[cover: Kaleidoscope.]

(E.M. Cosgrove, The Science of the Initiates, 1934, — Chapter VII.)

"Q. How did Socrates view death?
A. "Wherefore, 0 ye Judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth that no evil can happen to a good man in life or after death."

Q. And Spinoza, "The God-intoxicated"?
A. "There is no subject on which the sage will think less than death."

Q. How does the scientist view death?
A. It is necessary as it is inevitable. There can be no progress in the world without it. The bud opens into flower, the flower into fruit, the fruit ripens and falls to make room for another and richer harvest. So must we die to make room for the better men and women who will come after us.

Q. Why do people fear death?
A. It is the primitive past stealing a march upon the unenlightened present--the same primal fears in the presence of the same primal mystery. Moreover, the religious creeds of the Western world have given death a monstrous mien. God is said to have visited it as a curse upon the human race for the original sin of our first parents.

Q. And people believe such a monstrous theory today?
A. Some may believe it, but seldom act it out. Human nature is always stronger than the creed! Few people today break down before the awful threat of eternal punishment, just as few are elated by the dreary prospect of eternal bliss.

Q. What of the great mass that gives allegiance to no creed?
A. Life itself does the needful work. Life--its hard disciplines, the multiplicity of its sorrows and bereavements, the ennui of living--moderates the desires and often gives a philosophic calm in the face of death's inevitability.

Q. So death is not always a disaster?
A. NO! Even when little is known about the meaning and place of death on the path of life. When it breaks up families and separates friends, it wears the face of tragedy. When it brings release to the world-weary, a haven of rest to the infirm and cessation to the body racked with pain, it is: "Come, arms of dear enfolding Death!"

Q. And after Death?
A. To some, death means annihilation--the candle snuffed out forever! To others, the religious-minded, the saved soul goes to be with God--safe in the arms of Jesus! The more modern-minded cling to a tremulous something they call "The Larger Hope"--"that not one life shall be destroyed or cast as rubbish to the void, when God has made the pile complete." Others assume a neutral or agnostic position, and the rest an indifferent air.

Q. What do the religious-minded call the world beyond the grave?
A. Heaven, Paradise, Abraham's Bosom, The Eternal Home.

Q. What kind of place is it?
A. "Where there are pleasures at God's right hand forevermore." Or it is, "the Sabbath of the Soul that knows no ending."

Q. And all religious-minded go there?
A. Oh no! Only saved hearts, not loving hearts, go there. Before the creeds can save us, they must first separate us.

Q. Where do the unsaved go?
A. According to the creeds, they go to Hell.

Q. Is Hell eternal?
A. It is so believed.

Q. But you said, human nature is stronger than the creeds.
A. Yes. Love, dear human love, is stronger than any hell!

Q. Explain this.
A. It was the majesty of love that put out the fires of the creedal hells. A mother's tears salted them, even more than the increase of human intelligence.

Q. Is Heaven eternal?
A. It is so believed.

Q. What is Purgatory?
A. A temporary abode of the soul for the fires of cleansing.

Q. Do all Christians believe in Purgatory?
A. No, only the Roman Catholics, and some individuals of various sects.

Q. Are there any other views of the world beyond the grave?
A. That it is neither Heaven, Hell, nor Purgatory, but a continuum of the life here.

Q. It is a better world or condition than the one here?
A. It is precisely as we make it.

Q. What arguments are offered in support of these positions?
A. That the belief in a life beyond death is universal.

Q. Is this a conclusive argument?
A. No! The universality of a belief must be accounted for, but it is not decisive. Men once universally believed the world was flat.

Q. What is another argument?
A. That the soul of man is too precious to be blotted-out of conscious existence forever.

Q. Is this decisive?
A. One must first demonstrate the existence of the soul. Moreover, in our time modern science has seriously undermined man's belief in the reality of the soul. Of psychology, once the science of the soul, it is said, "Psychology has not only lost its soul, in our time it has lost its consciousness." And this is an age that hails science as the Saviour!

Q. Give another argument.
A. That God is too good to damn anyone.{1}

Q. What is the answer?
A. Not until we know more about Him.

Q. How else is the position supported?
A. That people are too good to be damned.

Q. Again, what is the answer?
A. Few people are too good, few people are too bad, and people who are neither good nor bad do not exist.

