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The Soul and its
Journey 1 WHEN a man dies, his soul or psychic being, after a time goes to the
psychic world and takes rest there till the hour comes to take birth again in
another body upon earth. There are then these two periods in the life after
death. First, the passage and next the rest. The passage means the gradual
shedding of all the other sheaths or envelopes that surround the psychic being
and form its earthly frame. With the physical body has to go also the subtle
body, then the vital and finally the mental too. The reason why one does not
remember the past lives is this that one leaves behind the instrument of memory
– the brain mind – with one's death. One does not carryover with the psychic
being the other parts that constitute the terrestrial life. They are dispersed
and dissolved in their respective cosmic spheres. The subtle body gives up its
elements to the subtle physical plane, the vital elements are taken up into the
vital world and the mental elements go into the mental world, – unless the
psychic being is highly developed and has organised around itself as its instrument of
self-expression any of these elements. In that case, as much of the terrestrial
parts – namely, of the subtle body and life and mind – as have come into direct
contact with the psychic and have allowed themselves to be moved and moulded by
its consciousness, will alone persist and share in the immortality of the soul.
Normally, the elements of the human vehicle form a loose and unorganised aggregate massed round the psychic centre.
When the centre withdraws, they too fall off automatically and are scattered
into the universal storehouse of Nature. Only when they have been organised and when
Page – 201 they have attained a definite form and
character expressing something of the psychic nature, can they maintain their
identity, for this identity is part and parcel of the psychic identity. I have said that the memory of past lives is
effaced because of the effacement of the instrument. But there is a higher
memory which is the attribute of the psychic consciousness. The psychic being
is made of light and knowledge: it knows, rather it sees and can survey the
whole curve of its past growth and development. Of course, it may not see or
remember – very often it does not – all the physical details of things and
happenings of an earthly life, the hundred incidents, accidents and
contingencies that are not directly linked to its consciousness. But all things
that have had its touch and have contributed to its growth and development and
have in their turn received its influence – objects, persons, happenings or
movements – f 2 The passage between death and the arrival at
final rest in the psychic world is a most difficult and dangerous ordeal for
the human being. He has left the protection of the body and has not yet found
the refuge in the psychic: he is obsessed and pulled back by his past – the
desires, the hungers, the attractions and repulsions, the plans unfulfilled,
problematic schemes – all haunt him still, things done, things not done crowd
around him and fetter his forward march. Not only his own Karma, but the Karma
of others too pursues him: all persons with whom he has had relation, who think
of him now, pity him, mourn for him, lament his absence, raise so many hurdles
and obstacles in his path, oblige him to turn and look back. Again, there are
forces and personalities in
Page – 202 the intermediate worlds with whom the poor
disembodied creature has now to come in contact, and not unoften he feels like
one unskinned and all his nerves on edge open helplessly to rough and painful
impacts. Indeed,
although it may sound somewhat strange and wonderful, nevertheless it is
literally true that the body is the fortress par excellence for the
individual being: it is not merely an ugly dirty clothing that has to be cast
off so that one may go straight to the enjoyment of the beatitude of Paradise;
on the contrary, it is, as it were, an armour, a steel-frame that protects the
subtle body against the attacks or harsh and cruel touches of other worlds and
their beings. Once outside the body, there is every danger for the individual
to go astray and be hurt, unless he is guided and protected by a guardian
angel, as Dante has had Virgil as his Maestro. We may note here that the
passage of Dante from Hell through
Purgatory to Heaven across their various levels is almost an exact image of
what happens to a soul after death. The highest Heaven where Dante meets
Beatrice may be considered as the psychic world and Beatrice herself the Divine Grace
that bathes, illumines and comforts the
psychic being. If
one has, however, within oneself an ardent and sincere and un flickering flame, one can go through more or less
easily and unscathed; but that is rare. Even when alive, in sleep one goes out
often into other worlds and the foreign and unpleasant contacts and experiences
he has there are recorded in the brain-mind as nightmares: on such occasions
the best way to escape is to rush back into the body, the best place of safety.
