THINKING AND DESTINY

Harold W. Percival

CHAPTER VII

MENTAL DESTINY

Section 31

Mental destiny in the after death states. The round of twelve stages from life to life. Hells and heavens.

A part of the mental destiny of a human is experienced after death, in that part of the mental which reaches into the psychic atmosphere; but the majority have their hells and their heavens in their psychic atmosphere, whether the destiny is psychic, mental or noetic. The reason is that their thoughts are usually concerned with physical things and with the psychic reactions therefrom.

There is a round, generally speaking, of twelve states or stages which a given doer portion goes through between one life on earth and its next life. Some of these stages are of short duration, while others may last for hundreds or even thousands of years,—this depends among other things on the destiny of the doer, that is, the kind of life the doer had lived and on his thoughts and acts. Eleven of these are stages after death and states in the preparation for another life. In the twelfth the doer re-exists in a human body, (Fig. V-D).

In the first of the after death states the doer portion lives and dreams over certain events and scenes of the life ended; it is with its breath-form and so sees, hears, tastes or smells. This stage may be of short duration or as though of centuries. Approximately at the end of the first stage, there is the judgment. The second stage has to do with the feelings and desires of the doer, and eventually there is a separation of its good from its evil desires, and from the breath-form. The period between the first and the third stage is that which is spoken of as hell. The third stage is the grading of the doer’s thoughts. In the fourth, there is a purification of the thoughts. In the fifth, the doer is purified; the breath-form is cleansed and ready for the doer to be in its heaven. In the sixth, the doer unites with the breath-form, cleansed of all untoward impressions, and is in its heaven. It lives over and realizes all ideal thoughts which it had had on earth. This stage varies greatly with individual doers, in character and duration. In the seventh, the sense elementals are temporarily freed and are in their elements. This stage is a period of peaceful rest. It is during this period that the other eleven portions re-exist one after the other in succession; each uses the same breath-form, which is common to all twelve doer portions. In the eighth stage, the doer is made conscious of the thought for the next life and the breath-form is summoned to again serve that doer portion. In the ninth, the form of the breath-form enters the body of the mother-to-be and causes conception by binding the two physical germs, and so makes contact with the physical world; this stage covers the first three months of intrauterine life. In the tenth stage, placental life begins and the flesh body is developed; this stage covers the second three months of the prenatal period. In the eleventh, the last three months of pregnancy, the human form is completed. In the twelfth stage, there is birth of the body into the physical world. Here the body grows, its senses become active, and it is developed and made ready for occupancy by the doer. Entrance of the doer into the body is marked by its first memories of this world, and by the intelligent questions it will ask.

In the building of a human body for each of the twelve doer portions, as they successively re-exist on earth, the breath-form is the same for all. That this can be so, the order of events is as follows: When the heaven period of a doer portion ends and it is at rest and in forgetfulness of nature, the four senses are temporarily freed and in their elements, and the breath of the breath-form is disunited from its form. All nature memories are removed from the form, and it is inert. It is then ready and waits to recompose the compositor and sense units for the building of a new body when summoned to do so by the thought of the doer portion next in line for a life on earth. There are countless intricacies which have to be adjusted in the lives of doers, so that in their re-existences they will be marshalled in their destined relation to each other on earth, in time and condition and place.

The after death states of the human being are largely determined by what he thought about during his last moments. The dominating thoughts of the life just ending crowd into these last moments. These thoughts turn upon the things in which the human was interested, for which he worked. They blend, and one or more thoughts result. At the time of death these thoughts hold the attention of the human. He made them and they rule his destiny for his conditions after death and for the span of his next life. Generally the last thoughts center on objects of the senses and on sensations sought or dreaded. Therefore, the after death stages are mostly psychic; what little mental destiny there is is taken in with the psychic and is worked out on the life plane of the form world or on that of the physical world.

What distinguishes psychic and mental hells and heavens is that in the hells feeling and desire disagree with rightness, while in the mental they agree with it. It is the doer that has a mental hell or heaven, because of the effect that rightness has upon it. The mental hells are conditions in which the doer feels anguish, remorse and grief because of the censure of rightness; the mental heavens are conditions in which the doer has satisfaction and peace through the approval of rightness.

The mental heaven is like the psychic heaven in that happiness is the dominant feature in both. While the doer has the breath-form and the four senses and its feelings and desires, happiness lies in dealing with thoughts and problems concerning subjects of thoughts. It is a life with ideals.

The mental heaven is as little a community heaven as is the psychic heaven. It is a condition of the doer in its own mental atmosphere. In the psychic heaven there are mental states, but they are in the psychic atmosphere and are related to psychic conditions where sensuous enjoyment is concerned with thoughts and ideals. These heavenly states are experienced with scenes, persons, pictures, sounds, places, actions and enterprises and are incidental to a trained, cultured enjoyment. The majority of cultured, artistic, learned people enjoy such mental activities. But a mental heaven is quite different. While there are scenes of places and people whom the doer meets, these are always incidental to mental activities.

Those who have a mental heaven enjoy working on moral and mental problems. They have a keen joy in contemplation. Their occupation is an extension of the thinking they did in life to benefit people, but the difficulties they had to contend with in life are removed. The happiness comes in their work rather than in the results. They solve their problems in an abstract way, not in the concrete manner in which they would be solved on earth.

A mental heaven is comparatively rare. Such persons as Emerson, Carlyle, Thomas Taylor, Alexander Wilder, Kepler, Newton and Spinoza get into that state when their difficulties are removed after death. Contemplation is the word that is the nearest approach to a description of the joy of that state, but this word is colorless, because it does not convey, except to those who may have a mental heaven, the joy one has there. The run of humans connect joy only with physical and emotional things and therefore use no words for what is here called mental joy. Contemplation is here used because it is a process with which the mental joy is connected. The contemplation becomes so absorbing that the doer forgets all else than the subject which it contemplates. So the end of the heaven period draws near, but the doer does not perceive this, because for it there is no end to heaven.