(2) When the consciousness-principle getteth outside [the body, it sayeth to itself], Am I dead, or am I not dead ?' It cannot determine. It seeth its relatives and connexions as it had been used to seeing them before. It even heareth the wailings. The terrifying karmic illusions have not yet dawned. Nor have the frightful apparitions or experiences caused by the Lords of Death yet come.

(19) The Deceased acquireth might with Rā, and is enabled to possess power among the gods, for the gods are made to regard him as one of themselves, and when the Dead ones see him they fall upon their faces. He is seen in the Netherworld even as the beams of Rā

(10) This Elementary Soul survives the dissolution of the physical body of the individual to which it belonged, and under certain conditions and circumstances it may become visible to living persons as the "ghost" of the deceased person. When the Elementary Soul has been "sloughed off" by the higher vehicles of the Soul (after the physical "death"), and has also been released by the partial or complete disintegration of the physical body, it is really but a "shell" having for form and shape of the latter, and is almost lifeless, although held together by the cohesive forces of the fast-dying vibrations. In such cases it possesses neither intelligence nor consciousness beyond that concerned in holding its substance together and to all intents and purposes can be regarded as nothing more than a mass of cloudy vapor assuming the form of a human being , and destined to become speedily disintegrated on its own plane.

(4) " He is becoming one," they say; ce he does not see." " He is becoming one," they say; " he does not smell." '• He is becoming one," they say; "he does not taste." "He is becoming one," they say; "he does not speak." " He is becoming one," yamdina text and does not fit in well with the context. Cf. 4. 3. 16. they say; "he does not hear." " He is becoming one," they say; " he does not think.3' " He is becoming one," they say; " he does not touch." <% He is becoming one/' they say; u he does not know." The point of his heart becomes lighted up. By that light the self departs, either by the eye, or by the head, or by other bodily parts. After him, as he goes out, the life (prand) goes out. After the life, as it goes out, all the breaths (prdnd) go out. He becomes one with intelligence. What has intelligence departs with him. His knowledge and his woiks and his former intelligence [i.e. instinct] lay hold of him. The soul of the unreleased after death

(23) [Instructions to the Officiant]: Thus speak, and, if recognition result from that, Liberation will be obtained, without need of the wandering in the Six Lokas. If, however, through influence of bad karma, recognition is made difficult, thereupon say as follows: O nobly-born, again listen. 'Endowed with all sense-faculties and power of unimpeded motion' implieth [that although] thou mayst have been, when living, blind of the eye, or deaf, or lame, yet on this After-Death Plane thine eyes will see forms, and thine ears will hear sounds, and all other sense- organs of thine will be unimpaired and very keen and complete. Wherefore the Bardo-body hath been spoken of as 'endowed with all sense-faculties'. That [condition of existence, in which thou thyself now art] is an indication that thou art deceased and wandering in the Bardo. Act so as to know this. Remember the teachings; remember the teachings.

(7) Again, the setting-face-to-face is, calling the deceased by name, thus: O nobly-born, listen undistractedly. On the Fourth Day the red light, which is the primal form of the element fire, will shine. At that time, from the Red Western Realm of Happiness, the Bhagavan Buddha Amitabha, red in colour, bearing a lotus in his hand, seated upon a peacock-throne and embraced by the Divine Mother Gokarmo, will shine upon thee, [together with] the Bodhisattvas Chenrazee and Jampal, attended by the female Bodhisattvas Ghirdhima and Aloke. The six bodies of Enlightenment will shine upon thee from amidst a halo of rainbow light.

(121) Behold, thou understanding spirit: The spirit speaketh to thee, and not to the dead spirit of the flesh: Open wide the door of thy astral birth, and elevate that one part of the astral birth in the light, and let the other in the wrath stand still, and take heed also that thy animated or soulish spirit do wholly unite with the light.

