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The Twelfth Lesson: Occult Miscellany.905
They have a knowledge of the planes beneath them, just as we on earth
know of conditions beneath us (spiritually), but they seem to be in almost
absolute ignorance of the planes above them, just as many of us on earth
cannot comprehend the existence of beings more highly developed
spiritually than ourselves. This, of course, is only true of the souls who have
not been made acquainted with the meaning and nature of life on the Astral
Plane. Those who have acquired this information and knowledge readily
understand their condition and profit thereby. It will be seen from this that
it is of the greatest importance for persons to become acquainted with the
great laws of Occultism in their present earth life, for the reason that when
they pass out of the body and enter some one of the Astral Planes they will
not be in ignorance of the condition, but will readily grasp the meaning and
nature of their surroundings and take advantage of the same in order to
develop themselves more rapidly.
It will be seen from what has been written by us here and elsewhere that
there are planes after planes on the Astral side of life. All that has been
dreamt of Heaven, Purgatory or Hell has its correspondence there, although
not in the literal sense in which these things have been taught. For instance, a
wicked man dying immersed in his desires and longings of his lower nature,
and believing that he will be punished in a future life for sins committed
on earth—such a one is very apt to awaken on the lower planes or subplanes,
in conditions corresponding with his former fears. He finds the fire
and brimstone awaiting him, although these things are merely figments of
his own imagination, and having no existence in reality. Murderers may
roam for ages (apparently) pursued by the bleeding corpses of their victims,
until such a horror of the crime arises in the mind that at last sinking from
exhaustion into the soul-sleep, their souls pass into re-birth with such a
horror of bloodshed and crime as to make them entirely different beings in
the new life. And, yet the “hell” that they went through existed only in their
imaginations. They were their own Devil and Hell. Just as a man in earth life
may suffer from delirium tremens, so some of these souls on the Astral plane