ASTRAL PLANE by-C H Leadbeater.pdf

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THEOSOPHICAL MANUALS NO, 5
THE ASTRAL PLANE
ITS SCENERY, INHABITANTS, AND
PHENOMENA
BY
C[harles]. W[ebster]. LEADBEATER
[1847-1934]
THIRD EDITION
(REVISED)
London:
1900
PREFACE.
Few words are needed in sending this little book out into
the world. It is the fifth of a series of Manuals designed to
meet the public demand for a simple exposition of
Theosophical teachings. Some have complained that our
literature is at once too abstruse, too technical, and too
expensive for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope that the
present series may succeed in supplying what is a very real
want. Theosophy is not only for the learned; it is for all.
Perhaps among those who in these little books catch their
first glimpse of its teachings, there may be a few who will be
led by them to penetrate more deeply into its philosophy, its
science, and its religion, facing its abstruser problems with
the student's zeal and the neophyte's ardour. But these
Manuals are not written only for the eager student, whom
no initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy
men and women of the work-a-day world, and seek to make
plain some of the great truths that render life easier to bear
and death easier to face. Written by servants of the Masters
who are the Elder Brothers of our race, they can have no
other object than to serve our fellow-men.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Introduction.
9
Scenery. —The Seven Subdivisions—Degrees of Materiality—
Characteristics of Astral Vision—The Aura—The Etheric
Double—Power of Magnifying Minute Objects—The
"Summerland"—Records of the Astral Light
17
Inhabitants. —I. Human. (1) Living:—The Adept or his
Pupil—The Psychically Developed Person—The Ordinary
Person—The Black Magician
29
(2) Dead:—The Nirmanakaya—The Pupil awaiting
Reincarnation—The Ordinary person after
Death—The Shade—The Shell—The Vitalized Shell—The
Suicide—The Victim of Sudden Death—The Vampire—The
Werewolf—The Black Magician after Death
35
II. Non-human:—The Elemental Essence—The Astral Bodies
of Animals—Various Classes of Nature-Spirits, commonly
called Fairies—Kamadevas—Rupadevas—Arupadevas—The
Devarajas
62
III. Artificial:—Elementals formed Unconsciously—Guardian
Angels—Elementals formed Consciously—Human
Artificials—The True Origin of Spiritualism
87
Phenomena.— Churchyard Ghosts—Apparitions of the
Dying—Haunted Localities—Family Ghosts—Bell-ringing,
Stone-throwing, etc.—Fairies—Communicating Entities—
Astral Resources—Clairvoyance—Prevision—Second-Sight—
Astral Force—Etheric Currents—Etheric Pressure—Latent
Energy—Sympathetic Vibration—Mantras—Disintegration—
Materialization—Why Darkness is Required at a Seance
Spirit Photographs—Reduplication—Precipitation of Letters
and Pictures—Slate-writing—Levitation—Spirit Lights—
Handling Fire—Transmutation—Repercussion
104
Conclusion.
125
THE ASTRAL PLANE.
INTRODUCTION .
T HOUGH for the most part entirely unconscious of it, man
passes the whole of his life in the midst of a vast and
populous unseen world. During sleep or in trance, when the
insistent physical senses are for the time in abeyance, this
other world is to some extent open to him, and he will
sometimes bring back from those conditions more or less
vague memories of what he has seen and heard there. When,
at the change which men call death, he lays aside his physical
body altogether, it is into this unseen world that he passes,
and in it he lives through the long centuries that intervene
between his incarnations into this existence that we know. By
far the greater part of these long periods is spent in the
heaven-world, to which the sixth of these manuals is devoted;
but what we have now to consider is the lower part of this
unseen world, the state into which man enters immediately
after death—the Hades or under world of the Greeks, the
purgatory or intermediate state of Christianity which was
called by mediaeval alchemists the astral plane. The object of
this manual is to collect and arrange the information with
regard to this interesting
9
10
region which is scattered through Theosophical literature,
and also to supplement it slightly in cases where new facts
have come to our knowledge. It must be understood that any
such additions are only the result of the investigations of a
few explorers, and must not, therefore, be taken as in any
way authoritative, but are given simply for what they are
worth. On the other hand every precaution in our power has
been taken to ensure accuracy, no fact, old or new, being
admitted to this manual unless it has been confirmed by the
testimony of at least two independent trained investigators
among ourselves, and has also been passed as correct by
older students whose knowledge on these points is
necessarily much greater than ours. It is hoped, therefore,
that this account of the astral plane, though it cannot be
considered as quite complete, may yet be found reliable as
far as it goes.
The first point which it is necessary to make clear in
describing this astral plane is its absolute reality. Of course
in using that word I am not speaking from that metaphysical
standpoint from which all but the One Unmanifested is
unreal because impermanent. I am using the word in its plain,
every-day sense, and I mean by it that the objects and
inhabitants of the astral plane are real in exactly the same
way as our own bodies, our furniture, our houses or
monuments are real—as real as Charing Cross, to quote an
expressive remark from one of the earliest Theosophical
works. They will no more endure for ever than will objects
on the physical plane, but they are nevertheless realities from
our point of view while they last—realities which we cannot
afford to ignore merely because the majority of mankind is
as yet unconscious, or but vaguely conscious, of their
existence.
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