Occultism recognizes the existence of three worlds, or three planes of existence: the spiritual world, the astral world and the physical world. The representative of the first (spiritual) is spirit, the second (astral) - energy or force, the third (physical) - matter. The second (astral) world serves as a conduit between the first and the third. However, all worlds penetrate each other to a greater or lesser extent.
The astral world is the world through which external energetic influence penetrates into a person. It is inhabited by residents and participants of nightmares and unusual dreams, energy clots - copies of the dead and not yet born, it is they who respond to spiritualistic seances. Psychics of any kind also go to the astral plane.
The astral world is conventionally divided into "higher" and "lower". The lower astral includes what is called unclean by the common people, it is the inhabitants of the lower Astral who can be seen drunk to hell, or having been smoked, madmen often communicate with them. The higher astral is associated with the stellar vault on the surface of the world. If you dream of flying to the stars, this is an unconscious exit to the higher astral plane. The most difficult thing in this matter is to realize that you are asleep, that your physical body remained below, and the astral body, slipping out to freedom, decided to walk through the astral world, communicate with astral inhabitants.
The astral plane should also be understood as one of the parallel worlds.
The human population of the astral plane naturally splits into two groups - the living and the dead, or, more precisely, those who still have a physical body and those who do not.
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People who manifest themselves on the astral plane during physical life can be divided into four classes: $ CUT $
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1. Adepts and their disciples
In the early stages of his development, a student can act in his astral body, like any other, but when introduced to the astral plane under the guidance of a competent teacher, he always has the most complete consciousness there and is able to act quite easily on all its subdivisions. In fact, it is he himself, exactly as his friends on earth knew him, but without a physical body and with additional forces and abilities of this higher state, allowing him, during sleep, to continue even easier and more efficiently that theosophical work that so occupies his thoughts during his waking hours. … Whether on the physical plane he will fully and accurately remember what he did or what he learned on the astral, to a great extent depends on whether he can transfer his consciousness from one state to another without interruption.
A researcher can accidentally meet in the astral world students of occultism from all parts of the world, and in many cases they are the most serious and selfless seekers of truth.
2. Mentally developed people who are not under the guidance of Teachers
Such people may or may not be spiritually developed, since the two forms of development are not necessarily achieved together. When a person is born with psychic powers, this is the result of efforts made by him in the past incarnation - efforts that can be the most noble and unselfish, or, on the contrary, ignorant and even completely unworthy.
Such a person is usually perfectly conscious when out of the body, but lack of proper preparation often leads him to deceive in what he sees. Often he is able to penetrate the different divisions of the astral plane almost as completely as a person belonging to the previous category, but sometimes he is especially attracted to any one division and rarely goes beyond his influence. The memories of such people about what they saw can vary widely according to the degree of their development - from perfect clarity to complete distortion or even oblivion.
3. Ordinary people
People without any mental development. During sleep, they float in their astral bodies, often in a more or less unconscious state.
All cultured people belonging to the highest races of the world now have fully developed astral senses, so if they were awakened enough to explore the realities around them during sleep, they could make observations and learn a lot of them. But in the vast majority of cases, they are not so awakened and spend most of their night in deep and often gloomy thoughts on the topic of the thought that prevailed in their minds while falling asleep. They have astral abilities, but they hardly use them, and although they, of course, do not sleep on the astral plane, they are not at all awakened to it, and therefore they are aware of their surroundings only dimly, if at all.
In the most backward races and individuals, the astral bodies are almost formless and indefinite in outlines, but as a person develops in intellect and spirituality, his floating astral body becomes more clearly outlined and begins to resemble a physical shell closer.
4. Black magicians or their students
This class somewhat corresponds to the first, except that the motives for development are evil, not good, and the acquired forces are used for purely selfish purposes, and not to help humanity. Among its lower ranks, there are people of primitive races who practice horrific rituals, as well as healers of many wild tribes.
DEAD
First of all, the very word “dead” is an absurdly flawed definition, since most creatures so classified are as alive as we are - and often definitely more. So this term should be understood simply as meaning those who are temporarily not attached to the physical body. They can be divided into the following classes:
1. Nirmanakayi
That is, those who deserved the eternal joy of nirvana renounced it in order to devote themselves to work for the benefit of humanity. They are mentioned here for the sake of completeness of the classification, since rarely are such high beings manifested on such a low plane as the astral. When, for any reason connected with their exalted work, they deem it desirable, they will most likely create temporary astral bodies for this purpose.