(41) When the perturbations of the psychic nature have all been stilled, then the consciousness, like a pure crystal, takes the colour of what it rests on, whether that be the perceiver, perceiving, or the thing perceived.

(2) Just as the man in this body passes through the various stages of boyhood, youth, and old age, like so, he passes into another body after death. The wise know it and are not deluded.

(44) Now if the Spirit of the Soul remains unregenerated in its first Principle, which it has inherited out of the Eternity, with the Beginning of its Life, then also (at the Breaking [or Deceasing] of its Body) there proceeds out of its eternal Mind such

(14) If the embodied soul meets with death when sattva prevails, it goes to the spotless realms of those who know the Highest.

(17) This procedure, if approved, will entail a distinction between psychic and bodily qualities, the latter belonging specifically to body.

If we decide to refer all souls to the higher, we are still at liberty to perform for Sensible qualities a division founded upon the senses themselves- the eyes, the ears, touch, taste, smell; and if we are to look for further differences, colours may be subdivided according to varieties of vision, sounds according to varieties of hearing, and so with the other senses: sounds may also be classified qualitatively as sweet, harsh, soft.

Here a difficulty may be raised: we divide the varieties of Substance and their functions and activities, fair or foul or indeed of any kind whatsoever, on the basis of Quality, Quantity rarely, if ever, entering into the differences which produce species; Quantity, again, we divide in accordance with qualities of its own: how then are we to divide Quality itself into species? what differences are we to employ, and from what genus shall we take them? To take them from Quality itself would be no less absurd than setting up substances as differences of substances.

How, then, are we to distinguish black from white? how differentiate colours in general from tastes and tangible qualities? By the variety of sense-organs? Then there will be no difference in the objects themselves.

But, waiving this objection, how deal with qualities perceived by the same sense-organ? We may be told that some colours integrate, others disintegrate the vision, that some tastes integrate, others disintegrate the tongue: we reply that, first, it is the actual experiences that we are discussing and it is to these that the notions of integration and disintegration must be applied; secondly, a means of differentiating these experiences has not been offered.

It may be suggested that we divide them by their powers, and this suggestion is so far reasonable that we may well agree to divide the non-sensuous qualities, the sciences for example, on this basis; but we see no reason for resorting to their effects for the division of qualities sensuous. Even if we divide the sciences by their powers, founding our division of their processes upon the faculties of the mind, we can only grasp their differences in a rational manner if we look not only to their subject-matter but also to their Reason-Principles.

But, granted that we may divide the arts by their Reason-Principles and theorems, this method will hardly apply to embodied qualities. Even in the arts themselves an explanation would be required for the differences between the Reason-Principles themselves. Besides, we have no difficulty in seeing that white differs from black; to account for this difference is the purpose of our enquiry.

(35) For the body is the incorporated or compacted spirit of nature, and encompasseth or encloseth the other six spirits; these generate themselves in the body, just as it is in the Deity.

(19) By certain fixed natural laws each soul is restricted to the realms of its own sub-plane or division of the Astral Plane, except that it may, if it desires, visit the planes beneath its own—but it cannot visit those higher than its own. The law of vibrations acts as the astral policemen in these matters. Disembodied souls may thus communicate with and have converse and association with each other, but only by the higher soul visiting the lower, and never the reverse.

(29) But- keeping to our illustration, by which the body is warmed by soul and not merely illuminated by it- how is it that when the higher soul withdraws there is no further trace of the vital principle?

For a brief space there is; and, precisely, it begins to fade away immediately upon the withdrawal of the other, as in the case of warmed objects when the fire is no longer near them: similarly hair and nails still grow on the dead; animals cut to pieces wriggle for a good time after; these are signs of a life force still indwelling.

Besides, simultaneous withdrawal would not prove the identity of the higher and lower phases: when the sun withdraws there goes with it not merely the light emanating from it, guided by it, attached to it, but also at once that light seen upon obliquely situated objects, a light secondary to the sun's and cast upon things outside of its path ; the two are not identical and yet they disappear together.

