Biblioteca Esoterica Esonet.ORG http://www.esonet.ORG 1

Biblioteca Esoterica Esonet.ORG
http://www.esonet.ORG
above or below average. The level of mankind's evolution at the time, and of society's and
its culture's, also are important factors usually completely unrecognized in arguments
about the after-death state. Thus statements that would apply to all individual situations
(for example, the length of time between two "incarnations") can have only general
validity. This validity also depends upon the expectable reactions of persons to whom
such statements are made. Knowledge has validity only in terms of the knower or (in
some cases) of a new generation to which it will be imparted.
Thus if a person is convinced that his or her "soul" exists primarily or essentially in
terms of the desire for and the fulfillment, failure, or frustration of interpersonal
relationships — and therefore is identified with the kama principle — this person is right
when saying that the personal soul not only persists after death, but returns later on as a
new person. This is the "personal" way of interpreting the situation that develops after
death.
The interpretation based on the Movement of Wholeness defines death as the
beginning of the symbolic Night of a very small sub-subcycle constituting a particular
human life. Death is the "Gate of Silence" through which a human center of consciousness
passes at the close of the existential Day hemicycle. At this time the principle of Unity
begins to dominate the Movement of Wholeness as experienced by this particular person,
"being" assumes increasingly subjective states, and the principle of Multiplicity and
objectivity becomes internalized. This internalization produces memory images in the
consciousness. These images constitute a subjectivized mode of relationship; they
resemble the dreams that occur during the sleep of the physical body — and there are
many kinds of dreams, including powerful nightmares.
Thus in the case of a person closely identified with the kama principle, the desire-body
(in which kama Operates within the structures defined by the concretizing or lower mind)
survives for a period after death. The length of survival depends on several factors.
Among them are the intensity and character of the desires and the organizing power of the
concretizing mind. Also significant is the degree to which the karma of the past has been
neutralized by the performance, unconscious if not conscious, of the dharma which the
higher mind and the spiritual will attempted to impress upon the personality's lower
mental consciousness. Other determining factors are the extent to which this spiritual will
and higher mind had been active, the degree of differentiation and concentration of the
spiritual Quality, and the state of development of the ideity field as a place of meeting for
the potential union of the spiritual entity and the personality. Because Western civilization
today primarily and often exclusively accentuates the personal, ego-centered factors in a
human being and in personal relationships to people, money, profession, and possessions
(including pets!), the persistence of all these personal factors in terms of subjective
memory experiences must be the norm in the period following death. But what are these
"subjective memory experiences"?
121