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to leave Nature to take its course when it is seen that the end is inevitable.
Another and more far-reaching sin against the passing Spirit is to give vent to loud crying or
lamentation in or near the death chamber. Just subsequent to its release and from a few hours to a
few days afterwards, the Ego is engaged upon a matter of the utmost importance; a great deal of
the value of the past life depends upon the attention given to it by the passing Spirit. If distracted
by the sobs and lamentations of loved ones, it will lose much, but if strengthened by prayer and
helped by silence, much future sorrow to all concerned may be avoided. We are never so much
our brother's keeper as when he is passing through this Gethsemane, and it is one of our greatest
opportunities for serving him and laying up heavenly treasure for ourselves.
We have studied the phenomenon of birth, and have evolved a SCIENCE OF BIRTH. We have
qualified obstetricians and trained nurses to minister in the best possible manner to both mother
and child to make them comfortable, but we are sadly, very sadly, in need of a SCIENCE OF
DEATH. When a child is coming into the world we bustle about in an intelligent endeavor; when
a lifelong friend is about to leave us we stand helplessly about, ignorant of how to aid; worse
than all, we bungle, and cause suffering instead of helping.
We have stated that the vital body is the storehouse of both the conscience and subconscious
memory; upon the vital body is branded indelibly every act and experience of the past life, as the
scenery upon an exposed photographic plate. When the Ego has withdrawn it from the dense
body, the whole life, as registered by the subconscious memory, is laid open to the eye of the
mind. It is the partial loosening of the vital body which causes a drowning person to see his
whole past life, but then it is only like a flash, preceding unconsciousness; the silver cord
remains intact, or there could be no resuscitation. In the case of a Spirit passing out at death, the
movement is slower; the man stands as a spectator while the pictures succeed one another from
death to birth, so that he sees the first happenings just prior to death then the years of manhood
and womanhood unroll themselves; youth, childhood and infancy follow, until it terminates at
birth. The man, however, has no feeling about them at that time, the object is merely to etch the
panorama into the desire body, which is the seat of feeling, and from that impress the feeling will
be realized when the Ego enters the Desire World, but we may note there that THE INTENSITY
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OCCULT PRINCIPLES OF HEALTH AND HEALING
107
OF FEELING REALIZED DEPENDS UPON THE LENGTH OF TIME CONSUMED IN THE
PROCESS OF ETCHING, AND THE ATTENTION GIVEN THERETO BY THE MAN. IF HE
WAS UNDISTURBED FOR A LONG PERIOD, A DEEP CLEAR-CUT IMPRESS WILL BE
MADE UPON THE DESIRE BODY. HE WILL FEEL THE WRONG HE DID MORE
KEENLY IN PURGATORY, AND BE MORE ABUNDANTLY STRENGTHENED IN HIS
GOOD QUALITIES IN HEAVEN, and though the experience will be lost in a future life, THE
FEELINGS WILL REMAIN, as the "still small voice." Where the feelings have been strongly
indented upon the desire body of an Ego, this voice will speak in no vague and uncertain terms.
It will impel him beyond gainsaying, forcing him to desist from that which caused him pain in
the life before and compel him to yield to that which is good. Therefore the panorama passed
BACKWARDS, so that the Ego sees first the effects, and then the underlying causes.
When the body is buried, the vital body disintegrates slowly at the same time as the dense
body, so that when, for instance, an arm has decayed in the grave, the etheric arm of the vital
body which hovers over the grave also disappears, and so on until the last vestige of the body is
gone. But where cremation is performed the vital body disintegrates at once, and as that is the
storehouse of the pictures of the past life, which are being etched upon the desire body to form
the basis of life in Purgatory and the First Heaven, this would be a great calamity where
cremation is performed before the three and a half days are passed. Unless help were given, the
passing Spirit could not hold it together. And that is part of the work that is done by the Invisible
Helpers for humanity. Sometimes they are assisted by nature spirits and others detailed by the
Creative Hierarchies or leaders of humanity. There is also a loss where one is cremated before
the silver cord has been broken naturally, the imprint upon the desire body is never as deep as it
would otherwise have been, and this has an effect upon future lives, for the deeper the imprint of
the last life upon the desire body, the keener the sufferings in Purgatory for the ill committed and
the keener also the pleasure in the First Heaven which results from the good deeds of the last life.
It is these pains and pleasures of our past lives that are what we call conscience, so that where we
have lost in suffering we lose also the realization of wrong which is to deter us in future lives
from committing the same mistakes again. Therefore, the effects of the premature cremation are
very far reaching.
As to what determines the length of the panorama, we remember that it was the collapse of the
vital body which forced the higher vehicles to withdraw, so after death, when the vital body
collapses, the Ego has to withdraw, and thus the panorama comes to an end. The duration of the
panorama depends, therefore, upon the time the person could remain awake if necessary. Some
people can remain awake only a few hours, others can endure for a few days, depending upon the
strength of their vital body.
When the Ego has left the vital body, the latter gravitates back to the dense body, remaining [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]