Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/34

30 expression in the measured words of this gifted young Brahmin which is beyond any effort of mine.

He began by an account of the five usually accepted planes of existence, the physical, the astral, the devachanic, the shushuptic and the nirvanic. But to limit these planes to five was, he said, 'a great error,' introduced into our philosophy by the too practical British mind which even in esoteric matters is crowding to the wall the finer understanding of the Hindu. The sole perfect number is seven and there must be seven planes and in his own experience as a wayfarer to Devachan and Shushup, he had always and ever found it so. Above the astral plane, already familiar to us at Alcalde lay the etheric plane, as the ether lies beyond the stars, while still beyond is the omnic plane, the Loka of the Perfect Silence.

Of the etheric plane, he chose to speak to us. He first emphasized the fact that all these planes and the things they contained are real, 'as real,' he said, 'as the American Hotel on the main street of Alcalde.' As all dreams came from emanations or excursions into these higher planes, all dreams and their contents are real also. In fact, there is no apparition which is false or illusory. The only illusion is the denial, and denial is the essential characteristic of that western philosophy, which is blighting the earth and changing it from a sphere of dreams and happiness to a world of war and commerce washed by a sea of aimless discontent. This is the natural effect of life on a physical plane. It leads to idle strife and constant struggle, as its greatest exponents have freely admitted, and its only hope of progress is in the killing off of all those who are useless in war and unskillful in making trades.

The scenery, inhabitants and actions in each of these seven planes are in part peculiar, each to its plane. In part they are the doubles or phantoms of the objects found in the plane next lower. For the finer matter of the higher planes permeates and penetrates the coarser objects of the planes below. Hence it transpires that to one in the plane below, the higher object, if he is aware of it, seems like a shadow or a phantom. Because he can pass through it is his argument for its unreality. But in like measure, to the astral or ethereal being the physical man seems quite as unreal, for with equal ease the being can walk through and through him, injuring him or helping him, just as he may elect to choose. By such means an evil-minded shadow may work dire revenge for injury done in another plane.

The higher the plane the more illusory the impressions we derive from it, not because of their unreality, but because of our own lack of training. For on the higher planes, objects change their forms with protean swiftness, casting a dazzling glamour from their aura as they change; again, sight on the higher plane is very unlike physical vision. Even so low as the astral plane the inside of any solid object is as