All good things must come to an end sooner or later. Life in Devachan, the heaven-world, is finite and ends when the monad has assimilated all the essence of the experiences gathered in the preceding physical and emotional lives. Notice the use of the word “essence”. It is not knowledge carried forth from the Mental to the Causal envelope but the essence of that knowledge. You could call it the lessons learned, but that does not reflect what has been gathered. The matter of the casual world and how it functions in our causal envelope is the topic for the next series.
One way to clarify what is being transferred is to think of having objective knowledge presented on a page and then converting this into an abstract concept now represented in a geometric shape. It sounds bizarre, and it is to us. We are used to living in an objective reality with subjective thought. Those thoughts are objective on their own plane of matter. Suddenly, even this objectivity is lost, and what replaces it is wondrous beyond our imagination, but we will get to that in due course. The amount of experience and knowledge gathered in the last incarnation will determine how long the devachanic life has taken. It usually lasts centuries but can last over a millennia.
When the mental envelope dissolves, all the faculties which were expressed through the mental envelope are then withdrawn within the higher mental or causal body. Together with them, the mental permanent molecule, which performs a function similar to that performed by the physical and emotional permanent atoms, is also withdrawn within the causal body and remains latent until called forth into renewed activity when the time comes for rebirth.
How is this withdrawal performed? The mental matter is located on the 1st Triad, on subplanes 47:4-7. There is a chasm between the 1st and 2nd Triads. This is where the role of the lower causal envelope, which you see here represented in pale blue, comes into play. We have called this our persona. It contains a small fraction of the causal matter that the monad has stored in its causal envelope (approximately 5 per cent). With the assistance of the solar devas, this matter is sent into incarnation, forming the envelope of the 1st Self. It is what contains the lower envelopes of matter. One of the most significant things about the lower causal envelope is that it contains no permanent, atomic or molecular structure. Why? Because its permanent structure is located on the 2nd triad in the 47:1 permanent atom. If that is the case, how does it store any information? That will be a topic for serious consideration in the next series, but I will give you a clue: it has to do with magnetic resonance.
The mental permanent molecule, together with the emotional and physical permanent atoms, are shrouded in the Unity (46) life-web, and stored up as a radiant nucleus-like particle in the causal body, being all that remains to the persona of the monad’s bodies in the lower worlds. When we consider the monad focused in its causal body, two terms have been used to describe it. The monad is the ego in Theosophical literature and the soul in Gnostic literature. The term monad is accurate in that this is who we are, a single monad. However, this monad is encased in a series of envelopes up the planes of matter until it reaches the 1st Plane. This is a difficult concept to get one’s head around until you realise that the monad is so energetic that it can not ever leave the 1st plane of matter. However, a cluster of 49 monads causes a lower plane of matter to come into existence. How can you always be on the 1st Plane of matter yet be in clusters of matter on lower planes at the same time? The answer to that could lie in a statement often quoted in Hindu literature, “maya, maya, all is maya”. Still, for practical purposes, think of the monad existing on the 1st plane, the 43rd plane (43:1), the 47th plane (47:1) and being conscious in one of the emotional subplanes (48:2-7), at least for most of us at the present time.
Let me repeat what I have just said in a different way. It is an important concept to grasp. Esoteric terminology has got around this problem by referring to the monad as a self. A 1st-Self, 2nd Self, 3rd Self etc. Why did they do this? Because the self refers to the consciousness aspect of the monad, and as we know, unless you are a Hylozoician, your universe revolves around consciousness. Matter plays an insignificant part. Using the term monad for an individual is the most accurate of all the options. Yet, it is inaccurate at the same time because, as we already know, the monad can not enter the Cosmic Physical Kingdom (43-49). Without getting lost in the weeds, let us assume, as I have often stated, that the monad is lodged in the 43:1 atom and focuses its attention on the Cosmic Physical World through the triads. This is what the triad structure is there for. Wherever the monad is focused, it must be in an envelope. Therefore, the home of the monad for a 1st-Self is the casual envelope; the anchor for that focus is the 47:1 permanent atom, composed of a cluster of tertiary matter. What we then call a monad conscious in this envelope can be called an ego or a soul. Of the two, I choose “soul”, and you will see me alternate between referring to the monad at times and, at other times, to the soul. Just be aware that what I am drawing your attention to is where the monad’s focus happens at any moment. As I speak to you now, your monad will most likely be focused through your 48:1 permanent atom in one of the six subplanes of the emotional envelope.
This may have been a lengthy discourse akin to how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin, but I feel it is important to realise that each of these envelopes we will inhabit on our way back to the 1st Plane is just an overcoat, it is not us. So when Christians talk about Man’s immortal soul, they are inaccurate, as what they refer to as a soul is, in fact, just a temporary home in which we collect our memories as we transition through the 4th Kingdom of Nature.
Okay, back to the narrative. The mental body, which is the last of the temporary vestures of the true person, the monad focused in the causal envelope, is left behind as a mental corpse, just like the physical and emotional bodies were left behind. Its materials disintegrate and return to the general matter of the mental plane. Dissolving your mental envelope is not as imperative as dissolving your etheric and emotional envelopes; you will not get mischievous elementals inhibiting and masquerading as you for the next few centuries.
We are not strictly concerned in this series with the monad’s life on the higher mental or causal plane, but in order not to leave the story of a monad’s life between one incarnation and the next too incomplete, we will mention very briefly the portion of that life spent on the higher mental plane (47:1-3).
Every human being, on the completion of their life on the emotional and lower mental planes, obtains at least a flash of consciousness of the monad in the causal envelope. The more developed souls have a definite conscious period, living as the soul in the causal envelope, either on subplane 47:2 or 47:3, but not 47:1. Why not 47:1? You should know the answer to that by now. In the momentary flash of soul-consciousness, the person sees their last life as a whole and gathers the impression of success or failure in the work it was meant to do. It is good that most of us fall unconscious as we reach our causal envelopes. It is better not to know just how badly we screwed up in our last incarnations! For most of us, it is just a peaceful slumber until we are awakened by our solar deva and begin ensouling again and embarking on a new adventure.
Before we get a full readout of our last incarnation with a breakdown of the scores of actives we engaged in, we slowly get glimpses of the causal life. This happens when we have focused ourselves in our 47:4 permanent molecule. This occurs when we take the (i2). The monad, who we can call the soul, begins to awaken to the value of what initially starts as glimpses, but then it comes to understand them. When this happens, the soul naturally begins to use the information gleaned. Eventually, the soul arrives at a stage when this glimpse is no longer momentary when it can consider the question much more thoroughly and devote some time to its plans for the life that lies before it.
Further description of the soul’s life on its own plane must now be deferred for the fourth series of presentations, which will deal with The Causal Body.