Annie Besant - Invisible and Unseen Worlds

The Reality of the Invisible and the
Actuality of the Unseen Worlds
Adyar Pamphlets  The Reality of the Invisible and the Actuality... No. 40
by Annie Besant

[Page 1] THE majority of civilized people today, in every country, profess a belief in the existence of worlds other than the physical globes scattered through space, the suns and planets of our own and other systems. However vague may be their ideas of the nature of such worlds, invisible, superphysical, supersensuous; however much the ideas vary, according to the religion professed by the believer; they yet cling to a belief that not all of me shall die, that death does not put an end to individual existence, that there is something beyond the tomb. But if we estimate the value of the belief by the criterion suggested by Professor Bain, that the strength of a belief may be tested by the influence it exerts over conduct, then we find that, despite the nominal profession, the belief itself is of the flimsiest character. The conduct of people is ruled by their belief in the visible world [Page 2] rather than in those invisible; their thoughts, interests, affections, all center here; and so markedly is this the case that the behavior of anyone who is really influenced by the thought of the superphysical worlds is deemed eccentric and morbid. A patient's body may be worn out by extreme old age, or tortured by a disease that must shortly end in death; doctors, nurses, relatives, will strain every nerve to scourge the will to hold on to the useless body, will pour into it drugs and stimulants to put off for a few days or weeks its dissolution, as though the life beyond this world were a mirage, or a thing to be avoided as long as possible by every means. This lack of the sense of the actuality of the superphysical worlds is more common in modern than in ancient times, in the West than in the East. Its wide prevalence is due to the conception of man as a being who possesses no present relation with those worlds, and no powers which would enable him to cognize them. Man is regarded as living in one world, the world of waking consciousness, the world of the triumphs of the senses and the intellect, instead of in several worlds, in all of which his consciousness is functioning, more or less definitely; he is no longer supposed to possess the powers which all religions have ascribed to him, powers which transcend the limitations of the body; and the active Agnosticism of the scientist, of the leaders of thought, is reflected in the passive Agnosticism of the intellectual masses, whose lip-belief [Page 3] in the superphysical is mocked by the conduct-belief of ordinary life.

It is not enough that we should think of the super-physical worlds as worlds that we may, or even shall, pass into after death; the realization of these worlds, if they are to influence conduct, must be a constant fact in consciousness, and man must live consciously in the three worlds, the physical, the astral, the heavenly. For that only is actual to man to which his consciousness responds; if his consciousness does not answer to a thing, for him that thing has no existence; the boundary of his power to respond is the boundary of his recognition of the existent. A man might be surrounded by the play of colors, but were it not for the eye, they would not, for him, exist; waves of melody might sweep around him, but without the ear, there would, for him, be silence. And so the worlds invisible may play on a man, but while he is unconscious of their presence, for him they do not exist. So long as that irresponsiveness continues, no amount of description can make them living, actual; to him they must remain as the dream of the poet, the vision of the painter, the hope of the optimist, beautiful exceedingly, perchance, but without proof, without substance, without reality. But can the invisible worlds be made present in consciousness, can we respond to them, and share their life ? Are there in man powers not yet unfolded, but to be unfolded in evolution, so that he may be likened to a flower not yet opened, powers [Page 4] that lie hidden like the stamens, the petals, in the bud ? Are the Prophets, the Saints, the Mystics, the Seers, the men in whom these possibilities have flowered, and are their methods of prayer or of meditation the scientific means of culture which hasten the unfolding of the bud ?

In seeking to answer this question we may look back into the past or analyze the present, we may study the religions of ancient times, or we may scrutinize our own constitution and seek to understand its constituents and the relations of these to our environment. Along these lines, it may be, some results may be obtained.

Looking back over the religions of the past we find one idea dominating them all — that the visible universe is the reflection of the invisible. Egypt sees the world of phenomena as the image of the real world. To India the universe is but the passing expression of a divine Idea; there is but one Reality, and the universe is its shadow. The Hebrews in their philosophic books assert that God made the universe of Ideas before the universe of forms; the celestial man, Adam Kadmon, is the original, whereof the terrestrial man is the copy, and Philo says that God, intending to make the visible universe, first created the invisible; in the Talmud it is regarded as axiomatic that if a man would know the invisible he should study the visible, and the Hebrew Paul declares that the invisible things are plainly seen by those [Page 5] that are made. Pythagoras tells of the world of Ideas, and has real forms existing in the intelligible world, the world of Ideas in the Universal Mind, ere the Ideas were manifested as the physical universe. So again Plato and his followers. Everywhere is this dominating thought, that there is an invisible which is real, and a visible which is unreal, a copy, a reflection. Only the Real is eternal, and only the eternal can satisfy, since Thou art That . The Real manifests as the unreal, the Eternal masks itself as the transitory; how strange the paradox, how complete the subversion, when the unreal is considered to be the only reality, and the transitory the only existence.

During the immense period of time covered by these and by other religions, man was regarded as an immortal consciousness veiled in matter, the consciousness becoming more and more limited as the veils of matter grew thicker and thicker; his deepest relations were with the world of Ideas, and each world grew more unreal, more illusory, as the matter which composed it grew more and more dense and gross. The phenomenal worlds were, as their name denotes, worlds of appearances, not of realities, and man must pierce through these appearances to reach the core of Reality. This Spirit endued the garment of mind, and over the mind the garb of the senses, in order to come into relation with the intellectual and sensuous worlds, and man, the [Page 6] resulting composite, must rise above the senses, must transcend the mind, in order to be self-consciously Spirit. As in himself as Spirit he knows the spiritual, so in his mind-garment he knows the intellectual, in his sense-garment the sensuous.

The sense-garment is threefold, and each layer relates him to a material world — the heavenly, the astral, the physical. All these are truly visible, each cognizable through sense-organs composed of its own state of matter, but only the grossest is visible to the normal man, because in him only the grossest layer of the sense-garment is in thorough working order. As the finer layers of the sense-garment aregradually evolved into similar working order, the finer phenomenal worlds will become sensuous to him, tangible to his senses. Thus was it taught in elder days; thus is it now taught in Theosophy. The pseudoinvisible — that which is capable of being seen although invisible to the eyes of the flesh — will become visible as evolution proceeds, bringing into functioning activity the finer layers of our sense-garment, and then the three worlds will become the visible universe. Such functioning activity may even be brought about, at the present stage of evolution, by special methods, and man may live consciously in the three worlds at once. For such men the actuality of the lower invisible worlds is established on that so-called indubitable evidence, the evidence of the senses, and it is of this sensuous evolution that many, perhaps [Page 7] most, people think when they speak of obtaining proof of the persistence of individual consciousness on the other side of death. Such evidence, however, must remain for a considerable time to come out of the reach of the majority of people, although the minority able to obtain it is everincreasing and is certain to increase more rapidly in the coming years. The available evidence for the existence of the finer layers of the sense-garment, and for man's relations through it with superphysical worlds, is abundant and is continuously receiving additions.  Clairvoyance, clairaudience, premonitions, warning and prophetic dreams, apparition of doubles, thought-forms and astral bodies, etc., etc., are beginning to play a part in ordinary life and to find unjeering reportal in the daily press. Signs of evolving sense-organs are thus around us, and the unimportance of death will be more and more recognized as these multiply. It is no longer possible for a person, instructed in the well-ascertained facts of mesmeric and hypnotic trances, to regard mental faculties as the products of nervous cells. It is known that the working of those cells may be paralyzed while perception, memory, reason, imagination, manifest themselves more potently, with wider range and fuller powers. Those who have patiently and steadily observed the phenomena occurring at spiritualistic séances know that when every doubtful happening is thrown aside, there remains a residuum of undoubted facts which prove the presence of forces [Page 8] unknown to science, and of intelligence that is not from the sitters or the medium. Automatic writing has been carried to a point where the agent concerned cannot be the brain-consciousness of the writer.

Thought-transference — telepathy — has passed beyond the range of controversy and has established itself as a fact by reiterated and exact proofs. The worlds unseen are becoming the seen, and their forces are asserting themselves in the physical world by the production of effects not generated by physical causes. The boundaries of the known are being pushed back until they begin to overlap those of the astral world. The evidence increases so rapidly that the materialist of forty years ago threatens to become as extinct as the dodo, and the whole attitude of the intellectual classes to life is changing. And yet, amidst all this, it may be well for us to realize that these extensions of knowledge, valuable as they are, can only, at the best, give us proofs of a prolongation of life, not of our immortality, for the three worlds are all phenomenal, all changing, and therefore all transitory. They add to our physical life, an astral life and a heavenly life; they give us three visible worlds instead of one; they enlarge our horizons, and add to our material inheritance; they do not, and they cannot, give us the certitude of immortality.

