Yours,
K. H.
Letter No. 104 (ML-25) Rec. February 2, 1883
The first Devachan letter was Letter No. 68. Letters 70A, B and C dealt further with the subject. The two Englishmen submitted more questions to the Mahatma K.H. This letter is in answer to those questions.
It will be remembered that Sinnett had taken over from Hume the task of writing the series entitled "Fragments of Occult Truth" which were published in The Theosophist. These articles were based on the teachings given by the two Mahatmas, K.H. and M., through the letters.
Devachan Notes Latest Additions. Received Feb. 2nd, 1883.
ANSWERS TO QUERIES
(1) Why should it be supposed that Devachan is a monotonous condition only because some one moment of earthly sensation is indefinitely perpetuated — stretched, so to say, throughout aeons? It is not, it cannot be so. This would be contrary to all analogies and antagonistic to the law of effects under which results are proportioned to antecedent energies. To make it clear you must keep in mind that there are two fields of causal manifestation, to wit: the objective and subjective. So the grosser energies, those which operate in the heavier or denser conditions of matter manifest objectively in physical life, their outcome being the new personality of each birth included within the grand cycle of the evoluting individuality. The moral and spiritual activities find their sphere of effects in "Devachan." For example: the vices, physical attractions, etc. — say, of a philosopher may result in the birth of a new philosopher, a king, a merchant, a rich Epicurean, or any other personality whose make-up was inevitable from the preponderating proclivities of the being in the next preceding birth. Bacon, for inst: whom a poet called —
"The wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind" —
might reappear in his next incarnation as a greedy money-getter, with extraordinary intellectual capacities. But the moral and spiritual qualities of the previous Bacon would also have to find a field in which their energies could expand themselves. Devachan is such field. Hence — all the great plans of moral reform, of intellectual and spiritual research into abstract principles of nature, all the divine aspirations, would, in Devachan come to fruition, and the abstract entity previously known as the great Chancellor would occupy itself in this inner world of its own preparation, living, if not quite what one would call a conscious existence, at least a dream of such realistic vividness that none of the life-realities could ever match it. And this "dream" lasts until Karma is satisfied in that direction, the ripple of force reaches the edge of its cyclic basin, and the being moves into the next area of causes. This, it may find in the same world as before, or another, according to his or her stage of progression through the necessary rings and rounds of human development.
Then — how can you think that "but one moment of earthly sensation only is selected for perpetuation"? Very true, that "moment" lasts from the first to last; but then it lasts but as the key-note of the whole harmony, a definite tone of appreciable pitch, around which cluster and develop in progressive variations of melody and as endless variations on a theme, all the aspirations, desires, hopes, dreams, which, in connection with that particular "moment" had ever crossed the dreamer's brain during his lifetime, without having ever found their realization on earth, and which he now finds fully realized in all their vividness in Devachan, without ever suspecting that all that blissful reality is but the progeny begotten by his own fancy, the effects of the mental causes produced by himself. That particular one moment which will be most intense and uppermost in the thoughts of his dying brain at the time of dissolution will of course regulate all the other "moments"; still the latter — minor and less vivid though they be — will be there also, having their appointed place in this phantasmagoric marshalling of past dreams, and must give variety to the whole. No man on earth but has some decided predilection if not a domineering passion; no person, however humble and poor — and often because of all that — but indulges in dreams and desires unsatisfied though these be. Is this monotony? Would you call such variations ad infinitum on the one theme, and that theme modelling itself on, and taking colour and its definite shape from, that group of desires which was the most intense during life "a blank destitution of all knowledge in the devachanic mind" — seeming "in a measure ignoble"? Then verily, either you have failed, as you say, to take in my meaning, or it is I who am to blame. I must have sorely failed to convey the right meaning, and have to confess my inability to describe the — indescribable. The latter is a difficult task, good friend. Unless the intuitive perceptions of a trained chela come to the rescue, no amount of description — however graphic — will help. Indeed, no adequate words to express the difference between a state of mind on earth, and one outside of its sphere of action; no English terms in existence, equivalent to ours; nothing — but unavoidable (as due to early Western education) preconceptions, hence — lines of thought in a wrong direction in the learner's mind, to help us in this inoculation of entirely new thoughts! You are right. Not only "ordinary people" — your readers — but even such idealists and highly intellectual units as Mr. C.C.M. will fail, I am afraid, to seize the true idea, will never fathom it to its very depths. Perhaps, you may some day realize better than you do now, one of the chief reasons for our unwillingness to impart our Knowledge to European candidates. Only read Mr. Roden Noel's217 disquisitions and diatribes in Light! Indeed , indeed, you ought to have answered them as advised by me through H.P.B. Your silence is a brief triumph to the pious gentleman, and seems like a desertion of poor Mr. Massey.