Surely they cannot be needed! Nor are they needed, and yet the habits of mind brought over from physical life are so ingrained in the thinking of the newcomer in the next world, that he needlessly repeats conditions around him which resemble those he has been used to. And if a staircase seems to him a necessary adjunct to a comfortable home, his new home includes the staircase accordingly. Later on, if he works his way to higher levels than the fourth sub-plane, he will get altogether free of the physical life traditions. There are no houses, for instance, on the [first] sub-plane." (page 97)

[A man now on the fourth-level] " ... seemed to be living in a house that was just exactly the kind of house he used to picture in imagination as the ideal house he would like to have. Of course this was a pleasant kind of thought-form he had unconsciously created. He also said he was beginning to have a curious sort of feeling, as though he were getting lighter. It was quite a pleasant feeling, and he thought he had been told that it betokened some impending change that would involve his translation to some superior condition. His house was a country-house with gardens and flowers, grass and trees, though they did not seem to want any attending to. He spent a great deal of time in the garden, thinking pleasantly of bygone times, and visited by people he had known -- his father and mother amongst them. The time just glided by. There was no night, no sense of being tired. He had no wants." (page 58)

"In the summer-land men surround themselves with landscapes of their own construction, though some avoid that trouble by accepting ready-made the landscapes which have already been constructed by others. Men living on the sixth sub-plane, upon the surface of the earth, find themselves surrounded by the astral counterparts of physically existing mountains, trees and lakes, and consequently are not under the necessity of manufacturing scenery for themselves; but men upon the higher subplanes, who float at some distance above the surface of the earth, usually provide themselves with whatever scenery they desire, by the method that I have described.

"The commonest example of this is that they construct for themselves the weird scenes described in their various scriptures, and therefore in those regions we constantly find ourselves in presence of clumsy and unimaginative attempts to reproduce such ideas as jewels growing upon trees, and seas of glass mingled with fire, and creatures which are full of eyes within, and deities with a hundred heads and arms to correspond. In this way, as a consequence of ignorance and prejudice during their physical life, many men do a great deal of valueless work when they might be employing their time in the helping of their fellows.

"To the man who has studied Theosophy and therefore understands these higher planes, one of their pleasantest characteristics is the utter restfulness and freedom which comes from the absence of all these imperious necessities which make a misery out of physical life. The dead man is the only absolutely free man, free to do whatever he wills and to spend his time as he chooses, free therefore to devote the whole of his energies to helping his fellows.." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, pages 233-234 online or hardcopy)

"It must always be borne in mind that the matter of the astral world is plastic in a high degree to thought. Thought there is an actually creative power, and thus there are regions of the fourth where the sustained thought power of all dwelling there, has created churches and chapels in which they continue to carry on such services as they have been used to on the physical plane. As the Roman Catholic community on the other side is of course a very numerous body, the Roman Catholic cathedral in which they renew their worship is, I am assured, an enormous building far exceeding in magnitude any similar structure on the earth's surface. Going to the opposite end of the scale, the little community calling themselves Plymouth Brothers, entertaining the belief, as I understand their state of mind, that they alone are destined to be saved, find their impressions duly realised, -- as they think. They find themselves congregated together in something resembling a town beyond which they see nothing but an infinite waste. They continue, as in life, to hold meetings and preach each other dismal sermons, until, one by one, they get sufficiently bored, and so drift away and gradually acquire enlarged experience. Many of them may have been in ordinary life, no doubt, good and affectionate people, and then they would be exactly of the type suited to the devachanic condition, and would float off to that state of existence, when tired of their "Plymouth Brother" attitude of mind. The tardiness of their progress to loftier happiness would once more illustrate the fundamental principle that knowledge gained down here in advance, concerning the opportunities of the astral world, is enormously helpful in enabling people passing on to attain at once desirable conditions for which, in the absence of such knowledge, they would have to wait.." (pages 93-94)