To say this is not to undervalue the further improvement of our sense-garment, but to put the senses in their right place as regards our knowledge [Page 9] of the superphysical worlds, even as we have learned to put them in their right place in our knowledge of the physical. If we analyse carefully the knowledge which we gain through observation every day and at once utilise for our conduct, we find that very little of it is directly obtained through the senses; at our present stage of physical evolution the experiment to prove this is not quite easy, but it is not impossible. If we would make the experiment we must proceed as follows; we shut out all that the mind has deduced from previous observations, and narrow ourselves down to pure sensuous perception of an object, such as a face, a landscape; we mark only what the eye reports, and as far as possible add nothing to that sensation from the mind that has perceived, noted, registered, compared, so many previous similar sensations; we see, as an infant sees, outline and colour, with no distance, no depth, no relations between adjoining parts, no meaning. When we now look over a landscape, we see into it countless observations, movements and experiences made from our babyhood upwards; the infant's eye is as perfect as our own, but does not measure the near and the far, the relation of parts that makes a whole. When the eye sees under quite new conditions it is easy to deceive it; the senses are continually corrected and supplemented by the mind. Now when first the finer sense-organs of our sense-garment begin to work, they are as the eyes of the infant on the physical [Page 10] plane, but behind them is an actively functioning mature mind, full of ideas built up out of physicalplane sensations; this content it throws into the outline supplied by the astral sense-organ, and the man "sees" an astral object; as on the physical plane, by far the greater part of the perception is mindsupplied, but while the mind on the physical plane supplies details collected by countless physical-plane observations of similar objects, and thus adds to the sense-report its own store of congruous memories, the mind on the astral plane projects into the sense-perception the same store of memories, now incongruous, for it lacks the astral observations which should form its contribution to the total perception.

There is a fertile source of error, continually overlooked, and hence early observations are most misleading, and the observations of the untrained continue to be earth-filled. In order that we may be sure of our immortality, something quite other than this refining of the sensegarment is necessary, something that is related to life and not to life-vehicles. We may climb rung after rung of the world's ladder, and yet remain unsatisfied; for infinities stretch ever above us as below us infinities stretch, and stunned, dwarfed by the immensities above and below, it seems to matter little whether we occupy one rung or another of the ladder. This is ever going outwards, adding one mass of phenomena to another mass, a true weaving of endless ropes out of illimitable sand. And if the Word of the Mystics [Page 11] be true we must turn inwards, not outwards, when we would seek wisdom instead of learning. It is indeed obvious that no extension, no refinement of the senses can introduce us into worlds really invisible, into that which is not phenomenal, into the world of thought, not the world of thoughtforms. For this the consciousness must unfold the powers ever within it, and make manifest the divinity which is its hidden nature. Consciousness is the Real, conditioned by matter, and we must plunge into the depths of our own being if we would find the certitude of immortality in conscious union with the One.

All other proofs are supplementary; this is primary and final, the Alpha and Omega of life. Consciousness is the Ever-Invisible: "Not in the sight abides his form; none may by the eye behold him"; yet herein resides the full certainty of the Reality of the Ever-Invisible, of that which escapes alike the senses and the mind. As the eye responds to light, the ear to sound, the material to the material, so must consciousness learn to respond to consciousness, the spiritual to the spiritual. When this is learned, the question of death can never more distress us, nor doubt of the necessary existence of worlds for the continued life of the imperfect discarnate assail us; for when consciousness realises its own inherent immortality, it knows itself essentially independent of the three worlds, a spiritual entity belonging to a spiritual world. [Page 12 ].

The answer to the question: "Can we know this, not only hope it ?" comes alike from religion and from philosophy. The greatest of our humanity declare that this knowledge is within the reach of man; it is the Brahmavidyã, the Gnosis, Theosophy. And the ancient narrow path along which men have trodden from times immemorial, along which have gone the teachers of every religion and the disciples that have followed in their footsteps, that ancient narrow path is as open for the treading of men today as it was open to the men of the past. The human Self is as divine in the twentieth century as in the first, or as in thousands of years before; the life of God is as near to the human Spirit. For the Spirit is the offspring, the emanation of Deity, and it can know because it is like its Parent. It is said in an ancient writing that the proof of God is the conviction in the human Self; that is the one priceless evidence, that testimony to the divine Reality which comes from the Real in us. Hence man may know the Reality of the Ever-Invisible, as well as the Actuality of the, at present, invisible worlds.

In search of this testimony Religion bids the believer tread the road of Prayer. By intense concentrated prayer, when the life is pure, a man may so rend the sense-garment that Spirit may commingle with Spirit, the human with the divine. The rapt ecstasy of prayer may lift the devotee to the Object of devotion, and he may feel the bliss of union, the [Page 13] ineffable joy of the Lord. Never again may he doubt the reality of that high communion. And, far short of this, the man of prayer may have experience of the inner worlds, may feel their peace, their joy, may bask in their light. These experiences are facts in consciousness, and lift the man beyond all possibility of doubt as to the Reality of the Invisible. To call them subjective, to talk of the reflex action of prayer, does not explain nor destroy their value. That the consciousness may be widened, uplifted, illuminated, is the all-important fact; the man feels himself in touch with a fuller consciousness, an up-welling life; his hunger is appeased, and the food reaches him from realms that are not physical. Along this road of prayer he may reach sureness of the existence of the invisible. For the simple, the devotional, this path is the easier to tread.

There is another road to which Philosophy points, in which man turns inwards, not outwards, and finds certitude of Reality within himself. The one certainty for each of us, needing no proof, beyond all argument, incapable of being strengthened by any act of the reason, is the sure truth: I am. This is the ultimate fact of consciousness, the foundation on which everything else is built. All save that is inference.  We argue the existence of matter from changes produced in our consciousness by other than ourselves; we argue the existence of people around us from the sensations we receive from them. All is inference save the one [Page 14] central fact of consciousness; all else changes, but that never. In that stability, that changelessness, is the mark of the Real; the Real is the changeless, the eternal, and this one changeless thing is the Real ingarbed in form.

If, studying man in his present stage of evolution, we seek to know the seat of this Self-consciousness, we find that in most of us its throne is the lower mind. In truth, the place in evolution of each conscious being may be judged by the recognition of the seat of consciousness. If that seat be in the physical body, we find consciousness, but not Self-consciousness; there is not there the power of distinguishing the " I " from the impact of impressions causing sensations. Higher in the ladder of being, consciousness is seated in the second layer of the sense-garment, and this is the case with animals and with large classes of men. The life with which these identify themselves is the life of sensations, and of the thoughts which serve sensations; from this they gradually rise to a consciousness which identifies itself with the mind, which has risen from the life of sensations to the life of thought. From this life of the lower mind, in which sensations still play so large a part, man rises to the life of the intellect, and the lower mind becomes his instrument, ceasing to be himself. From the life of the intellect he must rise to the life of the Spirit, and know himself as the One. The seat of Self-consciousness is moved from the [Page 15] lower mind to the higher by strenuous thinking, by the intellectual travail of the student, the philosopher, the man of science — if the latter turn his thoughts from objects to principles, from phenomena to laws. And as strenuous thinking can alone lift the seat of Self-consciousness from the mind to the intellect, so can deep concentration and meditation alone raise that seat from the intellect to the Spirit.

The man who would deliberately quicken his own evolution must, having transcended the life of the senses, strive to make his life the life of the intelligence, rather than the life of mere outer activity. As he succeeds, he will become more, not less, effective in the outer world, for he will fulfil all his duties there with less of effort, with less dispersal of energy; a strength, a calmness, a serenity, a power of endurance, will be marked in him which will make him a more effective helper of others, and a more efficient worker in his daily tasks. While he discharges these faithfully, his true life will be within, and he will practise daily the higher powers of the intellect as they unfold; as these become familiar, he will gaze into the darkness beyond the intellect, seeking by concentrated meditation to find the light that is beyond the darkness, the light of the Real, of the Self. In that silence will arise within him the spiritual consciousness, responding to subtle thrillings from an unknown world. First feebly, and then more strongly, with a courage everincreasing, that loftier [Page 16]  consciousness answers to the without and realizes the within; he knows himself as Spirit; he knows himself divine.

To such a one all worlds are open; nature has no veil in all her kingdoms. The heavens spread around him, and living Selves, discarnate and incarnate, people the various worlds. He knows that death is nothing, that life is ever-evolving, not because he has seen with the finer organs of the sense-garment the astral and mental bodies which clothe the departed, and can thus view the unbroken continuity of life here and there, but because he knows consciousness as eternal, not subject to death. To him, the universe is rooted in life, and the changing forms are unimportant, since the Real is, however forms may change. This sure conviction needs no phenomenal proofs to make it more sure; it is based on the nature of things. The actuality of the unseen worlds is, indeed, known to him, but his rock is the Reality of the Ever-Invisible; all worlds are actual, because they are the masks of the Reality, but they might all fade away as shadows, and yet would the Real remain.

                                    

Annie Besant - Life After Death

Adyar Pamphlets Life After Death No. 99

by Annie Besant

A lecture delivered in Australia in 1908

Published in 1919

Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Chennai [Madras] India

The Theosophist Office, Adyar, Madras. India

ONE of the quaintest things in the great play of Hamlet is the fact that in a very early part of it the statement is made as to death that it is the "bourne from which no traveller returns", and then the whole of the play is built up towards the final demonstration of a murder of which the ghost, returning from that same bourne, was originally the revealer. That sort of inconsistency as regards belief in a life after death, the possibility of communicating with other worlds, the general doubtfulness and vagueness of men's opinions on the subject, seems to spread through the whole of our modern life. Despite the fact that it is sometimes alleged that Christianity has made the after-death life more certain than any other religion, you find a far greater vagueness amongst Christian nations than you do among the non-Christian people, either of ancient or of modern times.

