Let us continue from where we left off in the last presentation by looking at the Emotional World and its residents. We will kick off with humans who are (B) Physically Dead.
1. The Average Person after Death.—This class, obviously a very large one, consists of people of all grades in varying conditions of consciousness, as already fully described in the presentation on After-Death Life. We all end up in the Emotional World after we shed our etheric and physical envelopes. The 64 thousand dollar question is, where do we end up? On which subplane and why? That is another story.
2. The Shades.—In a later presentation, we shall see that when the emotional life of a person is over, they die on the emotional plane and leaves behind them a disintegrating emotional body, precisely as when they die physically, they leave behind them a decaying physical corpse. In most cases, the monad cannot withdraw from their lower principles, the whole of their manasic (mental) principle; consequently, a portion of their lower mental matter remains entangled with the emotional corpse. The portion of mental matter remaining behind in this manner consists of the denser kinds of each sub-plane, which the emotional body has succeeded in wrenching from the mental body rather than letting it return to its own plane.
This emotional corpse, known as a Shade, is an entity that is not, in any sense, the actual individual at all; nevertheless, it bears their exact personal appearance and possesses their memory and all their little quirks. Therefore, it may be very readily mistaken for them, as it is at séances. It is not conscious of any act of impersonation, for as far as its intellect goes, it must necessarily suppose itself to be the individual: it is, in reality, merely a soulless bundle of all the monad’s lowest qualities. So, if you bump into Napoleon, take what he says with a pinch of salt. Also, consider that if you happen to be communicating with a parent over 30 years since they passed, the chances are you are communicating with a shade, not your departed parent. If this gives you comfort, so be it.
The length of life of a shade varies according to the amount of the lower mental matter which animates it. Still, as this steadily fades out, its intellect is diminishing. However, it may possess a great deal of animal cunning, and even nearer the end of its career, it can still communicate by borrowing temporary intelligence from the medium. From its very nature, it is exceedingly liable to be swayed by all kinds of evil influences and being separated from its monad, it has nothing in its constitution capable of responding to good ones. It, therefore, lends itself readily to various minor purposes of some of the baser sort of black magicians. The mental matter it possesses gradually disintegrates and returns the shade to the general matter of its own plane. You have been warned.
3. The Shell.—A shell is a person’s emotional corpse in the later stages of its disintegration, every particle of mind having left it. Consequently, it is without consciousness or intelligence and drifts passively about the emotional currents. Even now, it may be galvanised for a few moments into a ghastly comical exaggeration of life if it comes within reach of a medium’s aura. Under such circumstances, it will still exactly resemble its departed persona in appearance and may even reproduce, to some extent, their familiar expressions or handwriting.
It also has the quality of being blindly responsive to the lowest order of vibrations, frequently set up during its last stage of existence as a shade. You have been doubly warned.
4. The Vitalised Shell.—This entity is not strictly human; nevertheless, it is classified here because its outer vesture, the passive, senseless shell, was once an appendage of humanity. Such life, intelligence, desire and will as it may possess are those of the artificial elemental animating it, this elemental being itself a creation of humanity’s evil thoughts. A vitalised shell is always malevolent: it is a genuinely tempting demon whose evil influence is limited only by the extent of its power. Like the shade, it is frequently used in Voodoo and Obeah forms of magic. It is referred to by some writers as an “elementary”. Remember that term?
5. The Suicide and Victim of Sudden Death.—These have already been described in the presentation on After-Death Life. It may be noted that this class, as well as Shades and Vitalised Shells, are what may be called minor vampires because when they have an opportunity, they prolong their existence by draining away the vitality of human beings whom they can influence.
6. The Vampire and Werewolf. These two classes are extremely rare today, especially in Europe; examples are occasionally found, chiefly in countries where there is a high proportion of Fourth Root Race blood, such as Russia or Hungary. We know of such beings through our myths and legends in Europe. These beings are also described if you delve into similar myths on other continents. How prevalent they are today, I do not know.
A person can live such a degraded, selfish and brutal life that the whole of the lower mind becomes immeshed in their desires and finally separates from the monad. This is possible only where every gleam of unselfishness or spirituality has been stifled and where there is no redeeming feature whatever. Such a lost entity very soon after death finds itself unable to stay in the Emotional world. It is irresistibly drawn in full consciousness into “its own place”, the mysterious eighth sphere, which slowly disintegrates after experiences best left Un-described. If, however, it perishes by suicide or sudden death, it may, under certain circumstances, especially if it knows something of black magic, hold itself back from that fate by the ghastly existence of a vampire. Since the eighth sphere cannot claim it until after the death of the body, it preserves it in a kind of cataleptic trance by transfusing into it blood drawn from other human beings by its semi-materialised emotional body, thus postponing its final destiny by the commission of wholesale murder. The most effective remedy in such a case, as popular “superstition” rightly supposes, is to cremate the body, thus depriving the entity of its anchor point. When the grave is opened, the body usually appears fresh and healthy, and the coffin is not unusually filled with blood. Cremation makes this sort of vampirism impossible.
