Product Code Database
The astral plane, also called the astral realm, or the astral world, or the soul realm, or the spirit realm, is a plane of existence postulated by classical, medieval, oriental, esoteric, and New Age philosophies and mystery religions.G. R. S. Mead, The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition, Watkins 1919. It is the world of the celestial spheres, crossed by the soul in its astral body on the way to being born and afterlife, and is generally believed to be populated by , spirits, or other immaterial beings.Plato, The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee, Harmondsworth. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the term was popularised by Theosophy and neo-Rosicrucianism.
Another view holds that the astral plane or world, rather than being some kind of boundary area crossed by the soul, is the entirety of spirit existence or spirit worlds to which those who die on Earth go, and where they live out their non-physical lives. It is understood by adherents that all consciousness resides in the astral plane. Some writers conflate this realm with heaven or paradise or union with God itself, while others do not. Paramahansa Yogananda wrote in Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), "The astral universe ... is hundreds of times larger than the material universe ... with many astral planets, teeming with astral beings."
The "World of Al-Ghaib" and the "World of Barzakh" are related concepts in Islam (also the concept of 'âlam al-mithâl "Malakut" in Sufism). In Judaism, it is known as the "World of Yetzirah", according to Isaac Luria Kabbalah.
Man is a little world (mikros cosmos). For, just like the Whole, he possesses both mind and reason, both a divine and a mortal body. He is also divided up according to the universe. It is for this reason, you know, that some are accustomed to say that his consciousness corresponds with the nature of the fixed stars, his reason in its contemplative aspect with Saturn and in its social aspect with Jupiter, (and) as to his irrational part, the passionate nature with Mars, the eloquent with Mercury, the appetitive with Venus, the sensitive with the Sun and the vegetative with the Moon.Quoted in: G.R.S. Mead, The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition, Watkins 1919, page 84 (Slightly adapted).
Such doctrines were commonplace in mystery-schools and Hermeticism and Gnosticism sects throughout the Roman Empire.
Among Muslims the "astral" world-view was soon rendered orthodox by references to the Prophet Muhammad’s ascent through the seven heavens. Scholars took up the Greek Neoplatonist accounts as well as similar material in Hinduism and Zoroastrianism texts.The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: "There are two states for man – the state in this world and the state in the next; there is also a third state, the state intermediate between these two, which can be likened to the dream state. While in the intermediate state a man experiences both the other states, that of this world and that in the next; and the manner whereof is as follows: when he dies he lives only in the subtle body, on which are left the impressions of his past deeds, and of those impressions is he aware, illumined as they are by the light of the Transcendent Self" The expositions of Avicenna (i.e. Avicenna), the Brotherhood of Purity and others, when translated into Latin in the Norman era, were to have a profound effect upon European medieval alchemy and astrology. By the 14th century, Dante Alighieri was describing his own imaginary journey through the astral spheres in his Paradiso.Miguel Asín Palacios La Escatología musulmana en la Divina Comedia Muslim (1919). Seyyed Hossein Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, University of New York Press, passim. Idries Shah, The Sufis, Octagon Press, 1st Ed. 1964.
Throughout the Renaissance, philosophers, Paracelsus, Rosicrucianism, and alchemists continued to discuss the nature of the astral world between Earth and the divine. Once the telescope established no spiritual heaven was visible around the Solar System, the idea was superseded in mainstream science.
In early theosophical literature the term "astral" may refer to the aether. Later theosophical authors such as Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater make the astral finer than the etheric plane but "denser" than the mental plane. In order to create a unified view of seven bodies and remove earlier Sanskrit terms, an etheric plane was introduced and the term "astral body" was used to replace the former kamarupa - sometimes termed the body of emotion, illusion or desire. Some of those propounding such claims explain their belief that letting go of desires is spiritual progress by noting that, the more one lets go of earthly 'desire' feelings, the less tied down to the physical world, a world of illusion, and the more connected to the astral, where all is visible and known.Frank Lester, The Eternal Verities, 1962, Sedona, Az, pp. 31-35
According to Max Heindel's Rosicrucianism writings, desire-stuff may be described as a type of force-matter, in incessant motion, responsive to the slightest feeling. The desire world is also said to be the abode of the dead for some time subsequent to death. It is also the home of the Archangel. In the higher regions of the desire world thoughts take a definite form and color perceptible to all, all is light and there is but one long day.
In his book Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda provides details about the astral planes learned from his guru. Yogananda claims that nearly all individuals enter the astral planes after death. There they work out the seeds of past karma through astral incarnations, or (if their karma requires) they return to earthly incarnations for further refinement. Once an individual has attained the meditative state of nirvikalpa in an earthy or astral incarnation, the soul may progress upward to the "illumined astral planet" of Hiranyaloka. After this transitional stage, the soul may then move upward to the more subtle causal spheres where many more incarnations allow them to further refine before Satcitananda.
|
|
