Spheres of the Subtle World
Freed from the etheric body, a person in the astral (subtle) body finds himself in the first sub-plane of the astral plane, in the so-called "Subtle world". The subtle world contains 7 planes or spheres, into each of which the deceased enter in accordance with the degree of their spiritual and intellectual development, as well as in accordance with their dying mood.
The first sphere of the Subtle World is the so-called hell of the Subtle World, or purgatory (in the Bible, purgatory means the state of darkness after death). The state of a criminal and a vicious person in the first sphere of the Subtle World is very painful. Those who are ardent, spiteful and those who lived only by sensual pleasures suffer greatly because it is impossible to satisfy their anger and fleshly passions, because they have no tools for this - a physical body. They literally burn in the fire of their unquenchable desires. This is because in the first sphere after death, all energies are subject to those thoughts and feelings that come from the being itself; man meets here with his true qualities as a result of the fact that the external environment influences him not from the outside, but from within himself.
Thus, the first sphere is a subjective sphere, with the same multitude of states and experiences as there are many individuals and mentalities; a suicide, for example, gets there from the fire into the fire, because the gloomy mood that pushed him to commit suicide still exists and determines his external character.
Those who feel fear before death also find themselves in the first sphere. People who leave the earthly plane in a state of peace of mind almost do not experience the effect of purgatory, while a person (often even a very old man), in fear awaiting his inevitable death, slides straight into those ideas that they themselves have created about life after death. Such people did not understand for themselves that physical death is as inevitable as autumn leaf fall, but it is only an illusion, since it does not interrupt either human life or his consciousness; because earthly life is one link in the final chain of the mechanism of reincarnation (reincarnation).
A child who dies at an early age does not experience the effect of purgatory, because he completely dwells in the spiritual picture world and often even remembers the details of his previous earthly life. At the age of 7 to 14, the child begins to be shaped by the unyielding laws and principles of the physical world. Death at this time is accompanied by some effect of darkness that occurs immediately after death. Between the ages of 14 and 21, consciousness becomes more and more firmly entrenched in the earthly world (with a culmination between the years 21 and 28, when a person becomes firmly attached to him through family, responsibility, property and career), and the effect of purgatory becomes more and more likely.
In the first sphere, a person remains until the time when his religious instinct is automatically turned on with a request for help. Then other souls (souls of relatives, friends, or souls acting as spiritual leaders for those who not so long ago left the earthly plane) begin to intervene directly and help him with moving to other spheres of the Subtle World, which are exclusively the abode of light.
In the Subtle World, a person remains the same who he was before death, but now his external body has become the astral body - the carrier and conductor of desires, feelings, emotions. Having an astral body with its astral sense organs, he can immediately take part in the life of the Subtle World and its inhabitants. He had an astral body before, in earthly life, only there it was invisible - hidden behind the rough shell of the physical body. With the help of this astral body, he could desire, express his feelings - this opportunity remains fully in the Subtle World. Only in the physical world could he hide his feelings, desires, emotions - now on the Subtle plane they became visible, as on the earthly plane the physical body was visible.
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If in the physical world a person, pretending to be, is able to hide his true essence and take a place that does not correspond to his development, then on the Subtle plane this is completely impossible: there everyone finds himself in such a sphere to which he corresponds to his spiritual development. There it is impossible to be a hypocrite and clothe dirty thoughts in a veil of apparent virtue. If even in the physical world people transform their appearance with passions and the face of a corrupted and drunken scoundrel takes on the most repulsive expression, then in the Subtle World the inner character is certainly expressed in an external way. What a person really is, so is his outward appearance: he either shines with beauty, if his soul is noble, or repels with his ugliness, if his nature is dirty.
The spheres of the Subtle World differ from each other in the frequency of vibrations, that is, in the density of the substance, and this is the reason that the beings who live in one sphere are separated from the beings who live in another, and only those who are in the same sphere can communicate between themselves. In addition, the inhabitants of any sphere (except the first) are able to visit all the lower-lying spheres (often in order to help in the spiritual advancement of some inhabitant of the lower-lying sphere), but in order to ascend to higher spheres, they must reach the corresponding spiritual development.
It is dark in the first sphere, twilight reigns, because those in this sphere are the owners of dark thoughts, and light thoughts are the sources of light. The inhabitants of the Subtle World, due to their light thoughts, are themselves sources of light, they themselves shine, illuminating with themselves the space in which they are. The luminosity of each creature depends on the achieved greater or lesser spiritual perfection.
Communication on the Subtle plane is carried out not with the help of voice and words, but mentally. There is no need for languages: one can think in one's own language and at the same time be understood by other beings of the Subtle World who think in other languages.
On the Subtle plane, it is possible to create from subtle matter with your thoughts anything that a person desires. The richer a person's imagination, the more diverse his creativity, and the more cultured a person, the more beautiful it is. Therefore, poets, artists, dreamers can have great opportunities here for the application of their aspirations, talents, abilities. There is quite a lot of free time in this world that can be devoted to studying the laws of nature, expanding consciousness, because, having thrown off the physical body, a person feels free from many embarrassing responsibilities: here you do not need to cook your own food, you do not need to take care of your apartment, your clothes; there is also no need for rest.
This or that sphere of the Subtle World is not only our state, it is the whole world with its own possibilities and obstacles. Only the laws and conditions of the Subtle World are absolutely different from those in the physical world. So, space and time are perceived there in a completely different way. There is no concept of "near" and "far", because all phenomena and things are equally accessible to sight, regardless of their distance from the observer. Flights of thousands of Earth kilometers are made in a few seconds. There, every being and thing is transparent and visible from any point in space.
When a being leaves the Subtle World with the help of souls of higher development, it throws off the astral body, which turns into the so-called "astral shell", which retains its structure and now leads its independent existence for some time. This phenomenon can be compared to a wheel bouncing off a car at high speed and continuing to roll further under the influence of the force emanating from it.
This astral shell is a spiritual corpse without intelligence and is only able to automatically reproduce what its owner was able to do during his last life in the physical world. In those earthly places where the psychic atmosphere is permeated with mystery (ancient castles and estates), the materialization of astral shells is possible, which can be accompanied by strange sounds, movement and overturning of objects and furniture. The so-called ghosts are a manifestation of the materialization of astral corpses. Over the years, a distinct ghost of Marilyn Monroe has appeared, crying and singing in the house where she committed suicide in the early 1960s. In view of such ghosts, the house was constantly changing owners. And there are many such examples.
Y. Ivanov