" The [fifth astral sub-plane] lies just above the surface of the earth, and is still a region of varied discomfort, in which those whose personal characteristics are such as to require purification before they are qualified for existence on any of the superior regions, spend a time greatly varying in duration." (page 10)

[G. R.] "... describes himself as having been in life a man with a very ardent feeling for the other sex, though with refined tastes and habits. But he was now [in the after-life] plunged in the midst of the coarsest manifestations of that feeling. Without seeking the experience, he was drawn, sucked as it were, into the consciousness of a man of very gross nature and habits, and shared, though with loathing and disgust, his emotions as he gratified his desires. My friend was irresistibly tied to this man for a long time, till at last, with a horrified cry for help, he was enabled to break away, with a sense of extraordinary relief." (page 19)

"... I seemed to be surrounded by a peculiar cloud which seemed to obscure my sense of sight, a cloud of a reddish tinge; and it seemed to be drifting upon me, as far as I could judge. I did not appear to be the origin of it myself, and became conscious of an extraordinary sense of damp heat and that I was slowly drifting I knew not whither. How long I drifted I know not, but at last I found myself in a dense kind of fog. I became conscious of voices, at first dim and far off. Also aware of an acute, uncomfortable sensation of choking. All of a sudden the mist cleared away and I found myself in a room with a number of men and women. [The graphic sexual descriptions are ommitted, but the scene was one of very degraded debauchery.] I saw foul shapes of an extraordinary order floating round the room, one exactly like a large jellyfish. As it passed me it gave me an indescribable sensation of disgust and horror. I prayed to be delivered from this wretched condition ...." (pages 22-23)

" 'My friend, I have been permitted by my Master to help you. You must rest in this place for some little time. Remain patient. Do not long for those scenes that I have relieved you from.' I thought at the time that was a strange remark, as I felt a powerful loathing for the scenes I had just left. He read my thought, for he went on to say: 'You do not realise for the moment what this means, but those conditions will again recur, and unless you put them from you your sufferings will continue. (page 24)

[G. R.] " ... had great volumes of spiritual karma behind the unsatisfied passions of his last life. Moreover, I am inclined to believe that the disagreeable period described must have been to some extent traceable to unfulfilled tendencies of earlier lives. When he was finally free of all this, he ascended into lofty realms ...." (page 25)

[One man had to endure] " ... a period of suffering on the [sixth] submerged plane of the astral world. He gave me an awful account of the torments he was undergoing. He was in the dim lurid light of the underworld, surrounded by horrible elemental shapes or creatures of the most loathsome aspect who were attacking him fiercely. He had lost all sense of time, but this seemed to have been going on for what seemed an eternity." (page 36)

" A part of the great sphere is actually immersed or submerged beneath the solid crust of the earth. That is a terrible region with which only the very worst specimens of humanity have any concern, after passing on from the physical life. Two sub-planes of the astral are thus underground the [sixth] and [seventh]...."

"The man who commits suicide runs away from school before the appointed lesson is learned; he is guilty of the great presumption involved in taking into his own hands a decision which should be left to the working of the Great Law. The consequences of so great a rebellion against nature are always of a momentous character. They are certain to affect the next life, and quite probably more lives than one. The circumstances surrounding a suicide immediately after death are the same as they would be for the victim of an accident, since both of them arrive upon the astral plane with equal suddenness. But there is the enormous difference that the man who dies by accident, not expecting death, is thrown into a condition of unconsciousness and usually passes through the lowest sub-plane without knowing anything of its varied unpleasantness. The suicide, on the contrary, has acted deliberately, and is generally painfully aware of much that is horrible and repugnant to him. He cannot be saved from the sights and feelings which he has brought upon himself; but he may often be helped to understand them, and may be inspired with patience, perseverance and hope by the good offices of some kind friend.

