The Desire World
Purgatory: If the dying man could leave all his desires behind, the desire body would very quickly fall away from him, leaving him free to proceed into the heaven world, but that is not generally the case. Most people, especially if they die in the prime of life, have many ties and much interest in life on Earth. They have not altered their desires because they have lost their physical bodies. In fact, often their desires are augmented by a very intense longing to return. This acts in such a manner as to bind them to the Desire World in a very unpleasant way, although unfortunately, they do not realize it. On the other hand, old and decrepit persons and those who are weakened by long illness and are tired of life, pass on very quickly.
The matter may be illustrated by the ease with which the seed falls out of the ripe fruit, no particle of the flesh clinging to it, while in the unripe fruit the seed clings to the flesh with the greatest tenacity. Thus it is especially hard for people to die who are taken out of their bodies by
"accident" while at the height of their physical health and strength, engaged in numerous ways in the activities of physical life; held by the ties of wife, family, relatives, friends, pursuits of business and pleasure.
As long as the man entertains the desires connected with Earth life he must stay in his desire body, and as the progress of the individual requires that he pass on to higher regions, the existence in the Desire World must necessarily become purgative, tending to purify him from his binding desires. How this is done is best seen by taking some radical instances.
The miser who loved his gold in Earth life loves it just as dearly after death; but in the first place he cannot acquire any more, because he has no longer a dense body wherewith to grasp it and worst of all, he cannot even keep what he hoarded during life. He will, perhaps, go and sit by his safe and watch the cherished gold or bonds; but the heirs appear and with, it may be, a stinging jeer as the "stingy old fool" (whom they do not see, but who both sees and hears them), will open his safe, and though he may throw himself over his gold to protect it, they will put their hands through him, neither knowing nor caring that he is there, and will then proceed to spend his hoard, while he suffers in sorrow and impotent rage.
He will suffer keenly, his sufferings all the more terrible on account of being entirely mental, because the dense body dulls even suffering to some extent. In the Desire World, however, these sufferings have full sway and the man suffers until he learns that gold may be a curse. Thus he gradually becomes contented with his lot and at last is freed from his desire body and is ready to go on.
It is possible, of course, to avoid this problem in the after-life by disposing of material possessions while yet incarnate on Earth. If we use judgment, when we see that we have lived our lives to the end of usefulness, we may say: Here are things that I have no more use for, and I know I am getting towards the end; where can I do the most good with them, who will enjoy them most, or whom can I help to establish in business so he can do something for himself?
The same thing is true with regard to the affections; we should hold ourselves in check so that we do not love anybody with an inordinate love — such love as that which makes idols of others and puts them before everything else. If we thus get ourselves free from all earthly ties so we are ready to go, then we cannot be kept earthbound.
The drunkard is another case in point. He is just as fond of intoxicants after death as before. It is not the dense body that craves drink. The dense body is made sick by alcohol and would rather be without it. It vainly protests in different ways, but the desire body of the drunkard craves the drink and forces the dense body to take it, that the desire body may have the sensation of pleasure resulting from the increased vibration. That desire remains after the death of the dense body, but the drunkard has in his desire body neither mouth to drink nor stomach to contain physical liquor. He may and does get into saloons, where he interpolates his body into the bodies of the drinkers to get a little of their vibrations by induction, but that is too weak to give him much satisfaction. He may and also does sometimes get inside a whiskey cask, but that is of no avail either, for there are in the cask no such fumes as are generated in the digestive organs of a tippler. It has no effect upon him and he is like a man in an open boat on the ocean, "Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink;" consequently, he suffers intensely. In time, however, he learns the uselessness of longing for drink, which he cannot obtain. As with so many of our desires in the Earth life, all desires in the Desire World die for want of opportunity to gratify them. When the drunkard has been purged, he is ready, so far as this habit is concerned, to leave this state of "Purgatory" and ascend into the heaven world.
