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CHAPTER XX.
Heaven
The Lord doeth all things well.
He consigns the Jews to Heaven,
And all the rest to Hell.
There are forty nine heavens to which we ordinary mortals may attain, so you needn’t worry. Besides, there are certain aristocratic heavens reserved for the great and good men of high spirituality, such as Moses, the fakir, thief and murderer, and David, the bandit, outlaw and assassin, and Solomon, the fratricide, Mormon and pillar of Ashtoreth, and all the popes, bishops, priests and ministers. We will each go to that place we like the best, and to which we are fitted by our vibration. Some of us, like certain ministers, will go to that heaven where the beautiful fairies are. The ancient Jews will have a little heaven of their own, where they can worship the three balls and the ass-headed god and the god with whiskers on, and where they will have a chance to cop the golden paving stones, and sell corner lots, and insure their palace not made with hands eternal in the heavens.
And the ancient Scotch Presbyterian will walk the golden streets with his savage, gore-imbued devil-god, in his paradise overlooking the abyss of Hell, where he can gloat over the souls in torment, as they rise up out of the Bottomless Pit every thousand years, each one fastened by his tongue to a hook on an endless chain, which rises from such a fathomless depth of hellfire that it takes the victim a thousand years to make the circuit. It is claimed that these heavens and hells are built up from the astral substance by the imaginative power of the minds of the different religious sects.
This region contains all the heavens that have ever been dreamed of in theology, each filled with the devotees of the various creeds. Each of the great religions has its own particular region in which its disciples gather, worship and rejoice. In each region the religious soul finds just what he had expected and hoped to find on the other shore. You may even see the golden crowns, harps and stiff halos in some cases and hear the eternal chant of praise. These heavens are not eternal. Everything on the astral plane is subject to change like all other matter. Even the religious progress and change their opinions. – Astral World, 70.
The occultists do not, as a rule, disclose the process by which you may see the astral visions and pass out of the physical and journey in the astral body. But this is one way to see the pictures in the astral light: Between sleeping and waking, in the neutral state of Jagrata, when the eyes are closed and a numbness falls upon the body, and you experience a floating sensation, take note of the visions that appear to you, if any, and then by your will power impress them upon physical brain, so that you may remember them. These visions may be pictures on the astral light or scenes on the astral plane, but whatever they are, some of them prove to be true prophetic visions.
One occult teacher advised those who wished to induce trance to go into the silence, that is, to go into a room by yourself, where you will not be disturbed, and lie down and completely relax the muscles and think of nothing at all. The Hindus say fix your mind on your navel, but some fix their gaze on a crystal. You will see the visions when you doze off, if you can get them at all.
When you are in the astral body it is possible to remember the experiences of your previous lives, that is, the lives of your ancestors. In the physical body heredity and memory are stored in the cromatin or brain matter of all the millions of cells of the body. The human astral body is made up of the astral bodies of all the cells. It is possible that memory is inherent in the astral matter of all the cells, and that in the astral we are more in rapport with the cells than in the physical.
In the lowest astral plane next to the earth, it is said, is the region where the astral shells or corpses disintegrate, an arm sloughing off here, a leg there, and a head elsewhere. It is claimed that the spirits have deserted these shells. If you should happen to meet one of these ghosts walking in a graveyard without any legs or without any head, it may scare you into a fit, but it will not do you any harm, for it is dead. Then there are certain spectres or phantoms whose company is very undesirable when you take a lonely walk in the ghoul-haunted woodlands. These elemental spirits like to play practical jokes and have a little fun with you, but they will not do you any harm, unless you are sufficiently weak to allow them to obsess you. Cast out fear, cultivate a strong will, and be, like Solomon, the master of demons and men.
“There are certain entities or beings in the astral world which never were human and never will be, for they belong to an entirely different order of nature. They are fairies, satyrs, imps and goblins. At spiritual seances they sometimes play elfish pranks. They seem to be particularly apt to play tricks on neophytes in psychic research who seek to penetrate the astral without proper instruction. To such a one they appear as hideous forms, monsters &c.” – Astral World, 92.