The Werewolf can manifest only during a person’s physical life, and it invariably implies some knowledge of magical arts, which is sufficient at any rate to enable the person to project the emotional body. When a cruel and brutal person does this, under certain circumstances, the emotional body may be seized upon by other emotional entities and materialised, not into the human form, but into that of some wild animal, usually the wolf. In that condition, it will range the surrounding countryside, killing other animals and even human beings, thus satisfying not only its craving for blood but also that of the negative entities who drive it on. In this case, as so often with ordinary materialisations, a wound inflicted upon the emotional form will be reproduced upon the human physical body by the curious phenomenon of repercussion. But after the death of the physical body, the emotional body, which will probably continue to appear in the same form, will be less vulnerable.
It will then be less dangerous, as it can only fully materialise if it can find a suitable medium. In such manifestations, there is probably a great deal of etheric matter and perhaps even some liquid and gaseous constituents of the physical body, as in the case of some materialisations. In both cases, this fluidic body can pass much farther from the physical body than is otherwise possible for a vehicle containing etheric matter. The manifestations of vampires and werewolves are usually restricted to the immediate neighbourhood of their physical bodies. This explains the myth of the vampire in their coffin. The corpse looks fresh. The vampire does not open the coffin every night and flies off as a bat. This is an allegory. What has just been described is what occurs: a projection of semi-physical and etheric matter. Just make sure you don’t happen to be around when this happens.
7. The Black Magician and Their Pupil. This class corresponds, in a similar manner, to the pupil awaiting reincarnation, but in this case, the person is defying the natural process of evolution by maintaining themselves in emotional life through magical arts, often of the most horrible nature.
It is considered undesirable to enumerate or describe the various sub-divisions of this class, as an occult student wishes only to avoid them. All these entities, who prolong their life thus on the emotional plane beyond their natural limit, do so at the expense of others and by the absorption of their life in some form or another. Why do they have to do this? Because they have severed their link, in the case of the actual Black Magician, from their causal envelope and guardian angel. Eventually, a terrible fate awaits them, but that is not our problem.
8. The Pupil awaiting reincarnation.—This is also, at present, a rare class. A pupil who has decided not to “take their devachan”, i.e., not to pass into the heaven or mental world, but to continue to work on the physical plane, is sometimes, by permission only of a very high authority, allowed to do so, a suitable reincarnation being arranged for them by their Master. Even when permission is granted, it is said that the pupil must confine themself strictly to the emotional plane. At the same time, the matter is being arranged because if they touch the mental plane, even for a moment, they might be swept up by an irresistible current into the line of normal evolution again and so pass into the Mental World. This appears not to be the case for children who die before the age of 14. They can wait in the Emotional World for a suitable conception if the attendant solar deva deems this the best course of action for their change. I happen to be the beneficiary of such a dispensation.
Occasionally, though rarely, the pupil may be placed directly in an adult body whose previous tenant has no further use for it. Still, a suitable body is seldom available. Meanwhile, the pupil is fully conscious on the emotional plane and able to go on with the work given to them by their Master, even more effectively than when hampered by a physical body. This continuity of consciousness indicates the development of the monad concerned.
9. The Nirmanakaya.—It is very rare indeed that a being so exalted as a Nirmanakaya manifests itself on the emotional plane. A Nirmanakaya has won the right to untold ages of rest in unspeakable bliss. They, however, chose to remain within touch of earth, suspended as it were between this world and the 46th plane, to generate streams of spiritual force, which may be employed for the helping of evolution. Note the term force. Nirmanakayas are First Ray monads, and they act as transformers of higher solar systemic and cosmic forces, depending on which plane they are located. They are the elite of the elite.
If they wished to appear on the emotional plane, they would create a temporary emotional body from the atomic matter of the plane. This is possible because a Nirmanakaya retains its causal body and the permanent atoms it has carried throughout its evolution so that at any moment, it can materialise around its mental, emotional or physical bodies if it so desires. The Nirmanakaya are an interesting bunch of monads linked with the administration of karma, and they lurk everywhere except on the physical plane itself. They appear in the “Human” column, but I am not sure they belong here.
In the next presentation, we will start to look at the non-human emotional entities. This is a large group by itself, which will take at least three presentations to cover briefly.