Many have this experience of rushing headlong into the body-dropping into the
body, as it were – in order to escape from a threatening danger in sleep and
waking up all on a sudden to find to one's relief that all was illusion and
hallucination. An easy and quick passage to the place of
rest, that is what the being needs and asks for after death. This is determined
by one's Karma in life and the last wish and prayer at the moment of death –
for the force of consciousness at this critical moment acts not only upon the
character of the passage but also upon the character even of the next birth.
Apart from one's own merit, one can be helped by others also who are Page – 203 still upon earth and who claim to be his
friends and relatives and well – wishers not in the way they think they do at
present, that is to say, by grieving and lamenting or even by performing rites
and ceremonies, these often retard rather than accelerate the passage, but by
an inner detachment and calm prayer and goodwill: oftener perhaps to forget the
departed is the best way to help him. A truly conscious help can be given only
by one who has the requisite occult power and spiritual realisation – the Guru,
for example. 3 Once in its place of rest the soul enjoys
profound peace and delight and is in a kind of luminous sleep. There it
assimilates all the experiences of its last life, that is to say, imbibes out
of them all the substance that goes to increase and strengthen its
consciousness, the sap that lends itself to the growth of the build and stature
of the being. These experiences are meant to bring the soul nearer – each life
being one step nearer – to the fullness of its union with the Divine
Consciousness out of which it came originally upon earth as a mere spark, a
parcel yet apart. This process may be short or long according to the nature of
assimilation undertaken. Here also the being prepares for the impending birth,
that is to say, gathers all the elements that will be required for the play of
the consciousness in that life. A broad planning too is made here, a scheme in
outline of the kind of experiences that one will need for the particular growth
of consciousness envisaged. Some forces of consciousness, out of the stock
developed and assembled by the being, are kept back, in reserve, others are
brought forward for immediate use in the life to be lived next. All this,
however, is not the deliberate rational process of the mind, it is something
spontaneous, involved, a luminous brooding and incubation, something like the
trance of Brahman within which the seed of creation is about to germinate. The psychic being is a packet of gathered
power, a charged battery, as it were; when it comes down upon earth, it calls
round itself elements of mind and vital and even subtle physical needed for the
purpose of the particular life experience, and
Page – 204 even those that would go to constitute the physical
body. The psychic being usually picks up these elements of mind and life and
body out of the universal store-house of earth's atmosphere as it needs them,
in the same way as it returns them there on the journey back after death. But
as I have already said, there are beings who have developed well-formed
personalities of mind and life and even of the physical consciousness. These
formations are not mere loose accretions, temporary arrangements for a life
experience, but are welded, organised, given a more or less permanent shape, as the proper instrument of the
psychic being, as its own expression. In such cases, the outer personality too
continues to exist as an essential mode or vibration in and with the psychic
consciousness itself and when the soul descends upon earth, is in contact with
the earth's atmosphere, it projects out of I itself the external personality
and formation. This does not I
mean certainly that the personality remains something fixed and rigid, but that
it has attained an essential fullness of
form and yet retains the capacity for further change and growth through further growth of the psychic being
in other life experiences. Now
the time and occasion for a particular birth of the soul depends naturally on the inner need of that being. But it must be
noted – as it is a fact in the occult world – that the souls are not so many
absolutely separate unrelated autonomous self-sufficient entities, each one
coming and going as and when it chooses and likes: on the contrary, the souls form
groups or families according to some secret affinity. And when they come down,
they do so not unoften in company. A call goes, a bell is rung as it were
intimating that the hour is come and they rush down. And it may even happen
that in rushing down a psychic being is not too careful or fastidious about the
instrument, the vehicle he chooses to inhabit; whatever is handy and nearest
and on the whole suitable to his purpose he takes up and goes forward. He takes
it all as an adventure and has the joy of battle and the warrior spirit that
can taste of victory only when hard fought and won. That is how we meet not
unoften a considerable discrepancy between the inner being of a man and his
earthly tenement, his soul and his external character and physical nature.
