Question: If a person has lost his memory through nervous shock or fever,
does that affect his vital body and prevent him from getting the record of his
life in the three days immediately following death? (Vol. I, #54)
Answer: No. Memory is of three kinds: There is, in the first place, the
record which is made by our senses. We look about us in the world, we see and
hear things, these impressions are engraven upon the cells of our brain and we
are able to consciously call them back — yet not always, but in varying degree,
for this memory is extremely unreliable and capricious, and were this the only
method of gaining a record of our lives the law of cause and effect would be
invalidated — our after life would not be a sequence of what we have done or
left undone in the past.
There must be another memory, and this is what scientists have called the
subconscious mind. Just as ether carries to the camera of the photographer a
record of the surrounding landscape and imprints it upon the sensitive plate
to the minutest detail, regardless of whether the photographer observed these
details or not, so also does the same ether which carries a picture to our eye
and imprints it upon the retina carry into our lungs a similar picture which
then is absorbed by the blood, and as the blood passes through the heart this
record is indelibly inscribed upon the sensitive seed atom which is located in
the left ventricle of the heart near the apex. The forces of that seed atom
are taken out by the spirit at death and contain the record of the whole life
to the minutest detail, so that, regardless of whether we have observed the
facts in a certain scene or not, they are, nevertheless, there.
George du Maurier has written a story called "Peter Ibbetson," wherein
this theory of the subconscious memory is very clearly shown. Peter Ibbetson,
a prisoner in an English penitentiary, learned how to "dream true," that is to
say, by putting his body in a certain position he learned how to lock the
currents of ether whithin himself so that at night he was able at will to keep
in touch with any scene in his past life that he desired to; there he would
see himself as a spectator (grown man that he was), and he would also see
himself among his parents and playmates and in the environment as he was at
the time that scene was enacted. He would see the whole scene with many more
details than he had been able to observe at the time when the events took
place in this material world. That was because, under these circumstances, he
could get in touch with his own subconscious memory. He would have been unable
to gain any information concerning the future, but the past had been inscribed
upon the tablet of his heart and was, therefore, accessible under the proper
conditions. It is from this subconscious memory that the record of life is
taken after death, and as that is dependent upon the breath alone, it
continues regardless of all other circumstances while life is in the body, and
though a man may lose his conscious memory and become unable to recall past
events at will,the subconscious memory contains them all and will give them up
at the proper time.
The Consequences of Suicide
Question: Does the person who commits suicide stay longer in Purgatory than the people who die naturally? (Vol I, #58)
Answer: When the Ego is coming down to rebirth it descends through the
Second Heaven. There it is helped by the Creative Hierarchies to build the
archetype for its coming body, and it instills into that archetype a life that
will last for a certain number of years. These archetypes are hollow spaces
and they have a singing, vibratory motion which draws the material of the
Physical World into them and sets all the atoms in the body to vibrating in
tune with a little atom that is in the heart, called the seed atom, which,
like a tuning fork, gives the pitch to all the rest of the material in the
body. At the time when the full life has been lived on the Earth the
vibrations in the archetype cease, the seed atom is withdrawn, the dense body
goes to decay and the desire body, wherein the Ego functions in Purgatory and
the First Heaven, takes upon itself the shape of the physical body. Then the
man commences his work of expiating his evil habits and deeds in Purgatory and
assimilating the good of his life in the First Heaven.
The foregoing describes the ordinary conditions when the course of nature
is undisturbed, but the case of the suicide is different. He has taken away
the seed atom, but the hollow archetype still keeps on vibrating. Therefore he
feels as if he were hollowed out and experiences a gnawing feeling inside that
can best be likened to the pangs of intense hunger. Material for the building
of a dense body is all around him, but seeing that he lacks the gauge of the
seed atom, it is impossible for him to assimilate that matter and build it
into a body. This dreadful hollowed-out feeling lasts as long as his ordinary
life should have lasted. Thus the law of cause and effect teaches him that it
is wrong to play truant from the school of life and that it cannot be done
with impunity. Then in the next life, when difficulties beset his path, he
will remember the sufferings of the past which resulted from suicide and go
through with the experience that makes for his soul growth.