2. Disciples awaiting incarnation
In theosophical literature it was often stated that when a student reaches a certain stage, with the help of the Teacher, he can avoid the operation of the law of nature, which in ordinary cases, at the end of his astral life, carries a person to the heavenly world. In the normal course of events in this world, he would have fully received the result of the action of all the spiritual forces that, with his highest aspirations, set in motion while on earth.
Since the student is supposedly a man of pure life and lofty thoughts, it is likely that in his case these spiritual forces will be extraordinary, and therefore, if he enters into heavenly life, it will be excessively long. But if, instead of accepting it, he embarks on the path of renunciation, he will be able to use this reserve of strength in a completely different direction - to help humanity. By adopting this course of action, he undoubtedly sacrifices centuries of the greatest bliss, but on the other hand, acquires the extraordinary advantage of continuing without interruption a life of work and progress.
When a disciple who decides to do this dies, he leaves his body, as he often did before, and waits on the astral plane for a suitable reincarnation, which the Teacher can choose for him.
Disciples awaiting incarnation cannot at all be attributed to frequent phenomena of the astral plane, but nevertheless they can sometimes be found. Undoubtedly, with the advancement of the evolution of mankind, and an ever-growing number of those who entered the Path of Holiness, this class will become more numerous.
3. Ordinary people after death
Needless to say, this class is millions of times more numerous than the one we just talked about, and the character and position of its members varies widely. The duration of their life on the astral plane can differ just as widely, since there are those who spend there several days or hours, while others remain at this level for many years and even centuries.
A person who led a good and pure life, whose strongest feelings and aspirations were disinterested and spiritual, will not be attracted to this plan, and therefore little will keep him there. His stay will be brief, and most likely he will have no more than a sleepy semi-consciousness of existence until he plunges into sleep, during which his higher principles will finally be freed from the astral wrapper and enter the life of the heavenly world full of bliss.
The average person, who has not yet freed himself from all lower desires before his death, will need a long period of more or less conscious life on the astral plane in order to allow the forces generated by him to develop and thereby release his “I”.
People who have coarse and bestial desires - drunkards, libertines and the like - remain in the astral world for a period proportional to the strength of their desires, often experiencing terrible suffering from the fact that while their earthly lusts are still strong, as always, they are now impossible to satisfy, except in those cases when they succeed by obsession in capturing someone like them.
The poetic idea of death, which equalizes everyone, is a simple absurdity, born of ignorance, since in fact, in the vast majority of cases, the loss of a physical body does not bring any changes in the character or intelligence of a person, and therefore among those whom we usually call dead there is the same variety in intelligence, as well as among the living.
Popular Western religious teachings about the posthumous adventures of a person have long been so wildly inaccurate that even intelligent people after death are terribly puzzled when consciousness returns to them in the astral world. The conditions in which newcomers find themselves are so radically different from what they were led to expect that it is not uncommon for them to initially refuse to believe that they have passed through the gate of death. In fact, our vaunted belief in the immortality of the soul is of such little practical value that most people regard the very fact that they are still conscious as absolute proof that they are not dead.
The terrible doctrine of eternal punishment is also responsible for a great many of the most pitiful and utterly baseless fears of these newcomers to higher life. In many cases, they spend a long time in acute mental suffering before they can free themselves from the ruinous influence of this heinous blasphemy and realize that the world is ruled not by the whim of some demon rejoicing in human torment, but by a supportive and surprisingly patient law of evolution. Many of those who belong to the class in question do not at all reach a reasonable understanding of this fact of evolution, but float through their intermediate astral existence as aimlessly as they have spent the physical part of their lives. Thus, after death, exactly as before it, only a few understand something in their position and knowhow to best use it.
4. Shadows
When the astral life of a person ends, he goes over to the mental plane. But just as when dying on the physical plane, he leaves behind a physical body, so when dying on the astral plane, he leaves the decaying astral body.
Even in the case of a man whose life was somewhat less perfect, almost the same result can be achieved if the forces of lower desires are allowed to be exhausted without hindrance on the astral plane. But the efforts of most representatives of humanity to get rid of the less lofty impulses of their nature are insignificant and superficial, and therefore they doom themselves not only to a very long stay in the intermediate world, but also to the loss of part of the lower mind.
This disintegrating astral body turns out to be composed of particles of astral matter, from which the lower mind could not get out, remaining its captive - after all, during the transition of a person to the heavenly world, these clinging fragments stuck to a part of his mind, and, as it were, pulled it out.
Thus, a class of entities called "shadows" arises. Note that the shadow is a creature that in no sense is a real individuality, since the latter has already gone into the heavenly world, but nevertheless, this shadow looks outwardly like a person, even has its memory and all the smallest features of character, from - for which it can be easily mistaken for the person himself, as often happens at spiritualistic seances.
