ly one
little aspect of many-sided humanity for endless ages of years; a
thousand or so years of one person in one character would, to me, be
ample, and I should prefer to know him or her in some new aspect of
his nature. But those who object to this view need not feel
distressed, for they will enjoy the presence of their beloved in the
one personal aspect held by him or her in the one incarnation they are
conscious of _for as long as the desire for that presence remains_.
Only let them not desire to impose their own form of bliss on
everybody else, nor insist that the kind of happiness which seems to
them at this stage the only one desirable and satisfying, must be
stereotyped to all eternity, through all the millions of years that
lie before us. Nature gives to each in Devachan the satisfaction of
all pure desires, and Manas there exercises that faculty of his innate
divinity, that he "never wills in vain". Will not this suffice?

But leaving aside disputes as to what may be to us "happiness" in a
future separated from our present by millions of years, so that we are
no more fitted now to formulate its conditions than is a child,
playing with its dolls, to formulate the deeper joys and interests of
its maturity, let us understand that, according to the teachings of
the Esoteric Philosophy, the Devachani is surrounded by all he loved
on earth, with pure affection, and the union being on the plane of the
Ego, not on the physical plane, it is free from all the sufferings
which would be inevitable were the Devachani present in consciousness
on the physical plane with all its illusory and transitory joys and
sorrows. It is surrounded by its beloved in the higher consciousness,
but is not agonised by the knowledge of what they are suffering in the
lower consciousness, held in the bonds of the flesh. According to the
orthodox Christian view, Death is a separation, and the "spirits of
the dead" wait for reunion until those they love also pass through
Death's gateway, or--according to some--until after the judgment-day
is over. As against this the Esoteric Philosophy teaches that Death
cannot touch the higher consciousness of man, and that it can only
separate those who love each other so far as their lower vehicles are
concerned; the man living on earth, blinded by matter, feels separated
from those who have passed onwards, but the Devachani, says H.P.
Blavatsky, has a complete conviction "that there is no such thing as
Deat