In Rome, as many of you know, people were quite willing to lend money on security which was valid on the other side of death, and I suppose the absolute belief in the persistence of human personality could hardly be given a more definite proof than that. You find among many nations of the world an utter contempt of death. You find the Hindû wife who will not remarry as a widow because she does not regard death as in any sense severing the marriage tie. From her standpoint the marriage of a widow is simply a case of bigamy. And so in other nations also, you find this definite realisation of a superphysical life, and of the fact that men and women on the other side of death remain the same persons that they were on this side, with the same emotions and the same affections, the same ties, the same obligations to each other.

Now, why is it that in modern days, among the most civilised peoples, who boast so much of their religion as giving certainty of life on the other side of death, why is it that among ourselves the practical belief in that after-death life has become so little potent on conduct? Why is it so vague and so indeterminate ?

Why — testing it by what is the fairest test, that the proof, of the reality of a belief is its effect on conduct — is it, that the belief in an after-death life has become so very feeble among ourselves ? I think that the chief reason for this has been the want of reason in the views taken of the after-death life through many a century of Christian teaching. The idea that the endless ages of everlasting life were determined once for all by the passing, and often trivial, events of the brief life between cradle and grave, I think, has had much to do towards making the vision of the other life unreal in our minds. It was not so some centuries ago. Many of you will remember when the preachers of Christendom, dilating on the joys of heaven and the terrors of hell, used many a metaphor and many a description that would be rejected either with disgust or laughter now, according to the minds of the people who happened to hear it. Recall as an instance of what I am putting a famous description in one of the most eloquent of the great writers, or rather preachers, of the Calvinists. He traced out his idea of the everlasting nature of hell, and he described a huge mountain made up of grains of sand, vast, immense. He bade his hearers imagine that if a bird once in a thousand years came and carried away one grain of sand in its bill, that then, in the immeasurable ages which it would take to exhaust that mountain grain by grain, during the whole of that time the misery of hell would have been continuing, and would be no nearer to its ending than when the first grain of sand was carried away. Now one cannot wonder that against a doctrine so horrible the reason and the conscience of men rose up in revolt; and the very fact that it is so, the very fact that no such sermon would be preached now, to a congregation of educated people, at least, shows you that the old teaching has lost its hold, and men have been left, vague and indeterminate, knowing not how to replace the teaching they were unable to believe. The whole thing was out of relation.

No man felt himself bad enough for an everlasting hell; none good enough for an everlasting heaven. Hence the feeling that it was not rational has gradually weakened any idea of the after-death life in men's minds, and many, perhaps most, men of the world will now say: "Well, we cannot know anything about it. We must do our best here, and hope that it will be all right on the other side". That is the common thing that you hear now from men and women, decent living, thoughtful men and women, but unable to substitute for a belief they had rejected any rational conception of a life on the other side of death.

Now, is it possible that we should know anything about that other life ? Is it possible to discover the facts which we shall all have to face, for the one thing that is absolutely certain for everyone of us is the fact of death ? It is the one thing we cannot escape from, the one destiny of which we are absolutely sure. In these modern days, as in the older days, it is reasserted that some knowledge is possible — knowledge of those worlds which may be gained as we gain knowledge of foreign lands, by travelling therein and observing what there may be seen. There are two ways, especially, offered to the modern world; one easy, but not very satisfactory; the other difficult, but growing more and more satisfactory the more we know of it; the way which is put forward by our friends who are called the Spiritualists, and that which is put forward by those who call themselves Theosophists.

Now let us look at those two ways and see, just for a moment, how they differ, before I go on to try and explain to you clearly the methods of Theosophical investigation and the results that have come by the use of those methods. The Spiritualistic way, I said, was comparatively easy. It does not demand from those who would learn about it any special way of living, any special kind of study. It is done for people, not by them, and done by a certain class of people, who, by a peculiarity of their physical constitution, are able to act as links between this world and the world beyond, being what are called mediums, mediums of communication. The method of communication lies either in a person leaving his body and allowing someone else to occupy it, or by the definite materialisation of this discarnate entity reappearing in the world that he has left. Now as to the first of those methods, the stepping out of the body and the occupation of the body by someone else, there is an enormous amount of evidence, not only spiritualistic, but scientific also, to show that more than one personality can utilise a human body.

The cases of multiple personality, which are now being so much studied by psychologists form a remarkable and interesting contribution to the knowledge as to the ways in which the human body may be tenanted, and the fact that not one entity only may possibly occupy one human body. But even taking that for granted and accepting it, there is so much spiritualistic evidence for such possession by discarnate entities, that no one who has gone carefully into it can pretend that all the phenomena can be fraudulent, even though some of them have been so; those who have studied the subject carefully and long, know that, when you have made every possible allowance for fraud, there is an irreducible minimum of phenomena which nothing can possibly destroy. I am not myself a Spiritualist, but I eem it right to bear witness to the work that has been done by that large body, in establishing the survival of human personality on the other side of death, against ridicule and threat, against police prosecution, and every other weapon, that ignorance could use. That body of men and women has gone on steadily accumulating evidence, until numbers of the leading scientists of the world now admit what for so many years they denied. To their courage these proofs are due. Still, if a man be an utter Materialist who cannot be convinced, save by an appeal to the senses,then I know of no better evidence than can be gained by a careful and scientific investigation into spiritualistic phenomena. My objection to them does not lie then on the ground that they are always unreliable, but rather on this ground, that the people from the other side with whom you come into touch along these lines are very rarely those who can give a full and reliable statement.

They are mostly those who are nearest to the earth that they have left. Not quite always, but in the great majority of cases they do not show signs of high intelligence nor of a wide knowledge of the conditions of life on the other side of death. Their statements, while sometimes interesting, are not full and detailed, save in one or two cases which stand out from the rest of the teachings. I look on the contributions of Spiritualism to a knowledge of the after-death life as very limited in their character, although convincing as to the fact of survival on the other side. Our objections also lie partly along the lines of the depletion of human vitality, the injury to the mediums themselves, which so constantly accompanies these investigations. Were there none other, then I think we should be justified in following them, but if there be a better and a surer way, that is the way that I would rather commend to your attention, and I believe that there is. It is the way in which man may utilise his own spiritual nature in coming into touch with those who have cast off the burden of the flesh. If on the other side of death you are spirits, you are spirits quite as much on this side also. If your spiritual nature is capable of communicating from that world to this, the same spiritual nature is capable of going out from this world and investigating the other, while still we can return to this. That is the line which the great teachers of the past have followed. That is the line which the religions of the past and present have recognised in their own greatest teachers, in those who have come as the teachers of religion to men. Based as it is on the same spiritual nature in all of us, it rests with us to utilise it and to make investigations for ourselves. It turns on the fact that you are spirits encased in bodies, that those bodies are now in touch with other worlds as well as with the physical, as I was pointing out to you the other night, and that it is possible so to train your physical and your psychical bodies as to work as a living intelligence in the psychical body as well as in the physical, and so for yourselves to investigate the worlds that lie on the other side of death. Now it is along that line that Theosophical. Investigation has gone. A person, being a living spiritual intelligence, need not wait to know what is on the other side until death strikes away his body and releases him from the present house of the physical frame. This body of ours is meant to be a dwelling, but not a prison, and the key of it should be in our own hands and not only in the hands of death. That is the face that has been so often proclaimed, so often verified, and in what I am going to lay before you now, it is on those investigations that I shall entirely base all that I say. I do not propose to go beyond the facts that I can myself say I have verified as being true, for it is our habit amongst ourselves to verify over and over again what anyone may have observed and so gradually to bring a consensus of testimony to establish the facts as to the other worlds.

I start, then, with the statement that it is possible to leave the body and return to it. You may say: "But that sounds very curious", and yet you are doing it every night of your lives. Whenever you go to sleep, you, as a living intelligence, leave your body; and that leaving of the body in sleep, at least, is a fact that is being more and more recognised by scientific investigators who utilise what is called trance, which is only a form of sleep, a form of sleep in which for the time the physical body is insensitive to stimulus, but

fundamentally the same as the sleep state. Now it is proved beyond possibility of contradiction that such leaving of the body is possible, that under these conditions, as I was pointing out to you the other night, the living intelligence is very much more active and potent than when it is within the normal physical conditions. And it is on those facts that we start in our investigations, the possibility of leaving the physical body without loss of intelligence. It is not, however, on the ordinary dream state that we depend, but on the deliberate leaving of the body that comes by training yourself, in the sleep state as well as in the waking, until you have bridged the loss of consciousness between the two — can leave the body without loss of consciousness, and bring back and imprint on the brain that which outside the body you have observed. Then, when you have accomplished that, you can go a step further, opening up these inner psychical senses. It becomes, after a time, unnecessary to leave the physical body while you are exercising the higher senses. You learn gradually to unfold these so that they are under your control, so that you can observe the next world while living in the waking consciousness here. You must remember the next world is not far away. It is around you all the time. Your friends who have thrown off the body do not travel far away to some distant country, but remain near those they love, and are visible to the opened eyes which can see the finer matter in which then the intelligence is clothed. I say then, that you all have bodies of that finer matter, and in those bodies the senses whereby these bodies may also be seen; and if that line be followed and practised, then, while wide awake to the things of this world, you can examine also the things of the world that we call the other side of death, but which is really the world that is around us all the time, the world whose inhabitants are with us wherever we may be, the world which thus becomes a world of knowledge, and not only a world in whose reality we hope.