Q. What is the next argument?
A. The Moral argument.

Q. Let us hear it.
A. The amazing quanta of inequalities in human existence! The undeserved suffering in the world! In the govermnent of Moral Being there must be a final working out to perfect justice for one, for all, somewhere, sometime. If not here then after here! The ledger of life must be balanced if existence is to have any semblance of rationality.

Q. Is this conclusive?
A. It is an impressive argument, but it is not conclusive. Only complicates the idea of justice in the constitution of the universe. If we are not given justice under the gcvernment of God here, how can we be sure of it under the government of God anywhere else?

Q. Is this list inclusive?
A. No, there are others whom we may describe as Humanists.

Q. What is their position?
A. It is an agnostic or neutral zone. Since we do not know what comes after here, or indeed if there is any "after here," why bother about it? We are the continuum of the life before us, and the womb of the life after us. Individuals die, but Humanity lives on--the spirit of our being and of our loving continues to create the better world of the future. AB George Eliot says:
"In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's souls to vastex issues,
So to live is Heaven; to make undying music in the world."

Q. What is to be said of this belief?
A. It is a beautiful Confucianized philosophy. Preciously human and noble! It encourages men and women "to live like gods," that they may indeed become the inspiration and fragrance of the unborn tomorrows.

Q. In this wise, who are the best teachers?
A. Who but they who teach us that we are never too old to be young; never too discouraged ourselves to be someone's hope and cheer; never too disillusioned to engage in a great work for humanity.

Q. And the conclusion here?
A. Even from this point of view death cannot be annihilation for the soul, the sum of all the qualities, goes marching on. That can no more be blotted out than the law of causation can be suspended!

Q. Now tell us how those who follow the Light of the Wisdom feel about death?
A. "It is no more than the blinking of an eyelid which obscures the light,"

Q. Is this just one more comforting theory?
A. No indeed! It must be said that at a stage in the evolution of consciousness, it is demonstrable knowledge to the Initiate.

Q. How does the disciple of The Wisdom arrive at it?
A. Theoretically, through his understanding of the nature of matter, the constitution of man and his world , and his relationship with the Macrocosm of which he is the Microcosm. Demonstrably, through his intimate contact with the secret part of nature and her hidden powers, his ability to wield the law of her processes, and, again, through his own personal experiences in the Great Initiations.

Q. Can anything more be said?
A. It is, in fine, the inner secret which makes of every Initiate a Sphinx upon the desert of earthly existence. No Oedipus can filch it from his lips. Tha rest is silence!

Q. In such a world-view, what is Man's future?
A. It makes him, the Immortal Thinker, a God! Moreover, since man is a part of nature, he believes that such a prospect holds true for every part of nature. Perfection is for the whole mass of matter!

Q. You mean to say this can be postulated of matter?
A. Exactly! To the Initiate of The Sacred Science there is no inorganic matter, as indeed modern science is now stumbling over itself to believe. Our Initiates, from out the ageless past, knew it before the ordinary man had eyes sharp enough even to see death. Every atom (and its divisibles) is vibrantly alive and has its own consciousness after its own fashion. It is indeed a cosmos in itself! It follows, therefore, that it must all be changed into other and higher forms in the vast aeons to come. "Life eternal is shared alike by molecule and man.

Q. Explain further.
A. The transformation from one form to another is axiomatic.
The earth itself has gone through an endless series of re-formation or re-embodiments. What is now called human matter is precisely this reformation--matter that in aeons past was once mineral, then vegetable, and which today, in its extreme refinement, we call human atoms-the flesh.

Q. What do we call this process in the human kingdom?
A. Reincarnation--"The Lost Chord of Christianity."

Q. Explain your reference to Christianity.
A. Reincarnation was a doctrine of the Christian Church until the Edict of the Council of Constantinople. A. D. 553!{2}

Q. Is this doctrine related to transmigration?
A. No. Transmigration means that humans return after death into the forms of animals. "Once a man always a man" is the teaching of the Divine Wisdom. Therefore, Man, the Thinker, does not reincarnate below the human kingdom.