Thus we see that it is not an avenging Deity that makes Purgatory of Hell for us, but our own individual evil habits and acts. According to the intensity of our desires will be the time and suffering entailed in their expurgation. In the cases mentioned it would have been no suffering to the drunkard to lose his worldly possessions. If he had any, he did not cling to them. Neither would it have caused the miser any pain to have been deprived of intoxicants. It is safe to say that he would not have cared if there were not a drop of liquor in the world. But he did care about his gold, and the drunkard cared about his drink, so the unerring law gave to each that which was needed to purge him of his unhallowed desires and evil habits.
This is the law that is symbolized in the scythe of the reaper, Death; the law that says "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." It is the Law of Cause and Effect, which rules all things in the three worlds, in every realm of Nature — physical, moral, and mental. Everywhere it works inexorably, adjusting all things, restoring the equilibrium wherever even the slightest action has brought about a disturbance, as all action must. The result may be manifest immediately or it may be delayed for years or for lives, but sometime, somewhere, just and equal retribution will be made. The student should particularly note that its work is absolutely impersonal. There is in the universe neither reward nor punishment. All is the result of invariable law. This is the Law of Consequence.
In the Desire World it operates in purging man of the baser desires and the correction of the weakness and vices which hinder his progress, by making him suffer in the manner best adapted to that purpose. If he has made others suffer, or has dealt unjustly with them, he will be made to suffer in that identical way. Be it noted, however, that if a person has been subject to vices, or repented and, as far as possible, made right the wrong done, such repentance, reform, and restitution, have purged him of those special vices and evil acts. The equilibrium has been restored and the lesson learned during that embodiment, and therefore will not be a cause of suffering after death.
A word must be said here about the suicide, who tries to get away from life only to find that he is as much alive as ever. His is the most pitiable plight. He is able to watch those whom he has, perhaps, disgraced by his act, and worst of all, he has an unspeakable feeling of being "hollowed out." The part in the ovoid aura where the dense body used to be is empty, and although the desire body has taken the form of the discarded dense body, it feels like an empty shell, because the creative archetype of the body in the Region of Concrete Thought persists as an empty mold, so to speak, as long as the dense body should properly have lived. The archetype — the "model" of each Ego's dense body, around which the body takes shape — is made of mind-stuff and set to vibrating for a previously determined period of time. When a person meets a natural death, even in the prime of life, the activity of the archetype ceases, and the desire body adjusts itself so as to occupy the whole of the form. In the case of the suicide, however, that awful feeling of "emptiness" remains until the time comes when, in the natural course of events, his death would have occurred. The impression of this particularly unpleasant experience remains with the Ego, and is instrumental in preventing him from falling prey to the temptation of suicide in future lives.
In the Desire World life is lived about three times as rapidly as in the Physical World. A man who has lived to be fifty years of age in the Physical World would live through the same life events in the Desire World in about sixteen years. This is, of course, only a general gauge. There are persons who remain in the Desire World much longer than their term of physical life. Others again, who have led lives with few gross desires, pass through in a much shorter period, but the measure given above is very nearly correct for the average man of the present day.
It will be remembered that as the man leaves the dense body at death, his past life passes before him in pictures; but at that time he has no feeling concerning them.
During his life in the Desire World also these life pictures roll backward, as before; but now the man has all the feeling it is possible for him to have as, one by one, the scenes pass before him. Every incident in his past life is now lived over again. When he comes to a point where he has injured someone, he himself feels the pain as the injured person felt it. He lives through all the sorrow and suffering he has caused to others and learns just how painful is the hurt and how hard to bear is the sorrow he has caused. In addition there is the fact already mentioned before that the suffering is much keener because he has no dense body to dull the pain. Perhaps that is why the speed of life there is tripled — that the suffering may lose in duration what it gains in sharpness. Nature's measures are wonderfully just and true.
Nature, which is God in manifestation, always aims at the conservation of energy, attaining the greatest results with the least expenditure of force and the least waste of energy. If we study the effect of change in the Physical World, we shall learn something of its consequence in the realm above us. A person who is here suffering acutely for a short time usually feels pain very intensely; whereas those who suffer for years in succession, though the pain which is inflicted upon them may be as severe, do not seem to feel the suffering in the same measure. They have, as it were, grown used thereto, and their frame has in a certain sense become emaciated and adjusted to pain; hence suffering is not felt as keenly as by the person in the first case.
