Inner Worlds

For the first time in my life I did not kneel at his feet in greeting but instantly advanced to gather him in my arms. Moment of moments! The anguish of past months was a toll weightless against the torrential bliss now descending.

"Master, beloved of my heart, why did you leave me?" "I left you only for a little while; am I not with you again?" "But is it you, Master, the same Lion of God? Are you wearing a body like the one I buried beneath the cruel Puri sands?"

"Yes, my child, I am the same. This is a flesh and blood body. Though I see it as ethereal, to your sight it is physical. From the cosmic atoms I created an entirely new body, exactly like that cosmic-dream physical body which you laid beneath the dream-sands at Puri in your dream-world.

I am in truth resurrected – not on earth but on an astral planet. Its inhabitants are better able than earthly humanity to meet my lofty standards. There you and your exalted loved ones shall someday come to be with me." "Deathless guru, tell me more!"...

Resurrected

"As prophets are sent on Earth to help humans work out their physical karma, so I have been sent to serve on an astral planet," Sri Yukteswar explained. "It is called Hiranyaloka or 'Illumined Astral Planet.' There I aid advanced beings to rid themselves of astral karma to attain liberation from astral rebirths. Hiranyaloka dwellers are highly developed, having acquired in their last incarnation the power to consciously leave their physical bodies at death.

No one enters Hiranyaloka unless they have passed beyond sabikalpa samadhi to the higher nirbikalpa samadhi. They have already passed through the ordinary astral spheres, where most from Earth must go at death; now they work out the seeds of past actions in the astral worlds. None but advanced beings can perform such redemptive work effectually in the astral worlds.

Then, in order to free their souls more fully from the cocoon of karmic traces lodged in their astral bodies, these higher beings were drawn by cosmic law to be reborn with new astral bodies on Hiranyaloka, the astral sun or heaven, where I have resurrected to help them.

There are also highly advanced beings on Hiranyaloka who have come from the superior, subtler, causal world." My mind was now in such perfect attunement with my guru's that he was conveying his word-pictures to me partly by speech and partly by thought-transference. I was thus quickly receiving his idea-tabloids.

"You have read in the scriptures," Master went on, "that God encased the human soul successively in three bodies – the idea, or causal, body; the subtle astral body, seat of man's mental and emotional natures; and the gross physical body. On earth a man is equipped with his physical senses. An astral being works with his consciousness and feelings and a body made of lifetrons.

A causal-bodied being remains in the blissful realm of ideas. My work is with those astral beings who are preparing to enter the causal world." "Adorable Master, please tell me more about the astral cosmos." Though I had slightly relaxed my embrace at Sri Yukteswar's request, my arms were still around him. Treasure beyond all treasures, my guru who had laughed at death to reach me!

Astral Planets

There are many astral planets, teeming with astral beings," Master began. "The inhabitants use astral planes, or masses of light, to travel from one planet to another, faster than electricity and radioactive energies. "The astral universe, made of various subtle vibrations of light and color, is hundreds of times larger than the material cosmos.

The entire physical creation hangs like a little solid basket under the huge luminous balloon of the astral sphere. Just as many physical suns and stars roam in space, so there are also countless astral solar and stellar systems. Their planets have astral suns and moons, more beautiful than the physical ones. The astral luminaries resemble the aurora borealis – the sunny astral aurora being more dazzling than the mild-rayed moon-aurora.

The astral world is infinitely beautiful, clean, pure, and orderly. There are no dead planets or barren lands. The astral planets maintain the temperature of an eternal spring, with occasional luminous white snow and rain of many-colored lights. Astral planets abound in opal lakes, bright seas and rainbow rivers.

The ordinary astral realm – not the subtler astral heaven of Hiranyaloka – is filled with millions of astral beings, recently from Earth, and also myriads of spirits, all residing on different astral planets according to karmic vibration.

Vibratory regions are provided for good and evil spirits. Good ones travel freely, but evil spirits are confined to limited zones in the gloom-drenched regions of the lower astral cosmos, working out their evil karma. In the vast realms above that dark astral prison, all is shining and beautiful.

The astral cosmos is more naturally attuned than Earth to the Divine will. Every astral object is manifested primarily by Divine will and partially by the will of astral beings who possess the power of modifying or enhancing the grace and form of Divine creations.