Now let us see what is happening when a person is throwing off the physical body, at the moment of death. Exactly the same thing happens then as happens to everyone of you each night as you all asleep. There is no pain in the moment of death, no agony in the passing out of the body, even where signs of physical suffering are. The suffering is over, although there may be some touch of action in the physical body which simulates the suffering no longer felt. The intelligence, passing out, does not feel the last contortions of the dying body, but is turned in, as it were, within its own immortal existence, conscious of the world that is opening around it, and conscious of the world it is leaving for the last time. Hence those who gather round a deathbed should be careful that, in the wrench of the parting to them, the friend who is going onwards is not disturbed by any noisy demonstrations of sorrow which may check his peaceful passing and recall his thought for a moment to the pain on earth. Most religions have wisely appointed prayers for the dying, more for the sake of the calm of the living than for the sake of the intelligence passing on into the next world. It is true that these prayers for the dying, as prayers for the dead, are the messages of love to the passing one; that ought never to be forgotten nor omitted.

 For there is really no death; nothing that is a ceasing of life is possible; and there is no reason why you should not love and pray for your friends on the other side of death as much as you have done while they were still with you, for, though invisible, they have not passed out of reach. Now for about six and thirty hours after the actual moment of death a man stays in a condition of happy but dreamy consciousness. I mean by that, he is not conscious of anything around him, neither in this world nor on the other side, wrapped rather in what you would call dreams — the weariness of the sickness over, perfectly comfortable, happy and content. There is that pause between this world and the next, lasting for this brief space of mortal hours. After that, different, will be the experiences of the one who has passed on, according to the life which has closed upon earth. The easiest way to make this clear is to classify, however roughly, those who pass on. Take the lowest human type, the savage, the congenital criminal, the man of very violent, uncontrolled passions, the man whose only enjoyments here have been in the gratification of the appetites of the body. You have there a great class of human beings whose experiences — and there is no object in hiding it — are of a painful and distressing kind. It could not be otherwise, if you think for a moment, in a world where law is changeless and where the effect follows the cause in inviolable sequence. What could happen to a man, all of whose pleasures are connected with the physical world, when the physical body is struck away from him by death, when all the passions remain, but gratification is no longer possible ? What can happen save a painful craving for the banished pleasures, a suffering from the desires that no longer can be gratified, a passionate desire again to feel the feelings which on earth represented the only form of happiness he knew, and an equally great disappointment and frustration when he finds that those pleasures are now beyond his grasp ? That iswhat all the stories of the different hells of different religions have been built upon, but by their exaggeration they have destroyed their utility. Law is law. The drunkard and the profligate, victims of insatiable desires, must inevitably suffer on the other side of death until those desires are worn out by literal starvation, by the lack of the food which in the physical body could be supplied. It is no punishment inflicted, it is an inevitable sequence; no arbitrary penalty of an angry God, but the working out of that most merciful, though just, law of nature, that a man shall reap according to his sowing, and, by the reaping of the harvest, shall learn the wisdom or unwisdom of the planting of the seed.

There comes out the difference between the endless and the temporary hell, for I do not mind if you choose to use the word. Suffering in a world of law is remedial. By suffering, nature teaches us the things that we ought not to do. The things that injure its, physically, morally, mentally, they are all accompanied by suffering, whether in this world or any other. The profligate, though he may gain pleasure for a time, pays the price of that pleasure in his ruined nerves, in his shattered body, even in this life, and on this side of the grave. So, on the other side, he reaps the similar penalty of continuing desires that he cannot gratify. But the moment that the desires are exhausted, he passes onwards free from the suffering that he made for himself, and the scourge of his vices, created by himself, ceases to give him pain when the vice is exhausted by disuse. There it is that the man learns the lesson that it is an evil thing to lead the passion-life of the brute when grown into human form. There he learns his earliest lessons, that it is not worth while to be the slave of his vices, of his passions. He is forced to conquer them by the conditions around him, and he grows in knowledge by   the inevitable sequence of pain. Others you may find there also of brutal and violent character, always learning a lesson which on earth they refused to learn; and you find in some of the old religions, where these facts were well known, that the ordering of the man's life here was made so that he might not suffer there; and in the ordering of the man's life, men were always recommended and commanded to give up, after they reach old age, the ordinary pleasures of the world, to turn more to thought than to physical pleasures, more to study, meditation, and prayer than to worldly interests, preparing for themselves, deliberately, things that, they can carry on to the other side, so that, passing through death, they might have left their passions behind them, and have carried on pure emotions and noble thoughts.

Now after that stage of the after-death life, a stage which is a stage of suffering, there is one possibility that might well be avoided, which sometimes causes suffering at the present time. Thought on that side is much more powerful than it is here, and the things that you believe on this side, are forms and forces that you meet with on the next. That is the real mischief now of the preaching, in some of the narrower forms of Christianity, of that old doctrine of everlasting suffering. It causes terror on the other side. It creates occasionally for those victims some hours or days of suffering, partly due to terror, partly due to the manufacture of the very horrors that they dread. One of the experiences that some of us have had in going about among the people on the other side has been the finding occasionally of some unlearned but earnest Christian who has believed in that terrible doctrine of hell, while still he was living here. We have found him in a state of terror, afraid of a doom that he has believed to be possible. Let me give you one case which will show you how vivid it may be — not the case of believing in hell, but a very practical case of a woman who was burnt to death in the cabin of a ship. You can imagine what such a person would endure in the moments before death, as it was coming upon her before she knew she could not escape, a horror, a terror. With the flames gathering around her in that lonely cabin, fighting as she did for life —as could be seen by her body when it was discovered too late to save — she went out of the body in a  passion of terror, an agony of fear. Two of us found her on the other side surrounded by flames that her own imagination had created, suffering under that imagination, and still in the terror of death. So profound was that terror, so frantic her agony, that it was some hours before it was possible to comfort her and to persuade her to look round and see that there was nothing around her which could injure or terrify. I mention that particular case in order to make you see, as it were, for a moment the harm that may be done by lurid descriptions of terrors of what may happen on the other side of death. People who go out of the world with those in their mind do for a time suffer the very terrors that they fear; not for long, happily, for there are many on the other side whose work it is continually to help those who have passed on, to make them know that there is no fear, no terror, which need thus torture them when the body has been left behind. But I would urge upon every one who uses the power of the tongue to teach religion,not to use those terrors against the sinner, for they are creating the hell that for a brief while may torture,until the baseless imagination has been shown to be the nullity that it is. So much trouble is caused there, so much unnecessary suffering, that you cannot wonder if some of us who have to undo the mischief on the other side, try as far as we can to argue against it here.

Those who go into the other world by sudden death — by suicide, by accident — are the people who need most, on the other side, the care of those who help; and the great intelligences, whom you speak of as angels, have, as part of their work, the helping and the comforting of those who, flung suddenly out of the one life into another, find themselves as strangers on the other side of death. It is because of the shock of such a sudden departure that you find in the Litany of the Church of England the prayer to be saved from sudden death. I have often heard people nowadays say that they cannot use that prayer with any reality of feeling, that they think it would be better to pass out suddenly and have no warning of the approach of the death hour. Not so is the opinion of all those who know the conditions on the other side. Far better the illness, in which the clinging to life is gradually loosened, than the sudden shock of the flinging of the intelligence out of the body into that other world with all the suddenness which stuns and bewilders, and the marvel that sometimes terrifies the unprepared newcomer to that world. Sudden death is a thing not desirable from the standpoint of all who know, and that old Christian prayer is based on occult knowledge.

I have often been asked what is the fate of the suicide. There is no answer you can give to that, because the fate depends on the life that has gone before, and not simply on the sudden act that has closed that life on earth. Where a man who has wronged others tries by suicide to escape from the results of the wrong that he has done, kills himself to, say, escape prosecution for embezzlement or anything of that sort, his life on the other side is certainly unhappy, but rather for the wrong that preceded than, for the act that slew the body. Where a man has caused much misery, wretchedness, by any form of human fraud or trickery, and then strikes away the body because he cannot face the results of what he has done, he escapes nothing. Helpless on the other side, he sees the misery that he has wrought. Unable to assist, tormented by the sight of the harm he has done, he has only injured himself by the hasty striking away of the body. He finds himself face to face with all the pain he has caused, with the sin and the misery of the victims he may have reduced to poverty, and who surround him by angry thoughts. It is the most foolish of actions to strike away the body, for he thereby only renders himself more helpless.  Nothing is escaped thereby. There is only greater intensification of the sorrow. But in the case of a suicide who by bitter suffering or despair has practically lost control over his mind, who acts not with thought, but thoughtlessly, whirled away perhaps by a wave of despair that he is unable to breast, there the result of the action is naturally not so terrible, for it is suffering and not crime which has led up to the rash act of suicide. But in every case where the body is struck away, be it by self-inflicted death or accident, the man is not dead in the ordinary sense of the term—I mean as he would be if he had lived out his cycle of years upon earth. He has to live that out on the other side. Only, the conditions are less favourable there than here. It is the life on earth without a physical body, tied, as it were, to earth, and unable to leave it until the hour comes for which the body was built, the natural time of death. Hence in all cases suicide is an act of folly, the putting oneself at a greater disadvantage rather than the getting away from difficulty and suffering, and the only cases in which there is merely a peaceful sleep upon the other side in the case of suicide is where the mind has really been unhinged by pain, and no moral responsibility can attach itself to the rash act that ends the life.

