X. But again is it conceivable that a spiritual monad though surviving the rejection of its third and fourth round pages, cannot survive the rejection of fifth and sixth round pages. That failure to lead good lives in these rounds means the annihilation of the whole individual who will never then get to the seventh round at all?
But on the other hand if that were so the Eliphas Levi case would not be met by such a hypothesis, for long before then the individuals who had become co-workers with nature for evil would have been themselves annihilated by the obscuration of the planet X. between the fifth and sixth rounds — if not by the obscuration between the fourth and the fifth, for to every round there is one obscuration we are told. (5) There is another difficulty here because some fifth rounders being here already it is not clear when the obscuration comes on. Will it be behind the avant couriers of the fifth round, who will not count as commencing the fifth, that epoch only really beginning after the existing race has totally decayed out — but this idea will not work.
Having got so far in my reflections yesterday, I went up to Hume to see if he could make out the puzzle and so enable me to write what was wanted for this post. But on looking into it and looking back to the October Theosophist we came to the conclusion that the only possible explanation was that the October Theosophist note was utterly wrong and totally at variance with all our later teaching. Is that really the solution? I do not think so or K.H. would not have set me to reconcile the two.
But you will see that at present, with the best will in the world I am utterly unable to do the job set me, and if my dear Guardian and Master will kindly look at these remarks he will see the dilemma in which I am placed.
And then in the way which will be the least trouble to himself either through you or directly he will perhaps indicate the line which the required explanation ought to take. Manifestly it cannot be done for the August number, but I am inclined to believe he never intended this as the time is now so short.
We all feel so sorry for you, over-worked amid the heat and the flies. When you have got the August number off your hands you might perhaps be able to take flight for here, and get a little rest amongst us. You know how glad at any time we should be to see you. Meanwhile my own individual plans are a little uncertain. I may have to return to Allahabad, in order to leave Hensman free to go as special correspondent to Egypt. I am fighting my proprietors tooth and nail to avert this result — but for a few days still the issue of the struggle will be uncertain.
Ever Yours,
A. P. S.
P.S. — As you may want to print the letter in this number, I return it herewith, but hope that this may not be the case and that you will send it me back again so that I may duly perform my little task with the help of a few words as to the line to be followed.
Letter No. 70-C (ML-20C) Rec. August 1882
See Notes to Letter No. 70-A.
Received August, 1882.
* Except in so far that he constantly uses the terms "God" and "Christ" which taken in their esoteric sense simply mean "Good" — in its dual aspect of the abstract and the concrete and nothing more dogmatic — Eliphas Levi is not in any direct conflict with our teachings. It is again a straw blown out of a haystack and accused by the wind of belonging to a hay-rick. Most of those, whom you may call, if you like, candidates for Devachan — die and are reborn in the Kama-Loka "without remembrance"; though (and just because) they do get some of it back in the Devachan. Nor can we call it a full, but only a partial remembrance. You would hardly call "remembrance" a dream of yours; some particular scene or scenes, within whose narrow limits you would find enclosed a few persons — those whom you loved best, with an undying love, that holy feeling that alone survives, and — not the slightest recollection of any other events or scenes? Love and Hatred are the only immortal feelings, the only survivors from the wreck of Ye-dhamma, or the phenomenal world. Imagine yourself then, in Devachan with those you may have loved with such immortal love; with the familiar, shadowy scenes connected with them for a background and — a perfect blank for everything else relating to your interior, social, political, literary and social life. And then, in the face of that spiritual, purely cogitative existence, of that unalloyed felicity which, in proportion with the intensity of the feelings that created it, lasts from a few to several thousand years, — call it the "personal remembrance of A. P. Sinnett" — if you can. Dreadfully monotonous! — you may think. — Not in the least — I answer. Have you experienced monotony during — say — that moment which you considered then and now so consider it — as the moment of the highest bliss you have ever felt? Of course not. Well, no more will you experience it there, in that passage through the Eternity in which a million of years is no longer than a second. There, where there is no consciousness of an external world there can be no discernment to mark differences, hence no perception of contrasts of monotony or variety; nothing in short, outside that immortal feeling of love and sympathetic attraction whose seeds are planted in the fifth, whose plants blossom luxuriantly in and around the fourth, but whose roots have to penetrate deep into the sixth principle, if it would survive the lower groups. (And now I propose to kill two birds with one stone — to answer your and Mr. Hume's questions at the same time) — remember, both, that we create ourselves our devachan as our avitchi while yet on earth, and mostly during the latter days and even moments of our intellectual, sentient lives. That feeling which is the strongest in us at that supreme hour; when, as in a dream, the events of a long life, to their minutest details, are marshalled in the greatest order in a few seconds in our vision,171 — that feeling will become the fashioner of our bliss or woe, the life principle of our future existence. In the latter we have no substantial being, but only a present and momentary existence — whose duration has no bearing upon, as no effect, or relation to its being — which as every other effect of a transitory cause will be as fleeting, and in its turn will vanish and cease to be. The real full remembrance of our lives will come but at the end of the minor cycle — not before. In Kama Loka those who retain their remembrance will not enjoy it at the supreme hour of recollection. Those who know they are dead in their physical body can only be either adepts or — sorcerers; and these two are the exceptions to the general rule. Both having been "co-workers with nature," the former for good, the latter — for bad, in her work of creation and in that of destruction, they are the only ones who may be called immortal — in the Kabalistic and the esoteric sense of course. Complete or true immortality, — which means an unlimited sentient existence, can have no breaks and stoppages, no arrest of Self-consciousness. And even the shells of those good men whose page will not be found missing in the great Book of Lives at the threshold of the Great Nirvana, even they will regain their remembrance and an appearance of Self-consciousness, only after the sixth and seventh principles with the essence of the 5th (the latter having to furnish the material for even that partial recollection of personality which is necessary for the object in Devachan) — have gone to their gestation period, not before. Even in the case of suicides and those who have perished by violent death, even in their case, consciousness requires a certain time to establish its new centre of gravity, and evolve, as Sir W. Hamilton would have it — its "perception proper", henceforth to remain distinct from "sensation proper." Thus, when man dies, his "Soul" (fifth prin.) becomes unconscious and loses all remembrance of things internal as well as external. Whether his stay in Kama Loka has to last but a few moments, hours, days, weeks, months or years; whether he died a natural or a violent death; whether it occurred in his young or old age, and, whether the Ego was good, bad or indifferent, — his consciousness leaves him as suddenly as the flame leaves the wick, when blown out. When life has retired from the last particle in the brain matter, his perceptive faculties become extinct forever, his spiritual powers of cogitation and volition — (all those faculties in short, which are neither inherent in, nor acquirable by organic matter) — for the time being. His Mayavi rupa may be often thrown into objectivity, as in the cases of apparitions after death; but, unless it is projected with the knowledge of172 (whether latent or potential), or, owing to the intensity of the desire to see or appear to someone, shooting through the dying brain, the apparition will be simply — automatical; it will not be due to any sympathetic attraction, or to any act of volition, and no more than the reflection of a person passing unconsciously near a mirror is due to the desire of the latter.