Salvation from Death [1 of 2]

Salvation from Death

We come now to the second phase of our study of the final words of Rule XI.

 

RULE ELEVEN

Three things the worker with the law must now accomplish. First, ascertain the formula which will confine the lives within the ensphering wall; next, pronounce the words which will tell them what to do and where to carry that which has been made; and finally, utter forth the mystic phrase which will save him from their work.

We have dealt with salvation from the dangers incident to the creation of thought-forms by a human being who has learnt, or is learning, to create on the mental plane. Much could have been said from the standpoint of the inability of the majority of students to think with clarity. Clear thinking involves capacity to dissociate oneself, temporarily at least, from all reactions and activities of an emotional nature. As long as the astral body is in a state of restless movement, and its moods and feelings, its desires and emotions are powerful enough to attract attention, positive pure thought processes are not possible. Until the time comes when there is a more general appreciation of the value of concentration and of meditation, and until the nature of the mind and its modifications are more universally understood, any further teaching on the subject would be futile.

In these Instructions I have sought to give an indication of the first steps in esoteric psychology, and have dealt primarily with the nature and mode of training of the astral body. Later on in this century, the psychology of the mind, its nature and modifications may be handled in more detail. But the time is not yet.

Our subject now is salvation from the body nature through the process of death.

Two things must be borne in mind as we seek to study the means of this salvation:

  • • First, by the body nature I mean the integrated personality, or the human equipment of physical body, vital or etheric vehicle, the matter (or mode of being) of the desire nature, and the mind stuff. These constitute the sheaths or outer forms of the incarnated soul. The consciousness aspect is sometimes focused in one and sometimes in another, or is identified with the form or with the soul. The average man works with facility and self-consciousness in the physical and astral bodies. The intelligent and highly evolved man has added to these two the conscious control of his mental apparatus, though only in certain of its aspects, such as the memorizing or analyzing faculties. He has also, in some cases, succeeded in unifying these three into a consciously functioning personality. The aspirant is beginning to understand something of the principle of life which is animating the personality, whilst the disciple is utilizing all three, because he has coordinated or aligned the soul, the mind, and the brain and is therefore beginning to work with his subjective apparatus or energy aspects.
  • • Secondly, this salvation is brought about through a right understanding of the mystical experience we call death. This is to be our theme, and the subject is so immense that I can only indicate certain lines along which the aspirant may think, and posit certain premises which he can later elaborate. We shall confine ourselves also primarily to the death of the physical body.

Let us first of all define this mysterious process to which all forms are subject and which is frequently only the dreaded end – dreaded because it is not understood. The mind of man is so little developed that fear of the unknown, terror of the unfamiliar, and attachment to form have brought about a situation where one of the most beneficent occurrences in the life cycle of an incarnating Son of God is looked upon as something to be avoided and postponed for as long a time as possible.

Death, if we could but realize it, is one of our most practiced activities. We have died many times and shall die again and again. Death is essentially a matter of consciousness. We are conscious one moment on the physical plane, and a moment later we have withdrawn onto another plane and are actively conscious there. Just as long as our consciousness is identified with the form aspect, death will hold for us its ancient terror. Just as soon as we know ourselves to be souls, and find that we are capable of focusing our consciousness or sense of awareness in any form or on any plane at will, or in any direction within the form of God, we shall no longer know death.

Death for the average man is the cataclysmic end, involving the termination of all human relations, the cessation of all physical activity, the severing of all signs of love and of affection, and the passage (unwilling and protesting) into the unknown and the dreaded. It is analogous to leaving a lighted and a warmed room, friendly and familiar, where our loved ones are assembled, and going out into the cold and dark night, alone and terror stricken, hoping for the best and sure of nothing.

But people are apt to forget that every night, in the hours of sleep, we die to the physical plane and are alive and functioning elsewhere. They forget that they have already achieved facility in leaving the physical body; because they cannot as yet bring back into the physical brain consciousness the recollection of that passing out, and of the subsequent interval of active living, they fail to relate death and sleep. Death, after all, is only a longer interval in the life of physical plane functioning; one has only “gone abroad” for a longer period. But the process of daily sleep and the process of occasional dying are identical, with the one difference that in sleep the magnetic thread or current of energy along which the life force streams is preserved intact, and constitutes the path of return to the body. In death, this life thread is broken or snapped. When this has happened, the conscious entity cannot return to the dense physical body and that body, lacking the principle of coherence, then disintegrates.

It should be remembered that the purpose and will of the soul, the spiritual determination to be and to do, utilizes the thread soul, the sutratma, the life current, as its means of expression in form. This life current differentiates into two currents or two threads when it reaches the body, and is “anchored”, if I might so express it, in two locations in that body. This is symbolic of the differentiations of Atma, or Spirit, into its two reflections, soul and body. The soul, or consciousness aspect, that which makes a human being a rational, thinking entity, is “anchored” by one aspect of this thread soul to a “seat” in the brain, found in the region of the pineal gland. The other aspect of the life which animates every atom of the body and which constitutes the principle of coherence or of integration, finds its way to the heart and is focused or “anchored” there. From these two points, the spiritual man seeks to control the mechanism. Thus functioning on the physical plane becomes possible, and objective existence becomes a temporary mode of expression. The soul, seated in the brain, makes man an intelligent rational entity, self-conscious and self-directing; he is aware in varying degree of the world in which he lives, according to the point in evolution and the consequent development of the mechanism. That mechanism is triple in expression. There are first of all the nadis and the seven centers of force; then the nervous system in its three divisions: cerebro-spinal, sympathetic, and peripheral; and then there is the endocrine system, which might be regarded as the densest aspect or externalization of the other two.

