We continue in this presentation to look at specific examples of how monads pass into the Emotional World. In the case of children dying young, it is unlikely that they will have developed much affinity for the lowest sub-divisions of the Emotional World. As a matter of experience, they are seldom found on the lowest emotional subplanes. Some people cling so desperately to material existence that at death, their emotional bodies cannot completely separate from the etheric envelope. Consequently, they awaken, still surrounded by etheric matter. Such people are in a very unpleasant predicament. They are shut out from the Emotional World by the etheric shell surrounding them, and at the same time, they are shut off from ordinary physical life because they have no physical sense organs. The result is that they drift about, lonely, dumb and terrified, unable to communicate with entities on either plane. They do not realise that if they would only let go of their frenzied grasp on matter, they would slip, after a few moments of unconsciousness, into the ordinary life of the emotional plane. But they cling to their grey world, with their miserable half-consciousness, rather than sinking into what they think is going to be complete extinction or even the hell in which they have been taught to believe. In the process of time, the etheric shell wears out, and the ordinary course of Nature reasserts itself despite their struggles. Sometimes, they recklessly let themselves go in sheer desperation, preferring even the idea of annihilation to their present existence — with an overwhelming and surprisingly pleasant result. In a few cases, another emotional entity may be able to help them by persuading them to let go of their hold on what to them is life and sink out of it.
In other cases, they may be unfortunate enough to discover a means of reviving their touch with physical life through a medium to some extent. As a rule, the medium’s “spirit guide” very properly forbids them access. The “guide” is right in their action because such entities, in their terror and need, become quite unscrupulous and would obsess and even madden a medium, fighting as a drowning person fights for life. They could succeed in possessing the medium only if the monad of the medium weakened its hold upon its vehicles by allowing the indulgence of undesirable thoughts or passions. Beware your thoughts; you may get more than you bargained for.
Sometimes, an entity may be able to seize upon a baby’s body, ousting the feeble personality for whom it was intended, or sometimes even to obsess the body of an animal, the fragment of the group soul, which, to an animal, stands in the place of a casual envelope, having a hold on the body, which is less strong than that of a human monad. This obsession may be complete or partial. The obsessing entity thus once more gets into touch with the physical plane, sees through the animal’s eyes and feels any pain inflicted upon the animal — in fact, so far as their own consciousness is concerned, they are the animal for the time being.
A person who thus entangles themself with an animal cannot abandon the animal’s body at will, but only gradually and by considerable effort, extending probably over many days. Usually, they are set free only at the animal’s death, and even then, there remains an emotional entanglement to shake off. After the animal’s death, such a soul sometimes obsesses over another member of the same herd or any other creature they can seize in desperation. The animals most commonly seized upon seem less developed, like cattle, sheep and pigs. More intelligent creatures like dogs, cats, and horses do not appear so easily dispossessed, though cases occasionally occur. All obsessions, whether of a human or an animal body, are an evil and a hindrance to the obsessing soul, as they temporarily strengthen their hold on material existence and so delay their natural progress into the emotional life, besides making undesirable karmic links. I bet you will never look at a herd of cows again without wondering…
In the case of a person who, by vicious appetite or otherwise, forms a powerful link with any animal, their emotional body shows animal characteristics. It may resemble the animal whose qualities had been encouraged during earthly life. In extreme cases, the person may be linked to the emotional body of the animal and thus be chained as a prisoner to the animal’s physical body. The person is conscious in the emotional world and has human faculties but cannot control the animal body nor express himself through that body on the physical plane. The animal organism serves as a jailer rather than as a vehicle. In this case, the animal soul is not ejected but remains as the proper tenant of its body. Why do so many princes get entangled in the body of a frog?
Arthur Powell speculates that cases of possession of this kind partially explain the belief, often expounded in Eastern philosophies, that a person may, under certain conditions, reincarnate in an animal body. A similar fate may befall a person as they return to the emotional plane on their way to rebirth. This topic will be covered in the presentation on rebirth.
It needs to be stated clearly here that the concept of the transmigration of souls from a human to an animal body is not feasible. Once a monad acquires a causal envelope and has self-consciousness, it is human for the duration. Just as you cannot fit an adult back into its mother’s womb, you can not repackage a monad, operating in four principal envelopes; etheric, emotional, mental and causal; back into a life form that does not have its own causal structure. It is, however, possible for a monad to return to the consciousness of a mineral monad. All it has to do is follow the Left-Hand Path until it can centre itself in its 47:4 permanent molecule, break its connection to its guardian angel and then wait for the fourth globe to enter obscuration. One valuable role the casual envelope serves is to hold your memories and achievements until the Seed Manu hands you over to the Root Manu of the next globe. Tamper with that lifeline, and you are in trouble.
The class of person who is held down on earth by anxiety is often termed earth-bound: as St. Martin expressed it, such men are “remainers”, not “returners,” unable completely to tear themselves away from physical matter until some business is settled in which they have a particular interest.
We have already seen that after physical death, the persona is steadily withdrawing themselves from their outer bodies. In particular, manas, or mind, endeavours to disentangle itself from kama or desire. In certain rare cases, the personality or lower causal body may be so strongly controlled by kama that the lower manas is completely enslaved and cannot disentangle itself. The link between the lower and the higher mental, or mental and causal as it is also known, can be broken. The “silver thread that binds it to the Master” snaps in two. This is spoken of in occultism as the “loss of the soul”. This is different from the example previously given. In that case, a monad deliberately discounts themselves from the source. In this case, only the persona is lost. In the former case, the whole causal envelope is dissolved. It is the loss of the personal self, which has separated from its parent, in the latter case, the monad and has thus doomed itself to perish. When “the loss of the soul” is used, it refers to the guardian angel, not the monad. Why? Because the monad is not conscious yet in its causal envelope. What occultists term the higher self can not be considered a conscious monad, as the monad is not conscious in this envelope and is, therefore, unable to comprehend or control the persona’s life in the way many people think.
Anyway, back to our unfortunate persona who has disconnected themselves from their soul. In such cases, even during earth life, the lower quaternary is wrenched away from the Triad, i.e., the lower principles, headed by lower manas, are severed from the higher principles, Atma, Buddhi and Higher Manas. The person is rent in twain, the brute has broken itself free, and it goes forth unbridled, carrying with it the reflections of that manasic light (light of the mind, i.e., its solar deva), which should have been its guide through life. Due to its possession of the mind, such a creature is more dangerous than an un-evolved animal: though human in form, it is a brute in Nature, without a sense of truth, love or justice. After physical death, such an emotional body is an entity of terrible potency and is unique in that, under certain rare conditions, it can reincarnate in the world of humanity. With no instincts save those of the animal, driven only by passion, never even by emotion, with a cunning that no brute can rival, a wickedness that is deliberate, it touches ideal vileness and is the natural foe of all ordinary human beings. A being of this class — an Elementary — sinks lower with each successive incarnation until the evil force gradually wears itself out; it perishes, being cut off from the source of life. It disintegrates, and thus, a separate existence is lost.
From the point of view of the monad, there has been no harvest of useful experience from that personality: the “ray” has brought nothing back, and the lower life has been a total and complete failure. The word Elementary has been employed by various authors in many different contexts, but Powell recommended that it be confined to the entity described above. This all sounds grim. The following presentation will look at the Emotional World as a functional habitat.