It is similar in the purgatorial existence. When a person has been very hard and harsh in life, when he has thought nothing of the feelings of others, when he has inflicted severe pain here, there, and everywhere on whatever occasion offered, we shall find that his suffering in Purgatory will be very severe, intensified of course by the fact that the purgatorial experience is shorter than the life lived upon Earth; but the pain is intensified in proportion. Now, therefore, it is evident that if his experience were continuous, if the pain engendered by one act were followed immediately by the next, much of the effect of the suffering would be lost upon the Spirit because it would not feel its full intensity. Therefore, the experiences, as it were, come to him in waves so that there is a period of respite after each period of suffering in order that the full intensity of the next may be felt.
The motive in this is for a greater good, for Nature, or God, never seeks to revenge or avenge any wrong, but only to teach those who permit themselves to do wrong not to repeat the act by giving the wrong doer exactly pain for pain. The tendency in a future life is to cause him to respect the feelings of others and so be merciful to all the world. Thus the very highest intensity in pain is necessary for the conservation of energy, and to make him good and pure sooner than would be the case if the pain were continuous and the suffering correspondingly lessened.
Another characteristic peculiar to this phase of post-mortem existence is intimately connected with the fact that distance is almost annihilated in the Desire World. When a man dies, he at once seems to swell out in his vital body; he appears to himself to grow into immense proportions. This feeling is due to the fact, not that the body really grows, but that the perceptive faculties receive so many impressions from various sources, all seeming to be close at hand. The same is true of the desire body. The man seems to be present with all the people with whom on Earth he had relations of a nature which require correction. If he has injured one man in San Francisco and another in New York, he will feel as if part of him were in each place. This gives him a peculiar feeling of being cut to pieces.
The student will now understand the importance of the panorama of the past life during the purgative existence where this panorama is realized in definite feelings. If it lasted long and the man was undisturbed, the full, deep, clear impression etched into the desire body would make life in the Desire World more vivid and conscious and the purgation more thorough than if, because of distress at the loud outbursts of grief on the part of his relatives, at the death bed and during the three-day period previously mentioned, the man had only a vague impression of his past life. The Spirit which has etched a deep, clear record into its desire body will realize the mistakes of the past life so much more clearly and definitely than if the pictures were blurred on account of the individual's attention being riveted by the suffering and grief around him. His feeling concerning the things which cause his present suffering in the Desire World will be much more definite if they are drawn from a distinct panoramic impression than if the duration of the process were short.
This sharp, clear-cut feeling is of immense value in future lives. It stamps upon the seed-atom of the desire body an ineffaceable impression of itself. The experiences will be forgotten in succeeding lives, but the feeling remains. When opportunities occur to repeat the error in later lives, this feeling will speak to us clearly and unmistakably. It is the "still, small voice" which warns us, though we do not know why; but the clearer and more definite the panoramas of past lives have been, the oftener, and clearer shall we hear this voice. Thus we see how important it is that we leave the passing Spirit in absolute quietness after death. By so doing we help it to reap the greatest possible benefit from the life just ended and to avoid perpetuating the same mistakes in future lives, while our selfish, hysterical lamentations may deprive it of much of the value of the life it has just concluded.
The mission of Purgatory is to eradicate the injurious habits by making their gratification impossible. The individual suffers exactly as he has made others suffer through his dishonesty, cruelty, intolerance, or what not. Because of this suffering he learns to act kindly, honestly, and with forbearance toward others in the future. Thus, in consequence of this beneficent state, man learns virtue and right action. When he is reborn he is free from evil habits, at least every evil act committed is one of free will. The tendencies to repeat the evil of past lives remains, for we must learn to do right consciously and of our own will. Upon occasion these tendencies tempt us, thereby affording us an opportunity of ranging ourselves on the side of mercy and virtue as against vice and cruelty. But to indicate right action and to help us resist the snares and wiles of temptation, we have the feeling resulting from the expurgation of evil habits and the expiation of wrong acts of past lives. If we heed that feeling and abstain from the particular evil involved, the temptation will cease. We have freed ourselves from it for all times. If we yield we shall experience keener suffering than before until at last we have learned to live by the Golden Rule, because the way of the transgressor is hard. Even then we have not reached the ultimate. To do good to others because we want them to do good to us is essentially selfish. In time we must learn to do good regardless of how we are treated by others; as Christ Jesus said, we must love even our enemies.
