We will now have a few presentations describing the nature, appearance, and properties of the emotional plane or world. At a later stage, time will be devoted to reviewing and explaining the entities that live in the Emotional World.
It is challenging to describe the Emotional World accurately. The difficulties of defining the emotional plane are further complicated by two factors: (i) the difficulty of correctly translating from the emotional to the physical plane, the recollection of what has been seen, and (2) the inadequacy of physical plane language to express much of what has to be described.
One of the most prominent characteristics of the Emotional World is that it is full of continually changing shapes. There are not only thought forms composed of elemental essences and animated by a thought. There are also vast masses of elemental essence from which, continually, shapes emerge and into which they again disappear. The elemental essences exist in hundreds of varieties on every sub-plane, as though the air were visible and were in constant undulating motion with changing colours like mother-of-pearl. Currents of thought are continually thrilling through this emotional matter, strong thoughts persisting as visible entities for a long time, weak ones clothing themselves in elemental essence and disintegrating almost as soon as they are formed.
We continually discuss the seven subplanes of matter in seven orders of fineness. These correspond to the seven physical grades of solid, liquid, gaseous, etc. Each of these seven orders of matter is the basis of one of the seven levels, subdivisions, or sub-planes (as they are variously called) of the emotional plane. It has become customary to speak of these seven levels as arranged one above the other, the densest at the bottom and the finest at the top. Many diagrams are drawn in this manner, especially by me. This representation method has a basis of truth, but it is not the whole truth.
The matter of each sub-plane interpenetrates that of the sub-plane below it. Consequently, at the Earth’s surface, all seven sub-planes exist together in the same space. Nevertheless, it is also true that the higher emotional sub-planes extend further away from the physical Earth than the lower sub-planes. A fair analogy of the relationship between the emotional sub-planes exists in the physical world. To a considerable extent, liquids interpenetrate solids, e.g., water is found in soil; gases interpenetrate liquids (water usually contains significant volumes of air) and so on. Nevertheless, it is substantially true that the bulk of the liquid matter of the Earth lies in seas, rivers and glaciers above the solid world. Similarly, the bulk of gaseous matter rests above the water’s surface, reaching further into space than solids or liquids.
Similarly, with emotional matter, the exact relationship is found. By far, the densest aggregation of emotional matter lies within the limits of the physical sphere. In this connection, emotional matter obeys the same general laws as physical matter and gravitates towards the Earth’s centre. The seventh or lowest emotional sub-plane penetrates some distance into the Earth’s interior so that the entities living on it may find themselves within its crust. The sixth sub-plane is partially coincident with the surface of the planet. The third sub-plane, which the Spiritualists call the “Summerland”, extends many miles up into the atmosphere.
The outer limit of the emotional world extends nearly to the mean distance of the moon’s orbit so that at perigee (nearest to Earth), the emotional planes of the Earth and moon usually touch one another but not at apogee (furthest apart). (N.B.—The Earth and moon are nearly 240,000 miles apart.) This explains the name the Greeks gave to the Emotional World— the sub-lunar world. It follows that emotional communication with the moon is possible at certain times of the month but not at other times.
The seven sub-divisions of the emotional plane fall naturally into three groups: (a) the seventh or lowest, (b) the sixth, fifth and fourth, and (c) the third, second and first. The difference between members of one group can be compared to that between two solids, e.g., steel and sand, and the difference between the groups can be compared to that between a solid and a liquid.
Sub-plane 7 has the physical world as its background, though only a distorted and partial view of it is visible since all that is light and good and beautiful seems invisible. Four thousand years ago, the Scribe Ani described it in an Egyptian papyrus thus: “What manner of place is this unto which I have come? It hath no water, it hath no air; it is deep, unfathomable; it is black as the blackest night, and men wander helplessly about therein; in it, a man may not live in quietness of heart.” For the unfortunate human being on that level, it is indeed true that “all the earth is full of darkness and cruel habitation”, but it is a darkness which radiates from within himself and causes his existence to be passed in a perpetual night of evil and horror — a genuine hell, though, like all other hells, entirely of our creation.
