All areas of purgatory
The first or lower area of purgatory, the most eerie, we have covered in this article. Let us continue from the second area of purgatory, which could be called the astral double of the physical world, because the astral bodies of all things and many people consist mainly of matter belonging to this particular area of the Astral world, therefore it comes into contact more closely with the physical sphere than all other areas of the Astral plane.
Most of the dead people stay here for some time, maintaining, with some exceptions, full consciousness. This is the part of people whose interests were associated with trivial and petty objects, who laid their souls on trifles, as well as those who were in slavery to their lower nature and passed into another world without extinguishing their aspirations for physical pleasures. Having widely used life in this sense and having built their astral body from materials that easily respond to various sensory stimuli, they are held by these bodies in the neighborhood of what attracted them during their earthly life.
They are both dissatisfied and anxious, filled with more or less severe suffering, depending on the strength of desires that they cannot satisfy; and some go through very intense sufferings and stay in place for a long time until their earthly desires are exhausted. Many extend their stay on the astral plane to a considerable extent, striving to get in touch with the earth, which interests them as before, through the mediation of mediums placing their physical bodies at their disposal. From them, to a greater extent, comes that childish babble, which is well known to people who have attended public sessions of spiritualism. And since these earthbound souls are generally of very low development, their messages are no more interesting (to one who is convinced of the existence of a soul after death) than their conversations during their life on earth.and in absolutely the same way as during earthly life, their self-confidence is proportional to their ignorance, and they take a very limited range of their experience for the entire Astral world. And there, just like here, in the physical world: "They believe that the noise of their town is the dialect of the whole world."
And it is from this area that the dead, with some kind of care in their souls, strive to get in touch with their friends in order to arrange those earthly affairs that do not cease to disturb them. If they fail to appear themselves or convey their desires to a friend in dreams, they often cause a lot of trouble with knocks and other noises, the purpose of which is to attract attention to themselves or to get in touch with people unintentionally caused by their anxious efforts. In such cases, it would be a matter of mercy on the part of a knowledgeable person to get in touch with such a suffering soul, to recognize its desires and thus relieve it of the anxiety that hinders its progress.
While the souls dwell in this area, their attention can very easily be drawn to the earth, even if they did not want to return back, and this disservice is rendered to them when the relatives who remain on earth send them impulses of passionate grief and fiery appeals to return them back. Thought images created by this anguish hover around the freed souls, beat against them and often awaken those who slept peacefully, or rapidly draw their thoughts to the ground, if their conscious posthumous experiences have already begun.
The third and fourth regions of purgatory differ only slightly from the second region and can be called a more refined copy of it, while the fourth region is more ethereal than the third, but the general characteristics of all three divisions are very similar to each other. Souls of a more developed type are also here, and although they are held in purgatory due to the boundaries built by their earthly interests, nevertheless their attention is directed to a greater extent forward, and not backward, and if they are not forcibly drawn to earthly experiences, they are not slow down in their forward movement. Temporarily, they still remain sensitive to earthly vibrations, and a waning interest in earthly affairs can be reawakened by cries of grief rushing towards them.
Most educated and thinking people, who are usually engaged in worldly affairs during their earthly life, are in these areas in full consciousness, and they can be involved in communication with the physical world through mediums, and also seek such communication themselves, although the latter is much less common. … Their messages are of a higher character than the above-mentioned messages coming from the second region of purgatory, but they cannot be more valuable than what people say during their lifetime. Spiritual enlightenment cannot come from purgatory.
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The fifth area of purgatory already has many new traits. It is already clearly luminous and very attractive for those accustomed to dark earthly shades, justifying the name astral, stellar, given by this entire sphere. Here is the materialized sky that plays such a big role in folk religious beliefs around the world. People find here literal satisfaction with their aspirations, unconsciously creating in astral matter by the power of imagination - fed by the ritual side of world religions - those transcendental temples and palaces, which they dreamed of in earthly life. The most material religious ideas find here temporary fulfillment, and the scribes of all beliefs, who were full of an egoistic desire for personal salvation, find here a suitable and very pleasant abode for them, surrounded by precisely those conditions,who were the subject of their beliefs.
