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Yours,
K. H.
FOOTNOTE:
1. K.H.'s replies to the "Famous Contradictions"; the numbers correspond to those which
appear in the text of Mr. Sinnett's Queries. See ante Letter 24a. -- ED. (return to text)
The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
Theosophical University Press Edition
Letter No. 25
Devachan Notes Latest Additions. Received Feb. 2nd, 1883.
ANSWERS TO QUERIES
(1) Why should it be supposed that devachan is a monotonous condition only because
some one moment of earthly sensation is indefinitely perpetuated -- stretched, so to say,
throughout aeons? It is not, it cannot be so. This would be contrary to all analogies and
antagonistic to the law of effects under which results are proportioned to antecedent
energies. To make it clear you must keep in mind that there are two fields of causal
manifestation, to wit: the objective and subjective. So the grosser energies, those which
operate in the heavier or denser conditions of matter manifest objectively in physical life,
their outcome being the new personality of each birth included within the grand cycle of
the evoluting individuality. The moral and spiritual activities find their sphere of effects
in "devachan." For example: the vices, physical attractions, etc. -- say, of a philosopher
may result in the birth of a new philosopher, a king, a merchant, a rich Epicurean, or any
other personality whose make-up was inevitable from the preponderating proclivities of
the being in the next preceding birth. Bacon, for inst: whom a poet called --
"The greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind" --
might reappear in his next incarnation as a greedy money-getter, with extraordinary
intellectual capacities. But the moral and spiritual qualities of the previous Bacon would
also have to find a field in which their energies could expand themselves. Devachan is
such field. Hence -- all the great plans of moral reform of intellectual and spiritual
research into abstract principles of nature, all the divine aspirations, would, in devachan
come to fruition, and the abstract entity previously known as the great Chancellor would
occupy itself in this inner world of its own preparation, living, if not quite what one
would call a conscious existence, at least a dream of such realistic vividness that none of
the life-realities could ever match it. And this "dream" lasts -- until Karma is satisfied in
that direction, the ripple of force reaches the edge of its cyclic basin, and the being moves
into the next area of causes. This, it may find in the same world as before, or another,
according to his or her stage of progression through the necessary rings and rounds of
human development.
Then -- how can you think that "but one moment of earthly sensation only is selected for
perpetuation"? Very true, that "moment" lasts from the first to last; but then it lasts but as
the key-note of the whole harmony, a definite tone of appreciable pitch, around which
cluster and develop in progressive variations of melody and as endless variations on a
theme, all the aspirations, desires, hopes, dreams, which, in connection with that
particular "moment" had ever crossed the dreamer's brain during his life-time, without
having ever found their realization on earth, and which he now finds fully realized in all
their vividness in devachan, without ever suspecting that all that blissful reality is but the
progeny begotten by his own fancy, the effects of the mental causes produced by himself.
That particular one moment which will be most intense and uppermost in the thoughts of
his dying brain at the time of dissolution will of course regulate all the other "moments";
still the latter -- minor and less vivid though they be -- will be there also, having their
appointed plan in this phantasmagoric marshalling of past dreams, and must give variety
to the whole. No man on earth, but has some decided predilection if not a domineering
passion; no person, however humble and poor -- and often because of all that -- but
indulges in dreams and desires unsatisfied though these be. Is this monotony? Would you
call such variations ad infinitum on the one theme, and that theme modelling itself, on,
and taking colour and its definite shape from, that group of desires which was the most
intense during life "a blank destitution of all knowledge in the devachanic mind" --
seeming "in a measure ignoble"? Then verily, either you have failed, as you say, to take
in my meaning, or it is I who am to blame. I must have sorely failed to convey the right
meaning, and have to confess my inability to describe the -- indescribable. The latter is a
difficult task, good friend. Unless the intuitive perceptions of a trained chela come to the
rescue, no amount of description -- however graphic -- will help. Indeed, -- no adequate
words to express the difference between a state of mind on earth, and one outside of its
sphere of action; no English terms in existence, equivalent to ours; nothing -- but
unavoidable (as due to early Western education) preconceptions, hence -- lines of thought
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