English
Janguage is all but paralysed in the attempt to suggest the nature of the results that such progress may then lead to, but this much can be said: the expansion of the soul’s consciousness on the spiritual plane—provided the appropriate force making such progress possible has been engendered during life —will conduct it to a state af consciousness in which the appreciation of objective form is actually trans- cended. There is a spiritual condition possible for man in the intervals between incarnations, in which THE SPIRITUAL PLANE. 237 consciousness becomes so all-embracing that it oblit- erates the distinction of objective forms and goes far even towards obliterating the separateness of objective individualities considered as distinct from itself. The teaching of those who have penetrated this state of consciousness is to the effect that it cannot be realised in the imagination of any mind that has not actually touched it, but its sublimity, we are assured, eclipses the finite bliss of the earlier spiritual condition, just as that eclipses the purest happiness imagined by the incarnate thinker. We can only, from the earthly point of view, dwell in imagination on this lofty state of being with an expectant reverence, assured that if we reach it, the sense of exaltation it brings in its train will be something that transcends happiness. From that point of view neither happiness nor know- ledge must be thought of as acquired by the individuality concerned. The individuality is identified with the essence of those ideas. The idea of companionship is lost or merged in the unity of all spiritual individuali- ties, which, if not completely realised as yet in even the highest Devachan, is foreshadowed by the state of consciousness on its “‘ Arupa”’ level. The individual spirit has almost got behind the planes of manifestation to that of intense essential realities. I only avoid saying of “absolute realities’’ because nothing within the scheme of a human evolution as yet far from com- plete can touch “ the aBsolute,” in the proper significa- tion of that phrase, which refers it to the absolute spirit of the whole cosmos; but certainly no incarnate human understanding venturing to concern itself with 238 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. these overmastering problems of infinity can reach in thought beyond such an approximation to the absolute as the higher conditions of spiritual consciousness in the formless region of actuality may furnish. And now let us compare still further with the magni- ficent realities of the spiritual plane, as initiated insight is enabled to unveil them for us, the conceptions which exoteric religion attaches to the idea of Heaven. And in so doing this, let us not for a moment treat with any failure of respect the personal and anthropo- morphic belief that exoteric forms of religious enthusi- asm suggest to the devout though perhaps imperfectly instructed worshipper. Of course the teachings of real spiritual science sublimate and spiritualise the concep- tions which represent Heaven as an extra cosmic abode of Divinity, and of those personifications of Divinity which are evolved by conventional religious thinking for the satisfaction of incarnate imaginations. But although pious emotions directed towards these personi- fications are not the only feelings that deserve the name of spiritual aspiration, they are undoubtedly included in that condition of mind. There are myriads of people so saturated with definite beliefs as to the personalities with which existence in Heaven must be associated, that Heaven for them would not be Heaven if it did not include such beings. But what if the notions they have formed of such beings are really unworthy of the true sublimities of the spiritual plane; what if the Truth is purer and more impersonal than their narrow and earthly imaginations have represented it ? Is it to be supposed that, translated to the spiritual region, THE SPIRITUAL PLANE. 239 their expectations and aspirations will be at once harmonised with a more truly spiritualised stage of evolution ? To imagine this would be to ignore the fundamental lesson of occult teaching—that the human creature grows upward in the scale of Nature gradually as a consequence of efforts in the direction of growth accomplished during successive earth lives. The trans- lation of the Ego’s consciousness from one plane of Nature to another may bring latent capacities into operation, but it does not engender new capacities. Therefore the soul which has never spiritualised the personifications of exoteric religion will not be suddenly enabled to spiritualise them by coming into conscious- ness on the spiritual plane. It will simply deal with them as it deals with the beloved companions of earth who may not—according to the first hypothesis put forward a few pages back—be in true spiritual relations with itself. Its thought and aspiration will have the usual creative force, and the devotee to whom the idea of God has been that of a sublime monarch on a throne, will behold and worship at the foot of that throne, within the subjective though apparently boundless sphere of its own spiritual life. If the Virgin or the saints have played a part in the religious imagination of the human Ego in question on earth, the Virgin and the saints will be visible to its enraptured gaze on the threshold of the spiritual plane. Nothing but a highly refined and purified body of religious beliefs will intro- duce the Ego on that plane to pure realities and the truth of things. So far we have been chiefly considering the spiritual 240 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. plane from the point of view of those who pass on to it in the ordinary course of events after death—a long time after death, perhaps, if the astral plane has, in the first instance, exacted a considerable delay. But now, to expand as far as possible our coinprehension of the sublime aspect of Nature on which we are engaged, let us turn to the question, how Devachanic conditions of consciousness affect a soul or Higher Ego enabled to touch them during earth life. In discussing the very different conditions of astral existence I had continually to emphasise the principle that the region presented one aspect to the soul after death, and another to the soul set free from the body temporarily. There will be much to say about such temporary freedom later on, as that has to do with the grand achievements of abnormal spiritual develop- ment, so I need not anticipate another branch of my subject by stopping here to explain how such freedom is procured and what lofty purposes it subserves. But for the moment let us deal with the results of occult progress,—with the experience gained in temporary flights to the spiritual plane, undertaken by an Ego with a body still going on in the earth life. How would the spiritual plane, rich in the characteristics I have described, present itself to the consciousness of such an Ego? The sense of rapture and intense felicity which the Devachanic condition imparts would be the same in both cases. That is an inherent attribute of conscious- ness on the spiritual plane. Then the sense of com- panionship of whoever might be loved by the person THE SPIRITUAL, PLANE. 241 ascending to that plane would be the same as in the other case. But assuming that such ascents became of frequent occurrence with a highly spiritualised soul, a condition of things would set in, in which the activity of mind of the incarnate being would assert itself through the passive receptiveness that the all-sufficing character of the spiritual consciousness would otherwise tend to engender. The Higher Ego would, as it were, be continually prompted, from the incarnate phase of its own being, to seek out the solution of mysteries, to unravel problems on which its speculation had been bent, to avail itself, in short, of the almost infinite resources of the Akasic records. These would on that account be far more valuable to the Ego still in touch with earth than to the other, which would float undis- turbed by any desire, for long periods of time, in a mere bath of unalloyed and complete ‘felicity. Then the earth-attached Ego would be in a position to be making comparisons the whole time. Ike the other, it would be bathed in felicity, but it would never lose sight of the complexities of the whole situa- tion, nor of the earth life; so that its command of the resources of knowledge inherent in the spiritual con-- dition would be applicable to earthly things in a way which would give it a marvellous power of insight in respect to the affairs of this world. A very important distinction must always be drawn in connexion with consciousness, between consciousness pure and simple and self-consciousness—the condition in which the fact of consciousness becomes an object of consideration. Thus an animal may be as conscious as a man, but is R 242 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. not self-conscious—not qualified to turn its mental gaze inward and reflect upon the phenomena of its own mind. In the same way the soul on the spiritual plane after death, at all events while in the threshold state in which the sense of felicity and of complete satisfaction in regard to its aspirations swallows up everything else, may be regarded as conscious ; while the emancipated Ego, enabled to reach the spiritual plane during trances of the body, is self-conscious in the highest signification of the phrase. Thus the opportunities afforded by Devachanic con- sciousness to such an entity are stupendously greater than for one who is just qualified to exist there. The situation is but faintly hinted at if we consider the different meaning, for a highly educated man and for a savage, of books and philosophical instruments.