"While fully recognising that suicide is a mistake, and a most serious one, we are not called upon judge our brother who commits that mistake. There is a wide difference between different cases, and it is impossible for us to know the various factors which enter into each, although every one of them is duly taken into account in the working of the law of eternal justice." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, pages 227-228 online or hardcopy)

"During incarnate life certain desires are in harmony with Nature's design. They leave no indelible traces on the astral vehicle unless they are allowed to dominate life and thought to an excessive degree. As in so many other ways, moderation is the keynote of health. It is almost as definitely possible to overdo asceticism as to overdo self-indulgence. But the astral vehicle of H. S. [one person given as an example in the book] was no doubt over-saturated with sexual desire, and it was by a very slow course of suffering that this unhealthy state of things was counteracted." (page 46)

" ... selfish pleasure, sought at the expense of incidental suffering to another, engenders bad karma of an unequivocal character, the effects of which will color the next physical life, while, independently of that, desires innocent in themselves, may be exaggerated in their intensity and allowed to dominate a whole life to such an extent that they are shed with very great difficulty on the astral plane after the death of the physical body. The process of shedding them may be so painful and protracted, as the story I have just been dealing with shows, that an account of it in any particular case reads like the description of a punishment; but that would not be a correct reading of it. The consequences of evil-doing on the physical plane, which have to be regarded, from one point of view, as its penalty, are worked out on the physical plane again in the next life. The intervening period is one the conditions of which ought to reflect the better side of the life just spent, rather than its worst. But for that better side to express itself the entity must not be weighed down by characteristics incompatible with existence on the higher levels of the astral world. It cannot get up to those higher levels till free of the characteristics which belong exclusively to the earth-life." (pages 49-50)

" ... the astral life is not the period appropriate, to the working out of karma. That is reserved for the next physical life, and when disagreeable or painful experiences are incurred on the astral they are to be thought of almost always as purifying processes qualifying the personality to reach restful and happy conditions. If anyone passes over steeped in desires of a kind incompatible with life on any of the higher astral levels, he must wear out those desires, subdue them or realise their worthlessness, before he can ascend to the higher levels. The attainment of such an attitude of mind may, as we have seen, be sometimes retarded to a painful degree, but in that case the protraction of the painful state should not be regarded as a karmic penalty. It automatically comes to an end as soon as the person concerned is emancipated from the characteristics that hold him back.." (pages 95-96)

"Some ... people tend to hover round their earthly homes [after death], in order to keep in touch with their friends of the physical life and the places which they know; others, on the other hand, have a tendency to float away and to find for themselves, as if by specific gravity, a level much further removed from the surface of the earth. The great majority of the denizens of the astral world spend most of their lives comparatively near to the surface of the physical earth; but as they withdraw into themselves, and their consciousness touches the higher types of matter, they find it easier and more natural than before to soar away from that surface into regions where there are fewer disturbing currents." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, page 155 online or hardcopy)

"The average person passing into the heaven-life, for example, tends to float at a considerable distance above the surface of the earth, although on the other hand some of such men are drawn to our level. Still, broadly speaking, the inhabitants of the heaven-world may be thought of as living in a sphere or ring or zone round the earth. What Spiritualists call the summer-land extends many miles above our heads, and as people of the same race and the same religion tend to keep together after death just as they do during life, we have what may be described as a kind of network of summer-lands over the countries to which belong the people who have created them.

"People find their own level on the astral plane, much in the same way as objects floating in the ocean do. This does not mean that they cannot rise and fall at will, but that if no special effort is made they come to their level and remain there. Astral matter gravitates towards the center of the earth just as physical matter does; both obey the same general laws. We may take it that the sixth sub-plane of the astral is partially coincident with the surface of the earth, while the lowest, or seventh, penetrates some distance into the interior." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, page 156 online or hardcopy)

"The length of a man's astral life after he has put off his physical body depends mainly upon two factors -- the nature of his past physical life, and his attitude of mind after what we call death. During his earth-life he is constantly influencing the building of matter into his astral body. He affects it directly by the passions, emotions and desires which he allows to hold sway over him; he affects it indirectly by the action upon it of his thoughts from above, and of all the details of his physical life (his continence or his debauchery, his cleanliness or his uncleanliness, his food and his drink) from below. If, by persistence in perversity along any of these lines, he is so stupid as to build for himself a coarse and gross astral vehicle, habituated to responding only to the lower vibrations of the plane, he will find himself after death bound to that plane during the long and slow process of that body' s disintegration. On the other hand if, by decent and careful living, he gives himself a vehicle mainly composed of finer material, he will have very much less post-mortem trouble and discomfort, and his evolution will proceed much more rapidly and easily.