If you were to investigate this subplane, you would find it an extremely unpleasant task, for there appears to be a sense of density and gross materiality about it, which is indescribably loathsome to the liberated emotional body, causing it the feeling of pushing its way through some black, viscous fluid, while the inhabitants and the influences encountered there are also usually exceedingly undesirable. Remember, this is the bowls of Hell we are talking about. The average person would probably have little to detain them on the seventh sub-plane. The only persons who would typically awake to consciousness on that sub-plane are those whose desires are gross and brutal — drunkards, sensualists (as Powell calls them), violent criminals, and the like, oh and lawyers and politicians.
Sub-planes 6, 5 and 4 have for their background the physical world with which we are familiar. Life on No. 6 is like ordinary physical life, minus the physical body and its necessities. Nos. 5 and 4 are less material and more withdrawn from the lower world and its interests. As in the case of the physical, the densest emotional matter is far too thick for the ordinary forms of emotional life, but the emotional world has other forms of its own, which are unknown to us. As I have repeatedly mentioned, there are different “parallel” streams of evolution on this planet, and they also have emotional envelopes. On the fifth and fourth sub-planes, earthly associations appear to become less and less critical, and the residents there tend more and more to mould their surroundings into a vision of their imagination. It is no accident that the Emotional World is called the world of illusions.
Though occupying the same space, subplanes 3,2 and 1 give the impression of being further removed from the physical world and correspondingly less material. At these levels, entities lose sight of the Earth and its affairs: they are usually deeply self-absorbed and, to a large extent, create their surroundings. However, they are sufficiently objective to be perceptible to other entities on the same plane sub-planes 3, 2 and 1. They are thus not wholly aware of the realities of the plane but live instead in imaginary cities of their own, partly creating them entirely by their thoughts and partly inheriting and adding to the structures created by their predecessors.
On the various Emotional planes are found the happy hunting grounds of the Native American peoples, the Valhalla of the Norseman, the houri-filled paradise of the Muslim, the golden and jewelled-gated New Jerusalem of the Christian, and the lyceum-filled heaven of the materialistic reformer. Here is also the “Summerland” of the Spiritualists, in which houses, schools and cities exist, which, real enough as they are for a time, to a clearer-sighted monad, are sometimes pitiably unlike what their delighted creators suppose them to be. Nevertheless, many creations are of real, though temporary, beauty. A visitor who knew of nothing higher might wander contentedly among the natural scenery provided, which, at any rate, is much superior to anything in the physical world. The passerby might, of course, prefer to construct their scenery to suit their fancies.
In these collective environments, you will find selfish or unspiritual religionists. Here, they wear their golden crown and worship their own grossly material representation of the particular deity of their country and time. On another sub-division of a plane, you may find those who, during earth life, have devoted themselves to materialistic but intellectual pursuits, following them not for the sake of benefiting their fellow humanity but either from motives of selfish ambition or simply for the sake of an intellectual exercise. Such people may remain on this sub-plane for many years, happy in working out their intellectual problems but doing no good to anyone and making little progress towards the Heaven-World (47:4-7).
On the higher sub-planes, the inhabitants do not build themselves imaginary conceptions as they do at lower levels. Thinkers and scientists often utilise, for purposes of their study, almost all the powers of the entire emotional plane, for they can descend almost to the physical world along certain limited lines. Thus, they can swoop upon a physical book’s emotional counterpart and extract the required information. They readily touch an author’s mind, impress their ideas upon them and receive theirs in return. Sometimes, they seriously delay their departure for the heaven-world by the enthusiasm with which they prosecute lines of study and experiment on the emotional plane. Although we speak of emotional matter as solid, it is never really, but only relatively solid. One of the reasons why mediaeval alchemists symbolised emotional matter by water was because of its fluidity and penetrability. The particles in the densest emotional matter are further apart, relative to their size than even gaseous particles. Hence, it is easier for two of the densest emotional bodies to pass through each other than for the lightest gas to diffuse in the air.
In the following presentation, we will finish our overview of the Emotional World.