But is this simultaneous withdrawal or frank obliteration?

The question applies equally to this secondary light and to the corporeal life, that life which we think of as being completely sunk into body.

No light whatever remains in the objects once illuminated; that much is certain; but we have to ask whether it has sunk back into its source or is simply no longer in existence.

How could it pass out of being, a thing that once has been?

But what really was it? We must remember that what we know as colour belongs to bodies by the fact that they throw off light, yet when corruptible bodies are transformed the colour disappears and we no more ask where the colour of a burned-out fire is than where its shape is.

Still: the shape is merely a configuration, like the lie of the hands clenched or spread; the colour is no such accidental but is more like, for example, sweetness: when a material substance breaks up, the sweetness of what was sweet in it, and the fragrance of what was fragrant, may very well not be annihilated, but enter into some other substance, passing unobserved there because the new habitat is not such that the entrant qualities now offer anything solid to perception.

May we not think that, similarly, the light belonging to bodies that have been dissolved remains in being while the solid total, made up of all that is characteristic, disappears?

It might be said that the seeing is merely the sequel to some law , so that what we call qualities do not actually exist in the substances.

But this is to make the qualities indestructible and not dependent upon the composition of the body; it would no longer be the Reason-Principles within the sperm that produce, for instance, the colours of a bird's variegated plumage; these principles would merely blend and place them, or if they produced them would draw also on the full store of colours in the sky, producing in the sense, mainly, of showing in the formed bodies something very different from what appears in the heavens.

But whatever we may think on this doubtful point, if, as long as the bodies remain unaltered, the light is constant and unsevered, then it would seem natural that, on the dissolution of the body, the light- both that in immediate contact and any other attached to that- should pass away at the same moment, unseen in the going as in the coming.

But in the case of the soul it is a question whether the secondary phases follow their priors- the derivatives their sources- or whether every phase is self-governing, isolated from its predecessors and able to stand alone; in a word, whether no part of the soul is sundered from the total, but all the souls are simultaneously one soul and many, and, if so, by what mode; this question, however, is treated elsewhere.

Here we have to enquire into the nature and being of that vestige of the soul actually present in the living body: if there is truly a soul, then, as a thing never cut off from its total, it will go with soul as soul must: if it is rather to be thought of as belonging to the body, as the life of the body, we have the same question that rose in the case of the vestige of light; we must examine whether life can exist without the presence of soul, except of course in the sense of soul living above and acting upon the remote object.

(5) In the different fields of manifestation, the Consciousness, though one, is the elective cause of many states of consciousness.

(75) No; thou child of man, thou errest, and dost not rightly understand the divine power: Does not every man in his astral, qualifying or fountain spirits comprehend the whole place or body of this world, and the place comprehendeth man? it is all but one body, only there are distinct members.

(125) Which now [in this life] at present only that soul which qualifieth, operateth or uniteth with the light of God knoweth, though it cannot perfectly bring it back again into the astral birth or geniture; for it is another person.

(21) To those who have experienced the flashes of Illumination, or the glimpse of the Fire of Cosmic Consciousness—both of which classes of phenomena belong to the Plane of the Consciousness of the Demi-Gods—there has come a realization of the actual Oneness of Life in the Universe, and an actual awareness that the Universe is animated by One Life which is diffused among and permeates every portion of its extent and manifestation. To such has come an assurance that there is nothing "dead" in the Universe—that every part and portion, individual and collective, is instinct. with Life. Not only this, but for at least the time of the experience there has come a sense of absolute certainty that the individual is in touch with this One Life, and is an actual centre of activity within its presence.

(44) The [soulish] spirit of the soul is very much more subtle, and more incomprehensible than the body, or the seven qualifying or fountain spirits, which hold, retain and form the body; for it goeth forth from the seven spirits, as God the Holy Ghost goeth forth from the Father and the Son.