Q. Is reincarnation, then, only another "unjust theory," as so many aver?
A. The idea is that it is unjust because we suffer (as in the Christian theory of the sins of the fathers) for the evil-doing of the others. The theory of reincarnation has no commerce with this notion. In every life it is the same individual who is reborn, the same actor playing out his many parts and each part upon a new stage and in a new costume.

Q. What is the length of time between incarnations?
A. A general word is all that can be said here. The comprehensive answer would include the complexities involved in the science of the stars{3} and the science of the soul in their mutual and inter-relationships. An exoteric explanation is that the length of time between incarnations depends on the changes effected in the evolution of the earth itself, which, in any given star-period, has altered enough to provide a richer media of opportunity for the further ensoulment of the soul. The star-period relates to the path of the sun through a particular sign of the Zodiac--a precessional which averages about 2200 years. Such a time period sees marked changes of the earth's surface and, therefore, new soils and richer for the soul's expansion. It is said the soul incarnates twice during this star-period, in male and female vestures. However, the determinants, such as the Personality Ray, the Egoic Ray, are so intricate and various that the exotericism of the statement must be clearly stressed and understood.

Q. How is justice meted out?
A. "As a man sowety, so shall he also reap," from the beginning of his spiral journey into manifestation, on and on to its close. Every cause must have its effect; every effect must have its cause. Therefore, every man receives the wages of his sins, the wages of his virtues. Thus perfect Justice rules the world! This is what the Ageless Wisdom calls the Law of Karma.

Q. Is all this true of nations and races, as of individuals?
A. What is a nation or race but a conglomeration of individuals bound more or less by certain ties to the whole? The plight of some races, the exaltation of other races are only the operation of these two laws in a more planetary aspect. The race as a whole receives the wages of its virtues, the wages of its vices, and in ratio rises and falls in the scheme of destiny with the rise and fall of the egos who inform it.

Q. So what does the death of a race signify?
A. As a school of experience for racial students its tenure of existence is over. Therefore, a nation's span of life depends entirely on the allotted work it has to accomplish in human evolution. When the given number of students has learned these lessons, the blinds are pulled down, the doors locked and the students scattered to the four winds--other racial schools, other racial lives!

Q. So death is merciful to Races and to individuals?
A. It is neither merciful nor unmerciful. It is what it is in the Divine Plan, another manifestation of the same power we call life.

Q. Precisely, then, what is death to the disciple of the Wisdom?
A. The answer appears as we envisage the true constitution of Man, especially that part of his physical nature which is the real physical mechanism to the disciple--the etheric body. Man, in his lower aspect, is allied to the kingdoms of nature; his physical body to the mineral; his etheric body to the plant ; his astral body to the animal. It is in the posseesion of an etheric body that man is differentiated from the mineral. Possessing it, he is empowered to harness the physical forces in order to promote growth, assimilation, propagation, etc.--the characteristics of the plant kingdom. The astral body is the vehicle of desire and emotion and in this is man allied to the animal kingdom, and differentiated from the plant kingdom which has no astral existence.

Q. Now describe the etheric and astral bodies.
A. The etheric body permeates the physical body and extends for about an inch on all sides; the astral body envelopes the physical body in the form of an ovoid-shaped cloud. More properly, the physical body is seen as existing with in the ovoidal cloud. It extends, on an average, about two feet above the head and, like the world or plane of matter out of whose nature it came, it is in ceaseless movement; a billow, so to speak, in an ever-changing, ever-dissolving and re-assembling sea of colour and form-the astral world.

Q. And at the hour of death?
A. The etheric and astral bodies are abstracted by the soul or ego from the dense physical body. The etheric body can be seen by the trained eye as a pale bluish-violet coloured cloud gradually assuming the form of the dying man. The cord of etheric matter hinding it to the dense vehicle is snapped, when the real moment of death arrives.

Q. The real moment of death--why the qualification here?
A. Because death is not death until the last spark of animal heat leaves the body--"the light in the heart" is the last to perish. A momentary flashing of brilliant yellow light, blue fringed, accompanies the breaking of the cord and only then is the physical man's life ended forever.

