More from Geoffrey Barborka's Secret Doctrine Questions and Answers book - Question. Do we lose our identity when we die?
Answer. Here is a
question which would be asked by a person attending a Theosophical lecture for
the first time and the lecturer most likely referred to Reincarnation. To
answer such an inquirer would not be easy simply because the answerer would
have to inquire what was meant by "we." Is the physical body meant?
Or is it the personality? The following passage covers the subject very well:
"The human soul (lower Manas) is the only and direct
mediator between the personality and the divine Ego. That which goes to make up
on this earth the personality (miscalled by us individuality) is
the sum of all its mental, physical and spiritual characteristic traits, which,
being impressed on the human soul, produces the man. Now, of all these
characteristics it is the purified ideations alone which can be impressed on
the higher immortal Ego. This is done by the "human soul" merging
again, in its essence, into its parent source, commingling with its divine Ego
during life, and reuniting itself entirely with it after the death of the
physical man. Therefore unless Kama-Manas transmits to Buddhi-Manas such
personal ideations, and such consciousness of its "I" as can be
assimilated by the divine EGO, nothing of that "I" or personality can
survive in the Eternal. Only that which is worthy of the immortal God within
us, and identical in its nature with the divine quintessence, can survive; for
in this case it is its own, the divine Ego's "shadows" or emanations
which ascend to it and are indrawn by it into itself again, to become once more
part of its own Essence. No noble thought, no grand aspiration, desire, or
divine immortal love, can come into the brain of the man of clay and settle
there, except as a direct emanation from the higher to, and through, the lower
Ego; all the rest, intellectual as it may seem, proceeds from the
"shadow," the lower mind, in its association and commingling
with Kama, and passes away and disappears forever. But the mental and spiritual
ideations of the personal "I" return to it, as parts of the Ego's
essence, and can never fade out. Thus of the personality that was, only its
spiritual experiences, the memory of all that is good and noble, with the
consciousness of its "I" blended with that of all the other personal
"I's" that preceded it - survive and become immortal. There is no
distinct or separate immortality for the men of earth outside of the EGO which
informed them. That Higher Ego is the sole Bearer of all its alter Egos
on earth and their sole representative in the mental state called Devachan. As
the last disembodied personality, however, has a right to its own special state
of bliss, unalloyed and free from the memories of all others, it is the last
life only which is fully realistically vivid. Devachan is often compared to
the happiest days in a series of many thousands of other 'days' in the life of
a person. The intensity of its happiness makes the man forget entirely all
others, his past becomes obliterated. This is what we call the Devachanic
State ... " (H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings XII, 626-7; S.D.
V, 490-1 6-vol. ed.; III, 515 3rd ed.) - Vol. 53, No. 4
Question. Do we actually meet our loved ones in the
"heaven world"?
Answer. Not in
their physical bodies, just as we do not physically meet our loved ones in our
dreams; although at times our loved ones appear to be more lovely and more
"real" while dreaming than what we see in the physical world.
Devachan is a state of consciousness, a blissful state, in which no sorrow
enters to mar the picturization. There is a passage in The Mahatma Letters
to A.P. Sinnett describing the after-death state:
"There are great varieties in the Devachan states ...
as many varieties of bliss, as on earth there are shades of perception and of
capability to appreciate such reward. It is an ideated paradise, in each case
of the Ego's own making, and by him filled with the scenery, crowded with the
incidents, and thronged with the people he would expect to find in such a
sphere of compensative bliss." (p. 102; p. 100 3rd ed.)
"A mother from a savage tribe is not less happy than a
mother from a regal palace, with her lost child in her arms; and although as
actual Egos, children prematurely dying before the perfection of their
septenary Entity do not find their way to Devachan, yet all the same the
mother's loving fancy finds her children there, without once missing that her
heart yearns for. Say - it is but a dream, but after all what is objective life
itself but a panorama of vivid unrealities?" (p. 103; p. 100 3rd ed.) -
Vol 54, No. 4
Part 5
Part 5
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