On this matter, Max Heindel explained
the following:
« So man builds and sows until
the moment of death arrives. Then the seed time and the periods of growth and
ripening are past. The harvest time has come, when the skeleton specter of
Death arrives with his scythe and hour-glass.
That is a good symbol. The
skeleton symbolizes the relatively permanent part of the body. The scythe
represents the fact that this permanent part, which is about to be harvested by
the spirit, is the fruitage of the life now drawing to a close. The hourglass
in his hand indicates that the hour does not strike until the full course has
been run in harmony with unvarying laws.
When that moment arrives a
separation of the vehicles takes place. As his life in the Physical World is
ended for the time being, it is not necessary for man to retain his dense body.
The vital body, which as we have explained, also belongs to the Physical World,
is withdrawn by way of the head, leaving the dense body inanimate.
(This is false, because the vital
body is not part of the physical plane, it is part of the energetic plane, and
this lie was invented by Leadbeater.)
THE ATOM SEED OF THE PHYSICAL BODY
The higher vehicles (vital body,
desire body and mind) are seen to leave the dense body with a spiral movement,
taking with them the soul of one dense atom. Not the atom itself, but the
forces that played through it.
The results of the experiences
passed through in the dense body during the life just ended have been impressed
upon this particular atom. While all the other atoms of the dense body have
been renewed from time to time, this permanent atom has remained.
It has remained stable, not only
through one life, but it has been a part of every dense body ever used by a particular
Ego. It is withdrawn at death only to re-awaken at the dawn of another physical
life, to serve again as the nucleus around which is built the new dense body to
be used by the same Ego. It is therefore called the “Seed Atom.”
During life the seed atom is
situated in the left ventricle of the heart, near the apex. At death it rises
to the brain by way of the pneumogastric nerve, leaving the dense body,
together with the higher vehicles, by way of the sutures between the parietal
and occipital bones.
(All this is false, and this is
another lie invented by Leadbeater, who claimed that the registers of the
different bodies are kept in "a permanent atom" corresponding to each
of the bodies.
But the masters explained that
all the characteristics of humans and their bodies remain stored in the
skandhas, which are placed in the auric egg. And the lower skandhas become
inactive when the human ascends to the divine World, and they are reactivated
when the humans return to reincarnate.)
THE SILVERY CORD
When the higher vehicles have
left the dense body they are still connected with it by a slender, glistening,
silvery cord shaped much like two figure sixes reversed, one upright and one
horizontally placed, the two connected at the extremities of the hooks.
One end is fastened to the heart
by means of the seed atom, and it is the rupture of the seed atom which causes
the heart to stop. The cord itself is not snapped until the panorama of the
past life, contained in the vital body, has been reviewed.
The silver cord snaps at the
point where the sixes unite, half remaining with the dense body and the other
half with the higher vehicles. From the time the cord snaps the dense body is
quite dead.
(I don't know if the Max
Heindel's description of the silver cord is correct, but it is false that the
memories of life are contained in the vital body, because masters explained
that in reality these memories are contained in the brain.
And it is true that the silver
cord is what keeps the inner person connected with his physical body, but I
have read that the connection is established in the navel and not in the heart.
Although, I am not sure if it asseveration is true or not. However, I am
inclined to think that this could be true, since the fetus begins to form
connected with the navel.)
THE CREMATION
Care should be taken, however, not
to cremate or embalm the body until at least three days after death, for while
the vital body is with the higher vehicles, and they are still connected with
the dense body by means of the silver cord, any postmortem examination or other
injury to the dense body will be felt, in a measure, by the man.
Cremation should be particularly
avoided in the first three days after death, because it tends to disintegrate
the vital body, which should be kept intact until the panorama of the past life
has been etched into the desire body.
(It is false that the vital body
is disintegrated with the cremation, because as I pointed out above, the energy
body does not belong to the physical plane.
The vital body has been
constructed to remain operational for a period of time. And if, for example,
the human had to live 90 years, but by accident, he dies at 60. Then the vital
body will continue to function for another 30 years.
And during these thirty years,
the human will remain in the astral plane, exactly the same as before, simply
he will no longer have his physical body since it will have been eliminated.)