The experiences on the other side, again, bear directly on the infliction of capital punishment here. No greater folly, as well as crime, than to send the criminal out of this world into the next by the act of  law. It is not only that you throw away the chance of helping, the chance of training, the chance of reforming, but you do the maddest of all mad things — you set free a malignant intelligence that here you could, keep from doing harm to his fellows. Your criminal who has committed a murder is helpless while you hold him under restraint, but if you strike away the body, how can you control him on the other side ?

It is men of that sort who have given rise to the ideas of devils tempting and urging others to sin. Those men, furious at the act that has ended their lives, hating society, and longing for revenge, they it is who only too often push weaker criminals into similar crimes. Often the bad harvest of the gallows is a number of similar crimes taking place in the community that sends the murderer to his doom. It is not without significance that the countries that have abolished the death penalty are those where murder takes place the least often. Switzerland is such a country, but murder is the rarest of crimes thereof. Where you hang for murder, you practically make temptation and instigation to murder, round the place where the murderer's body was struck off. Hence, from the study of other-world conditions we learn a lesson for the improvement of our treatment of criminals here.

But pass from that worst side of human life, and take the average human being, man or woman — not a high type for a moment, a low but not a sinful type the type that you get by hundreds and thousands among yourselves — the men whose only pleasures outside the work by which they win a livelihood are the pleasures of the race-course, the pleasures of the music-hall, the pleasures which can only be enjoyed in the body, and which do nothing to stimulate the mind nor to gratify the loftier emotions, those whose amusements are trivial, childish, depending for their interest on the mere changing of money. Or take the women whose lives are as trivial as those of the men, who find their greatest pleasure in fashion or in idling. What can you do with those people on the other side of death, when you come to think how much of them is left ? All their life has gone into their bodies. All their interests have to do with physical things. They have no intellectual pleasures, no artistic pleasures nor pleasure of the higher emotions. Clothes, fashion, games, these are the things alone in which they take a lively interest, and these things do not go on to the other side of death. Now, those people do not suffer in the sense of any keenness of suffering. It is a dull, grey, unhappy life for the time until the higher side of them awakens and begins to show activity in that other world. To put it colloquially, they are very much bored.

There is no word that expresses their condition better. You meet them wandering about discontented, grumbling, fretful, complaining — not actually suffering, as I said before, but finding life so grey as to be almost intolerable. Now, there is a certain value in knowing that beforehand. It is no good knowing it only when you get there. If you know it beforehand you can provide against it and the provision against it is simple enough. Measure your amusements as well as your work, and let some of them at least be of a nature that death is unable to destroy. I am not speaking against the taking of pleasure. All human beings need some pleasure and some amusement, and most of all those whose work is laborious and of the nature of drudgery. They do need pleasure in order to brighten their lives here. But is it necessary that the pleasure should be of such an unspeakably stupid character ? That is the point that you want to think about. Take music. Music is a thing which stirs emotions that you can carry on to the other side of death, that you may utilise there in many of the forms of noblest pleasure. Then why not here have the music that raises a little, rather than the music that degrades ? It need not be of too difficult a kind; it need not be what would be called classical music, interesting only to the musician; it may be a noble ballad; it may be a song carrying with it some high sentiment or pure emotion, something better than the miserable patter which is what you may hear in many of the music-hall songs, drivel which is not fit for rational people to listen to at all. Now that is one of the practical points that come out of the study of the other-world conditions. Make part of your amusements at least form that portion of your nature which you carry on to the other side. Have some taste, some hobby, if you will, which you find interesting, something that cultivates and refines, without being too much of a strain upon the brain that may be already tired with the day's toil, but something which appeals to the real human part of you, and not only to the mere physical part. And that will be something to carry on to the other side, and to make you on that other side contented and happy by the resources that you have within yourself.

You find many of those who have passed onwards who are still in the higher regions of the intermediate world with which I have been dealing, many a man whose interests are large, those who love their community, who love their town, or love their country. These men carry on into the intermediate world subjects of interest and powers of usefulness as well. A statesman, or the politician who has been honourable and serviceable, the man who has loved the people and tried to serve them — his utility is not ended  when death strikes away the body. In that higher world he can still work for the causes that he loved, still inspire others with the enthusiasm that moved him here. He carries on his interests and his powers, and is able to work for others on the other side of death.

So in making up your life here, have some larger interests, some care for the common good, some thought for the common welfare, some larger self than the self that is limited by the body, and then, as you pass onwards, life will grow wider not narrower, richer not poorer, fuller of happy activity instead of being deprived of it, for you build here your life on the other side and carry with you the materials for it.

Let us leave the intermediate world and pass on into the heavenly, that heavenly world which is the world of growth, which is the world of swifter evolution. And all men pass on into that heavenly world, even the poorest in virtue, the lowest in intelligence. That lowest class of which I spoke at first, who inevitably pass through the experience of suffering, grow out of it and pass on into the heavenly world, for only a short stay, I grant, for the material they take with them is small. Never a seed of good, either in emotion or in thought, that is lost to the soul that experienced it, that does not find its flowering-place on the other side of death. Now, in that heavenly world we also find lives differing according to the lives which here were led — all happy, but happy in different measures, according to the greatness of the capacity for happiness. None but is as happy as he can be, through all the days of his heaven-life, his capacity to receive always full, but the amount of the capacity varying from one to another. And first you find in the heaven-world a perfect satisfaction for all the loves and the affections of the world you are in today. Never a tie of love that is broken by death, never a tie of affection that does not find in the heavenworld its realisation. Love on earth is sometimes frustrated, but in heaven it finds the crown which here it failed to win.   

People ask sometimes: " Shall we know each other in heaven ? Shall we there meet our dear ones ? " What would heaven be unless the loved ones of earth found there their reuniting, or if one who was beloved here was left outside? The circle of love must be complete, and so we find it is. None are missing whom here we loved, none are away from us whom here we cherished. If you think for a moment, you will see how reasonable that is. For you do not love only the bodies; you love the immortal spirits of those who are dear to you. A mother loves her son. But he changes from the babe that she nursed in her arms to the man who, in her old age, is her support and consolation. The babe and the man are very different in body, but always the son is there, and it is the son, and not the body, that the mother loves, though the body may be dear for the son's sake; and her son is ever with her in that heavenly world. So again with all others, with every tie that here on earth might seem to be broken. Have you a friend from whom misunderstanding has parted you ? Have you a friend who has turned against you, though once he loved you ? Have you some friend who has forgotten you, or, worse than that, has returned your love with coldness and your helpfulness with ingratitude ? Never mind. Keep on loving, though he has ceased to love. Pour out love unstintingly, though he has turned his back upon you. For in the heavenly world you will re-win the friend whom here you seemed to lose. Keep the love tie unbroken, and it will knit you each to each again in the heavenly world.

All, then, of our higher emotions find in heaven their intensification and their bliss. But not love only which unites heart to heart, as friend or relative; the love of mankind, that nobler, grander love which spreads itself out in service and endeavours to lift and help the race, that great love of man, often frustrated here on earth for lack of power and lack of opportunity, that love comes back to you in heaven and grows into the power of service that in this life you lacked. That is the wonderful alchemy of heaven. Every hope and every affection, every thought and every aspiration, these are the materials of the heaven-world out of which you build your nature and gradually evolve it towards perfection.

I have said to you elsewhere that thought creates, but the creative power of thought is at its highest and its greatest in the heavenly world. Not one noble aspiration, not one pure and lofty thought, not one passing flash of longing to help and serve, but in the, heaven-world you shall find it again, to weave it into the garment, of the spirit with which you shall be reborn again to serve on earth. Heaven is the growingplace for all the seeds which here we are planting. The harvest of the heaven-world depends on the richness and the nature of the seeds which here you sow, and if you would have your heaven full and rich, if there you would evolve more rapidly than here, then, think nobly and highly, love purely and largely, and all that experience here upon earth shall turn into power and faculty in heaven.

That is the bearing of the knowledge of the life after death on life here. It is no idle folly, no useless, pleasant imagining. You work out here that which, in the other worlds, you shall enjoy and utilise. When you understand that, or begin to understand it, you change your life here and make it more a preparation for a long life of heaven for remember that life here is but like the dip of the diving bird into the sea, out of the free air of heaven down into the ocean. It dives for a moment to catch the food it requires. So each of you, heaven-born, not earth-born, plunges from the heavenly life down into the earthly to carry back the experience you gather to your heavenly home. That is the use of the earthly life, to give the experience that in heaven you will build into character and power, to gather the seeds of the harvest that there you will reap, to make possible here the richness and the glory of a long heavenly life.