Some of the elementals are electric spirits and confer upon the medium the power of magnetic healing. The medium, upon the approach of the spirit, is charged with electricity. The spirit may appear as a bird with a human face and a parrot’s bill and sharp, black eyes and body covered with hair, and deliver messages which can be heard clairaudiently by the medium. That reminds us of the claim of Mahomet that a little bird stood on his shoulder and whispered the laws of the Koran in his ear. They are certainly the Devil’s own laws.
“Many of the angels on the astral and the ghosts that haunt houses are thought forms created by the people who imagine them, and obtain all their apparent mind from the action of the thought force of their creators. Repeated thought and repeated belief will serve to keep alive and strengthen these entities, otherwise they will disappear in time. Many supernatural visitors, saints and semi-divine beings of all religions have been formed in this way. The power of the devils arise in the same way.” – Idem.
According to the Theosophists man has two souls, the animal and the spiritual, and at death the animal soul or spook, together with the spiritual soul, passes to that part of the astral called Kamaloka, or place of spooks, the lowest plane. But the spirit soon deserts the spook and leaves it to meet its just reward in the second death, because on earth it desired too much of carnal pleasures. The spooks retain all the impressions accumulated in the earth life and can communicate with mortals through mediums. Among these are the demons that obsess human beings. The spiritual soul passes on to Devachan, or the house of gods, which evidently includes those astral planes where the religious grovel before their various imaginary idols. See “What is Theosophy,” 46. This alleged spiritual soul, that deserts its brother soul in the depths of Hell, receives its due reward, for in the sub-heaven to which it goes, it has no memory of the earth life, consequently it is not immortal, and it is in jail and cannot get out. It would be better to stay in Hell with the spook, for it could have more fun haunting houses than worshipping imaginary gods with a lot of stiff-necked orthodox hypocrites.
In Ceylon they have twenty six heavens, and at the end of the world period they kill off all the spirits in all these heavens except those in the five upper spheres, the four highest of which are Nirvana.
You need not think that because you go across that you will have surcease from sorrow. It is only in the highest heavens that they have no sorrow, and that is because they don’t know anything. You cannot obtain happiness here or hereafter by purchasing absolution from any fakir, but only by doing to others as you would be done by. The astral planes of the Spiritualists in which the soul may advance, improve and ultimately attain to the highest heaven, corresponds with Purgatory, that superlative graft of religion. You can be prayed out of this limbo, if your relatives are willing to put up the stuff, otherwise you will be shoveled down into Hell. But a cheaper way is to have a Hindu prayer wheel. I am going to devote the immense revenues which I shall receive from this pious work to the construction of prayer wheels, which will be placed at street corners on all the highways and byways, so that even he who runs can turn the wheel and bring around to the open slot, so that God can see it, one of the many prayers printed on the wheel, for instance: “O, God, save my mother-in-law from Hell.”
In the coma, between sleeping and waking, the gates of the astral world are sometimes opened, and you can see the ghosts on the astral plane, great throngs of spirits, having no indication of piety, all busily engaged in their favorite occupations or sports. If in this state of Jagrata you happen to float into a graveyard, you will see the ghosts lying or sitting on their graves or pacing up and down beside them with bowed heads and in deep thought, trying to figure out how they got there and where they are going. See Seership, 179.
It is said that two persons can exchange bodies if they wish. Or if someone else has a better body than you have, and you wish to steal it, invite him to take a trip with you in his astral body on the astral plane. All the time keep commanding your astral body, sotto voce, to enter into his body, and when his astral body has emerged, prepared to take a trip with you in spook-land, that is the instant for your astral body to take possession of his physical body and leave his astral body out in the cold. But be careful to back into his body, for if your astral body enters his physical body face to face, you will be in wrong end to and will be crazy as a loon. Now there is no place for the other astral body to go except into your abandoned physical body, and as you are a wicked robber who just stole a house, he will probably hesitate about entering the body of such a person, and if he delays too long, he will be a lost spook, condemned to wander forever in the land of shades.