"This much is generally understood, but the second great factor -- is attitude of mind after death -- seems often to be forgotten. The desirable thing is for him to realise his position on this little arc of his evolution -- to learn that he is at this stage withdrawing steadily inward towards the plane of the true ego, and that consequently it is his business to disengage his thought as far as may be from things physical, and fix his attention more and more upon those spiritual matters which will occupy him during his life in the heaven-world. By doing this he will greatly facilitate the natural astral disintegration, and will avoid the sadly common mistake of unnecessarily delaying himself upon the lower levels of what should be so temporary a residence.

"Many people, however, simply will not turn their thoughts upwards, but spend their time in struggling with all their might to keep in touch with the physical plane which they have left, thus causing great trouble to anyone who may be trying to help them. Earthly matters are the only ones in which they have ever had any living interest, and they cling to them with desperate tenacity even after death. Naturally, as time passes on, they find it increasingly difficult to keep hold of things down here, but instead of welcoming and encouraging this process of gradual refinement and spiritualisation they resist it vigorously by every means in their power. The mighty force of evolution is eventually too strong for them, and they are swept on in its beneficent current, yet they fight every step of the way, thereby not only causing themselves a vast amount of entirely unnecessary pain and sorrow, but also seriously delaying their upward progress." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, pages 230-231 online or hardcopy)

"The astral counterparts of the floor, walls and furniture of a room are all of the lowest type of astral matter, and consequently the man newly dead usually sees these counterparts vividly, and is almost entirely unconscious of the vast sea of thought-forms which encompasses him, because nearly all those forms are built out of combinations of the finer types of astral matter.

"In process of time, as the consciousness steadily withdraws inward; the shell of this coarsest type of matter atrophies and begins to disintegrate, and matter of a somewhat higher type is as it were uncovered, and becomes the surface through which impressions can be received. Since this usually happens gradually, it means that the man finds the counterparts of physical objects growing dimmer and dimmer, while the thought-forms become more and more vivid to him, so that without necessarily moving at all in space, he finds himself living in a different world....

"This then is what is meant by passing from one sub-plane to another -- that the man loses sight of one part of the wonderful complexity which is the astral world, and that another part of it comes into his view. It is after all only a repetition on a smaller scale of what happens to each one of us as we pass from plane to plane. The whole astral world and the whole mental world are both of them around us here and now, yet so long as our consciousness is focussed in the physical brain we are blankly unconscious of them. At death the consciousness is transferred to the astral body, and at once we find ourselves seeing the astral part of our world, having lost sight of the physical. When later on we lose the astral body in turn, and live in the mental body, we are then conscious (though only partially) of the mental part of our world, and have altogether lost for the time both the astral and the physical." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, pages 243-244 online or hardcopy)

"... there is reason behind the familiar old prayer of the Church: "From sudden death, good Lord, deliver us;" for though a sudden death does not necessarily affect the man's position upon the astral plane in any way for the worse, at least it does nothing to improve it, whereas the slow wasting away of the aged or the ravages of any kind of long-continued disease are almost invariably accompanied by a considerable loosening and breaking up of the astral particles, so that when the man recovers consciousness upon the astral plane, he finds some at any rate of his chief work there already done for him." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, page 229 online or hardcopy)

