The Devachanic Plane. Charles Webster Leadbeater
Читать онлайн книгу.
tion>
Charles Webster Leadbeater
The Devachanic Plane
Published by Good Press, 2020
EAN 4064066419844
Table of Contents
The Lower and the Higher Heaven-Worlds
The Qualities Necessary for the Heaven-Life
How a Man first gains the Heaven-Life
The Reality of the Heaven-Life
Third Sub-Plane—the Fifth Heaven
Second Sub-Plane—the Sixth Heaven
First Sub-Plane—The Seventh Heaven
PREFACE
Few words are needed in sending this little book out into the world. It is the sixth of a series of Manuals designed to meet the public demand for a simple exposition of Theosophical teachings. Some have complained that our literature is at once too abstruse, too technical, and too expensive for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope, that the present series may succeed in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy is not only for the learned; it is for all. Perhaps among those who in these little books catch their first glimpse of its teachings, there may be a few who will be led by them to penetrate more deeply into its philosophy, its science and its religion, facing its abstruser problems with the students zeal and the neophyte's ardour. But these Manuals are not written only for the eager student, whom no initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy men and women of the work-a-day world, and seek to make plain some of the great truths that render life easier to bear and death easier to face. Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder Brothers of our race, they can have no other object than to serve our fellow-men.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Since further enquiry has shown that the word "Devachan" is etymologically inaccurate and misleading, the author would prefer to omit it altogether, and to issue this manual under the simpler and more descriptive title of "The Mental Plane". The publishers inform him, however, that this alteration of title would cause difficulties in the matter of copyright, and produce confusion in various ways, so he defers to their wishes.
INTRODUCTION
In the previous manual an attempt was made to describe to some extent the astral plane—the lower part of the vast unseen world in the midst of which we live and move unheeding. In this little book must be undertaken the still harder task of trying to give some idea of the stage next above that—the mental plane or the heaven-world, often spoken of in our Theosophical literature as that of Devachan or Sukhâvatí.
Although, in calling this plane the heaven-world, we distinctly intend to imply that it contains the reality which underlies all the best and most spiritual ideas of heaven which have been propounded in various religions, yet it must by no means be considered from that point of view only. It is a realm of nature, which is of exceeding importance to us—a vast and splendid world of vivid life in which we are living now as well as in the periods intervening between physical incarnations. It is only our lack of development, only the limitation imposed upon us by this robe of flesh, that prevents us from fully realizing that all the glory of the highest heaven is about us here and now, and that influences flowing from that world are ever playing upon us if we will only understand and receive them. Impossible as this may seem to the man of the world, it is the plainest of realities to the occultist; and to those who have not yet grasped this fundamental truth we can but repeat the advice given by the Buddhist teacher:
—"Do not complain and cry and pray, but open your eyes and see. The light is all about you, if you would only cast the bandage from your eyes and look. It is so wonderful, so beautiful, so far beyond what any man