Q. Meanwhile, what of great moment is taking place?
A. With the last fast ebbing of the tide of life in the brain, the floodgates of memory are swung open and the ego lives over in a flashing interval the whole drama of the soul in physical incarnation, seeing and hearing with complete clarity and continuity even the most fleeting impression in the entire panorama of existence, back to the moment of birth. This, because the etheric body is (as a specialized function) the reservoir of memory and, at the hour of death, the etheric body increasigly loosens its grip upon the physical body so that the subtler vibrations can enter the brain and precipitate there the shadow-graphic tone and colour pictures of the past. This kaleidoscope of memory lasts until the ego abstracts the astral body from the etheric.{4}

Q. What occurs to the dense physical body?
A. The moment the etheric web is abstracted with the Vital or Pranic Life, the unity of the body as a totality is destroyed. It is now only a conglomerate of cells, each with its momentary separate life. As the organism of the soul in its denseat manifestation its existence is finished. The soul has dismissed the body from its employ since it can no longer use it as the functioning unit in the outer world. It returns to the physical world whence it came to be reincorporated into its own elements.

Q. But the man lives on?
A. In his etheric brain! As already indicated, the whole drama of life is being precipitated on the stage of memory; a vast kaleidoscope flashing backward to the first breath of life. Every impression is faithfully reproduced every note, with its infinitesimal shadings in the song of life, from our first lispings, finds a voice. The real man is at work in his etheric brain, and only when this work is done is the man truly dead.

Q. Let us, by way of analogy, ask what becomes of the etheric body in sleep?
A. The various envelopes or vehicles of the Ego are concentric, and at night when sleep enfolds us, a separation takes place. The Ego clothed in the mental and astral vestures abstracts itself from the etheric and dense physical. They are above, so to speak, and connected with the latter by a thread of etheric matter which, in our Bible, is called "The Silver Cord." At death, the etheric body is outside the dense physical body; in sleep it still interpenetrates it.

Q. What is "The Silver Cord"?
A. A radiant gossamer-like thread of finer matter, arranged like two sixes, one end of which is linked to the seedatom in the left ventricle of the heart, and the other to "the navel" of the emotional or desire body.

Q. What is this seed-atom?
A. It is the nucleus round which the material of the body is ingathered from the plane of manifestation. At the passing out of incarnation, the Ego abstracts the higher bodies with a spiral movement and also abstracts the force of the Permanent Atom of the physical body. It is this atom which remains constant through every life, and comes to renewed activity at the coming again into each incarnation. It is therefore called the Seed-atom. It resides at the pole of the heart in the left ventricle. It is only when this seed-atom is ruptured by the snapping of the cord that the physical life is at an end.{5}

Q. Later, what is associated with the Seed-atom?
A. The story of our sufferings in the purging fires of the post-mortem experience is indelibly imprinted upon the seed-atom. This the Ego abstracts with the higher bodies and keeps permanently from life to life. It is "Our book of Remembrance." Therefore, those sufferings that are most imprinted become in the next life as ''hands laid upon us". We remember!--"Our unconscious memory" as the psychologist would say!

Q. Now we are ready to state precisely what occurs at death?
A. This life thread is snapped at the heart end. The unleashed forces of the Seed-atom sweep along the pneumogastric nerve, between the occipital and parietal bones of the skull, thence along the chord into the higher bodies.

Q. When the break occurs, what is the situation with the etheric body?
A. The etheric is also abstracted, and remains with the higher bodies which are "hovering" over the untenanted physical body. Here it holds together for a period of about three days. Then the Ego again abstracts his higher vehicles; the chord is snapped in the middle, and the etheric body desintegrates.

Q. And then----?
A. The Man lives on, clothed in the vesture of his desire-body on the various spheres or modifications of the Astral Plane. These "worlds of the soul" are not to be conceived as being differentiated in space. They occupy the same space; therefore, while we are embodied on the physical plane, we are also dwellers in the other worlds of our planetary existence--planes of finer and finer modifications or matter, including the Devachanic or Spiritual world. Thus it is, that the so-called spirit-world is not outside or beyond--extensions in Space--but within, around and about us, and at every moment in the movement of the cyclic drama we call life and death.