When you know it, you will not let a day go by that does not sow some seed for the heavenly reaping. A little reading of great books, a little coming into touch with the great minds of the race, the communing with those who have left behind them the mighty literature of the past, these are the affinities that in the heavenly world realise themselves. Here you may have small chance of going among the greatest and the most thoughtful of your race. Never mind, you can pick here the company that in the heavenly world you will enjoy, and if you study here the writings of a Plato, the writings of any great thinker of the past, the writings of the great authors of our own time — Emerson, Ruskin, take whom you will — these studies of yours make links, which, in the heaven-world, will reassert themselves, and you shall know as teachers there the souls whose writings you have studied as loving pupils here. That is the way in which heaven and earth are linked together, that the vision in which the knowledge of the future enables us to make that future what here we determine that it shall be.

Creators of your own destiny, you can make it as you will. On that side you cannot begin. You must begin here what there you shall continue. As these facts gradually become real to us, as by reiterated investigation and constant study we find out more and more that these worlds are all linked together, parts of a single life, continued, unbroken, life here becomes irradiated with the light of that fuller life, and earth becomes more beautifully illumined by the light of heaven. You are really in your higher spiritual nature living in heaven all the time, only earth's noises deafen you to the subtler music of the heavenly worlds. It is round you always. Heaven's inhabitants mingle with your grosser earthly life, heaven's music breathes around you, heaven's light shines about you, you who are natives and citizens of heaven, deaf and blind to your own country, and to the messages it is breathing to your souls. Your lives might be so much fuller, so much richer, so much happier, if only you would open the higher senses and not cling so passionately to the grosser forms of earth, but realise those belonging to your birthplace, which is really your true home.

An old teacher once said, when he was asked by his heavenly comrades what he thought of earth: "A happy land for those who can forget their birthplace"; but there is a happier land for those who remember their birthplace; a stronger, higher happiness for those who realise more lives than one. All the prophets who have known heaven and talked on earth, all the Divine revealers who have lifted a little corner of the veil and taught their followers the realities of the greater life, bear witness to the reality of the life on the other side of death, to its being a continuance of the life that here we are leading.

If you study your lives here, mark your faculties, judge your amusements and your business here, you can forecast what your life shall be upon the other side. Make it what it should be, full of the power of evolution, full of the certainty of growth, full of the splendour of the divine potentialities within you. Then earth shall also become heaven, and the two shall mingle in your lives, and those around you who know not of that glory,those around you who still are blinded by the earth, shall catch from the beauty of your lives something of the promise of the life immortal, and you shall bring to the deafened ears of earth some of those melodies of heaven which shall have become the music of your own lives.

***************************

HT. Thích Thanh Từ - NGUỒN AN VUI LÂU DÀI

Tất cả chúng ta ai cũng mong muốn có được nguồn an vui lâu dài. Đời sống an vui mới có hạnh phúc, con người mới thảnh thơi nhàn hạ. Nhưng nếu chúng ta không biết thế nào là an vui lâu dài, thế nào là an vui tạm bợ thì chỉ hưởng được cái vui tạm bợ thôi, không bao giờ thấy được nguồn an vui lâu dài.

Bây giờ tìm vui trong đạo Phật là thế nào? Phật dạy người tu có nhiều thứ vui, nhưng ở đây tôi nói giản lược hai thứ thôi. Thứ nhất là vui trong sanh tử, thứ hai là vui trong vĩnh cửu, nghĩa là thoát ly sanh tử. Vui trong sanh tử là vui thế nào? Với cái nhìn của Phật, Ngài thấy trong vòng luân hồi sanh tử có sáu đường: địa ngục, ngạ quỷ, súc sanh, người, a-tu-la, trời. Ba đường khổ là địa ngục, ngạ quỷ, súc sanh. Ba đường lành là người, a-tu-la, trời. Người là vui bậc hạ, a-tu-la vui bậc trung, trời vui bậc thượng. Cho nên ai tu nhân đi theo ba đường này là tìm vui trong lục đạo.

Khi quy y Tam bảo, kết quả thế này: “Quy y Phật khỏi đọa địa ngục, qui y Pháp khỏi đọa ngạ quỷ, quy y Tăng khỏi đọa súc sanh”. Đó là chúng ta tìm ra một lối để khỏi đọa ba đường khổ địa ngục, ngạ quỷ và súc sanh. Muốn ra khỏi ba đường khổ đó không gì hơn là hướng về Phật, hướng về Pháp, hướng về Tăng. Nhưng muốn được làm người, Phật dạy phải giữ gìn năm giới cấm. Giữ năm giới là tư cách một con người tốt, con người sống vui tươi.

Phật chế giới cấm là vì lợi ích của chúng ta, chớ không phải của Ngài. Đức Phật là Bậc Toàn giác, tâm hoàn toàn thanh tịnh, thoát khỏi ba cõi đâu cần phải giữ giới làm gì. Phật tử giữ giới không giết hại, không trộm cướp thì khỏi ở tù. Không tà dâm thì gia đình được hạnh phúc. Không dối gạt người thì mọi người tin tưởng, quý trọng mình. Không uống rượu say thì trí tuệ thông minh sáng suốt, được mọi người kính nể. Như vậy vì tư cách của mình, sống xứng đáng là một con người nên chúng ta phải giữ năm giới cấm. Giữ được năm giới thì bản thân mình bình an, láng giềng cũng bình an. Đó là cách tu để đem lại sự an vui cho bản thân, gia đình và xã hội.

Hiện tại Phật tử giữ tròn năm giới thì khi sắp ra đi có sợ không? Thật ra nếu chúng ta giữ tròn năm giới thì khi ra đi không có gì phải sợ. Tại sao? Vì giữ giới không sát sanh, đời sau sanh ra tuổi thọ dài lâu. Giữ giới không trộm cướp, đời sau sanh ra có nhiều của cải, không bị hao mất. Giữ giới không tà dâm, đời sau sanh ra gia đình đầm ấm vui tươi, bản thân được đẹp đẽ nữa. Giữ giới không nói dối, đời sau sanh ra nói năng lưu loát, ai nghe cũng tin quý. Giữ giới không uống rượu, đời sau sanh ra trí tuệ sáng suốt. Năm giới này giữ đủ, khi chết rồi sanh trở lại được làm người rất tốt đẹp, rất hoàn hảo. Đó là kế tìm an vui lâu dài. Nhưng lâu dài này chỉ là lâu dài trong cuộc sanh tử, theo ba đường lành.

Bây giờ nói đến cái vui siêu thoát hơn, vui mãi mãi, vui vĩnh viễn, không bao giờ khổ. Tiến lên chỗ này hơi khó một chút, nhưng ai khéo tu vẫn có thể tiến được. Nhà Phật nói vui ra khỏi sanh tử là cái vui siêu thoát mà người đời ít ai biết đến. Trước khi nói cái vui đó, tôi xin hỏi “Tất cả quý vị thấy thân này phải thật là mình không?”. Không. Nếu không thật, có ai bẻ ngón tay mình nổi giận không? Điều này thật khó nói.

Nhà Phật phân tích thân này do bốn thứ đất, nước, gió, lửa hợp lại thành. Tuy nó có hình tướng, có bao nhiêu thứ tế bào nhưng thật ra cũng không ngoài bốn thứ đất, nước, gió, lửa. Chất cứng trong người là đất, chất ướt là nước, thở ra thở vào động là gió, hơi ấm là lửa. Trong bốn thứ không thể thiếu thứ nào hết, nếu thiếu một thứ thì chết ngay. Thân này đã do bốn thứ hợp thành, khi đủ duyên nó còn, thiếu duyên nó hoại. Còn và hoại là theo duyên chớ không phải quyền của chúng ta. Có ai muốn thân này hoại đâu, nhưng hết duyên nó phải hoại. Như vậy chúng ta sống chỉ bằng sự vay mượn.

Thế thì quý vị định nghĩa hạnh phúc của thân này là gì? Mượn vô tốt trả lại dễ dàng, đó là hạnh phúc. Nếu trả lại trục trặc thì chở vô bệnh viện liền. Rõ ràng có cái gì là thật mình đâu. Nếu thật thì không mượn, đã mượn thì không thật. Thế mà người thế gian không hiểu, cứ ngỡ thân này là thật, không ngờ chúng ta đang vay mượn để tồn tại trong từng phút giây. Khi sự vay mượn đó dừng, tất cả chúng ta phải ra đi. Cho nên hạnh phúc của cuộc đời như người ta thường mơ ước chỉ là sự tưởng tượng mà thôi. Nếu nói thẳng hạnh phúc của cuộc đời là mượn vô tốt, trả ra dễ dàng.