There is a
Page – 205 meaning in the choice, a significance in the
utilisation of unfavourable conditions: there is a method in the madness. This grouping will appear natural and
inevitable when we bear in mind the purpose of creation and the role of the
psychic consciousness. For it is not a matter of individual salvation, of the
unilateral growth and development and fulfilment of an individual psychic
being. The soul is a luminous point in an inconscient universe and its role is
to make it conscious, at least a representative portion of it. The psychic
being's activity is the means of a new creation, the trans-mutation of the
earth-consciousness, the growth and advent of a divine race, the manifestation
and embodiment of the Divine and his play upon earth. The souls are the
warriors, playmates, the beloved of the Lord. They have to assemble and move
together for the interest of the play. They have to be in companies and
regiments and battalions, in associations and concert and harmonised formations. 4 The souls group themselves into natural types
according to the fundamental mode of consciousness and its dynamism. And they
form a hierarchy: they exist and function in an organisation, the type and
pattern of which is the pyramid. At the apex is the One Supreme, at the base
the infinity of individual and disparate souls, earthly sparks, that are
emanations, derivations, scattered condensations, parts and parcels of that One
Supreme. In between, from
the top towards. the bottom, lie in a graded scale formations more and more
specialised, particularised and concretised: as we rise we meet the larger, vaster more comprehensive forms of the
same entities till we arrive at the typal and original, the source being. Thus
we can view a soul along its line of emanation from the central source as a
series of beings, the higher enclosing and encompassing the lower. Not only so,
a higher entity can have several lower emanations and each of these again can
emanate several others. The number of emanations multiply as one goes down and
they decrease as one goes up. We can understand now what is meant when we speak
of Page – 206 kindred souls. When there is an inexplicable
natural affinity or similarity between two souls, it happens in such a case
that the souls are emanations of the same Over-Soul. And it happens also
sometimes that the guardian angel or daemon whom one may contact is none other
than one's own Over-Soul. The term Over-Soul takes thus a literal and a
profound significance. We may illustrate here a little. At the apex
of the pyramid of existence is the Divine, the Supreme Person, the
Purushottama. Even there as He begins to lean and look dawn, He expresses
himself at the very outset as the dual personality of Ishwara and Shakti (the
Divine Father and the Divine Mother) – sa dvitiyam aicchat, as the
Upanishad says. That is still the Divine in His highest transcendent status, paratpara.
Next, this dual or biune or divalent reality shows itself or throws itself
further out in a fourfold valency of the dynamic truth consciousness, creating
and leading the cosmic evolution. The Four Aspects of Ishwara, forming the male
or purusa line, are the great names: Mahavira, Balarama, Pradyumna
and Aniruddha. And the corresponding four aspects of Ishwari form the other
great quaternary: Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati. They
embody the four major attributes of the Divine in his relation to the created
universe: Knowledge, Power, Love and skill in work. They also represent thus a
divine fourfold order. The first embodies the Brahmin quality of large wisdom,
wide comprehension, a vast consciousness; the second has the Kshatriya quality
of force, dynamism, concentration and drive of energy; the third possesses the
Vaishya quality of harmony, beauty, mutuality and the fourth has the Shudra
quality of perfect execution, thoroughness in detailed working, order and
arrangement. The higher Gods, like those, for example, envisaged in the Veda, may be considered each as an emanation of one or other of these Divine Aspects. They are dwellers of Swar or the Overmind. Varuna seems to be an emanation of Mahavira, a son of Maheshwari: for he is pre-eminently the god of the pure and vast consciousness who releases us from the triple bonds and shows us the winding way into the embrace of the infinite Mother. His associate, Mitra, is the lord of love and harmony, evidently an emanation of Pradyumna (or Mahalakshmi).
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Other gods of the same category are Bhaga and Soma. The Balarama or Mahakali aspect is manifested in Aryaman: Rudra
being another form of the same. And Mahasaraswati (or Aniruddha) must have
given birth to and inspired the Ribhus, who are artisans of divinity. The
Puranic trinity – Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva – with lndra as the fourth member
forms a parallel system embodying a similar conception. Another tradition gives the Four Supernals as (1) Light or Consciousness, (2) Truth or
Knowledge, (3) Life and (4) Love. The tradition also says that the beings
representing these four fundamental principles of creation were the first and
earliest gods that emanated from the Supreme Divine, and that as they separated
themselves from their source and from each other, each followed his own
independent line of fulfilment, they lost their divinity and turned into their
opposites – Light became obscurity, Consciousness unconsciousness or the
inconscient, Truth became falsehood and Knowledge ignorance, Life became death
and finally Love and Delight became suffering and hatred. These are the fallen
angels, the Asuras that deny their divine essence and now rule the world. They
have possessed mankind and are controlling earthly existence. They too have
their emanations, forces and beings that are born out of them and serve them in
their various degrees of power. Men talk and act inspired and impelled by these
beings and when they do so, they lose their humanity and become worse than
animals. But still the Pure Reality descends
undeviated in its own line and man enshrines that within him, the undying fire
that will clean him and bear him to the source from where he came. And there
are luminous godheads that help him and wish themselves to participate in the
terrestrial transformation. There is a pressure from above and there is an urge
from below, between these two infinities all is ground and moulded and changed.
