THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL --- PART SEVEN

Divine Guru Yukteswar continues...

THE CAUSAL WORLD

The Causal world is indescribably subtle. In order to understand it, one would have to possess such tremendous powers of concentration that he/she could close their eyes and visualize the astral cosmos and the physical cosmos in all their vastness -- the luminous balloon with the solid basket -- as existing in ideas only.

If by this superhuman concentration one succeeded in converting or resolving the two comoses with all their complexities into sheer ideas, one would then reach the Causal world and stand on the borderline of fusion between mind and matter. There one perceives all created things -- solids, liquids, gases, electricity, energy, all beings, gods, mankind, animals, plants, bacteria -- as forms of consciousness, just as a person can close their eyes and realise that they exist, even though their body is invisible to the physical eyes and is present only as an idea.

Whatever a human being can do in fancy, a Causal being can do in reality. The most colossal imaginative human intelligence is able, in mind only, to range from one extreme of thought to another, to skip mentally from planet to planet, or tumble endlessly down a pit of eternity, or soar rocketlike into the galaxied canopy, or scintillate like a searchlight over the milky ways and the starry spaces. But beings in the Causal world have a much greater freedom, and can effortlessly manifest their thoughts into instant objectivity, without any material or astral obstruction or karmic limitation.

A COSMIC MIND

Causal beings realise that the physical cosmos is not primarily constructed of electrons, nor is the astral cosmos basically composed of lifetrons (Prana) -- both in reality are created from the minutest particles of God-thought, chopped and divided by "Maya" (Illusion), the law of relativity that apparently intervenes to separate creation from Creator.
Souls in the Causal world recognise one another as individualized points of joyous Spirit; their thought-things are the only objects that surround them. Causal beings see the difference between their bodies and thoughts to be merely ideas. As a man or woman, closing their eyes, can visualize a dazzling white light or a faint blue haze, so Causal beings by thought alone are able to see, hear, smell, taste, touch; they create anything, or dissolve it, by the power of Cosmic Mind.

SEA OF BLISS

Both death and rebirth in the Causal world are in thought. Causal-bodied beings feast only on the ambrosia of eternally new knowledge. They drink from the springs of peace, roam on the trackless soil of perception, swim in the ocean-endlessness of bliss. Lo! see their bright thought-bodies zoom past trillions of Spirit-created planets, fresh bubbles of universes, wisdom-stars, spectral dreams of golden nebulae on the skyey bosom of Infinity!
Many beings remain for thousands of years in the Causal Cosmos. By deeper ecstasies the freed soul then withdraws itself from the little Causal body and puts on the vastness of the Causal Cosmos. All the seperate eddies of ideas, particularised waves of power, love, will, joy, peace, intuition, calmness, self-control and concentration melt into the overjoyous Sea of Bliss. No longer does the soul have to experience its joy as an individualized wave of consciousness, but is merged in the One Cosmic Ocean, with all its waves -- eternal laughter, thrills, throbs.

When a soul is out of the cocoon of the three bodies it escapes forever from the law of relativity and becomes the ineffable Ever-Existent. Behold! The butterfly of Omnipresence, its wings etched with stars and moons and suns!! The soul expanded into Spirit remains alone in the region of lightless light, darkless dark, thoughtless thought, intoxicated with its ecstacy of joy in God´s dream of Cosmic Creation.


(Article/Teaching is from "Autobiography of a Yogi".)

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL. --- PART FOUR

The Master Guru continues....

ENTERING THE CAUSAL WORLD

Joyous festivities on high astral planets like Hiranyaloka take place when a being is liberated from the astral world through spiritual advancement and is therefore ready to enter the heavens of the causal world. On such occasions the Invisible Heavenly Father, and the saints who are merged in Him, manifest Themselves in exquisite astral bodies and join the celebration.

To please His beloved child the Lord assumes the form desired by him/her. If the devotee has worshipped through devotion, he/she will see God as the Divine Mother. To the Master Jesus, the Father-aspect of the Infinite was appealing beyond other conceptions. The individuality with which the Creator has endowed each of His creatures makes every conceivable and inconceavable demand on the Lord´s versatality!

IMMORTALITY OF FRIENDSHIP

Friends of other lives easily recognise one another in the astral world. Rejoicing at the immortality of friendship, they realise the indestructibility of love, often doubted at the time of the sad, delusive partings of earthly life.

By intuition astral persons pierce the veil and observe human activities, but mankind cannot view the astral spheres unless their sixth sense is somewhat developed. Thousands of earth dwellers have momentarily glimpsed an astral being or an astral world.

NIRBIKALPA ECTASY

Nirbikalpa ectasy is union with God/Creator. The advanced beings on Hiranyaloka generally remain awake in Nirbikalpa ectasy during the long astral day and night, helping to work out intricate problems of cosmic government and the redemption of the prodical sons and daughters earthbound souls. When Hiranyaloka beings sleep, they have occasional dreamlike experiences and astral visions.

Inhabitants of all parts of the astral cosmos are still subject to mental agonies. The sensitive minds of the exalted devotees on planets like Hiranyaloka feel keen pain if any mistake is made in conduct or in perception of truth. These advanced beings endeavour to attune their every act and thought with perfection of spiritual law.

COMMUNICATION

Communication among all astral-world residents is effected entirely by telepathy and astral television. The confusion and misunderstanding of the spoken and written word, prevelant on Earth, are unknown in astral worlds.

Just as mankind on the cinema screen, through a series of light-produced pictures, move and engage in activities but do not actually breathe, so astral persons walk and work as intelligently guided and co-ordinated beings whose essence is Light and who require no oxygen to animate them. Mankind is vitally dependent on solids, liquids, gases, and life energy in the air; but astral-world inhabitants are sustained principally by Cosmic Light.

ABOUT ASTRAL EATING

Luminous raylike vegetables abound in the astral soils. Astral-world dwellers consume fruits and vegetables, and drink a nectar that flows from glorious fountains of Light and in astral brooks and rivers. Just as the ordinarily invisible images of mankind on Earth can be summoned from the ether and made visible by a television device, later being dismissed into space, so the God-created, unseen astral blueprints of vegetables and plants and fruits that float in the ether are precipitated on an astral planet by the fiats of the inhabitants. In the same way, from the wildest fancies of astral beings, immense gardens may be materialized, returning later to etheric invisibility.

Although dwellers on heavenly spheres like Hiranyaloka are almost freed from the necessity of eating, still higher is the unconditioned existence of nearly perfect beings in the causal world, whose only food is the manna of bliss.


(Article and Teaching is from "Autobiography of a Yogi".)