Thân này không thật, đến tâm có thật không? Ở đây tôi chỉ nói hai thứ tâm. Một là tâm tạm bợ giả dối, hai là tâm chân thật, danh từ chuyên môn là vọng tâm và chân tâm. Tất cả chúng ta đều có hai thứ tâm, nhưng mình chỉ biết vọng tâm sanh diệt, còn tâm chân thật thì quên mất tiêu. Bởi vậy trong kinh Pháp Hoa, Đức Phật nói ví dụ, có anh nhà nghèo đi xin ăn gặp người bạn giàu. Sau khi tiệc rượu say sưa rồi, anh bạn giàu lấy một hòn ngọc nhét trong túi áo anh nhà nghèo, nghĩ rằng qua cơn say, anh ta sờ vào túi thấy hòn ngọc, đem đi bán sẽ được giàu sang, hết một kiếp nghèo. Anh bạn nghèo hết say, không thấy chủ nhà cũng từ giã đi luôn và tiếp tục lang thang ăn mày nữa. Qua một thời gian khá dài, anh nhà giàu bất chợt gặp lại người bạn cũ, thấy vẫn đi ăn mày, tức quá anh hỏi: “Trước tôi đã tặng cho anh viên ngọc nhét trong túi áo, sao tới giờ vẫn còn lang thang vậy?”. Nghe thế, anh nhà nghèo mò vô túi được viên ngọc, lấy ra xài, từ đó hết nghèo.

Viên ngọc dụ cho cái chân thật, quý như ngọc báu mà mình quên nên cứ sống lang thang theo tâm sanh diệt, tạo nghiệp luân hồi muôn kiếp. Chúng ta cứ luôn luôn đuổi theo buồn thương giận ghét, đời này khổ đời khác khổ, không biết bao giờ hết. Đó là nghiệp luân hồi sanh tử. Muốn ra khỏi nghiệp luân hồi sanh tử chỉ có tu thôi. Tu bằng cách nào? Là dừng hết những tâm sanh diệt, để tâm chân thật hiện ra, chừng đó mới ra khỏi vòng sanh tử nghiệp báo.

Tổ Bồ Đề Đạt Ma sang Trung Hoa, có bốn câu châm ngôn dạy tu thế này:

Bất lập văn tự,
Giáo ngoại biệt truyền.
Trực chỉ nhân tâm,
Kiến tánh thành Phật.
Nghĩa là:
Không lập văn tự,
Truyền ngoài giáo lý.
Chỉ thẳng tâm người,
Thấy tánh thành Phật.

Ngài không nói Sơ thiền, Nhị thiền, Tam thiền, Tứ thiền gì hết. Như vậy con đường của Ngài thế nào? Ở đây Ngài chỉ thẳng một con đường để ra khỏi sanh tử, chấm dứt mọi khổ đau. Giải thoát sanh tử là nguồn an vui vĩnh cửu, không còn phiền lụy nữa. Đó là con đường đốn giáo hay nói cách khác là con đường Thiền tông.

Con đường Thiền tông được truyền từ Tổ Ca Diếp dài xuống mãi cho tới Tổ Đạt Ma. Đó là chư Tổ ở Ấn Độ. Đến Tổ Đạt Ma, Thiền tông được truyền sang Trung Hoa, rồi tới Việt Nam. Chư Tổ ở Việt Nam nhận được yếu chỉ tu hành, các ngài cũng ngộ đạo, cũng được làm Tổ. Thế nên con đường thiền này rất thiết yếu.

Lâu nay chúng ta mê lầm nhận cái hư ảo là tâm mình thật. Từ nhận lầm nên cứ theo nó tạo nghiệp. Nó buồn, nó thương, nó ghét, nó giận, đủ thứ chuyện để tạo nghiệp. Tạo nghiệp thì đi trong luân hồi sanh tử. Bây giờ quay lại tìm xem nó ở đâu, có thật hay không? Quả tang nó mất tăm mất tích, tức là không thật, không thật thì có gì đâu phải an. Nhà thiền sau này dùng từ “Phản quan tự kỷ”, tức xem xét lại chính tâm mình. Tìm là chiếu soi lại, xem tâm bất an đang chạy đi đâu? Quay lại tìm tức là xem xét lại chính mình. Khi xem xét lại thì nó mất.

Chúng ta vì mê lầm chấp thân hư giả làm thân thật, chấp tâm hư giả làm tâm thật của chính mình. Trọn cuộc đời đi trong mê lầm, rồi tạo nghiệp hư giả, sanh tử không cùng. Bây giờ tu theo Phật là phải trở lại, phải thấy đúng như thật thân này hư giả, tâm vọng tưởng không thật. Phật thường nói thân tạm bợ vô thường, duyên hợp hư giả mà chúng ta thấy thân này thật nên quý nó, khổ vì nó.

Phật thấy rõ được lẽ thật nên Ngài là Bậc Giác ngộ. Còn chúng ta thấy mê lầm nên làm chúng sanh hoài. Vì bảo vệ thân tâm hư giả này mà con người tranh giành với nhau, rốt cuộc cả đời đau khổ dồn dập. Người biết thân hư giả, tâm hư giả không thật là tiến được bao nhiêu bước? Nếu ai thật sự thấy thân này rõ ràng hư giả tạm bợ, sống mượn nó để làm những điều tốt đẹp, ích lợi cho đời thì được. Dùng tâm hư giả để phương tiện giúp đỡ người thì được. Ngược lại nếu ai bảo vệ nó vì tưởng nó là mình thật, là chân lý thì sai lầm.

Chúng ta tu là cốt giác ngộ. Một khi tâm lăng xăng là hư dối không thật lặng rồi, tâm chân thật hằng ở bên mình. Nhưng vì chúng ta bỏ quên nó, cứ chạy theo cái giả dối nên khổ. Vì vậy Phật nói: “Chúng sanh mê lầm chìm trong sanh tử khổ đau”. Bây giờ trở về với tâm thật thì hết khổ đau. Sống với tâm chân thật, không còn giành hơn thua, phải quấy thì ngay đời này hết khổ rồi. Mai sau khi bỏ thân này được giải thoát sanh tử, đó là vui vĩnh cửu, chớ không phải vui thường.

Phật dạy chúng ta tu là tìm đến chỗ vui vĩnh cửu, đó mới thật là người biết đạo, biết cầu giải thoát. Cho nên tìm về với tâm chân thật là gốc của sự tu.

HT. Thích Thanh Từ

Achema – Peace with no Saint

Achema - This world only can be in peace when there is no saint!!

Chân lý tuyệt đối có lẽ hoàn toàn không giống như ta nghĩ. Trước khi thảo luận về vấn đề này hãy xem câu nói dưới đây:

“Thế giới này chỉ có thể được bình an khi không có thánh nhân.”

Câu nói trên hình như có điều gì sai, nhưng nếu nhìn vào thật sâu hơn ta có thể hiểu được câu nói đó một cách khác biệt hơn. Và cũng thấy một trong những nguyên nhân đã tạo nên sự hiểu lầm và lý do tại sao những lời nói của những người hiểu biết khôn ngoan đã bị cái tâm ô nhiễm của ta làm cho hư hỏng. Tâm ô nhiễm không thể nhìn sự việc một cách rõ ràng và sâu rộng nên phần lớn con người đã mất đi cơ hội tự chứng kiến những ý nghĩa chân thực và rồi ngược lại họ cứ tiếp tục đổ lỗi sai lầm cho các bực khôn ngoan. 

Bất cứ nơi đâu có thánh nhân thì lập tức chỗ đó có hiện diện cả những người xấu. Thánh nhân không thể hiện hữu nếu không có những kẻ xấu xa. Khi cả hai phe đều có mặt cùng lúc và xen kẽ vào với nhau; sự kiện đó mới chính là thành phần của thực tại. Làm cho một bên biến đi; và bên kia sẽ tự động biến đi theo. Cũng giống như nóng và lạnh. Làm mất cái nóng đi và cái lạnh cũng tự động mất đi ngay, bởi vì lạnh chẳng có gì khác hơn là cường độ của sức nóng. Làm cho lạnh biến mất thì nóng cũng sẽ không còn nữa. Đây chỉ là sự khác biệt về cường độ, trong khi phẩm chất hay bản chất vẫn giống như nhau. Thánh nhân hay tội nhân cũng giống như nóng và lạnh. Họ là những cường độ trên cùng một nhiệt kế. Bỏ cái này đi thì cái kia cũng lập tức mất theo ngay.... cả hai tồn tại vì “có điều kiện” hay chỉ là “những phân cực”

Nếu Thương đế là tốt, thì tại sao thế giới này lại có quỷ dữ? Thượng Đế không thể hiện hữu khi không có quỷ dữ; hay ngược lại, ta có thể nói có quỷ dữ vì có Thượng Đế. Cùng một đường lối như vậy, khi một người nào tìm thấy sự giác ngộ, thì đồng thời phải có kẻ không giác ngộ. Cho nên khi một người chủ tâm tìm kiếm sự Giác Ngộ thì sẽ không bao giờ tìm thấy được Giác ngộ vì người ấy cũng chỉ là một người có đầy ảo tưởng như người khác mà thôi. Người ấy không thể nhìn thấy tất cả chỉ là một, không thể chấp nhận ảo tưởng, không chấp nhận sự ngu muội và cũng không thể chấp nhận sự ghét bỏ. Vấn đề là con người không thể nhìn thấy thế giới này phát triển được là nhờ “những phân cực”

Suy tư trong tâm của con người, một tiến trình không ngừng nghỉ của tư tưởng, làm cho con người thành tối tăm không thấy được Chân Lý. Tâm trí như là một bức tường, bức tường này ngăn chận không cho thấy cái thế giới thực sự. Phật tính tự nhiên là không có ranh giới và không có bức tường nào ngăn chận. Khi đang ở trong một căn phòng, ta biết và luôn nghĩ là ta đang ở trong căn phòng đó. Rồi bắt đầu tự ngăn cách, tự tách biệt ra khỏi thế giới ở bên ngoài. Đây là tệ trạng của riêng ta, luôn luôn giam hãm trong cái tâm trí của chính ta. Vì tự ràng buộc mình vào cái tệ hại hay cái hoàn mỹ, cái đúng hay cái sai, đẹp hay xấu, nên số đông con người tự gây ra sự chia cách, phân cực. Phần lớn những người này vì bị giam hãm trong sự “phân chia” đó, họ trở nên bị riêng rẽ cho nên không thể nhìn thấy thế giới này chỉ như là Một.