There is an inestimable benefit in knowing about the method and object of this purgation, because we are thus enabled to forestall it by living our Purgatory here and now day by day, thus advancing much faster than would otherwise be possible. The exercise of Retrospection is given in the latter part of The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, the object of which is purification as an aid to the development of spiritual sight. It consists of thinking over the happening of the day after retiring at night. We review each incident of the day, in reverse order, taking particular note of the day, in reverse order, taking particular note of the moral aspect, considering whether we acted rightly or wrongly in each particular case regarding actions, mental attitude, and habits. By thus judging ourselves day by day, endeavoring to correct mistakes and wrong actions, we shall materially shorten or perhaps even eliminate the necessity for Purgatory and be able to pass to the First Heaven directly after death. If in this manner we consciously overcome our weaknesses, we also make a very material advance in the school of evolution. Even if we fail to correct our actions, we derive an immense benefit from judging ourselves, thereby generating aspirations toward good, which in time will surely bear fruit in right action.
In reviewing the day's happenings and blaming ourselves for wrong, we should not forget to approve impersonally of the good we have done and determine to do still better. In this way we enhance the good by approval as much as we abjure the evil by blame.
Repentance is also a powerful factor in shortening the purgatorial existence, for Nature never wastes effort in useless processes. When we realize the wrong of certain habits or acts in our past life, and determine to eradicate the habit and to redress the wrong committed, we are expunging the pictures of them from the sub-conscious memory and they will not be there to judge us after death. Even though we are not able to make restitution for a wrong, the sincerity of our regret will suffice. Nature does not aim to "get even," or to take revenge. Recompense to our victim may be given in other ways.
Much progress ordinarily reserved for future lives will be made by the man who thus takes time by the forelock, judging himself and eradicating vice by reforming his character. This practice is earnestly recommended.
Egos dwelling in the Desire World find it possible to mold desire-stuff by thought, in any manner desired. For instance, they can form whatever articles of clothing they might wish. They usually think of themselves as being dressed in the conventional garb of the country in which they lived prior to their passing into the Desire World, and therefore they appear so clothed without any particular effort of thought. But when they desire to obtain something new or an unusual article of clothing, naturally they have to use their will power to bring that thing into existence; and such an article of clothing will last as long as the person thinks of himself as being clad in that apparel.
This amenability of desire-stuff to the molding power of thought is alo used in other directions. Generally speaking, when a person leaves the present world in consequence of an accident, he thinks of himself as being disfigured by that accident in a certain manner, perhaps minus a leg or arm or with a hole in the head. This does not inconvenience him at all; he can move about
there just as easily without arms or legs as with them, but it shows the tendency of thought to shape the desire body. At the beginning of World War I, when great numbers of soldiers passed over into the Desire World with lesions of the most horrible nature, the Elder Brothers of the Rosicrucian Order and their pupils taught these men that by merely holding the thought that they were sound of limb and body, they would at once be healed of their disfiguring wounds. This they immediately did. Now all newcomers, when they are able to understand matters over there, are at once healed of their wounds and amputations in this manner, so that to look at them nobody would think they has passed over in consequence of an accident in the Physical World.
Another evidence of the readiness with which desire-stuff is molded by thought is where many people on Earth think along similar lines. In such cases their thoughts mass themselves and form one grand whole.