Do not allow them to palm off any gods upon you. Do not allow anyone to assume authority over you. I charge you to teach your descendants these things from father to son, down through the clanging corridors of time, down through the endless vista of eternity. There is nothing but matter in the universe, and all matter is equal. This being so, all forms produced therefrom, whether visible or invisible, must be equal, and one form has no right to assume authority over another. All beings are composed of matter, be they gods or be they worms, and no one mass of matter is superior to another or worthy of worship. The worm that crawls the earth is the equal of the king that sits upon a throne. Never bow the knee to anything that walks or swims or flies, that lives in the flesh or that exists only in the diseased imagination of depraved religious fanatics. Remember this: There is none greater than you in Heaven or Earth or Hell.
THE DEVIL’S HALF ACRE.
By Willard Bartlett.
From the Beacon
In rummaging through the attic of an old wraith-haunted, country house, I discovered a course of lessons in Yogi Philosophy. These lessons I devoured with avidity, and practiced with assiduity the occult rites, until I could readily pass into the silence and project my astral body or ghost to any desired place. In fact the unruly ghost would sometimes quit the body without my consent and leave me stranded high and dry without any soul.
One night while I lay sleeping, my astral body left the physical and sped through the air, as it had a very bad habit of doing, to Hapenny, the very last place on earth, the place manufactured by the Devil out of scraps and old junk, which he had left over after building Hell. But my perverted soul always insisted on going there whenever it succeeded in bursting through the carnal and beating down its being’s door.
The soul atom or Ego is said to be located in the Medulla Oblongata. If the soul is immortal, it is probably an electron. An atom is said to be composed of ions or electrons, and probably is subject to dissolution, and consequently not immortal. But as no one ever saw an atom or electron on account of their extreme minuteness, for the purpose of this veracious story, we will call the soul an atom and play it is eternal. An atom is a vortex ring of ether in a constant state of vibration, and assumed to resemble in form a ring of smoke. Some of the Hindus claim that a Purusha or soul from the countless spirit ions constituting the spirit principle of the universe, the akasa or astral light, becoming involved in the ether, originates the vortex movement by which the atom is produced. The ether is the ultimate refinement of matter, a body of extreme tenuity that pervades the whole universe and permeates all grosser bodies. By the waves of this ether all the vibrations of light, heat, sound, energy, electricity and life are transmitted.
The electron is an extremely minute corpuscle or particle endowed with life, mind and energy. A thousand electrons, more or less, revolve in the atom at a terrific rate around a central sun, thus resembling the solar system. This central sun is a male or positive electron, and all those revolving about it are females or negative electrons and constitute the harem of the central sun, thus establishing polygamy at the very basis of life. Our solar system is an atom in a great cosmic animal or god called Pan, the all-god.
In my nocturnal journeys, I thought I was clothed in the carnal body, but as I was transported through the air, I must necessarily conclude that I traveled in the astral body and on the astral plane, in which astral bodies move about and ghosts manifest, together with doubles, wraiths, hobgoblins and dopplegangers, to which latter class I belonged. The astral body, one of the bodies of the soul, is composed of fine, ethereal matter, and in form is a duplicate of the human body. It is claimed that this body persists for some time after death, but eventually disintegrates.
Many a night I have been there in Hapenny when the body lay many miles away. These were not ordinary dreams. I was actually there, that is, I being in the soul atom or astral body. One night I was conducted through a new manufactory there, which I had never seen with the mortal eyes and never knew existed. But the next time I went there in the body, I found the building just as I had seen it in the vision.
The favorite outing place of my doppleganger is the Devil’s Half Acre, or Murderer’s Paradise. It always flies to that obsessed and accursed spot hard by the gates of Tophet, close round the hinges of Hell. Traveling in the astral body, I can see both the quick and the dead, but as I am always out there at night, the live ones are asleep, and only the spooks are abroad, prowling hither and yon in the moon’s pale rays, visiting again, like myself, the scenes of former crimes. These are earth-bound spirits who, during life, lived out a low, degraded existence, and they are bound by their own desires and the vibration of their astral bodies to these astral slums. I stood out on the old road in front of the dilapidated shack formerly occupied by a gun-fighter, and watched the astral bodies as they glided to and fro in the air.