Earth is dark with warfare and death, but astral realms know harmony and equality. Astral beings dematerialize or materialize their forms at will being free to assume any form. Certain karmic restrictions are present, but there are no distinctions between desirability of forms. Everything is vibrant with Divine light.

No one is born of woman; offspring are materialized by astral beings with the help of cosmic will into specially patterned forms. Recently disembodied beings arrive in astral families through invitation, drawn by similar mental and spiritual qualities.

Astral Body

Astral anatomy includes an astral brain – a 1000-petal lotus of light and sushumna or astral spine with six awakened centers." "The heart draws cosmic energy and light from the astral brain and pumps it to the astral nerves and cells. Astral beings can affect their bodies by energetic force or by mantric vibrations.

The astral body is an exact counterpart of the last physical form. Astral beings retain the same appearance which they possessed in youth in their previous earthly sojourn. Occasionally an astral being chooses, like myself, to retain his old age appearance," Master, emanating the essence of youth, chuckled merrily.

"Unlike the three-dimensional physical world cognized by the five senses, the astral spheres are visible to the all-inclusive sixth sense – intuition.

By intuition all astral beings see, hear, smell, taste and touch. They have all the outer sensory organs – ears, eyes, nose, tongue, and skin – but can experience sensations through any part of the body. A physical body is exposed to countless dangers and is easily maimed; the astral body may occasionally be cut or bruised but is healed at once by mere willing."

"Gurudeva, are all astral persons beautiful?" "Beauty in the astral world is known to be a spiritual quality, not an outward conformation", Sri Yukteswar replied. "Astral beings attach little importance to facial features. They have the privilege, of costuming themselves at will with new, colorful, astrally materialized bodies. Just as worldly men don new array for gala events, so astral beings find occasions to assume specially designed forms.

Joyous astral festivities on the higher astral planets like Hiranyaloka take place when a being is liberated from the astral world through spiritual advancement, and is therefore ready to enter the heaven of the causal world." My guru and I laughed happily together.

"Friends from other lives easily recognize one another in the astral world. Rejoicing at the immortality of friendship, they realize the indestructibility of love, often doubted at the time of the sad, delusive partings of Earthly life.

The intuition of astral beings pierces through the veil and observes human activities on Earth, but man cannot view the astral world unless the sixth sense is somewhat developed. Thousands of Earth-dwellers have momentarily glimpsed an astral being or an astral world."

Advanced Beings

"The advanced beings on Hiranyaloka remain mostly awake in ecstasy during the long astral day and night, helping to work out intricate problems of cosmic government and the redemption of prodigal sons, earthbound souls.

When Hiranyaloka beings sleep, they have occasional dreamlike astral visions. Their minds are usually engrossed in the conscious state of highest nirbikalpa bliss.

Inhabitants in all parts of the astral worlds are still subject to mental agonies. The sensitive minds of higher beings on planets like Hiranyaloka feel pain if any mistake is made in conduct or perception of truth. Advanced beings endeavor to attune their every act and thought with the perfection of spiritual law."

Communication among the astral inhabitants is held entirely by astral telepathy and television; there is none of the confusion and misunderstanding of the written and spoken word which earth-dwellers must endure.

Astral beings sustain themselves principally by cosmic light. Although dwellers on the heavenly planets like Hiranyaloka are almost freed from any necessity of eating, still higher is the unconditioned existence of almost completely liberated souls in the causal world, who eat nothing save the manna of bliss.

The Earth-liberated astral being meets a multitude of relatives, fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, and friends, acquired during different incarnations on Earth, as they appear from time to time in various parts of the astral realms.

A person is therefore at a loss to understand whom to love especially learning in this way to give a divine and equal love to all, as children and individualized expressions of God.

Though the outward appearance of loved ones may have changed, according to the development of new qualities in the latest life, the astral being employs unerring intuition to recognize all those once dear to them in other planes of existence, and to welcome them to their new astral home.

Because every atom in creation is inextinguishably imbued with individuality, an astral friend will be recognized no matter what costume they may don, even as on earth an actor's identity is discoverable by close observation despite any disguise."

Astral Realm

"The span of life in the astral world is much longer than on earth. A normal advanced astral being's average life period is from 500 to 1000 years, measured in accordance with Earthly standards of time.