Thus, in the lower regions of the Desire World, the thoughts of people who believe in a fiery, furnace-like Hell make of the desire-stuff there such a place of torture. There we may see devils with horns, hoofs, and tails, prodding the unhappy sinners with pitchforks, and often when people pass out at death, after having lived in that belief, they are in a sad state of fear on beholding this place which they have helped to create. There is also in the higher regions of the Desire World a New Jerusalem with pearly gates, with a sea of glass and its great white throne upon which is seated a thought-form of God, created by these people and appearing like an old man. This is a permanent feature of the Desire World, and will remain so as long as people continue to think of the New Jerusalem in that way. These forms have no life apart from the sustained thoughts of mankind, and in time when humanity has outgrown that faith, the city created by their thoughts will cease to exist.
The Borderland: Purgatory occupies the three lower Regions of the Desire World. The First Heaven is in the three upper Regions. The central Region is a sort of borderland — neither heaven nor hell. In this Region we find people who are honest and upright; who wronged no one, but were deeply immersed in business and thought nothing of the higher life. For them the Desire World is a state of indescribable monotony. There is no "business" in that world, not is there, for a man of that kind, anything that will take its place. he has a very hard time until he learns to think of higher things than ledgers and drafts. The men who thought of the problem of life and came to the conclusion that "death ends it all," who denied the existence of things outside the material sense world — these men also feel this dreadful monotony. They had expected annihilation of consciousness, but instead of that they find themselves with an augmented perception of persons and things about them. They had been accustomed to denying these things so vehemently that they often fancy the Desire World an hallucination, and may frequently be heard exclaiming in the deepest despair, "When will it end? When will it end?"
Such people are really in a pitiable state. They are generally beyond the reach of any help whatever and suffer much longer than almost anyone else. Besides, they have scarcely any life in the heaven world, where the building of bodies for future use is taught, so they put all their crystallizing thoughts into whatsoever body they build for a future life. Thus a body is built that has the hardening tendencies we see, for instance, in consumption. Sometimes the suffering incident to such decrepit bodies will turn the thoughts of the entities ensouling them to God, and their evolution can proceed; but in the materialistic mind lies the greatest danger of losing touch with the Spirit and becoming an outcast.
The First Heaven: When the purgatorial existence is over, the purified Spirit rises into the First Heaven, which is located in the three highest Regions of the Desire World, where the results of its sufferings are incorporated in the seed-atom of the desire body, thus imparting to it the quality of right feeling, which acts as an impulse to good and a deterrent from evil in the future. Here the panorama of the past unrolls itself backward, but this time it is the good acts of life that are the basis of feeling. When we come to scenes where we helped others, we realize anew all the joy of helping which was ours at the time, and in addition we feel all the gratitude poured out to us by the recipient of our help. When we come to scenes where we were helped by others, we again feel all the gratitude that we then felt toward our benefactor. Thus we see the importance of appreciating the favors shown us by others, because gratitude makes for soul growth. Our happiness in heaven depends upon the joy we gave others, and the valuation we placed upon what others did for us.
It should be ever borne in mind that the power of giving is not vested chiefly in the monied man. Indiscriminate giving of money may even be an evil. It is well to give money for a purpose we are convinced is good, but service is a thousandfold better. A kind look, expressions of confidence, a sympathetic and loving helpfulness — these can be given by all regardless of wealth. Moreover, we should particularly endeavor to help the needy one to help himself, whether physically, financially, morally, or mentally, and not cause him to become dependent upon us or others.
The First Heaven is a place of joy without a single drop of bitterness. The Spirit is beyond the influence of the material, earthly conditions, and assimilates all the good contained in the past life as it lives it over again. Here all ennobling pursuits to which the man aspired are realized in fullest measure. It is a place of rest, and the harder has been the life, the more keenly will the rest be enjoyed. Sickness, sorrow, and pain are unknown quantities. This is the Summerland of the Spiritualists. There the thoughts of the devout Christian have built the New Jerusalem. Beautiful houses, flowers, etc., are the portion of those who aspired to them; they build them themselves by thought from the subtle desire-stuff. Nevertheless, these things are just as real and tangible to them as our material homes are to us. All gain here the satisfaction which Earth life lacked for them.