The shadow's lifespan varies according to the amount of lower mind that animates it, but its intelligence is constantly decreasing, although it may possess some animal cunning. By its nature, it is very susceptible to all kinds of harmful influences. Therefore, she willingly lends herself to the use of black magicians for the execution of small errands of the lowest kind. Gradually, the matter that it possessed disintegrates and returns to its own plane, without joining any mind, and thus this shadow fades, almost imperceptibly passing into the next class we are considering.
5. Shells
These are already just astral corpses in the last stages of decay, which have been abandoned by the last particles of the mind. They do not possess any consciousness or intelligence and passively float in astral currents, like clouds that can be carried away in any direction by a blowing breeze.
6. Suicides and victims of sudden death
It is clear that a person hastily pulled out of physical life by an accident or suicide while he is still in full health and full of strength, will find himself on the astral plane in conditions significantly different from those that surround the deceased from old age or illness. In the latter case, the grip of earthly desires is more or less weakened, and the coarsest particles are most likely already removed, and therefore the shock will not be so great.
In the case of sudden death or suicide, none of these preparations took place, and it would be appropriate to compare the withdrawal from their physical case with the removal of a bone from an immature fetus.
For victims of sudden death, whose earthly life was pure and noble, the time of their stay there passes in "happy ignorance and complete oblivion, or in a state of calm slumber."
On the other hand, if the earthly life of people was low and rough, sensual and selfish, then they can become terribly evil creatures.
One whose psychic sight is open can often see crowds of these unfortunate creatures around butcher shops, drinking establishments and other places with an even lower reputation - that is, everywhere where one can find gross influences pleasing them, and where they still meet incarnate people similar to them thinking.
It should be noted that representatives of this class, like the shadows, can be called lesser vampires, since whenever an opportunity presents itself, they prolong their existence, drawing vitality from human beings on whom they are able to influence.
7. Vampires and werewolves
It remains to mention two even more disgusting, but fortunately, and more rare opportunities.
Readers of Theosophical literature know that a person can live such a low and selfish life, be so evil and cruel, that his whole lower mind becomes inextricably linked with desires and finally separates from his spiritual source. Some students believe that such cases are quite common, and we can each meet many such "soulless people" on the street, but this is fortunately not true. To reach these heights of evil, which presuppose the complete loss of personality, a person must stifle every glimpse of selflessness or spirituality and have nothing in him that can save him; and remembering how often, even among the worst of the villains, some good sides can be found, we will understand that the abandoned individuals should always constitute an insignificant minority. Yet, no matter how relatively small they are, they exist,and even rarer vampires are moving out of their ranks.
After death, such a lost creature very soon discovers that it cannot remain in the astral world, but must be irresistibly drawn into “its own place” in full consciousness, where it will slowly disintegrate, having gone through an experience that it is better not to describe. However, if death occurred suddenly or was the result of suicide, it can, under certain circumstances, especially if it knows something of black magic, to keep from this terrifying mortal fate through a life hardly less terrifying - the hideous existence of a vampire:
He is kept in a state similar to a trance with the help of a terrible trick - the transfusion of blood drawn from other human beings with the help of a semi-materialized astral body, thus delaying the final fulfillment of his destiny through many murders. Popular "superstition" again quite rightly assumes that the easiest and most effective means in this case is to dig up and burn the body of a vampire, thereby depriving it of its stronghold. When a grave is excavated, the body is usually quite fresh and healthy, and the coffin is often full of blood. In countries where cremation is customary, this type of vampirism is naturally impossible.
Werewolves, while equally disgusting, are the product of a slightly different karma.
When a person is completely cruel and bestial, his astral body under some circumstances can be captured by other astral beings and materialized in the form of some wild animal, usually a wolf. In this state, he will scour the neighborhood, killing other animals and even people, satisfying not only his own thirst for blood, but also those demons that push him to do so.
In this case, as often happens in ordinary materializations, every wound inflicted on an animal will be reproduced on the physical body of a person.
In our age, it is fashionable to scoff at what is called the stupid superstitions of illiterate peasants, but the student of occultism will discover, behind what at first glance seemed just nonsense, the undiscovered or forgotten truths of nature, and so he will learn to be circumspect in denial, just as in acceptance.
Researchers of the astral plane should not be very afraid to meet the unpleasant creatures described in this paragraph, since, as already mentioned, they are now extremely rare, and fortunately, over time, their number will steadily decrease. In any case, the area of such manifestations is limited to the surroundings near their physical bodies, as could be assumed, given their extremely material nature.