Q. Can you give us an idea of this condition of soul-existence on the Astral Plane?
A. First of all, we must recall the function of the soul in relation to the Spirit. The soul is the link between the Spirit and the world of outer phenomena, and in the after-death state links the Spirit to the inner world of experience-- the kingdom of the soul. Here it comes under the laws of the soul-world and through their operation, the soul loses its hunger and thirst after "the things of this world" until, finally purged of "the dross", the spirit is free to live in the realms of its own nature.

Q. Precisely, how is this liberation of the soul achieved?
A. In this condition of existence the soul does not alough off "the body" of its desires at once. Here, however, the gratification of these desires is no longer possible, since the bodily organs through which these desires were satisfied on earth are no longer present. Hence the idea of suffering in the after-death state. The soul suffers until it learns through the fires of experience the futility of desiring in a condition of existence where these desires can never be gratified. The fires of purgatorial cleansing! The man lives over and over again the entire drama of his desire-life upon the earth in all its infinitesimal moods and shadings, and this from the hour of death to the hour of birth, until through privation he liberates himself' from the inwheeling of his desire-nature. Purgation through privation?

Q. So there is a Purgatory beyond death?
A. Mercifully so! As already said, it is a condition of finer matter which surrounds and interpenetrates the earth, of endless modifications, into which each of us is drawn by the attraction of his, desire--each man "to his own place." Hence, it is written in the Christian Scriptures, "And Judas went to his own place."

Q. Again, who go there?
A. All souls bound to the wheel.

Q. Specifically, what determines our destiny there?
A. The kind and grade of astral matter ingathered by the individual to his astral or desire-nature during incarnation.

Q. How long does he stay there?
A. The duration of existence is fixed by the condition of the desire body and the density of the force which holds it together as a totality. The various densities of the desire material are separated into a series of concentric shells, each one composed of the matter of one of the seven sub-planes--the temporary astral plane prisonhouse. Somewhere along and within the vast medifications of these conditions the soul abides until the last selfish longing is stilled and the last selfish desire purified.

Q. And for some Souls?
A. The Soul that on earth had little or no attraction for the life of selfish desire in the physical body and has drawn into the desire body only that which is of "The Good, The True, The Beautiful" passes through this condition of existence oblivious of the suffering and un-needing of the purging fires of privation. His the passage through, as the flight of a bird from morning twilight to dawn! His, a state of undisturbed and unshadowed realization.

Q. Let us consider, for a moment, the case of a man whose greed has caused pain to his fellows.
A. In this, we may also include not only Man but our younger brothers of the animal kingdom. As he re-reviews his life backward in this post-mortem state, he comes at length face to face with the situation he precipitated. All the environmental factors are faithfully reproduced: the colour of the scene; the form of the desire. The outer and inner situation finds a voice in his own soul. He is the situation. He is the one who suffers the pentup anguish; the one who knows the engulfing grief. He himself is now the man he crucified on a cross of gold. He is the animal driven to bay, and all the reactions of fear and despair become the marrow of his own being. The laws of the soul-kingdom are one and immutable. The ledger of life is balanced here as everywhere else. The mercy of it all is that Karma like an out-pouring of a divine providence bears on its tide the media through which our desire-life is purified from one incarnation to another. What a quality of Mercy! And this, as Shakespeare says, ''When Mercy seasons Justice."

Q. And they who descend into Hell?
A. Happily for the human race, few there be who enter "the prison of damned souls." For few there be who have not one redeeming spark in their sorry scheme of things entire; not one mite of aspiration vibrant in the chord of being; not one line of ennobling worth in the book of life.

Q. And even here "God's Mercy" is to the uttermost?
A. "Even though I make my bed in Hell, lo Thou art there." And this! There is One of our Hierarchy who remains nameless, and before whose great sacrifice even the Masters bow in reverence. His the voluntary offering of Himself; the "Descent into Hell" to seek and to save the lost! And this to the end of the ages!