As certain redwood trees outlive most trees by millenniums, or as some yogis live several hundred years though most humans die before the age of sixty, so some astral beings live much longer than the usual span of astral existence.

Visitors to the astral world dwell there for a longer or shorter period in accordance with the weight of their physical karma, which draws them back to Earth within a specified time."

The astral being does not have to contend with pain on the death of the astral sheath. Many of these beings nevertheless feel slightly nervous at the idea of dropping their astral form for the subtler causal one.

The astral world is free from unwilling death, disease, and old age. These three dreads are the curse of Earth, when a human allows their consciousness to identify itself with a frail physical body requiring constant aid from air, food, and sleep in order to exist at all.

Physical death is attended by the disappearance of breath and the disintegration of fleshly cells. Astral death consists of the dispersement of lifetrons, those manifest units of energy which constitute the life of astral beings.

At physical death a being loses consciousness of flesh and becomes aware instead of their subtle body. Experiencing astral death a being then passes from the consciousness of astral birth and death to that of physical birth and death.

These recurrent cycles of astral and physical encasement are the ineluctable destiny of all unenlightened beings. Scriptural definitions of heaven and hell sometimes stir humanity's deeper-than-subconscious memories of long series of experiences in the blithesome astral and disappointing terrestrial worlds."

Soul

"Man as an individualized soul is essentially causal-bodied," my guru explained. "That body is a matrix of the thirty-five ideas required by God as the basic or causal thought forces from which He later formed the subtle astral body of nineteen elements and the gross physical body of sixteen elements.

"By condensation of vibratory forces, first subtle, then gross, He produced man's astral body and finally his physical form.

According to the law of relativity, by which the Prime Simplicity has become the bewildering manifold, the causal cosmos and causal body are different from the astral cosmos and astral body; the physical cosmos and physical body are likewise characteristically at variance with the other forms of creation. The fleshly body is made of the fixed, objectified dreams of the Creator.

Dualities are ever-present on Earth: disease and health, pain and pleasure, loss and gain. Humans are limited by three-dimensional matter. When the desire to live is shaken by disease or other causes, death arrives; the overcoat of flesh is shed.

The soul, however, remains encased in astral and causal bodies. The adhesive holding all three bodies together is desire. Physical desires are based in egotism and sense pleasures. The temptation of sensory experience is more powerful than astral attachments or causal perceptions.

Astral desires center around enjoyment of vibration. Astral beings enjoy the ethereal music of the spheres and the sight of creation as exhaustless expressions of changing light. Astral beings smell, taste, and touch light. Their desires are connected with the power to precipitate objects and experiences as forms of light or condensed thoughts.

Causal desires are fulfilled by perception. Nearly-free beings encased only in the causal body see the universe as a realization of Divine dream-ideas; they can materialize anything in sheer thought.

Causal beings consider enjoyment of physical sensations or astral delights as gross and suffocating to their fine sensibilities. Causal beings work out their desires by materializing them instantly. Those covered only by the delicate veil of the causal body can bring universes into manifestation.

Because all creation is made of the cosmic dream-texture, the soul thinly clothed in the causal has vast realizations of power. A soul, invisible by nature, can be distinguished only by the presence of its body or bodies, the mere presence of which signifies its existence is conditioned by unfulfilled desires."

Causal beings

"So long as the soul of man is encased in one, two, or three body-containers, sealed tightly with the corks of ignorance and desires, he cannot merge with the sea of Spirit.

When the gross physical receptacle is destroyed by the hammer of death, the other two coverings – astral and causal – still remain to prevent the soul from consciously joining the Omnipresent Life.

When desirelessness is attained through wisdom, its power disintegrates the two remaining vessels. The tiny human soul emerges, free at last; it is one with the Measureless Absolute."

"The causal world is indescribably subtle. In order to understand it, one would have to possess such tremendous powers of concentration that you could visualize the astral cosmos and the physical cosmos in all their vastness – the luminous balloon with the solid basket – as existing in ideas only.

If by this superhuman concentration one succeeded in resolving the two cosmoses with all their complexities into sheer ideas, you would then reach the causal world and stand on the borderline between mind and matter.

There one perceives all created things – matter, energy, gods, men, animals, plants, bacteria – as forms of consciousness, just as a human can close their eyes and realize they exist, even though the body is invisible to the eyes and is present only as an idea.