The soul, seated in the heart, is the life principle, the principle of self-determination, the central nucleus of positive energy by means of which all the atoms of the body are held in their right place and subordinated to the “will-to-be” of the soul. This principle of life utilizes the blood stream as its mode of expression and as its controlling agency, and through the close relation of the endocrine system to the blood stream, we have the two aspects of soul activity brought together in order to make man a living, conscious, functioning entity, governed by the soul, and expressing the purpose of the soul in all the activities of daily living.

Death, therefore, is literally the withdrawal from the heart and from the head of these two streams of energy, producing consequently, complete loss of consciousness and disintegration of the body. Death differs from sleep in that both streams of energy are withdrawn. In sleep only the thread of energy, which is anchored in the brain is withdrawn, and when this happens the man becomes unconscious. By this we mean that his consciousness or sense of awareness is focused elsewhere. His attention is no longer directed towards things tangible and physical but is turned upon another world of being and becomes centered in another apparatus or mechanism. In death, both the threads are withdrawn or unified in the life thread. Vitality ceases to penetrate through the medium of the blood stream and the heart fails to function just as the brain fails to record, and thus silence settles down. The house is empty. Activity ceases except that amazing and immediate activity which is the prerogative of matter itself and which expresses itself in the process of decomposition. From certain aspects, therefore, that process indicates man’s unity with everything that is material; it demonstrates that he is part of nature itself and by nature we mean the body of the one life in whom “we live and move and have our being”. In those three words – living, moving and being – we have the entire story.

  • • Being is awareness, self-consciousness and self-expression and of this man’s head and brain are the exoteric symbols.
  • • Living is energy, desire in form, coherence and adhesion to an idea and of this the heart and the blood are the exoteric symbols.
  • • Moving indicates the integration and response of the existing, aware, living entity into the universal activity, and of this the stomach, pancreas and liver are the symbols.

It is interesting, though incidental to our subject, to bear in mind that in cases of imbecility and idiocy and in that stage of old age which we call senile decay, the thread which is anchored in the brain is withdrawn, whilst that which conveys the life impulse or urge remains still anchored in the heart. There is life but no intelligent awareness; there is movement but no intelligent direction; in the case of senile decay, when there has been a high grade apparatus utilized in life, there may be the appearance of intelligent functioning but that is an illusion due to old habit and to old established rhythm but not to coordinated coherent purpose.

It must be noted also that death is, therefore, undertaken at the direction of the ego, no matter how unaware a human being may be of that direction. The process works automatically with the majority, for when the soul withdraws its attention the inevitable reaction on the physical plane is death, either by the abstraction of the dual threads of life and reason energy, or by the abstraction of the thread of energy which is qualified by mentality, leaving the life stream still functioning through the heart but no intelligent awareness. The soul is engaged elsewhere and occupied on its own plane with its own affairs.

In the case of highly developed human beings we often find a sense of prevision as to the death period; this is incident upon egoic contact and awareness of the wishes of the ego. It involves sometimes a knowledge of the very day of death, coupled to a preservation of self-determination up to the final moment of withdrawal. In the case of initiates there is much more than this. There is an intelligent understanding of the laws of abstraction and this enables the one who is making the transition to withdraw consciously and in full waking awareness out of the physical body and so to function on the astral plane. This involves the preservation of continuity of consciousness so that no hiatus occurs between the sense of awareness on the physical plane and that of the after death state. The man knows himself to be as he was before, though without an apparatus whereby he can contact the physical plane. He remains aware of the states of feeling and of the thoughts of those he loves, though he cannot perceive or contact the dense physical vehicle. He can communicate with them on the astral plane or telepathically through the mind if they and he are en rapport, but communication that involves the use of the five physical senses of perception lies necessarily out of his reach. It is useful to remember, however, that astrally and mentally the interplay can be closer and more sensitive than ever before for he is freed of the handicap of the physical body. Two things, however, militate against this interplay: one is the grief and violent emotional upset of those left behind and, in the case of the average human being, the other is the man’s own ignorance and bewilderment as he stands faced by what are to him new conditions, though they are really old conditions, if he could but realize it. Once men have lost the fear of death and have established an understanding of the after death world which is not based on hallucination and hysteria or on the conclusions (oft unintelligent) of the average medium, who speaks under the control of his own thought-form (built by himself and the circle of sitters), we shall have the process of death properly controlled. The condition of those left behind will be carefully handled so that there is no loss of relationship and no false expenditure of energy.

Part 2 of 2 here.


join us on instagram @esotericteachings
This error message is only visible to WordPress admins

Error: No feed found.

Please go to the Instagram Feed settings page to create a feed.