THE IMPORTANCE OF SILENCE
When the “silver cord” has broken
in the heart, and man has been released from his dense body, a moment of the
highest importance comes to the Ego, and it cannot be too seriously impressed
upon the relatives of a dying person that it is a great crime against the
departing soul to give expression to loud grief and lamentations, for it is
just then engaged in a matter of supreme importance and a great deal of the
value of the past life depends upon how much attention the soul can give to
this matter. This will be made clearer when we come to the description of man's
life in the Desire World.
(The masters agree that silence
is ideal, but neither is it the end of the world if there is noise, because
this separation process takes place automatically, without the involvement of
the person, except unless he is already a very advanced human.)
FORCE THE PERSON TO STAY ALIVE
It is also a crime against the
dying to administer stimulants which have the effect of forcing the higher
vehicles back into the dense body with a jerk, thus imparting a great shock to
the man.
It is no torture to pass out, but
it is torture to be dragged back to endure further suffering. Some who have
passed out have told investigators that they had, in that way, been kept dying
for hours and had prayed that their relatives would cease their mistaken
kindness and let them die.
(Here, it depends on each case,
for example a person who falls into a coma, sometimes it can be beneficial to
try to bring her inner being back to her body.)
THE REVISION OF LIFE
When the man is freed from the
dense body, which was the heaviest clog upon his spiritual power (like the
heavy mitten on the hand of the musician in our previous illustration), his
spiritual power comes back in some measure, and he is able to read the pictures
in the negative pole of the reflecting ether of his vital body, which is the seat
of the subconscious memory.
(The masters explain that the
human remains exactly the same after deadh as before, and his powers do not
increase.
It is true that the human sees
his life passing, but this happens when he is in the process to die, and not
after he has freed himself from his physical body. And this does not happen
because "his spiritual power has increased", but because it is the
usual process where the brain transmits to the inner being, all the memories of
what the person lived on Earth, consciously and unconsciously.)
The whole of his past life passes
before his sight like a panorama, the events being presented in reverse order.
The incidents of the days immediately preceding death come first and so on back
through manhood or womanhood to youth, childhood and infancy. Everything is
remembered.
The man stands as a spectator
before this panorama of his past life. He sees the pictures as they pass and
they impress themselves upon his higher vehicles, but he has no feeling about
them at this time.
That is reserved until the time
when he enters into the Desire World, which is the world of feeling and
emotion. At present he is only in the Etheric Region of the Physical World.
(This is false, because this
process takes place on the physical plane and before the brain turns off, and
the energy plane does not belong to the physical plane, this is another
Leadbeater invention.)
This panorama lasts from a few
hours to several days, depending upon the length of time the man could keep
awake, if necessary. Some people can keep awake only twelve hours, or even
less; others can do so, upon occasion, for a number of days, but as long as the
man can remain awake, this panorama lasts.
(This is also false, because this
remembering takes only a short time.)
This feature of life after death
is similar to that which takes place when one is drowning or falling from a
height. In such cases the vital body also leaves the dense body and the man sees
his life in a flash, because he loses consciousness at once. Of course the
“silver cord” is not broken, or there could be no resuscitation.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE REMEMBERING?
When the endurance of the vital
body has reached its limit, it collapses in the way described when we were
considering the phenomenon of sleep. During physical life, when the Ego
controls its vehicles, this collapse terminates the waking hours; after death
the collapse of the vital body terminates the panorama and forces the man to
withdraw into the Desire World.
(This is incorrect, because in
reality the vital body does not intervene in this affair. It is the physical
body which forces that separation, either by the old age, or because an event
caused its death prematurely.)
The silver cord breaks at the
point where the sixes unite, and the same division is made as during sleep, but
with this important difference, that though the vital body returns to the dense
body, it no longer interpenetrates it, but simply hovers over it. It remains
floating over the grave, decaying synchronously with the dense vehicle.
(The silver cord is not divided
during sleep, because then the person would die.)
Hence, to the trained
clairvoyant, a graveyard is a nauseating sight and if only more people could
see it as he does, little argument would be necessary to induce them to change
from the present unsanitary method of disposing of the dead to the more
rational method of cremation, which restores the elements to their primordial condition
without the objectionable features incident to the process of slow decay.
(As I mentioned earlier, the
vital body does not disintegrate until its time has arrived. However, what
disintegrates with the physical body is its subtle counterpart, which
corresponds to its denser astral aspect. This is the unconscious
"ghost" which is sometimes perceived on the physical plane.
