When you go to the Astral Plane/ Kamalaoka..

You are dead. A new journey has begun...

For a moment imagine all that you are, is only your mind. Your thoughts, feelings, memories and knowledge is all that you are. No Body. How would you feel-free at first-no more aches pains, itches, no ugly stretch marks, bald patches, no loose flesh, no wrinkled skin. In this freedom of just the bundle of thoughts, you float around. Still in this world-only you can now see the others also with their thought bundles floating around, plainly as you saw them as bodies in your earlier life. Some are selfish, some are obsessed with some desires, some are full of themselves-arrogant, some are completely miserable,some pleasantly happy.

So now in this world, you begin your thought process, the same way you would , in the previous one-perhaps, by comparison-asking yourself-ok, where do i stand in this world. You sift thru your good and bad thoughts, your positive energy giving ones and your negative weakening ones. Since ,you are only thought, you aim to reduce the negative ones, cultivate the positive ones. Suddenly ,you have now a clearer idea of what are really good thoughts and what leads to unhappiness and frustration. You learn more about how others think-you see other's viewpoints clearly and begin to accept notions which you in your earlier form had rejected.

This education goes on until the first thought of desire creeps in- i am so hungry- would love a delicious hot juicy jelabi this instant. You are filled with images of this delicasy-suddenly there seems nothing more important or larger than a jelabi. You now have absolutely NO way to eat a jalebi-having lost the human form. You hover in your thought world-until slowly the urge goes away. After a while ,other images of desires trouble you-you realise the limitations of this new state. You realise no desires can be fulfilled on this plane. One can improve one's thought processes, clean one's thought chambers and contemplate several things ,but one cannot actually do anything. One can keep learning , one can keep studying, one can keep solving problems-if these aren't enough, you wonder -oh my god ,my life is BORING.(you also remember in your physical life ,when you had to do something repeatedly, you used the same words.)

Then you decide to solve this issue of boredom-the same way you would have done earlier-you try to learn a new bunch of thoughts-go in a new direction-explore other venues-seek guidance from better beings around you-find joy in sharing and helping someone in a worser plight-ok -you think-this is fun. I am enjoying this state. I am learning to cope. You begin a new life.

(What happens next?....Time passes quickly-a 100, 200 years passes very fast as slowly only the clear beautiful side of your mind world is left, all desires burnt out by sheer lack of fulfillment. You are now ready to leave the Kamaloka and move higher into the sphere of the Devachanic plane- the heaven of your own self creation- of the purest and the most perfect in you. Of all the higher things that you loved in your earthly life.

A 1000/2000 years in this plane- passes again faster again- and you are reborn with your old skandas or propensities/attachments reworking the parts of your karma and trudging through life, once again oblivious to all that has already happened in all those past thousands of years, once again filling the vessel of your 'you ness'....once again creating an I.. once again living blindly...)

The laws of Higher life,sacrifice ,dharma and duty.

The 88th South India conference dealt with the above topics and these are my impressions of the various lectures. Man, constantly is driven by the emergencies of the moment, the issues of daily life, the issues of personal ambition, dreams and desires ,in his actions. He rarely thinks that ,his present life could have a long term effect on life after death. He rarely spends time wondering what stage of evolution his spiritual self is in and how his choices in this birth could aid that growth.


If one were to imagine that one has had countless births before, that at some point in the last million years one has been poor, ultra rich, disabled, super strong, man, eunuch, a foreigner, maybe a buddhist ,widowed, orphaned, drug addict,unstable...what then would one's attitude to humanity around him be? Logically only compassion and a desire to help ,in whatever manner possible or at least be civil and respectful to all around, as one realises the pain of the other and does not want to add to his/her tale of woes. The laws of higher life are essentially this -understanding of living a life of service, compassion and a doing one's dharma or duty.


