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The Life Beyond Death2278
There are many souls which are now on the Astral Plane, undergoing the
final stages of the casting off of the earthly bonds. And there are many souls
now in earth-life which will never again return to earth, but which, after their
next sojourn on the Astral Plane, will rise to the higher planes of existence,
leaving the earth and all earthly things behind forever. Moreover, there are
to-day, on earth, thousands of souls which are well on the way to freedom,
and which will have but one more earth-life to undergo—and that one life
will be passed in an exalted state of understanding and wisdom. At the
present time we are nearing the end of a cycle in which a very great number
of souls are preparing for their upward flight, and many who read these
lines may be well advanced in that cyclic movement.
It would be the veriest folly for human pen to attempt to picture the
nature of the existence on the higher spheres—even those spheres only one
grade higher than the earth. For there are no words which would convey
the meaning—no mental concepts which would embody the idea. Nay,
more, the majority of the race have not even the mental machinery which
would enable them to even think of the nature of such a life. The average
human mind cannot begin to think even of the middle planes of the Astral,
and the concept of the higher Astral is far beyond them. What then must
be their position regarding the thought of realms of being to which even
the highest Astral planes are but as dung-hills compared with the world’s
greatest palaces? Enough to know that there exists an infinite scale of being,
composed of realm after realm, ever rising higher and higher and higher—
and that the soul is destined to move on and on and on toward the Infinite.
Escape from the round of earthly reincarnation is possible when the soul
learns the truth regarding its own nature and its relation to the Whole. When
it perceives the illusory nature of the phenomenal universe, and realizes that
the spiritual world is the only real one, then do the ties of the material life
begin to slip away, and the soul begins to struggle from its confining bonds.
This liberation is the great end aimed at in the Yogi Philosophy. This is the
reason, end, and aim, of Yoga. Some attain it by faithful works; others by