• The
Invisible Helpers - War Victims
The conditions introduced
by the war are in various ways unusual. It is
not only that thousands of men are suddenly thrown
out into the astral world, but that'll these men
are young and strong and nearly all of them belong
to the most advanced races of the world. A man
who dies in old age has already exhausted most
of his emotional forces, those which are still
playing through him are comparatively weak and
easily controlled, and are not likely to give
him much trouble. But them who die in the full
flush of youth and strength has his emotions all
at their highest point, therefore, he is capable
of suffering through them just as on the other
hand he is capable of more enjoyment through them.
Therefore, his astral life usually presents a
different set of problems for solution.
What
is the condition of these people who die so
suddenly? Some of them are for quite a long
time after death practically unconscious of the
surrounding world. That is one of the consequences
of that rearrangement of the matter of the astral
body all the coarsest and grossest astral matter
is put outside on the periphery of the astral
world and the result is that only impressions
such as can work through that grosser type of
matter - vibrations to which it will respond -
can either reach the man or be expressed by him.
The man who has been living an ordinarily decent
physical life has not been in the habit of using
the grosser matter. All the higher emotions -
love, devotion, sympathy, patriotism - use the
finer particles of the astral body; only the lower
emotions, such as sensuality, anger, envy, hatred
use the grosser part of it. A man does not suddenly
change his nature when he dies, and begin to use
vibrations to which he is not accustomed and as
he can be conscious only through the outer film
of his astral body, the consequences is that he
remains shut up inside that shell of dense matter,
living in a sort of rosy dream, happily unconscious
of all the unpleasantness around him, until those
grosser particles gradually wear away, and he
wakes up at a higher level. But that may not be
for weeks, or sometimes even months.
Others experience nothing but a momentary unconsciousness
at death - and then they feel far better and lighter
than they ever felt before. It is not the weight
of the physical body of which they relieved; it
is far more the pressure of the atmosphere - fifteen
pounds to the square inch pressure about two tons
on the whole body.
Often such a man does not know that he is dead,
and will not believe it. He will perhaps try to
pick up his rifle, he cannot grasp it. He will
try to speak to a living comrade, he does not
hear him. He will try to touch some physical friend;
there is no result. He will say to the astral
helper "You say I am dead; I feel much more alive
than I did 10 minutes ago". Sometimes he wants
to go on fighting; then it is necessary to calm
him and explain things to him. When at last such
a soldiers realizes his position, he is generally
immensely interested, for he finds that he had
all sorts of new opportunities. He could go unseen
into the enemy's lines and he is often very anxious
to communicate his observations, though it is
only rarely that he could succeed in doing so.
Still there are cases in which he did manage to
make an impression on somebody's mind; but even
then, the recipient usually thinks that is only
imagination. Some men are chiefly anxious about
their families; others are desirous to learn all
they could of the new conditions in which they
found themselves. The business of the invisible
helper is to be ready to meet all these different
requirements. When matters are explained to them
many of the dead soldiers are ready and eager
to do whatever they could for their comrades,
whether the latter are already on the astral or
still on the physical plane.
By C. W. Leadbeater