Even the Lords of Denial will in the end change and learn to affirm, become
again what they truly were and are.
Page – 208 5 First then there are the supreme divinities, aspects or own personalities of the Divine in his supreme status, the Super-mind; next come the first emanations, the true or pure gods in the Overmind. Thence or simultaneously there is the line of deformation, that of the false gods and godheads, the Asuras and Titans. These too extend in a series of emanations down to the subtle physical; except when they themselves incarnate on the earth in an earthly body. Man,
the soul, we said, comes direct from
the Divine and is thrown and almost stuck into the earth as a spark, as a point
of luminous consciousness-force. This soul, as it develops, we find, belongs to
one or other of the fundamental type of divine personality, it is a lineal
descendant, as it were, of one of the quaternary and its growth means growing
into the nature of that particular godhead and its fulfilment means. identification with that. We may try to illustrate by examples,
although it is a rather" dangerous game and may tend to put into a too
rigid and' mathematical formula something that is living and variable. Still it
will serve to give a clearer picture of
the matter. Napoleon. evidently was a child of Mahakali; and Caesar
seems to have been fashioned largely by the principle of. Maheshwari; while
Christ or Chaitanya are clearly emanations in the line of Mahalakshmi.
Constructive geniuses, on the other hand, like the great statesman
Colbert, for example, or Louis XIV, Ie grand monarque, himself belong to
a family (or gotra, as we' say in India) that originated from
Mahasaraswati. Poets and artists again, although generally they belong to the
clan of Mahalakshmi, can be regrouped according to the principle that
predominates in each, the godhead that presides over the inspiration in each.
The large breath in Homer and Valmiki, the high and noble style of their
movement, the dignity and vastness that compose their consciousness affiliate them naturally to the Maheshwari line. A
Dante, on the other hand, or a Byron has something in his matter and manner
that make us think of the stamp of Mahakali. Virgil or Petrarch, Shelley or our
Tagore seem to be emanations of Beauty, Harmony, Love – Mahalakshmi. And the
perfect artisanship
Page – 209 of Mahasaraswati has found its especial
embodiment in Horace and Racine and our Kalidasa. Michael Angelo in his fury of
inspirations seems to have been impelled by Mahakali, while Mahalakshmi sheds
her genial favour upon Raphael and Titian; and the meticulous care and the
detailed surety in a Tintoretto makes us think of Mahasaraswati's grace.
Mahasaraswati too seems to have especially favoured Leonardo da Vinci, although a brooding
presence of Maheshwari also seems to be intermixed there. For it must be remembered that the human soul
after all is not a simple and unilateral being, it is a little cosmos in itself.
The soul is not merely a point or a single ray of light come down straight from
its divine archetype or from the Divine himself, it is also a developing fire
that increases and enriches itself through the multiple experiences of an
evolutionary progression – it not only grows in height but extends in wideness
also. Even though it may originally emanate from one principle and Personality,
it takes in for its development and fulfilment
influences and elements from the others also. Indeed, we know that the Four primal
personalities of the Divine are not separate and distinct as they may appear to
the human mind which cannot understand distinction without disparity. The Vedic
gods themselves are so linked together, so interpenetrate one another that
finally it is asserted that there is only one existence, only it is given many
names. All the divine personalities are aspects of the Divine blended and fused
together. Even so the human soul, being a replica of the Divine, cannot but be
a complex of many personalities and often it may be difficult and even harmful
to find and fix upon a dominant personality. The full flowering of the human
soul, its perfect divinisation demands the realisation of a many-aspected personality, the very richness of the Divine
within it.
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