In cases where land contact is made, they seek out people of their own faith and country, partly out of natural affinity, but also because there is still a language barrier in Kamaloka, which is reflected in messages received during spiritualism sessions. Souls from this area, as a rule, take a lively part in attempts to establish communication between the physical world and the other world, and the "spirits-leaders" of mediums of medium development are mostly from this area and from immediately following it. Usually they still realize that they have a higher life ahead of them and that sooner or later they will move to worlds, from where communications with the earthly plane will become impossible.
The sixth area of purgatory is similar to the fifth, but it is incomparably more refined, and is inhabited by souls of a higher type, who outlive their astral shells there, with which a large share of their mental energy was closely connected while they were in the physical body. Their detention in this area is due to selfishness, which played a significant role in their artistic or intellectual activity, and due to the fact that they sold their talents to satisfy, in a refined form, their desires.
This region is the most beautiful of all Purgatory; from the luminous material of this region, creative thoughts form wonderful landscapes, rolling oceans, snow-capped mountains and fertile valleys, whole scenes of such magical beauty that no beauty of the earthly world can match. And the narrowly believers are also here, more advanced than the inhabitants of the previous region. Realizing more clearly their own limitations, they more correctly look forward to their transition to a higher state.
The seventh, higher, area of purgatory is inhabited almost entirely by mentally developed men and women who were either bright materialists on earth, or so closely linked their consciousness with the paths on which knowledge is attained by one lower mind that they continue their research along the same lines, although and with increased perception ability.
Many scientists live for whole years, sometimes even centuries, according to H. P. Blavatsky, literally among the astral library, studying diligently all the books related to their favorite subject, and are absolutely satisfied with their lot. People who were passionately devoted to intellectual research along certain scientific lines and who had to leave earthly life with an unsatisfied thirst for knowledge continue their research with indefatigable persistence, fettered by their craving for physical methods of cognition.
Often such people retain their skepticism about the higher possibilities that lie before them, and retreat before the prospect of what can be called the second death, that is, before the unconscious state into which the soul falls before the time when it is born for the higher life in heaven.
But for everyone, sooner or later, with the exception of those few who, during their entire life on the physical plane, have never experienced even a fleeting feeling of disinterested love or a glimpse of spiritual striving and did not recognize anything or anyone above themselves - for all the time comes when the connection with the astral body is finally cut off, and the soul is immersed in a short unconsciousness with respect to everything around it, similar to that which occurs after the physical body is thrown off; and then the soul awakens from a feeling of bliss, bright, boundless, immeasurable, unimaginable for the earthly consciousness, the bliss of the heavenly world, to which the human soul belongs in its true essence.
Her passions could be base and selfish, many of her aspirations could be trivial and impure, but if there were flashes of a higher nature in her and rays of light erupted from the higher worlds, for these glimpses of divine nature, the harvest comes, and no matter how insignificant and few they are, and for them comes the appropriate reward.
Thus, a person proceeds to gathering in heaven what was sown by him during his life on the earthly plane, to eating and translating the fruits of this harvest.
The astral corpse, as it is sometimes called, or the "shell" left after a departed person, consists of the remnants of those seven concentric shells, and these remnants are held in conjunction by the preserved magnetism of the soul. Each of the seven shells, or "shells," in turn disintegrates until only scattered particles remain; the latter are attracted by a magnetic pull to the remaining "shells", and when, one after the other, they all disintegrate up to the seventh or the inner one, then the person himself is freed, leaving behind empty remnants.
The latter wander indefinitely in the Astral world, automatically and weakly repeating the usual vibrations, and, as the magnetism preserved in them gradually dissipates, they come to a greater and greater degree of decomposition, until they finally disintegrate completely, returning their materials to the common reservoir of astral matter is exactly the same as it happens with the physical body, which gives its constituent particles to the physical world.
Such "shells" rush where the astral currents will direct them, and they can be temporarily revived (if they are not very decomposed) by the magnetism of embodied souls and, as it were, returned for a short time to some semblance of activity. They suck in such magnetism, like a sponge that sucks in water, and then take on a deceptive form of vitality, repeating more vigorously the vibrations to which they are accustomed during life.
The latter are evoked by the current of thoughts that are familiar both for the departed soul and for friends and relatives who have remained on earth, and such a lively "shell" is capable of very satisfactorily playing the role of a communicating "spirit", although it repetition of thoughts familiar to a deceased person and an absolute absence of any originality and any kind of knowledge that the deceased did not possess in earthly life.
Annie Besant