This heaven is also a place of progression for all who have been studious, artistic, or altruistic. The student and the philosopher have instant access to all the libraries of the world. The painter has endless delight in the ever-changing color combinations. He soon learns that his thought blends and shapes these colors at will. His creations glow and scintillate with a life impossible of attainment to one who works with the dull pigments of Earth. He is, as it were, painting with living, flowing materials and able to execute his designs with a facility which fills his soul with delight.
The poet finds a wonderful inspiration in the pictures and colors which are the chief characteristics of the Desire World. Thence he will draw the materials for use in his next incarnation. In like manner does the author accumulate material and faculty. The philanthropist works out his altruistic plans for the upliftment of man. If he failed in one life, he will see the
reason for it in the First Heaven and will there learn how to overcome the obstacles and avoid the errors that made his plan impracticable.
Our life in the First Heaven is always blessed and filled by the presence of those we love, whether relatives or friends. Those who love each other and are, therefore, in a sense, necessary to each other's happiness, are united in a bond of closest friendship during the stay in the First Heaven if they pass out at or near the same time. If one remains in the body for a number of years after the other has passed over, the one who is in the heaven world will, with his or her loving thought, create an image of the other and endow it with life; for we must remember that the Desire World is so constituted that we are able to give bodily shape to whatever we think of. Thus, although this image will only be ensouled by his thought and the thoughts of the other person still living in the physical region, it embodies all the conditions that are necessary to fill the cup of happiness of this inhabitant of the heaven world.
Similarly, when the second person passes on, if the first person is no longer in the First heaven but has progressed on into the Second, the disintegrating desire body in which he or she lived will remain in the First Heaven and seem perfectly real to the second person until his or her life in this realm is ended. It must not be thought that this image is pure illusion, for it is ensouled by the love and friendship sent out by the absent one toward the person of whose heaven they are a part.
Then, when they both pass into the Second and Third Heavens, forgetfulness of the past comes over them, and they may part for one or more lives without loss. But some time, somewhere, they will meet again, and the dynamic force which they have generated in the past by their yearnings for each other will unvaryingly draw them together so that their love may reach its legitimate consummation.
Children in the First Heaven lead a particularly beautiful life. If we could but see them we would quickly cease our grief. When a child dies before the birth of the desire body, which takes place about the fourteenth year, it does not go any higher than the First Heaven, because it is not responsible for its actions, any more than the unborn child is responsible for the pain it causes the mother by turning and twisting in her womb. Therefore the child has no purgatorial existence. That which is not quickened cannot die, hence the desire body of a child, together with the mind, will persist until a new birth, and for that reason such children are very apt to remember their previous life.
For such children the First Heaven is a waiting-place where they dwell from one to twenty years, until an opportunity for a new birth is offered. Yet it is more than simply a waiting-place, because there is much progress made during this interim.
When a child dies there is always some relative waiting for it, or, failing that, there are people who loved to "mother" children in Earth life who find delight in taking care of a little waif. The extreme plasticity of the desire stuff makes it easy to form the most exquisite living toys for the children, and their life is one beautiful play; nevertheless, their instruction is not neglected. They are formed into classes according to their temperaments, but quite regardless of age. In the Desire World it is easy to give object-lessons concerning the influence of good and evil passions on conduct and happiness. These lessons are indelibly imprinted upon the child's sensitive and emotional desire body, and remain with it after rebirth, so that many a one living a noble life owes much of it to the fact that he was given this training. Often, when a weak Spirit is born, the invisible Leaders who guide our evolution cause it to die in early life that it may have this extra training to fit it for what may perhaps be a hard life. This seems to be the case particularly where the etching on the desire body was weak in consequence of a dying person having been disturbed by the lamentations of his relatives, or because he met death by accident or on the battlefield. He did not, under these circumstances, experience the appropriate intensity of feeling in his post-mortem existence. Therefore, he is caused to be reborn and die in childhood in his next Earth life, so that the loss can be made up. Often the duty of caring for such a child in the heaven life falls to those who are the cause of the anomaly. They are thus afforded a chance to make up for the fault and to learn better. Or perhaps they become the parents of the one they harmed and care for it during the few years that it lives. It does not matter then if they do lament hysterically over its death, because there would be no pictures of any consequence in a child's vital body.
