Continuity of Consciousness is a subject we have mentioned on many occasions. Let us look at it today in more detail. As we have seen, for a person to pass in unbroken consciousness from one vehicle to another, e.g., from the physical to the emotional, or vice versa, it is requisite that the links between the bodies should be developed. Most people are not conscious of these links and the links are not actively vivified, being in a condition similar to that of rudimentary organs in the physical body. These links are, of course, the famous chakras. They have to be developed by use and are made to function by the person fixing their attention upon them and using their will. The will sets free and guides kundalini, but unless the preliminary purification of the vehicles is first thoroughly accomplished, kundalini is a destructive instead of a vivifying energy. Hence the insistence, by all occult teachers, on the necessity of purification before true yoga is practised. Now a word of warning. What has been stated here is the generally perceived method of development of your chakras. Somehow, by concentrating on them, lights will switch on and illumination will be achieved. Laurency begs to disagree and warns us not to focus on our chakras, letting them develop naturally as and when we enter the path through service to others.
When a person has rendered themself fit to be helped in vivifying the links, such assistance will inevitably come to them as a matter of course, from those who are always seeking opportunities to aid the earnest and unselfish aspirant. Remember, ultimately, development has to be facilitated by our solar angels and those monads who have broken through the barrier, separating the first and second triads. However, we are responsible for laying the groundwork that will facilitate this eventual assistance. Then, one day, the person will find themselves slipping out of the physical body, while they are wide awake and without any break in consciousness. This may sound a bit utopian but the basic premise is correct. With practice, the passage from vehicle to vehicle becomes familiar and easy. The development of the links (chakras) bridges the gulf between physical and emotional consciousness so that there is perfect continuity of consciousness.
Gaining access to the emotional plane is all well and good but what next? The student has not only to learn to see correctly on the emotional plane but also to translate accurately the memory of what they have seen from the emotional to the physical brain. This is not as easy as one would hope. You are trying to translate a four-dimensional experience and describe it in three dimensions. To assist the aspirant in this, they are trained to carry their consciousness without a break from the physical plane to the emotional plane and at a later stage, to the mental plane as well. Having got there, they need to come back into their physical bodies with the fruits of the labour still fresh in their minds. Until this can be done, there is always a possibility that the aspirant’s recollections may be partially lost or distorted during the blank intervals, which separate their periods of consciousness on the various planes. Why is there always a blank period? Because the highest subplane is atomic and humans are not capable of being conscious on this subplane, therefore momentary unconsciousness is guaranteed. When the power of bringing over the consciousness is perfectly acquired, the aspirant/disciple will have the advantage of the use of all the emotional faculties, not only while out of the body during sleep or trance, but also while fully awake in ordinary physical life. This all sounds fine and dandy but there is one small catch. To achieve this you need to have initiated (i3). When the likes of Leadbeater talk about this process, they are speaking from the context of someone who is already capable of doing this. They make it sound easy but the preparations involved are long and arduous and take many lifetimes. For instance, so that the physical waking consciousness can include emotional consciousness, it is necessary that the pituitary body is evolved and that the fourth spirilla in the atoms should be perfected. No sweat! Being able to translate information from a five-dimensional environment found on the metal plane and a four-dimensional environment on the emotional plane is also a skill that needs to be learnt. What must be frustrating is that no matter the disciple’s ability to retrieve information from these higher worlds, there simply is not the language or imagery to accurately translate the glories of these higher worlds on the physical plane. It will always be as though you are looking through a frosted pane of glass at a scene that you know is beautiful but you are unable to focus that image in your brain.
The monad can, when they have evolved sufficiently, move their consciousness from one molecular subplane to another in the emotional envelope. Information can flash through the atomic subplane of this envelope but the monad is not conscious in the permanent atom (48:1). Before the monad moves its focus from the 48:1permanent atom to the 47:4 permanent molecule, the mental envelope is a subjective environment. However, at the (i2), the monad moves to the 47:4 permanent molecule, at the (4) Compassionate stage of evolution and the Mental World begins to open up to objective observation. Now the aspirant is able, not only to move within the emotional envelope but jump a plane, into the lower subplanes of the mental envelope. However, there is also another line of connection, which may be called the atomic shortcut. If we picture the atomic sub-planes of emotional and mental envelopes lying side by side along a rod, the other sub-planes may be pictured as hanging from the rod in loops, as though a piece of string were wound loosely around the rod. To pass from one plane to another, one could move by a shortcut along the rod, or down and up again through the hanging loops, which symbolise the lower sub-planes. The normal processes of our thinking come steadily down through the subplanes: but flashes of genius, illuminative ideas, come through the atomic 48:1 & 49:1) and molecular (47:4) permanent structures only. There is also a third possibility connected with the relationship of our planes with the cosmic planes, but this is too abstract to be dealt with in a work, which focuses on the emotional plane and its phenomena.
People often assume that access to higher worlds allows them to investigate their past lives. Merely obtaining continuity of consciousness between the physical and the emotional planes is insufficient in itself to restore the memory of past lives. For this to occur, a much higher development is required, into the nature of which it is not necessary to get tangled up at the moment. A person who has acquired complete mastery over the emotional body may, of course, leave the physical body, not only during sleep but at any time they choose and travel to a distant place, a phenomenon termed astral travel by most occultists. Mediums and sensitives, project their emotional bodies unconsciously when they go into trance: but usually on coming out of trance, there is no brain memory of the experiences acquired. Trained students can project the emotional body consciously and travel great distances from the physical body, bringing back with them full and detailed memories of all the impressions they have gained. The development of this faculty has not escaped the notice of the military, who seek to weaponise any phenomena, which they think will give them an advantage against their enemies, real or imaginary.
An emotional body thus projected may be seen by other people who are sensitive or who may accidentally witness it, if they are experiencing some abnormal emotional event themselves or they are eating magic mushrooms. There are, on record, many cases of such emotional visitations by a dying person near the time of death. The approach of dissolution loosens the envelopes, to make the phenomenon possible for people who were unable at any other time to perform the feat we are talking about. This happened in my own family when upon the death of my grandmother, a friend called 20 minutes later from a country 5,000 miles away to report that he awoke to find my grandmother standing at the foot of his bed. She waved goodbye and then faded away. The emotional body may also be consciously detached when suffering from high fevers or if the person is physically incapacitated for extended periods.
A person may, if they know the mechanism of how to slightly densify their emotional body, by drawing into it from the surrounding atmosphere, particles of physical matter, “materialise” sufficiently to become physically visible. This is the explanation for many cases of “apparitions”, where a person, physically absent, has been seen by friends with their ordinary physical sight. My wife reported that I did this when we were courting at university and I appeared in her room at night. It did not alarm her and I honestly was not spying on her! I was unaware of this event occurring. This is a good example of being able to function effectively in one’s emotional body but having no recollection of it on waking due to the constraining effect of the etheric web.
So, we have looked at how a monad can separate its higher envelopes from its physical and etheric double. In the next presentation, we will go on to look at the process of death and how this relates to the Desire Elementals.