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AFTER DEATH: WHAT?    by  Andrew Rooke 

There are many fascinating stories in the world’s mystery traditions regarding the nature of heavens and hells. We all know the extent to which these concepts have dominated Christian thinking, though the archetypal preacher raining down “fire and brimstone” from the pulpit on Sundays is thankfully less common these days. More detailed and enlightened statements of the reality of different levels of consciousness we have come to call heaven and hell are stated particularly well in the mystery tradition of the ancient Egyptians in the Book of the Dead (more correctly translated as the Book of Coming Forth Into Light), and Tibetan Buddhist teachings of the six realms which so heavily influenced H.P. Blavatsky and the theosophical tradition – the six realms being hell, the “prêtas” or hungry ghosts, humans, animals, asuras or titans, and the gods or devas (from the Tibetan Book of the Dead). One also finds complex and detailed teachings on this subject in the mystery traditions, such as we have come to know them, of native peoples in Africa, Mexico, North American Indians, and our own Australian Aboriginal peoples. They all have their own symbology, but they set out to describe broadly similar themes in the language and metaphor of their own peoples. This is because of the difficulty we always face in describing in human terms matters relating to the invisible worlds beyond the everyday experience of most of us.

Imagine, if you will, that you are in a pre-birth state with a good friend who is about to take birth on Earth. Your friend asks you: “What will life on Earth in a physical body be like?” How would you answer? No one answer is likely to cover all possibilities. The same is true in discussing the after death states which are so intimately related to the question of heavens and hells. Instead of talking at length about what the various religious and philosophical teachers of the world have said on the subject, I will concentrate on an outline, as I understand it, of what theosophical teachings in the Blavatsky tradition have to say on the subject.

The ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, and others have told us that the after death journey can be pictured as a pathway leading through various realms along the way. Let’s follow this ancient tradition with a modern exploration of this sublime journey that awaits us all one day.

Physical life: a short period of time, maybe only 1% of our ‘universal life’, compared to our other life in the after-death states, said by Theosophy to be on average 1,500 – 2,000 years during which time aspects of our constitution could experience various heavens, hells, limbo, purgatory, etc., according to our level of spiritual evolution and consequent actions in our material life. Alas, for many, life on the physical earth is a hell most of the time; in fact, some Buddhists refer to our earth as a hell (Sanskrit: Myalba), in that it is the arena for working out the effects of past karma and generating future karma.

Physical Death: After the initial disengagement from the physical body so well described these days in the many accounts of “Near Death Experiences”, we have from people revived in intensive care units in hospitals, there is for most people a period of blessed unconsciousness before moving on the so called heavens or grades of ascending bliss and purity, and hells of increasing purgation or suffering. The Esoteric Doctrine teaches that one is not a “punishment” nor is the other strictly speaking a “reward”. The teaching is simply that each entity after physical death is drawn to the appropriate sphere to which the karmic destiny of the entity and the entity’s own character and impulses magnetically attract it. That is, over a long period of time we choose heaven or hell by our own actions! As the Bible puts it, as a man lives of ‘sows’, in his material life, that and that only shall he ‘reap’ after death. Good seed produces good fruit, bad seed tares – or perhaps, even nothing much of spiritual/enduring value follows a negative or colourless lifetime.

Kama Loka: is a Sanskrit phrase meaning “desire-world” into which the human constitution is projected after physical death. It is a semi-material plane or realm, invisible to most, but not all human beings, which surrounds and encloses our physical world. It is the dwelling place of the astral forms of dead men and other dead beings variously referred to in the legends of ancient Greece as “Hades” and “Amenti”, the land of silent Shadows, by the Egyptians. 

When the physical body breaks up at physical death, the astral elements of the excarnate entity remain in kama-loka or the shadow world. If our tendencies during earth life have been on balance spiritually inclined, we can shed aspects of our lower nature which remain and dissipate in this “purgatorial” or “limbo” state following the “Second Death”. If, however, an entity is so weighted with evil tendencies and attracted to earth spheres that it cannot easily rise to the heaven worlds, then it remains for a longer period in Kama Loka and may even sink to the dread Avici state and below that to the Eighth Sphere or Planet of Death there to be ground over in nature’s mills to begin the evolutionary journey towards true humanity again.        