And this counterpart rots and
generates subtle pestilent emanations that humans do not currently perceive –
except those who are very sensitive – but which affect people negatively, and
that is why it would be preferable to get rid of cemeteries.)
In leaving the vital body the
process is much the same as when the dense body is discarded. The life forces
of one atom are taken, to be used as a nucleus for the vital body of a future
embodiment. Thus, upon his entrance into the Desire World the man has the seed
atoms of the dense and the vital bodies, in addition to the desire body and the
mind.
THE WEIGHT OF THE SOUL
In the beginning of 1906 Dr.
McDougall made a series of experiments in the Massachusetts General Hospital,
to determine, if possible, whether anything not ordinarily visible left the
body at death. For this purpose he constructed a pair of scales capable of
registering differences of one-tenth of an ounce.
The dying person and his bed were
placed on one of the platforms of the scale, which was then balanced by weights
placed on the opposite platform. In every instance it was noted that at the
precise moment when the dying person drew the last breath, the platform
containing the weights dropped with startling suddenness, lifting the bed and
the body, thus showing that something invisible, but having weight, had left
the body.
Thereupon the newspapers all over
the country announced in glaring headlines that Dr. McDougall had “weighed the
soul.” Occultism hails with joy the discoveries of modern science, as they
invariably corroborate what occult science has long taught.
The experiments of Dr. McDougall
showed conclusively that something invisible to ordinary sight left the body at
death, as trained clairvoyants had seen, and as had been stated in lectures and
literature for many years previous to Dr. McDougall's discovery.
But this invisible “something” is
not the soul. There is a great difference. The reporters jump at conclusions
when they state that the scientists have “weighed the soul.” The soul belongs
to higher realms and can never be weighed on physical scales, even though they
registered variations of one-millionth part of a grain instead of one-tenth of
an ounce.
It was the vital body which the
scientist weighed. It is formed of the four ethers and they belong to the
Physical World.
As we have seen, a certain amount
of this ether is “superimposed” upon the ether which envelops the particles of
the human body and is confined there during physical life, adding in a slight
degree to the weight of the dense body of plant, animal and man. In death it
escapes; hence the diminution in weight noticed by Dr. McDougall when the
persons with whom he experimented expired.
(The vital body is not composed
of four ethers, that is another lie invented by Leadbeater.
And I've heard about the research
done by Dr. Mac Dougall, but I can't tell you what he weighed. On the other
hand, what I can tell you is that Max Heindel is partially wrong when he says
that the soul remains in the higher realms.
Because although most of the soul
remains in the divine world, she also projects a ray of her essence towards the
Earth, and this ray will interact with the physical world.)
Dr. McDougall also tried his
scales in weighing dying animals. No diminution was found here, though one of
the animals was a St. Bernard dog. That was taken to indicate that animals have
no souls.
A little later, however,
Professor La V. Twining, head of the Science Department of the Los Angeles
Polytechnic School, experimented with mice and kittens, which he enclosed in
hermetically sealed glass flasks. His scales were the most sensitive procurable
and were enclosed in a glass case from which all moisture had been removed.
It was found that all the animals
observed lost weight at death. A good sized mouse, weighing 12.886 grams,
suddenly lost 3.1 milligrams at death.
A kitten used in another
experiment lost one hundred milligrams while dying and at its last gasp it
suddenly lost an additional sixty milligrams. After that it lost weight slowly,
due to evaporation.
Thus the teaching of occult
science in regard to the possession of vital bodies by animals was also
vindicated when sufficiently fine scales were used, and the case where the
rather insensitive scales did not show diminution in the weight of the St.
Bernard dog shows that the vital bodies of animals are proportionately lighter
than in man.
(I cannot tell you if animals
have a proportionally lighter vital body than humans, but that could be possible,
because humans have more developed their subtle bodies.
However, I don't think that can
be perceived with a scale, and for me it remains a mystery what doctors have
weighed, but I don't think they are subtle bodies.) »
(The Rosicrucian Cosmos Conception,
Chapter 3)
CONCLUSION
Max Heindel, about the process experienced by humans at the time of
death, said some asseverations in correspondence with what the Masters of
Wisdom taught, but unfortunately most of his explanations are incorrect because
he copied the lies invented by Charles Leadbeater.