Q. And after the fires of cleansing?
A. There are, in all these states of consciousness beyond death, a corresponding series of pralayas or privations--sleepings and wakings, wakings and sleepings, preparatory to the full awakening on the threshold of Devachan--The Heaven World. The Spirit must return to its own world between incarnations in order to possess itself of new resources and richer for the pilgrimage through the next experience in physical embodiment. Hence, in its own world it comes under its own laws of growth, expansion, in ratio as it immerses itself in the life of the multitudinous conditions which constitute the life of Devachan In brief, the Spirit now works unhampered upon its own nature, drawing its nourishment from the eternal fountain distilling the spiritual essence into the cup of its own being, that its next pilgrimage through the physical world may be to a higher rhythm of expression.

Q. In this wise, what follows us into Devachan?
A. Only the Karma of our spiritual experience upon the earth the fruitage of our meritorious action in the world of form, no grief ever casts its shadow there! No remembrance of the shortcomings and sorrows of the life on earth! It is "an ideated paradise" of unalloyed bliss.

Q. And Love finds its own there?
A. "Love never faileth!" Again, as the Initiate-Jesus said, "Those whom I love, I love to the end." These souls who on earth were bound in friendship's deathless faith and loyalty or knew the majesty of the love that never ends with self, find there the fulfilment of their experience of love in the highest spiritual communion. It is the very atmosphere of Devachan or the Heaven world; the sacramental bread and wine of their Devachanic existence! For Heaven is Love, and the love or harmony of such souls is but another vibrant chord in the symphonic whole of spirit-communion in Devachan.
"And Spirit with Spirit doth meet."

Q. How long is the duration of the Devachanic experience?
A. From a few moments to a millennium and more. All we can say is that it depends upon the duration of Spiritual Karma. Every effect must be in ratio to a cause and Devachan is no exception to the universal law.

Q. And then------?
A. The Descent through the planes to a new scene on a new stage through the gate of birth.

Q. Describe the important phases along the Path of Descent.
A. At the frontiers, so to speak, of the Heaven world, the Ego comes into touch with the Creative Hierarchies or The Builders of the bodies, on their several planes.

Q. Who are they?
A. They who create the archetypal forms or models for the various vestures with which the soul or Ego will clothe itself, along the arc of its descent.

Q. How do these models look to the seer?
A. Saucer-like hollows, rotating at great rapidity; each with its separate colour and tone. Their in-whirling movement draws the appropriate material of the planes into them. The seed-atoms give the key-note to which all the countless atoms of the bodies vibrate in unison.

Q. Then what occurs?
A. The Seed-atom is deposited in the lif e-fluid of the father before the hour of co-ition and later into the womb of the mother. What we call conception is a later procedure. A period of two weeks transpires before the impregnated spermatozoon is imbedded in the ovum.

Q. When does gestation begin?
A. When the impregnated ovum leaves the Fallopian tubes.

Q. Meanwhile, what of the Ego?
A. The Ego appears vestured in a cloud-like mass of astral and lower mental plane matter. About three weeks after conception, this bell-shaped mass enters the mother's womb, closes at the bottom and in this spheroidal form remains with the mother until the hour of birth.

Q. When do these subtler bodies appear in the outer world?
A. The etheric body at 6-7; the emotional at 13-14; the mental at 20-21 years.

Q. Explain further the first stage of physical life.
A. The Ego has very little to do with the physical vehicle during the first six years. It is between the sixth and seventh years that he begins to lay hold upon it. The form of the physical embodiment is created through the agency of an entity of elemental substance which in turn is the product of the individual's Karma. This creature remains with his task, the modelling process, until the physical body is, on the average, six years old.

Q. What occurs before incarnation?
A. Just before the entry of the soul on the new stage of action, there is a kaleidoscopic flashing, as took place at the hour of death. At this moment, however, the flashing is forward, so to speak, and not backward as before. The veil that hides the face of the future incarnation is lifted and dropped again as with the swniftness of the lightning.

Q. Does anyone die unconscious?
A. Not even the insane! Even they have their moment of complete awareness. No one can escape it! From the last pulse-beat of the heart to the moment when the last part icle of animal heat leaves the body--the Knower is aware Even the Ego of such a man must make the final accounting of all the debit and credit in the ledger of his existence.