Duty, is individualistic, depending on the current status of our lives. The duty of a student is to study, the duty of a father is to provide, a mother to nurture etc. Doing one's duty, is doing the right thing at the right time. Duty is automatically obvious to one ,if one is even briefly contemplative. The next question is, how does one make oneself perform one's duties. What are the incentives. One of the main incentives is, perhaps , these bunch of duties that we have now, will at least not recur, in the next round of birth. We would have tackled these problems intelligently and efficiently, and the soul would seek newer challenges. From viewpoint of the reality the law of reincarnation and the law of karma-the law of natural justice, whose existence though is felt by many, but the absence of scientific proof, prevents most from completely and wholeheartedly accepting such doctrines, from these viewpoints, fulfilling one's duty, is then a manner of completing the term of punishment due to our past crimes. One could think better to complete the term than start all over again, entering the jail. Be out, a free man.

All this leads to this thought that is duty an unsavoury task always? The thing to understand is that the while the completion of one's duties, gives one momentary satisfaction-if one is seeking that satisfaction alone-one would only hate to do the duty-as there are so many better ways to seek momentary satisfaction. Hence , duty is a task finished entirely only for the sake of finishing it. 'karmanye vadika rastu,ma phaleshu kadachana'-oft repeated Lord Krishna's quote is the hidden basis of all correct actions on earth. Duty has to be done. Seeking a reward ruins the job- and one inherits new 'duties'. The best way out id to see what are the tasks that one feels compelled from within to complete-only those are our duties and doing them alone and feeling happy while doing them is all there is to this whole problem.

But then, why this case against happiness-isn't that why we are here on earth-to find happiness. The happiness , which we would find in the pursuit of pleasure is fleeting. The same from the pursuit of fulfilling duties transcends births and rebirths. Which would you choose?

Nivruti marga-the process of going in reverse gear-as pointed out by Ms Linda Olievra, in her individualistic style of speaking, is the accumalation of and concentration of energy which one gathers around oneself as one slowly wraps oneself into this narrow path of dharma and duty .And as she points out, a tree sustains itself, within its branches which cover the roots and thus shades it from the hard sun, while every part of it performs a vital role in its survival, the tree also generously gives its surplus to the life around it-shade to humans, habitat or food to animals etc. One can learn a lot from a simple tree. Doing one's duty like a tree does its. These are the small methods to start treading the path of higher life.
One must aim to apply all this every waking moment and not let it be just a rhetoric.

An Outline of Theosophy-CW Leadbeater

The last six months ,I have been reading various books and booklets on theosophy and finally on a recommendation, started reading this book by CWL which I found lucidly clear and precise.

I will concise the learnings from this book as follows- The three basic tenets of theosophy are-
1. There is God and he is benevolent and immortal.
2 Man himself is also immortal .
3 There are certain laws of karma which naturally occur in man's life-as he sows, so he reaps.

Man is born from god and goes back to him, but the process going back is a process of getting the traits of god in himself.

 Man's physical body, his astral body and his mental body play key roles in each of his lives on earth. While Man spends a lot of his time on earth serving the physical and the astral or emotional body, if he diverted this and spent time developing,nourishing his mental body-its this mental body and its quality that decides his position in the evolutionary scale.

 When a noble man dies the initial decades he lives in his astral body and goes through still wanting all the things that he craved for while living-now in absolute frustration since his physical vehicle is no more. Slowly this 'wanting' nature of his burns up in frustration and he begins to accept his fate and then he transcends to the next higher level of the mental or devachanic plane.

 Here, in this more enriching and happy phase he learns to gather all the good thoughts, aims, learnings that he collected in his earth life and lives in this state of vibration for many centuries, until once again his soul decides to be born again. Its the spirit within the soul (a spark of the divine) that decides on what the soul needs to learn and sends it back to the exact circumstances which will teach him broadly what he needs. If at a early age, man learns the basics of being an excellent human being and is constantly striving for mental beauty and perfection, this amount to be learned is reduced, the number of rebirths reduced, the difficulties faced lesser. The purpose of a student of theosophy has to be strive towards this internal excellence, through various methods. The path of polishiing this inner self is meandering one and one has to find one's loop holes and keep correcting as one goes along...so that towards the end of one's life -you can proudly stand up and say, 'I am a far better person that when I started out at first. I worked at it and I am proud of this achievement. I made many mistakes, but I learnt from them. I was haughty, arrogant, mean, rude, selfish, miserly, jealous but I learnt to replace each with humility, kindness, soft speech, charity, generosity and admiration for those who were better than me. I have done for myself, what was needed for my soul and now am ready to leave,until the next adventure beckons me.'