Whatever a human being can do in fancy, a causal being can do in reality. Causal beings have great freedom and effortlessly manifest their thoughts into instant objectivity, without material or astral obstruction or karmic limitation.

They recognize one another as individual points of joyous Spirit; their thought-things are the only objects around them. They see the difference between bodies and thoughts as merely ideas. As a human, closing their eyes, can visualize dazzling white light or a faint blue haze, so causal beings by thought alone can see, hear, feel, taste, and touch; they create or dissolve by the power of cosmic mind.

Death and rebirth in the causal world are in thought. Causal-bodied beings imbibe the ambrosia of eternally new knowledge. They drink from the springs of peace, swim in the endless ocean of bliss.""

Karmic Reincarnation

"Beings may remain for 1000s of years in the causal realm. By deeper ecstasies the soul withdraws itself from the causal body and enters the vastness of the cosmos.

Separate eddies of ideas, power, love, will, joy, peace, calmness, self-control and concentration melt into the ever-joyous Sea of Bliss. No longer does the soul experience joy as an individualized wave of consciousness, but is merged in the One Cosmic Ocean, with all its waves.

When a soul is out of the cocoon of the three bodies it escapes forever from the law of relativity and becomes the ineffable Ever-Existent. Behold the butterfly of Omnipresence, its wings etched with stars and moons and suns!"

The soul expanded into Spirit remains in the region of lightless light, darkless dark, intoxicated with the Divine ecstasy of cosmic creation. When a soul finally frees itself from the three jars of bodily delusions it becomes one with the Infinite, without any loss of individuality.

The undeveloped human must undergo countless earthly, astral and causal incarnations in order to reach this stage.

A master who achieves this final freedom may elect to return to Earth as a prophet to bring other human beings back to their divine nature, or like myself, may choose to reside in the astral realm where they help the 'inhabitants' to terminate their cycle of reincarnation in the astral cosmos and return permanently to the causal sphere.

Or a freed soul may enter the causal world to aid its beings to shorten their span in the causal body and thus attain the Absolute Freedom."

Astral (Deep Emotional) World

"The physical karma or desires of a human must be completely worked out before their permanent stay in astral worlds becomes possible. Two kinds of beings live in the astral spheres.

Those who still have earthly karma to dispose of and who must therefore reinhabit a gross physical body in order to pay their karmic debts could be classified, after physical death, as temporary visitors to the astral world rather than as permanent residents."

Beings with unredeemed earthly karma are not permitted after astral death to go to the high causal sphere of cosmic ideas, but must shuttle to and fro from the physical and astral worlds only, conscious successively of their physical body of sixteen gross elements, and of their astral body of nineteen subtle elements.

After each loss of the physical body, however, an undeveloped being from the earth remains for the most part in the deep stupor of the death-sleep, barely conscious of the astral sphere. After the astral rest, such a person returns to the Earth for further lessons, gradually growing accustomed, through repeated journeys, to the subtle astral realm.

Normal or long-established residents of the astral universe, on the other hand, are those who, freed forever from all material longings, need return no more to the gross vibrations of earth.

Such beings have only astral and causal karma to work out. At astral death these beings pass to the infinitely finer and more delicate causal world.

Shedding the thought-form of the causal body at the end of a certain span, determined by cosmic law, these advanced beings then return to Hiranyaloka or a similar high astral planet, reborn in a new astral body to work out their unredeemed astral karma."

Causal (Deep Mental) World

"You may now comprehend that I am resurrected by divine decree as a savior of astrally reincarnating souls descending from the causal sphere, rather than of those astral beings coming up from the earth", Sri Yukteswar continued.

Just as most people on earth have not learned to appreciate the superior advantages of astral life and thus, after death, desire to return to the limited, imperfect pleasures of earth, so many astral beings, during the normal disintegration of their astral bodies, fail to picture the advanced state of spiritual joy in the causal world and, dwelling on thoughts of the more gross and gaudy astral happiness, yearn to revisit the astral paradise.

Heavy astral karma must be redeemed by such beings before they can achieve after astral death a permanent stay in the causal thought-world, so thinly partitioned from the Creator.

