After Death - III

What becomes of the vital being after death?

It is dissolved. Rarely does it happen otherwise. But if you have had a very strong passion, if you were divided by fixed impulses, the vital being would break up into small pieces. Instead of going off like a vapour or a liquid, it goes off by little bits. Each of these pieces of vital substance is gathered around the central impulse, the central desire, the central passion of that piece, thus creating little entities which don't have a human form but take at times an indefinite form; at times they resemble the body to which the pieces belonged, at other times they take a form expressing the desire they represent. And naturally their sole concern is to satisfy their desire or passion and they search everywhere for the means of self-satisfaction.
Take, for instance, the passion of a miser for his fortune. He dies. His vital being is dissolved, but his passion for his money remains alive. It gathers around itself a certain number of elements to form a living and conscious entity in the vital world. If this man has in his lifetime hidden a treasure somewhere, that entity goes and installs itself just above the place where the treasure is, as if to guard it and stop people from coming near it. But there are sensitive people who, when they know that a treasure is hidden somewhere, feel the presence and say, "The treasure is there." That is the first effect. The other effect is that the entity, not wanting the treasure to be touched, always brings about some catastrophe to guard its property. It makes those who approach it ill or it causes an accident, even an assassination; any means is good for it; or if the person is very sensitive, it gives him such a fright that he goes mad.

There are also lots of little entities, quite repugnant, in very large numbers, which originate from that wreched sexual desire. If this desire (with its corresponding entities) is not dissolved at the time of death, these entities continue to exist and they come and settle in the atmosphere of sensitive persons to goad them, to egg them on. These entities feed upon the vital force emanated at the time of the act and naturally their only desire is to get as much nourishment as they can. I have seen people enringed by dozens of these beings. It is a very concrete thing...I don't know if you have heard of Maurice Magre, the writer who had come here. He has said in one of his books that people who have a very strong sexual instinct are surrounded by a swarm of these small beings, who plague them to satisfy themselves, to feed upon the vital force. He knew the thing quite well, he had observed it. To those who are ever so little sensitive, it is very perceptible. Even the people who are tormented very often feel that the impulse comes from outside arouses something inside them, but they feel that the excitation comes from outside. And there are hundreds of thousands of them, for unfortunately it is one of the greatest difficulties of mankind, it is a terrible slavery.

At the time of death, the psychic being goes to take rest, doesn't it? But the vital is stopped in the vital world; does this prevent the psychic from going to rest?

But the vital does not go to rest nor does the mental being. Generally they are dissolved. It is only if one has followed a yoga throughout his whole life, if one has taken great care to individualise, to centralise the vital and the mental around the psychic being that they remain—that happens once in ten million cases, it is very exceptional. Take the case of a philosopher or a writer who has worked considerably in his brain, tried to organise it; that then persists, but as a capacity to think, nothing else. There are these capacities of thinking which persist after death and they try naturally to find another physical brain in which to manifest. It is in this way that the mind of a great thinker may identify itself with another mind and be able to express itself.

From the vital point of view, take the case of a great musician who has worked all his life to make his external being a good instrument for music; he has organised this vital power in his body for playing music; well then, his hands, for instance, are so individualised in their ability to play, that they can persist subtly even after death, with their form, a form analogous to the old physical form. They float in the vital world and are attracted by people who have similar capacities; they try to become identified with them. A person who is sensitive enough, receptive enough, can become identified with these hands and execute wonderful things, profit by all the individualisation of the past life of these hands.

Does the same phenomenon occur in the case of scientists when the results of their work are realised some time after their death?

Yes,in the case of Pierre and Marie Curie, for example, it is certain that the power of work of Pierre Curie passed into his wife at his death.

Men who undertake excavations in the tombs of Egypt often meet with accidents. Why?

They deserve it! When they violate the tombs, you see...There are countless stories of this kind. But that is another phenomenon.

Let me explain: in the physical form is found the "spirit of the form" and this spirit of the form persists for a certain time even when outwardly the person is pronounced dead. And as long as the spirit of the form persists, the body is not destroyed. In ancient Egypt they had this knowledge; they knew that if they prepared the body in a certain way, the spirit of the form would not leave it and the body would not disintegrate. In some cases they have succeeded wonderfully; and if one violates the repose of beings who have remained thus for thousands of years, it is understandable that they may not be very pleased, especially when their repose is violated out of an unhealthy curiosity, legitimised in the "cause of science".

In the Musée Guimet in Paris, there are two mummies. Of one practically nothing is left, but in the other the spirit of the form has remained very conscious, conscious to such an extent that one can make contact with the consciousness. Evidently when a bunch of idiots come to stare at you with their blank, saucer-eyes which understand nothing, and say, "Oh, it is like this, it is like that", it cannot give much pleasure.

You see, they begin by committing an outrage: these mummies are enclosed in a box of a particular form according to the person, with all that is necessary to preserve them; now, the box is opened, more or less violently, some wrappings are stripped away here and there to provide a better view... And considering that it was never ordinary people who were mummified, these were beings who had attained an appreciable inner power or who were of royal birth, people more or less initiated.

There is a mummy which has been the cause of a large number of catastrophes; she was a princess, daughter of a Pharaoh, and secretly at the head of a college of initiation at Thebes.
Well, men are like that...

10 March 1951
- The Mother