There was Mr. B. with a red gash from ear to ear and a crimson stream of blood running down over the white, astral, vapor-like body. Around the body was the aura, a cloudy vapor extending outward to a distance of two or three feet in the shape of an egg, an emanation of a dark and dismal color, corresponding to his dark and dismal career. It was in back of that very shack that he cut his throat and burst the door that bound him to the mortal clay, crying as he passed over that he was eternally lost and damned, as the church had hypnotized him into believing. But that Hell is immeasurably preferable to the Devil’s Half Acre, because the astral body is relieved of pain, hunger and thirst and the necessity of laboring for food and clothing. In fact, I believe that we are in Hell now, that this is the lowest plane of existence. In the Devil’s Half Acre the poor and wretched outcasts of the earth, embellished with dirt and clad in rotting rags, lived on three cents a day.
There was something in the atmosphere of the neighborhood that urged all the inhabitants on to crime. The family life was a hell on earth. The place was obsessed by the Devil and accursed of God. A village will acquire a character of its own. It is claimed that all the evil thoughts of all the vicious inhabitants of a vile place will linger in the surrounding atmosphere for years and exercise a baneful influence on all who dwell there. In the Devil’s Half Acre you could not take a step without treading on the crimson stain of a reeking crime. The spooks were and are now as thick as Tophet there; the place is haunted by ghosts and fiends unholy in Death and Hell bedight. It was the obsession of the place by the powers of evil that attracted to it all the notorious criminals.
The next spook to pollute the atmosphere was that of Mr. D. who, when on earth, was engaged in the banking business. In his left hand he carried a jimmy and in his right a gun, and he was peering here and there looking for a safe to crack or a cashier to shoot up. He was floating through the air at a height of about ten feet, and on his forehead blazed the blood-red mark of Cain, and his black aura was lighted by the fires of Tophet. When in life he lived in the house across the road. From this house also emerged a ghost with a halter around its neck. It was there with the halter he had swung himself over the battlements of time and dropped into eternity. The vicious influence of this house was irresistible. It is well to know this law of thought obsession and avoid these accursed places.
The next spirit to make its appearance was my old friend Mr. E. who came from walking up and down in the earth trying to sell the girl he led by the hand. He was still on his uppers as usual, as I could see by the ragged condition of his astral body. The accompanying aura of a slate-green hue, embellished with dull-red flames, indicated a low, deceitful and sensual character. He stopped and, looking me over, said: “I remember you. Don’t you want to buy my wife here again? She is in good condition now. I admit that I cheated you forty years ago when I sold her to you for fifty cents, but now in the astral world she is a vision of youth and beauty.”
Then came the ghost of Mr. F., a Sunday School teacher, who operated on a class of young ladies in the vestry of the church, that time-worn vestry, that well-beloved vestry, where the foundations of their philosophy were laid. A very genial, loving gentleman he was too, but his scholars being exceedingly frivolous, he found it necessary, in order to impress upon them the Divine truths, to pat them on the knees and sort of instil religion into them by the massage process. He has found his heaven. He appeared on the astral, surrounded, embraced and beloved by that same dazzling galaxy of beauties, now a star-crowned angel band.
It is claimed that they have schools over there, in which those who so desire may be instructed in virtue and wisdom and assisted to advance. When at last they learn the great secret and discover the key that unlocks the horns of the bull, they pass through the low and narrow portal between the horns of Taurus, squeeze through the needle’s eye, and enter the higher heaven.
Then I saw a lot of ghosts and fragments of ghosts sometimes without any heads, and sometimes lacking limbs, floating about aimlessly without any rudders, for they were dead, and their spirits had fled, leaving in the Devil’s Half Acre their astral shells. That is what they are called when their spirits have departed in the spiritual body and left the astral body to return to the elements like the carnal body.
A human being in a normal condition is unable to see an astral body, or ghost, because the vibrations on the astral plane are too rapid for the human eye to see. The vibrations of the ultra-violet or X rays, at one end of the spectrum are too rapid, and the infra-red rays, at the other end of the spectrum, are too slow for the human eye to see. But we have astral senses, appurtenant to the astral body, duplicates of the physical senses, and persons in a trance and sometimes people asleep are able to use these astral senses and see and communicate with the denizens of the astral world.
