The Transition into the Third Life

We do not really enter our third life until we leave the psychic world behind us forever. When we have “gone” (as we say), it has been that our spirits might be strengthened or enlightened in ways that were not possible in the psychic world or that we might get insight into some duty not intelligible otherwise. We see “in a glass darkly” and not “face-to-face.”

Now, what happens when our time comes to depart? It is this—our psychic form dissolves, fades away, is folded up, is dissipated into the sphere from which it was taken, leaving our spirit free to pass beyond into purer and rarer air more fitted for it. There is no pain or struggle in such a dissolution, nor any break in consciousness. Our friends bid us farewell for a time but we need not say farewell to them, for we shall see and know them more intimately even than before. Their eyes may not perceive us but our clearer vision will embrace the past as well as the present, the old as well as the new.

We are now pneuma or spirit; not that pure, invisible, immortal essence but approaching it more closely. The true, the real man remains hidden from comprehension; the final, the deepest mystery of all.

It is not simply that he has taken off two coverings, the physical and the psychical, and is now himself, unclothed upon. Rather he manifests himself in three ways at different times and in different degrees—in body, in soul, and in spirit. The physical and the psychical bodies have been cast off and left in the spheres to which they belonged; he has now a spiritual body, while yet the true man has been complete through all. The body of the body and the body of the soul are gone forever and he is now clothed upon with the body of the spirit.

On the earth the broken arcs,

In the heaven a perfect round.

Before we try to describe the spirit body and its functions, it will be well to speak of the new sphere in which the Man is now manifesting. This sphere is not one and single as the intermediate is but is seven spheres closely connected together.

Perhaps a diagram will make this clearer.

The three central are the Unity Spheres; the side ones are the Duality Spheres.

The first Unity Sphere (I)—Introductory, for strengthening and improving the character and the new powers.

The second Unity Sphere (III)—For action and exercise of powers.

Third Unity Sphere (V)—Peace; rest; the equipoise of the perfectly manifested being.

The first Duality Spheres (2)—Discipline—the growth, guidance and strengthening of such parts of the being as were still weak and imperfect.

Second Duality Spheres (4)—Discipline on a higher plane—the completion of the work. The man now passes into the last Unity Sphere, the sphere of perfection, and beyond that who shall say! Certainly, we know nothing.

The Duality Spheres are so-called, chiefly because the old double consciousness (which is almost dormant in the Unity Spheres) is again in force. In force, that is, in the sense of conflict of one part of our nature with another; not merely in the ability to think of ourselves as if we were two beings. This double consciousness is revived in the dual spheres because it is then easier for the ego to see its own weaknesses; to condemn and struggle against them.

Thus, these spheres are dual as being in pairs; dual in the divided experience and, above all, dual as to the double consciousness.

The unity spheres are so-called, not only or chiefly because they are the one sphere for all but because there this unity of consciousness is existent.

The unity of the whole seven in one is shown in the oneness of the man’s manifestation; through all he dwells in his spirit body; through all, he is a man of seven dimensions until he comes to the perfection of his being, as far as can be judged of perfection.

No spirit ever passes through more than one of each of the two spheres marked 2 and 4—that is, he goes to the right or to the left but not to both. (The words right and left, of course, are used only in reference to the diagram).

What, then, causes him to enter one of these spheres rather than the other? It is the bent of his deep soul-character. There is no uniformity in mankind, rather there is infinite diversity. Yet it divides, broadly speaking, into two classes—call them by what name you please, say—

The religious and the scientific—

The imaginative and the practical—

The introspective and the out looking.

Now, the soul that has the one bent passes into the opposite sphere that his nature may be so cultivated and disciplined that he shall be a perfect and not a one-sided being.

When we speak of perfect and imperfect, we understand that sin is a wilful failure to do the thing that is known to be right or the equally wilful doing of the wrong; sin is left behind finally in the psychic. By perfect is meant the essential being fully manifested and by imperfect, not fully manifested. Man, then, is not perfect until he reaches the Seventh Sphere; the Unity in Peace.

Man thus passes through only five of the seven spheres but the seven are so closely connected by a constant stream of life circling through all that he may be said to inhabit them all.

Finally, the three unity spheres are specialised thus—

I—Is that state where all the qualities developed in the physical life reach their highest stage.

III—The same, only psychical.

V—The perfection of the pneumatic.

—I AWOKE! Conditions of Life on the other Side, Author Unknown, David Stott, London, 1895