Purgatorial Experience

Experiences of H. S.

The beautiful "passing" of my friend W. G. might without doubt be paralleled by many other examples of similar experience, writes theosophist A. P. Sinnett. Happily, at the present stage of human evolution there must be large numbers of people who lead thoroughly good lives and wake up on delightful regions of the astral, where they may soon be eager to express the idea that W. G. conveyed to me in the course of his talk — "I wouldn't be back in the body for anything." But I have been seeking, in the course of the enquiries I have been privileged to carry on, for examples of astral experience that convey some more varied lessons than the simple old truth that good lives here lead to happy conditions hereafter. Thus, while there may be a good deal of shadow in some of the stories I am going on to tell, these need not have a discouraging effect on the minds of my readers generally. There will be more to say on that subject  later, but I have now to describe some astral lives involving a good deal of what may be called purgatorial experience. Let me reserve comment on this purgatorial aspect of astral life till I have an appropriate text in the shape of the story I now want to relate.

This has to do with the astral life of a man who was a close personal friend of my own in physical life. He was an older man than myself, and passed on more than twenty years ago from the time at which I am writing. He was a man of great personal charm, attractive in every way, mentally brilliant, and good-looking to correspond. Under those conditions, and filled with an intense interest in and desire for the opposite sex, the results were remarkable and striking, to say the least. Don Juan (of the poem), I used sometimes to think, with his two or three simple love adventures, had an almost ascetic record compared to that of my friend, "H. S." let me call him.

The consequences to him on the astral plane after he passed over were not such as to encourage us to think lightly of tendencies along the line referred to. H. S. woke after the usual interval, and found himself in what seemed liked the lounge of a great hotel, or the entrance hall of a large club. It was pervaded by a reddish-yellow light. At first he had no particular sense of discomfort, but presently he saw coming in and out of the room a number of nude female forms. These evoked passionate desires, but if he attempted to reach them they receded or disappeared. This went on for a terrible length of time. On one occasion he was endeavouring to pursue some female form down what seemed a long corridor. It narrowed and narrowed until it seemed like a pipe down which he was being propelled. It was a terrible nightmare feeling. Then he seemed shot out into space, and found himself in a room where there was a man, and a woman of the prostitute order. He was partially drawn into the vortex of their feeling, but the room seemed filled with red fumes that gave him a strange sensation of reaction and disgust. Then he was back again in the lounge, and everything went on as before, crowds of unclothed figures all about. At one time a voice seemed to address him, saying: "Son, you will never get satisfaction that way; shut your soul's eye and you will get relief." But he could not do this. Years went on and he suffered acutely.

His experience, illustrated in a remarkably vivid way the principle that the astral body is the real seat of those desires we are in the habit of thinking about as the desires of the flesh. The appreciation of this truth may indeed in some cases be carried to excess. During incarnate life certain desires are in harmony with Nature's design. They leave no indelible traces on the astral vehicle unless they are allowed to dominate life and thought to an excessive degree. As in so many other ways, moderation is the keynote of health. It is almost as definitely possible to overdo asceticism as to overdo self-indulgence. But the astral vehicle of H. S. was no doubt over-saturated with sexual desire, and it was by a very slow course of suffering that this unhealthy state of things was counteracted. Eventually, one of those whom I may describe as lieutenants of the Masters got into touch with H. S., and helped him to escape from the tantalising torments to which he had been so long subject. Of course by that time he had become intensely desirous of escaping, or else the rescue could not have been accomplished. As it was, he was so dealt with that the room that had been so long the scene of his purgatory began to look shadowy. It was still filled with the forms of women, but though they clutched at him and tried to keep him down, he shrank from them and felt himself floating upward. He seemed to hear a sound, something like a gong, and then! — all the previous conditions had disappeared and he found himself in a rocky desert alone. The first feeling was "awful," but presently he saw the one who had helped him, who told him to come along, that he was ready. "He held my hand," H. S. told me; and "life seemed to pour into me. We floated along. At the end of a valley we came out into a beautiful country." He had, in fact, been lifted out of the third level on to the fourth.

The new influence gradually worked on him and created a revulsion of feeling, a disgust for the emotions that had previously controlled him. He remembers having been alone for a time. Then he came more definitely into touch with former friends who had already become established on higher levels, and so by degrees into the companionship of entities belonging to the White Lodge. During life he had known something of occult teaching, and the effect of this blossomed forth when he had struggled through the embarrassments of sexual passion. Now, of course, for many years he has been engaged in loftier pursuits, and on the usual task of helping other people coming up from the lower world, and needing such help as his own experiences enable him to give.