Avoidance of the
Post-Mortem Purgatorial
Experience
Question: Does a good person have to go through Purgatory and be conscious
of all the evil there before he can get into the First, Second and Third
Heaven? And, if so, isn't that an undeserved punishment for him? (Vol. I, #59)
Answer: The inquirer would do well to get away from the idea of punishment.
There is no such thing as punishment. Whatever happens to a man is in
consequence of immutable, invariable laws, and there is no personal God who
gives rewards or punishments as he sees fit, according to an inscrutable will
or any other such method. When the Ego invests itself with bodies, or when it
divests itself of its vehicles, this is done on the very same principle and by
the very same laws that govern, for instance, in the case of a planet. When a
planet is being formed from the central firemist, a crystallization has taken
place at the poles where motion is the slowest. The crystallized matter is
thrown out by centrifugal force and flies into space because it is heavier
than the rest of the fire-mist. For similar reasons, when the body of the
spirit which is densest has become so crystallized and heavy that the spirit
can no longer use it to gain experience the process of disrobement is
accomplished by the centrifugal force which naturally eliminates the dense
body first. That is what we call death. Then the spirit is free for a time,
but the coarsest desire matter which was the embodiment for the lowest
passions and desires must also be thrown off, and it is the forcible ejection
of low desires the causes pain in Purgatory where the centrifugal force of
repulsion is the strongest. If a man has any of that coarse matter in his
desire body, naturally he will have to stay in Purgatory and undergo the
process of purgation before he can enter the First Heaven. There the
centripetal force of attraction whirls all the good in the life inward to the
spiritual center, where it is assimilated as soul power available for the use
of the spirit in its next Earth life as conscience. Thus our stay in Purgatory
depends upon how much of the coarse desire matter there is in the man, and a
good man naturally, would have very little or nothing of that kind. Therefore,
he would have no life to speak of in Purgatory; he would pass directly through
those regions into the Heaven World.
Why We Don't Remember
Previous Lives
Question: Why, with a few exceptions, are we reincarnated, without having
the slightest knowledge of any previous existence, to suffer blindly in this
life for transgressions committed in some former life of which we are now
entirely ignorant? Could we not advance better and quicker spiritually if we
knew where we had erred before and what acts we must correct before we can
progress? (Vol. I, #65)
Answer: It is one of the greatest blessings to man that he does not know
his previous experiences until he has attained considerable spiritual
advancement, because there are in our past lives (when we were much more
ignorant than we are now) dark deeds that call for retribution, and this fate
is being gradually liquidated, so that did we know our past lives, did we know
how and when the law of cause and effect will bring to us retribution for past
misdeeds, we would see this impending calamity hovering over us, and fear of
our fate would then be apt to rob us of the strength wherewith to battle
against it, and at the time of its arrival we should stand appalled and
helpless.
On the other hand, not knowing what is behind us, we escape knowing what
is before us, and, therefore, we learn the lessons without being deprived of
our strength by fear. Besides, for those who wish to know, there are certain
means of knowing what lessons we are to learn and how best to learn them. For
instance, our conscience tells what we are to do or not to do. If we care to
study the science of astrology the horoscope tells us our tendencies and the
lines of least resistance, so that by working with these laws of nature we may
advance quickly, and the more we study the laws of nature as revealed by
astronomy, the quicker we shall by ready for first-hand knowledge.
In "Zanoni," Bulwer Lytton speaks of a fearsome specter which met Glyndon
as he was attempting to enter a step in unfoldment not hitherto attained by
him, and that is called in Occultism the "Dweller on the Threshold." Between
the time of death and a new birth, this Dweller on the Threshold is not seen
by man, but it is the embodiment of all our past evil deeds, that must first
be passed by one who wishes to enter the inner worlds consciously and attain
to a full knowledge of conditions there; but there is also another Dweller
which is the embodiment of all our good deeds, and that one may be said to be
our Guardian Angel.
If we have the courage to pass the hideous one, which is perceived first
because formed of coarse desire matter, we shall soon obtain the conscious
help of the other and then we shall have the strength to stand fearless in the
storms of vilification that come to all who attempt the path of unselfishness.
But before we have passed this specter we are not fitted for knowledge or our
previous lives; we must rest content with the ordinary view given to mankind.
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