Only when a being has no further desires for experiences in the pleasing-to-the-eye astral cosmos, and cannot be tempted to go back there, does he remain in the causal world.

Completing there the work of redeeming all causal karma or seeds of past desires, the confined soul thrusts out the last of the three corks of ignorance and, emerging from the final jar of the causal body, co-mingles with the Eternal".

"Now do you understand?" Master smiled so enchantingly!

Three Types of People

"The interpenetration of man's three bodies is expressed in many ways through his threefold nature," my great guru went on. In the wakeing state on earth a human being is conscious more or less of the three vehicles.

When sensuously intent on tasting, smelling, touching, listening, or seeing, they are working principally through the physical body.

Visualizing or willing, they work mainly through the astral body.

Their causal medium is active when they are thinking or diving deeply in introspection or meditation; the cosmic thoughts of genius come to the person who habitually contacts their causal body.

In this sense an individual may be classified broadly as 'a material human,' 'an energetic human,' or 'an intellectual human.'"

A human identifies themself about 16 hours daily with their physical vehicle. Then they sleep; if they dream, they remain in their astral body, effortlessly creating any object as do the astral beings.

If their sleep is deep and dreamless, for some time they will transfer their consciousness, or sense of I-ness, to the causal body; such sleep is revivifying. A dreamer is contacting their astral and not their causal body; that sleep is not fully refreshing."

I had been lovingly observing Sri Yukteswar while he gave his wondrous exposition. "Angelic guru," I said, "your body looks exactly as it did when last I wept over it in the Puri ashram." "O yes, my new body is a perfect copy of the old one. I materialize or dematerialize this form any time at will, much more frequently than I did while on earth.

By quick dematerialization, I now travel instantly from planet to planet or, from astral to causal or to physical realms. Though you move about so fast these days, I had no difficulty in finding you at Bombay!"

"O Master, I was grieving so deeply about your death!" "Ah, wherein did I die? Isn't there some contradiction?" Sri Yukteswar's eyes twinkled with love and amusement. "You were only dreaming on Earth; on that Earth you saw my dream-body," he went on. "Later you buried that dream-image.

Now my finer fleshly body – which you behold and are even now embracing rather closely! – is resurrected on another finer dream-planet of God. Someday that finer dream-body and finer dream-planet will pass away; they too are not forever. All dream-bubbles must eventually burst at a final wakeful touch."

The Truth of Life & Death.

"Differentiate between dreams and Reality! I have now told you, Yogananda, the truths of my life, death and resurrection.

Grieve not for me; rather broadcast everywhere the story of my resurrection from the God-dreamed earth of men to another God-dreamed planet of astrally garbed souls! New hope will be infused into the hearts of misery-mad, death-fearing dreamers of the world.

On earth my standards were uncomfortably high, unsuited to the natures of most men. Often I scolded you more than I should have. You passed my test; your love shone through the clouds of all reprimands." He added tenderly, "I have also come today to tell you: Never again shall I wear the stern gaze of censure. I shall scold you no more."

How much I had missed the chastisements of my great guru! Each one had been a guardian angel of protection. "Dearest Master! Rebuke me a million times, do scold me now!" "I shall chide you no more." His divine voice was grave, yet with an undercurrent of laughter.

"You and I shall smile together, so long as our two forms appear different in the maya-dream of God. Finally we shall merge as one in the Cosmic Beloved; our smiles shall be His smile, our unified song of joy vibrating throughout eternity to be broadcast to God-tuned souls!"

Sri Yukteswar gave me light on certain matters which I cannot reveal here. During the two hours that he spent with me in the Bombay hotel room he answered my every question.

"I leave you now, beloved one!" At these words I felt Master melting away within my encircling arms. "My child," his voice rang out, vibrating into my very soul-firmament, "whenever you enter the door of nirbikalpa samadhi and call on me, I shall come to you in flesh and blood, even as today."

With this celestial promise Sri Yukteswar vanished from my sight. A cloud-voice repeated in musical thunder: "Tell all! Whosoever knows by nirbikalpa realization that your Earth is a dream of God can come to the finer dream-created planet of Hiranyaloka, and there find me resurrected in a body exactly like my earthly one. Yogananda, tell all!"

In this chapter of my autobiography I have obeyed my guru's behest and spread the glad tiding, though it confound once more an incurious generation.