Descents into the Kama Loka and the states and locations even below this state are described in the world’s literature and traditions most beautifully perhaps by Dante in his Inferno, and are attempts to describe real states or locations of purgatorial experience for the soul we usually associate with a hell.             

Second Death: thankfully, lengthy sojourns in these hellish realms are usually the exception in human experience. In most cases, the higher aspects of a human being are successful in bringing about the separation of the “Upper Triad” from the “lower Duad” (Kama-Manas). Previous to this event, the upper Duad, gathers unto itself the “Reincarnating Ego” which is all the very best of the entity that was – our purest and most spiritual and noblest aspirations and hopes and dreams for betterment, beauty and harmony (hence the importance of concentrating on these things during life). The ancient Greek philosopher and initiate priest of the Delphic Apollo, Plutarch, says of this process: “Of the deaths we die, the one makes man two of three, and the other, one out of two.” What he meant was that using the simple division of man into spirit, soul and body:  the first death is the dropping of the body, making two out of three; the second death is the withdrawal of the spiritual from the lower (Kama Rupic) soul, making one out of two. The seeds of the lower elements remain in the Reincarnation Ego as it enters the heaven worlds. Later these will develop into what we recognize of a person in the material worlds when we enter incarnation once again.  Divested, or more accurately, having ‘shaken off’ our lower aspects, the enduring spiritual aspects of our constitution can rise into the heaven worlds. Theosophy uses the Sanskrit – Tibetan word Devachan to describe the “heaven”experience of most human beings.                                                                        

Devachan: means the “god-land”, the state between earth lives into which the human entity, the human monad, enters and rests in peace and blissful repose. I have heard that the highest aspects of our constitution, fly back to their home star, hence the old Roman epitaph “gaudeat in astris” meaning “he rejoices amongst the stars”. Devachan is the most accessible of the heaven worlds so let’s talk about this blissful state. There are many degrees of Devachan and therefore many heavens ranging from the highest Kama-Loka to blissful states beyond our understanding. Devachan is the fulfilling of all the unfulfilled spiritual hopes of the past incarnation, and an efflorescence of all the spiritual and intellectual yearnings of the past incarnation which in that past lifetime have not had the opportunity for fulfilment. It is a period of unspeakable bliss and peace for the human soul, until it has finished its rest-time and recuperation of its own energies, ready for the challenges of another lifetime. It is a state of blissful dreaming reviewing, and constantly reviewing, and improving upon the most spiritual lessons and yearnings of the past lifetime. Though described as a state of dreaming, sages also describe it as vividly more real to the entity in the heaven worlds than our life is to us in this material world (described as illusory or “maya” by the Hindus). It is a time of incorporation and assimilation of the spiritual and enduring lessons we have learnt in any one lifetime as is sleep in our regular sleep/waking cycle in everyday life. Gradually, this process is completed, old memories, wants and desires from previous lives stir in the heart of the entity blissfully dreaming in the heaven worlds and the process of reincarnation is begun.  If we had more time, we could perhaps discuss other subjects such as the even more blissful state of Nirvana and the responsibility of those who approach this high heaven world. What about the Tibetan teaching that the moment of death holds great importance as an opportunity for enlightenment? These are wonderful and complex subjects however a more down to earth consideration may be – how real are these realms and what do they mean to me here and now? Let’s turn to the Tibetans themselves for an answer to this question as they point to the reality of the teaching of the six realms (the heavens, hells, human and animal kingdoms) for us in our behaviour each day. The following is from the wonderful book by Sogyul Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, pp. 112-113: 

“Do these realms actually exist externally? They may, in fact, exist beyond the range of the perception of our karmic vision… Looking at the world around us, and into our own minds, we can see that the six realms actually do exist. They exist in the way we unconsciously allow our negative emotions to project and crystallize entire realms around us, and to define the style, form, flavour, and context of our life in these realms. And they exist also inwardly as the different seeds and tendencies of the various negative emotions within our psychophysical system, always ready to germinate and grow, depending on what influences them and how we choose to live.”