Q. But what of precipitate death? Suicide?
A. It can be better understood by comparing it with normal death. In the latter the etheric atoms are liberated from the dense physical by the same spiral motion which abstracts the seed-atom from the pole of the heart, throough the ventricles and the top of the head. In precipitate death, such as suicide, the etheric envelope of the permanent atoms becomes shattered temporarily. The Thinker is therefore denied the medium through which he reviews his life upon the earth. He remains in the condition of one who in life is, as we way, "temporarily unconscious."

Q. What follows?
A. The time comes when a re-formation of the etheric atoms take place. Memory begins slowly to dislodge itself. Since the last dominant impulse in the etheric brain is associated with self-destruction, this will be his first experience, re-enacting the precipitate ending of his life-drama when he begins his post-mortem existence. Until this hour strikes he remains "A Sky wanderer" within the earth's atmosphere, for a period of time commensurate with the normal duration of his life-period on the earth--whether it be a day, a month, or a century, --until he is ready to meet not his Creator but his creation, in the fires of purgatorial cleansing.

Q. Qualify this statement.
A. Motive is everything. "Karma deals with motives (causes), not effects. Love and hatred are the only immortal feelings." Therefore are our Heavens and our Hells created here. And as our Heavens and Hells are here, so are they after here. Moreover, as our motives, so our Heavens and our Hells!

Q. What is the moral judgment on suicide?
A. It is desertion! It is throwing away one's sword before the battle is either fought or won. Kant formulated it as a golden rule for all mankind, "Act as if thy action were to become, by thy will, a universal law of nature."

Q. What ritual should be observed in the hour of death?
A. Silence unbroken by accents of speech or sounds of sorrow. The Knower must be left in undisturbed peace to make the final accounting of his earthly life. Thie last hour belongs to him and him alone, face to face with himself before his own judgment seat. "Speak in whispers," says a Master, "lest ye disturb the busy-work of the Past casting its reflection upon the veil of the Future."

Q. When the Divine Wisdom again impregnates the earth?
A. In that day the birthing of a soul at death into the Light Supernal will be celebrated with as much gladness as we today celebrate the birthing of a soul into the Light of Day! His real birthday! His the ever-recurring Resurrection and Ascension!"

———————
{1} Someone facetiously remarked on the distinction between the Unitarians and the Universalists--The Universalists believe God is too good to damn them, and the Unitarians believe they are too good to be damned.
{2} The edict of the Second Council of Constantinople is as follows: "Whoever shall support the mythical doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul and the consequent wonderful opinion of its return, let him be anathema." "The mythical doctrine" was widely accepted, even by the most eminent of the Church Fathers, for a period of between five and six hundred years, before it was officially declared a heresy. And this in the most degenerate days of official Christianity!
{3} Our reference here is to esoteric astrology which has little or nothing in common with the system of star-reading, that today, so often takes in vain the name of this aspect of The Ageless Wisdom.
{4} The evidence, even in our materialistic age, is not all on the side of the general professional opinion that the brain is the seat of mind and the repository of memory. Case-histories are on record of individuals who even with decomposition of the brainmass did not show the least symptoms of mental derangement. The eminent scientist, Prof. G. W. Surya, cites such cases--among them that of a man insane for years and who suddenly became normal before his death. The autopsy revealed that there was almost nothing of the brain left in the brain-pan. Hie explanation can be summarized as follows: The spirit in man is the primary source of his power; the brain is the switchboard and the soul the main transmission line of energy to the various secondary motors (eye, ear, tongue, etc.) If the switchboard be destroyed, emergency lines are laid from the main source to the secondary motors which keep the whole mechanism active. Similarly, Henry Bergaon, the eminent French philosopher. His conclusions were based on firsthand investigation of such cases--veterans of the Balcan War who suffered severe injuries of the brain.
{5} It is at the moment of the rupture of the Seed-atom that a brilliant flashing, yellow and blue-fringed, is seen by the seer in the region of the heart and is to him the infallible signal that the real moment of death has come! It should be said, that at the hour of passing there is a technique of transition which the Initiate knows and, when applied, is invaluable as a skill in aiding the purely physical process of departure and, again, in the psychical process of abstraction of the higher bodies by the Ego, through the sutures of the head.

Note:
Eugene Milne Cosgrove was one of 50 Disciples selected in 1931 by Master Djwhal Khul for the formation of the New Group of World Servants.