"In the case of young children it is exceedingly unlikely that in their short and comparatively blameless young lives they will have developed much affinity for the lowest subdivisions of astral life; indeed, as a matter of practical experience they are hardly ever to be found in connection with that sub-plane at all. In any case, whether they die by accident or disease, their life on the astral plane is a comparatively short one; the heaven-life, though much longer, is still in reasonable proportion to it, and their early reincarnation follows as soon as the forces which they have been able to set in motion during their short earth-lives work themselves out, precisely as we might expect from our observation of the action of the same great law in the case of adults." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, page 229 online or hardcopy)

"... the 'dead' live in astral bodies in the astral world; 'temporarily', ... since after a period of time they finally pass on to life in the heaven world [Devachan]." (C. Jinarajadasa, The First Principles of Theosophy, pages 138-139 online or hardcopy)

"After the second death [the dissolution of the astral body] when Ego is freed from the encumbrance of the impure remains of its last personality, consciousness slowly returns to it. As this happens it awakes slowly to find itself in a state or condition of unadulterated bliss: it is in surroundings where, and with those with whom, it would most have wanted to be. It is in the state known as Devachan, a blissful but purely subjective state: one quite private to the Devachanee. It is as a dream which no-one else can share." (Geoffrey Farthing, After-Death Consciousness and Processes, Chapter IV)

"The seven sub-planes of the heaven world form two great divisions; the three higher sub-planes make the higher heaven, and the four lower sub-planes make the lower heaven. The lower heaven world is also known as 'Devachan', the abode of Bliss, or the place of intense joy because in its four lower sub-divisions are found souls after death in conditions of happiness described in the various religions as 'heaven'. Here too are found those animals who, before death, became 'individualized', and attained to the stature of a human soul. On the lowest sub-plane live those men and women and children in whom affection predominated in the character when on earth (however limited may have been its manifestation, owing to adverse circumstances), and they dwell in bliss for centuries in happy communion with those to love whom was the highest possible heaven of earthly dreams. On the next higher sub-plane are those who added to affection a devotion to some definite religious ideal; on the sub-plane above, the men and women who delighted to express their dreams of love and devotion in philanthropic action; on the fourth sub-plane are those who, with all these beautiful attributes, added philosophic, artistic or scientific interests to their soul's manifestations when on earth." (C. Jinarajadasa, The First Principles of Theosophy, pages 141-142 online or hardcopy)

• Farthing, Geoffrey, After-Death Consciousness and Processes
  http://www.theosophical.ca/AfterDeathConsciousnessA.htm
• Leadbeater, Charles, The Devachanic Plane (online)
  http://www.theosophical.ca/DevachanicPlane.htm
• Leadbeater, Charles, The Devachanic Plane (hardcopy)
  http://www.questbooks.net/title.cfm?bookid=147
• Wright, Leoline L., After Death -- What?
  http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/gdpmanu/death/death-1.htm

"At the end of Devachan, the mental body, the last remnant of the Personality, is cast aside, and the Ego is once more fully himself, with all his energies, in the higher heaven." (C. Jinarajadasa, The First Principles of Theosophy, page 164 online or hardcopy)

"After a period, brief or long, dimly conscious or fully aware of the process of rebirth, the Ego once more puts down a part of himself into incarnation to become the new Personality." (C. Jinarajadasa, The First Principles of Theosophy, page 164 online or hardcopy)

"Let us consider the case of an ego ... [who is resting in the higher part of the mental plane, between incarnations]. Since the death of his last physical body he has been drawing steadily inwards, first into his astral and then into his mental vehicle, and at the end of the heaven-life he has cast off even the latter.... He then rests for a certain period on his own plane.... Then he begins once more to turn his attention downwards and outwards...." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, page 340 online or hardcopy)

[There are those] "... who will drop out of this evolution in the middle of the fifth [root race]. This dropping out is precisely the aeonian (not eternal) condemnation of which the Christ spoke as a very real danger for some of His unawakened hearers the condemnation meaning merely the decision that they are incapable as yet of the higher progress, but not implying blame except in cases where opportunities have been neglected. Theosophy teaches us that men are all brothers, but not that they are all equal. There are immense differences between them; they have entered the human evolution at various periods, so that some are much older souls than others, and they stand at very different levels on the ladder of development. The older souls naturally learn much more rapidly than the younger, and so the distance between them steadily increases, and eventually a point is reached where the conditions necessary for the one type are entirely unsuitable for the other.

