Devachan

Devachan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devachan
 * Devachan** is the "dwelling of the gods" according to the Theosophy of H.P._Blavatsky. It is regarded as the place where most souls go after death where desires are gratified, corresponding to the Christian belief in Heaven. However, Devachan is a temporary, intermediate state of being before the soul's eventual rebirth into the physical world

What is Conscious in Devachan ? "As to the personal Soul--by which we mean the spark of consciousness that preserves in the Spiritual Ego the idea of the personal "I" of the last incarnation--this lasts, as a separate distinct recollection, only throughout the Devachanic period; after which time it is added to the innumerable incarnations of the Ego...(108) Immortality is but one's unbroken consciousness; and the personal consciousness can hardly last longer than the personality itself...and such consciousness...survives only throughout Devachan, after which it is reabsorbed, first, in the individual, and then in the universal consciousness." KEY TO THEOSOPHY, p. 107-8

"That flash of memory which is traditionally supposed to show a drowning man every long-forgotten scene of his mortal life--as the landscape is revealed to the traveler by intermittent flashes of lightning--is simply the sudden glimpse which the struggling soul gets into the silent galleries where his history is depicted in imperishable colors." Isis I 179

"...Devachan is a state where the Ego enjoys and does not suffer, suffering being reserved for the earth life. It is not a question of memory strictly speaking, but is a state where the causes generated on this earth which can exhaust in no other state, do so exhaust themselves, leaving the causes relating to this plane of earth life to be afterwards exhausted here, and as it is, like this life, a state of illusion, the Ego naturally enlarges all its conceptions of what it thought best and highest when it was alive, for such are the causes that relate to that state." Practical Occultism," p. 258-9

A state intermediate between two earth lives into which the Ego enters after its separation from its lower aspects or sheaths

Devachan 45, 46 is a state of consciousness, reflecting, in the life of the Personality, that higher state which we call nirvanic consciousness, and which is brought about by egoic action. It is but a dim reflection in the separated units (and therefore tinged with selfishness and separative pleasure) of the group condition called nirvanic. In this high state of consciousness each separate identity, though self-realizing, shares in the group realization, and therein lies bliss for the unit. Separation is no longer felt, only unity and essential oneness is known. Therefore, as might be naturally deduced, there is no devachan for the savage or little evolved man, as they merit it not, and have not the mentality to realize it; hence, therefore, the rapidity of their incarnations, and the brevity of the pralayic period. There is little in their case for the Ego, on its own plane, to assimilate in the residue of incarnations, and hence the life principle withdraws rapidly from out of the mental form, with the resulting impulse of the Ego to reincarnate almost immediately. TOCF, p 736

 Devachan. "(3) 'Who goes to Devachan?' The personal Ego, of course, but beatified, purified, holy. Every Ego - the combination of the sixth and seventh principles - which, after the period of unconscious gestation is reborn into the Devachan, is of necessity as innocent and pure as a newborn babe. The fact of his being reborn at all shows the preponderance of good over evil in his old personality. And while the Karma (of evil) steps aside for the time being to follow him in his future earth-reincarnation, he brings along with him but the Karma of his good deeds, words, and thoughts into this Devachan. 'Bad' is a relative term for us - as you were told more than once before, - and //the Law of Retribution is the only law that never errs.// Hence all those who have not slipped down Into the mire of unredeemable sin and bestiality - go to the Devachan. They will have to pay for their sins, voluntary and involuntary, later on. Meanwhile they are rewarded; receive the //effects// of the //causes// produced by them."

"Of course it is a //state,// one, so to say, of //intense selfishness// during which an //Ego// reaps the reward of his //unselfishness// on earth. He is completely engrossed in the bliss of all his personal earthly affections, preferences, thoughts, and gathers in the fruit of his meritorious actions. No pain, no grief nor even the shadow of a sorrow comes to darken the bright horizon of his unalloyed happiness; for, //it its a state of perpetual 'Maya'//. ...Since the conscious perception of one's //personality// on earth is but an evanescent dream that sense will be equally that of a dream in the Devachan - only a hundredfold intensified." - From //Mahatma Letters to A. P//. //Sinnett, pp. 100-105-//106.

This is one of the factors resulting in more rapid incarnation, and more rapid assimilation of the experiences learnt. Curiously enough, from the standpoint of the average thinker, this factor causes longer devachanic periods, for these cycles of interior mental consideration are of ever increasing activity. They are cycles of intense mental adjustment, and of the generation of force until (towards the close of the cycle of incarnation) the activity which has been generated is so strong that continuity of consciousness becomes an accomplished fact. The man frequently then foregoes devachan as he needs it no more. TOCF, p 1104

**Absorption**: This is the faculty which produces the forms of the mental ring-pass-not, and which (at the close of the cycle) is the active principle behind //devachanic// manifestation. [...] Absorption into devachan is absorption into a definite stage of consciousness within the logoic physical body; devachan, therefore, is occultly a state of consciousness, but of consciousness thinking in terms of time and space in the three worlds. [...] It is in devachan that the man shapes and polishes the stones which are built into the Temple of Solomon. It is the workshop to which the individual stones (good deeds and thoughts) are taken for fashioning, after being extracted from the quarry of the personal life. TOCF, p 1108



