The Inner Life, v. I/Fifth Section/V
THE DESIRE-ELEMENTAL
Much of the matter of the astral body is vivified by elemental essence, which is cut off for the time being from the general mass which belongs to the plane, and becomes the man's expression on that plane. This is a living, though not an intelligent essence. But it has a kind of instinct which Mr. Sinnett calls “dawning intelligence,” which guides it into getting what it wants. Blindly and without reason, but instinctively, it seeks its ends, and shows great ingenuity in obtaining its desires and in furthering its evolution.
Evolution for it is a descent into matter; its aim is to become a mineral monad. Therefore, its object in life is to get as near to the physical plane as it can, to come into contact with as many of the vibrations of the coarser kind as possible. It knows nothing of you; it could not know or imagine anything of you; but it does realize that it is apart from the general stock, and that it is good to be apart. It is not a devil, and you must not get the idea that it is to be hated.
It is part of the Divine Life, just as you are; but its interests are diametrically opposed to yours. It wants to evolve downwards; you want to evolve upwards. It desires to preserve its separate life, and it feels that it can do so only by means of its connection with you. It is conscious of a something which is your lower mind, and realizes that if it can englobe, as it were, this mind, and persuade you that its and yours interests are one, you will increasingly supply it with the sensations it desires. When it gets the matter sufficiently entangled to suit its purpose, you cannot withdraw it, the result being that some of this matter of the lower mind is then lost to you altogether in the life after death.
So, you see, here is the desire-elemental seeking its own ends; not knowing that it is injuring you by trying to entangle your lower mind. The more it can do this the better for it, for the more mental matter it can entangle the longer will be its astral life — that life still enduring even after you have passed into the heaven-world. In Theosophical phraseology it has been known as the shade. Your business is not to allow yourself to be deceived; it understands nothing of your evolution, and is not responsible for it; it simply tries to turn you to its own purpose. You ought to understand the situation, and refuse to be drawn. Do let us realize this: that this elemental is not ourselves. It is never you who desire these lower things, but this creature.
It is not so much that we have to make a great fight against it, but we should shake ourselves free, saying: “This is not I; I do not want this lower thing.” Somebody wants it. Yes, it is this elemental; and you are responsible for its likes and wants, for in your last life you made it what it is. Not that this particular collection of astral matter and elemental essence existed then; it did not, for it was newly gathered together at your birth this time. But it is an exact reproduction of the matter in your astral body at the end of your last astral life. Nevertheless it is not you; and you must ever bear this in mind all through life, and even more during the life after death, for then it has still greater power to deceive you.
But you may think that by thus refusing to allow it to influence you, you are checking its evolution. Not at all. You are doing better for the elemental if you control the lower passions, and take a firm stand of your own. It is true you do not develope a very low part of it; but you may drop the lower and evolve the higher. An animal can supply the lower kinds of vibrations even better than you can yourself, whereas none but man can evolve the higher type of essence.
After the death of the physical body the ordinary man, who has never heard all this, finds himself when he wakes up on the other side in a totally unexpected condition of affairs, and is generally more or less disturbed thereby. Finally, he accepts these conditions which he does not understand, thinking them necessary and inevitable. Some no doubt are, but some are not, and with knowledge the latter could be transcended.
The elemental is afraid, because it knows that the death of the physical body means that the term of its separated life is limited; it knows that the man's astral death will more or less quickly follow, and with it the loss to it of vivid and intense sensations. Consequently it adopts the best plan it can think of for the preservation of the man's astral body. It evidently knows enough of astral physics to realize that the coarsest matter can hold together longest, and best stand friction. So it arranges the matter in rings, the coarsest on the outside. And in so doing it is right, from its point of view. During physical life the astral body is like swirling, boiling water, but after death it arranges the matter in a series of graduated sheaths, so that full circulation is impossible.
Now there are no sense organs in the astral body. There are in it organs corresponding to the physical sense-organs, but you do not see, hear and smell with them. You hear and see all over the surface of the body. Each sub-plane has its own matter; and it is by means of the matter of that sub-plane in your body that you can respond to its vibrations. Whatever matter is on the outside (or surface) of your body responds to these vibrations, and you see or hear by it alone. Consequently, what has happened is this: the elemental has, by this arrangement of the matter of your body, shut you up, as it were, in a box of astral matter, which enables you to see and hear things of the lowest and coarsest plane only. If you object to being shut up in this way, it endeavours to make you believe that unless you do thus firmly root yourself into the lower matter you will float off, and lose yourself in a nebulous vagueness.
But if, on the other hand, you were to set your will to oppose it, then at once there would be a difference. The particles of the astral body would be kept all intermingled, as in life; and you would, in consequence, be free of all the sub-planes.
The final struggle with it takes place at the conclusion of the astral life, for then the ego endeavours to draw back into himself all that he put down into incarnation at the beginning of the life which has just closed — to recover as it were the principal which he has invested, plus the interest of the experience which has been gained and the qualities which have been developed during that life. But when he attempts to do this he is met with determined opposition from this desire-elemental, which he himself has created and fed.
Though it can hardly be described as intelligent, it has a strong instinct of self-preservation, which leads it to resist with all the force at its command the extinction which threatens it. In the case of all ordinary mortals it attains a certain measure of success in its efforts, for much of the mental faculty has during life been governed by the lower desires and prostituted to their service, or in other words the lower mind has been so seriously entangled by desire that it is impossible for it to be entirely freed. The result of the struggle is therefore that some portion of the mental matter and even of causal matter is retained in the astral body after the ego has completely broken away from it. When a man has during life completely conquered his lower desires and succeeded in absolutely freeing the lower mind from desire, there is practically no struggle, and the ego reclaims in full both principal and interest; but there is unfortunately an opposite extreme when he is able to reclaim neither.
So our business, both during life and after death, is to control this desire-elemental, and not let it control us. Realize that you are a god in the making. All the power and force of the universe are on your side. The result is certain. Range yourself on the side of the Law, and all will be simplified.
Absolute control of passions is eminently desirable, but is obtained by few. You have to keep your temper on the astral plane. You see many dreadful things, and if you have not all feelings thoroughly under control you may easily do something for which you will be sorry. Down here people often commit casual brutality and think nothing of it; a callous schoolmaster, for example, beats a child without realizing his wickedness; but on the astral plane the heinousness of such a crime is at once obvious, and even the awful horrors of the karma which it entails may often be seen. On the astral you see the full effects of even an unkind word. Tremendous and violent passions may often attract low kinds of beings, who enter into the thought-forms and enjoy the vibrations. Such animated thought-forms may last for years, and even produce poltergeist phenomena.