Reincarnation Basics 4

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