English
They may undergo mysterious transmutations, but until we get into the higher regions of human con- sciousness in relations with spiritual essence, there is nothing in the world that is not elemental in its nature. The minute cells of which animal and human bodies are built up are evolutions of elemental agency. Matter and force on the physical plane are elementals con- densed—miaterialised. Elementals as seen on the astral plane are matter and force etherealised. They are related to themselves in the lower manifestation as steam to ice—as carbonic acid gas to carbonic acid snow. They do not need a vehicle for their manifesta- THE ELEMENTALS. 219 tion—as human consciousness needs a vehicle. They are vehicle and /tfe (not consciousness) in one. Clearly it cannot fall within the scope of this explana- tion to define the methods by which human will func- tioning on the astral plane is enabled to specialise and direct the elemental agency around it; but we may approach as near to the confines of that mystery as circumstances will allow by realising how the non- specialised oceans of elemental agency perceptible on the astral plane pervade Nature from that point of view. They need not be sought for as a herbalist, for instance, might seek in a wood for the particular plant he required. They are all at hand, as the atmosphere is at hand in all parts of the world for the uses of a man who desires to blow a bellows; more so if that be possible, by reason of the fact that they are visible— to the astral sense, though not clouding or obscuring other objects of perception,—because vision with the astral senses differs so widely from vision with the eyes. Within limits one may say that nothing is seen on the astral plane except that to which attention is directed, so that if the astral voyager is not wanting to manipulate the elemental agencies he might hardly be conscious of their presence. Desiring to deal with them he would perceive them on every side. I have referred to the manner in which elemental agency of more than one kind may play a part in physical phenomena. In the same way “an” elemental evoked or created by a human will may be compounded of more than one variety of elemental agency. One alone might not suffice for the purpose in view. 220 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. Undoubtedly, however, the creation of a complex elemental is a more advanced achievement than that of one in which only a single variety is concerned. Over and above elemental entities that may have been formed by human will from the ocean of elemental essence, there are innumerable varieties that owe their existence, as such, to natural evolutions going on side by side with, but quite independently of, that with which humanity is concerned. With these, however, it is hardly my business at present to deal. I am concerned with those teachings of occultism that directly relate to the evolution of man. THE SPIRITUAL PLANE. 221 CHAPTER IX. THE SPIRITUAL PLANE. LET us turn now to the consideration of the truly Spiritual realm of Nature to which the astral plane is but the ante-chamber. From the first, however, we must keep in mind the dual aspect of this realm which corresponds to the dual aspect of the astral plane. The spiritual plane is one condition from the point of view of those normal souls that are resting in its blissful emotion between two periods of incarnate life, and another for the purified Ego of the living initiate quali- fied to ascend to that level of consciousness while still in touch with the conditions of moral responsibility and activity that belong to the earth life. The fetters of immature religious thinking are apt to prevent those of us who are not trained occultists from drawing that distinction properly. People are liable to imagine that Heaven, for those who pass away from the physical plane at death, is a condition of greater exaltation and progress than the possibilities of the situation really provide for. Though its scope may be almost infinite—in regard to knowledge and exaltation of consciousness,—it responds in every case with exactitude to the characteristics of spiritual evolution brought thither by the soul which attains to 222 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. it. There is no plane of Nature in fact that is above the operation of cause and effect. Transplant to Heaven a consciousness, a being, invested with no attributes transcending the best emotions of ordinary physical life, and Heaven does not for such persons contain more than the fruition of these emotions. You do not change an African savage’s nature by bringing him over to a civilised country and planting him suddenly in the midst of art and science and literary culture. To use comparatively grovelling and familiar ideas in illustration of the principle before us, the savage can merely select from the resources of civilisation, supposing them offered to hiin in all their abundance, the food and drink and physical comforts which his experience of life enables him to crave for. So with the imperfectly developed souls of coinmon humanity. Heaven is only Heaven for them in so far as the growth of their minds enables them to avail themselves of its resources. That which it does for all who have it in them to attain its confines at all, is to assure them complete happiness along the lines that their spiritual development has followed. By spiritual development in this sense, let me hasten to add, I do not mean, in any exclusive way at any rate, the development of the religious instinct. Where this instinct is very energetic that is undoubtedly one phase of spiritual development, but real unselfish love is no less spiritual in its character and is equally capable of a glorified expansion on the heavenly or spiritual plane of consciousness. The artistic faculty again is deeply tinged with true THE SPIRITUAL PLANE. 223 spirituality and is thus capable of evoking a generous response from the spiritual plane whether it has to do with the beauty of form, colour, or sound, and the love of knowledge may be spiritual if it penetrates the essence of things, though it is possible that it may be bent so exclusively on physical detail as to be sometimes a force which may operate to keep a soul set free by death, earth bound in the higher astral condition, instead of acting as a stimulus to the spiritual awakening. As I have said, the resources of the spiritual plane are all but infinite, for thought is there becoming a creative power in a far higher degree than on the astral plane, and independently of this, consciousness is there in direct relations with the all but infinite memory of Nature, which is preserved---how we cannot at present expect to understand exactly—with imperishable per- fection, in the all-embracing medium known to occult science as the “ Akasa.”’ This marvellous medium is discernible in some of its manifestations on the astral plane, but its clear and unconfused records belong especially to the higher plane of spiritual consciousness. It is a natural mirror of all events, which recalls them for those who have the power of reading in it, in their minutest details. As nothing can alter the past when its events are once accomplished, so nothing can obliterate them from the memory of Nature. Our own individual memories in physical life are imperfect readings of so much in its records as we have personally had to do with—of as much as is connected by magnetic affinities, so to speak, with our own brain cells; but to the emanci- 224 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. pated spiritual faculties on the spiritual plane all the records are accessible. We are in a position to remember everything that has ever occurred in the history of our world, and to remember it not in that dim shadowy way which physical memory alone achieves, but in such a way that the past scene or chain of events on which we bend our attention, re-enacts itself before us in vivid perfection of detail. But it does not so unroll itself unless the attention is bent upon it with the set purpose of evoking its records, so that in this immensely important matter it will be seen that the Akasa is only panoraznic in its character for those souls on the spiritual plane that are animated by the thought of applying to it. For a person dying in the ordinary way, and passing, after getting clear of the astral region, on to the spiritual plane, the records of Nature’s memory will be a blank if the mind has not been stored with aspirations pointing to the use of such resources. But, though the spiritual plane may be thus subject to limitations for people passing on to it in the ordinary way, it does not follow that its happiness-giving character is limited in a similar manner. Within its beneficent atmosphere there is simply no room for unhappiness of any sort or kind. For all who attain it there is necessarily an interior condition of complete, perfect, and unalloyed bliss and delight. The struggles and sorrows of incarnate life are for the time—and a long time is in question—entirely over and done with. Whatever—whoever—is needed to conduce to perfect happiness is there present to the consciousness of the THE SPIRITUAL PLANE. 225 enraptured soul, always, of course, assuming that the conditions of happiness for such a soul are susceptible of fulfilment in a spiritual state. If they have to do with delights of an absolutely earthly and physical character, it will not be possible for the person so bowed down to ascend to the spiritual plane at all. But we are not dealing now with earth-bound astrals, but with souls that have ascended, however feeble, comparatively, may be the force that has carried them upward.