"We may obtain a useful working analogy by thinking of the children in a class at school. The teacher of the class has a year' s work before him, to prepare his boys for a certain examination. He parcels out the work so much for the first month, so much for the second, and so on, beginning of course with what is easiest and leading gradually up to what is more difficult. But the boys are of various ages and capacities; some learn rapidly and are in advance of the average, while some lag behind. New boys, too, are constantly coming into his class, some of them barely up to its level. When half the year has run its course, he resolutely closes the list for admissions, and declines to receive any more new boys.

"That took place for us at the middle point of this fourth [root race], after which the door was shut for passage from the animal kingdom into the human, save for a few exceptional cases, which belong, as it were, to the future; just as you have a few men attaining adeptship, who are not belated remnants of the moon's adepts, but people in advance of the rest of humanity. In the same way there are a few animals at the stage of individualization, which the generality are expected to reach at the end of the seventh round. On the next planet an arrangement will be made by which these exceptions will have the opportunity of taking primitive human bodies.

"A little later the teacher can already clearly foresee that some of his boys will certainly pass the examination, that the chance of others is doubtful, and that there are yet others who are sure to fail. It would be quite reasonable if he should say to these last:

"'We have now reached a stage when the further work of this class is useless for you. You cannot possibly by any effort attain the necessary standard in time for the examination; the more advanced teaching which must now be given to the others would be entirely unsuited for you, and as you could not understand it you would be not only wasting your own time but would be a hindrance to the rest of the class. It will therefore be better for you at once to transfer yourselves to the next class below this, perfect yourselves there in the preliminary lessons which you have not thoroughly learned, and come back to this level with next year's class, when you will be sure to pass with credit.'

"That is exactly what will be done in the middle of the fifth [root race]. Those who cannot by any effort reach the prescribed goal in the time which remains will be put back into a lower class, and if the class-room doors are not yet open they will wait in peace and happiness until the appointed time. They may be described as lost to us , lost to this particular little wave of evolution to which we belong; they are no longer men of our year as we say at College. But they will very certainly be men of the next year even leading men in it, because of the work that they have already done and the experience that they have already had." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, pages 182-183 online or hardcopy)

"It is of these [people in Avichi] that Madame Blavatsky speaks in such vigorous terms as 'useless drones who refuse to become co-workers with Nature, and who perish by millions during the manvantaric life-cycle.' (Secret Doctrine, iii, 526.) But note that this 'perishing" is merely from this "manvantaric life-cycle,' and that it means for them delay only, and not total extinction.." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, page 184 online or hardcopy)

"... after the completion of the great cycle: either a long Nirvana of Bliss (unconscious though it be in the, and according to, your crude conceptions); after which -- life as a Dhyan Chohan for a whole Manvantara, or else 'Avitchi Nirvana' and a Manvantara of misery and Horror as a ---- you must not hear the word nor I -- pronounce or write it. But 'those' have nought to do with the mortals who pass through the seven spheres. The collective Karma of a future Planetary is as lovely as the collective Karma of a ---- is terrible. Enough. I have said too much already." (H.P. Blavatsky, The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, paragraph 18 online or page 171 hardcopy)

"Avichi ... means 'the waveless,' that which is without vibration. The state of Avichi is not, as has been popularly supposed, some kind of hell, but it is a condition in which the man stands absolutely alone in space, and feels cut off from all life, even from that of the Logos; and it is without doubt the most ghastly experience that it is possible for any human being to have...." (Charles Leadbeater, The Inner Life, page 195 online or hardcopy)

• Leadbeater, Charles, The Inner Life pages 181-195 "Lost Souls"
  http://www3.igalaxy.net/~nick/theosophy/il-163.htm#177






Next: Lesson 7, Planes of Existence (Physical, Astral, etc.)




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