Những người chủ tâm chỉ làm việc công đức cũng giống như những người đang làm việc thất đức. Nghe có vẻ ngụy biện nhưng sự thật là công đức không thể có được nếu không có việc thất đức hỗ trợ. Đồng ý không... khi đọc tới đây, trong đầu ta có ý nghĩ gì? Có lẽ ta phải cảm thấy quá là lầm lẫn, có lẽ cái tâm sinh hoạt của ta đang bị khựng lại như phải đối diện một câu hỏi về toán học mà không trả lời được chỉ vì ta không nắm được một đầu mối nào cả. Có thể hình như ta hiểu được một phần nào nhưng lại gặp khó khăn diễn tả bằng từ ngữ, hoặc có lẽ ta cảm thấy mọi nỗ lực dùng trong việc làm công đức chỉ là một trò đùa của vũ trụ. 

Tốt và xấu.....rất là khó nhận thức....vì tâm trí không thể nào hoạt động đúng cách.....Làm thế nào để có thể nghĩ rằng xấu cũng là tốt; và tốt cũng là xấu?............ tại khoảnh khắc này, nên hít vào một hơi thở thật sâu và xét lại........ ngay tại lúc này cố gắng nhìn thật sâu vào cái thực tại không phân chia của sự vật. Ai có thể nghĩ, nhận ra được một người thực hoàn hảo nào đó nếu không có người nào khác là xấu không?

Một người khôn ngoan là một người đã mất dạng. Trong cái nhìn sâu sắc của người đó, không có gì là tốt và xấu, không có gì là đúng hay sai. Họ không thấy cần phải ghép sự tốt và xấu hay đúng và sai vào với nhau; vì những điều này không bao giờ tách rời nhau. Thế giới này hiện hữu như biểu hiệu của Tao hay Dao. Cái rắc rối độc nhất là tâm trí của ta không chấp nhận những gì ngoài nguyên tắc nhị nguyên. Tại sao vậy? Vì cái tâm trí này chỉ hiện hữu trong nguyên lý của sự phân chia, của nhị nguyên, và vì đây lại là phương cách độc nhất làm vinh danh cái Tôi và Niềm Tự Hào lên cao. Cái Tôi và Niềm Tự Hào chỉ có được khi có sự “so sánh”. Sự so sánh chỉ có được khi ta ở trong nguyên lý của sự phân chia và phân biệt; cho nên người ta không thể nhìn thấy thế giới này như là Một.

Sự khó chịu, sự giận dữ, sự phiền hà, thất vọng của người ta là hậu quả của sự thất bại khi không nhìn thấy thế giới này như là Một. Người ta tự giam hãm một cách ngu muội trong cái “tâm phân chia” của họ. Và đây là phương cách tự tạo ra sự đau khổ cho chính họ.

Achema – Malaysia 2009 

Kim Morris lược dịch January 2012

Achema - Body

Thân Thể

Những thành phần dùng cấu tạo nên thân thể con người lấy ra từ hành tinh địa cầu. Cái “tri thức” của ta được dùng như một “chiếc xe” để học hỏi về luật của nghiệp trong thế gian này. Khi thu nhận năng lượng từ bên ngoài vào, tâm thân phát huy đủ loại nhận thức và đủ loại phản ứng cho được phù hợp. Điều này tạo ra sự bất quân bình của năng lực, hay có người còn gọi nó là Nghiệp (Karma / Kamma). 

Khi không cảnh giác về năng lực thu nhận này, ta tách biệt nó ra, xếp loại... vào tốt hay xấu. Do đó nhãn hiệu về Nghiệp Tốt hay Nghiệp Xấu đã được tạo nên và đem áp dụng trong những giảng dạy của tôn giáo 

Ta cần phải hiểu rằng bản chất của năng lực này là không tốt và cũng không xấu. Nhưng khi ta mang nó ra phân loại, lúc đó nó sẽ trở thành một cái gì khác biệt....thì ta sẽ không thể nào thấy được Chân Lý như đúng nghĩa của nó....và tất cả những người tham lam sẽ chọn cách thi hành thật nhiều nghiệp tốt. Trong khi đang thiền định, ta có thể đi tới trạng thái không nhận thức hoặc không vô nhận thức nữa, lúc này là thời điểm cho ta hiểu biết được cái năng lực trong trạng thái nguyên thủy này. Không có sự xếp loại.

Mọi loại bệnh tật sinh ra do sự bất quân bình của năng lực. Tất cả các năng lực bất quân bình bắt nguồn từ “tâm ý” và sự suy luận. Nếu làm cách nào để thấy sự liên hệ giữa thân thể và tâm linh, thì từ đó ta có khả năng thoát khỏi tất cả các bịnh tật. Chuyện này đã xẩy ra cho nhiều người thực hành Lão giáo (Tao / Dao). Họ có thể trải qua sinh.. lão... tử... nhưng không bị “ốm đau hay bịnh tật.” Họ được phép chết đi mà không cần đi qua quá trình của bịnh tật. Nếu tâm ta nghĩ (hay đồng ý) rằng ta cần phải trải qua ốm đau hay bệnh hoạn trước khi chết, thì ta cũng sẽ phải trải qua giai đoạn đó theo như tâm ý của ta....vì bởi “ta là người tạo nên cái thực tại của chính ta.”

Khi “tri thức” và “thân thể” của ta hòa hợp đồng nhịp, thân ta tự động thoát tiết ra đức tính nguyên thuỷ có khả năng “chữa bệnh” cho người khác. Sư vận chuyển của năng lực tới một cách tự nhiên và khả năng chữa bịnh bộc phát mà không cần phải đòi hỏi . 

Có 5 loại khác nhau trong trạng thái của “Tri thức “ này. Để cho dễ dàng giải thích, hãy đặt tên cho 5 loại đó như sau: Thứ nhất là giai đoạn của trẻ sơ sanh. Sau đó là giai đọan của trẻ thơ. Thứ ba là người lớn. Rồi tuổi trưởng thành. Và thứ năm là tuổi già. Trong các loại kể trên, bốn loại đầu khó có thể thực hiện đưọc thân và ý hoà hợp với nhau. Chỉ “những người tri thức lớn tuổi”, những người đã trải qua nhiều vòng luân hồi, mới có thể có kinh nghiệm thực hiện việc đó. Vì họ đã chuẩn bị đầy đủ và sẵn sàng rồi. 

Bọn trẻ sơ sanh trong trạng thái tri thức đầu tiên không bao giờ để ý tới vấn đề này vì chúng nó chỉ mới bắt đầu đi vào cuộc chơi của nghiệp trên hành tinh trái đất này. Và có biết bao nhiêu thứ cho chúng nó muốn làm và học hỏi. Muốn có kinh nghiệm tự tử, muốn có kinh nghiệm chết vì tai nạn xe hơi và còn nữa... Đây là con đường chúng nó chọn cho cuộc đời và nếu ta cứ mang năng lực của ta tạo sự xáo trộn việc học hỏi của chúng nó, làm phát sinh ra sự bất quân bằng của năng lực, rồi nghiệp cũng phát sinh và chính ta lại cần phải trực tiếp đương đầu với hậu quả của nghiệp đó. Đây là định luật căn bản của trò chơi trên thế gian này. Cho dù có thích hay không, nó sẽ vẫn là những luật lệ của trò chơi . 

Khi có khả năng hiểu thấu và nhìn vào vấn đề vừa nói tới ở trên sâu xa hơn, ta không còn gì để đổ thừa cho những người ở xung quanh ta. Không còn gì để đổ thừa cho người vợ hay người chồng nữa. Không còn gì để đổ thừa cho người vợ hay người chồng đã ly dị, cho con cái họ hàng, cho bạn bè vân vân. Tất cả là do ta tạo nên và ta muốn đi con đường như thế. Một khi biết tất cả là do chính ta tạo nên, ta nên biết ơn những người đã từng giúp ta hoàn tất sự học hỏi đó. 

Không có gì được coi là tốt hay là xấu, đó chỉ là kinh nghiệm và chò trơi của Nghiệp.

Achema – Malaysia - 2008 
Kim Morris lược dịch September 2011