the desire body _plus_ lower Manas, whether that lower Manas be
disentangling itself from the kâmic elements, in order that it may be
re-absorbed into its source, or separated from the Higher Ego, and
therefore on the road to destruction.


DEVACHAN.

Among the various conceptions presented by the Esoteric Philosophy,
there are few, perhaps, which the Western mind has found more
difficulty in grasping than that of Devachan, or Devasthân, the
Devaland, or land of the Gods.[27] And one of the chief difficulties
has arisen from the free use of the words illusion, dream-state, and
other similar terms, as denoting the devachanic consciousness--a
general sense of unreality having thus come to pervade the whole
conception of Devachan. When the Eastern thinker speaks of the present
earthly life as Mâyâ, illusion, dream, the solid Western at once puts
down the phrases as allegorical and fanciful, for what can be less
illusory, he thinks, than this world of buying and selling, of
beefsteaks and bottled stout. But when similar terms are applied to a
state beyond Death--a state which to him is misty and unreal in his
own religion, and which, as he sadly feels, is lacking in all the
substantial comforts dear to the family man--then he accepts the words
in their most literal and prosaic meaning, and speaks of Devachan as a
delusion in his own sense of the word. It may be well, therefore, on
the threshold of Devachan to put this question of "illusion" in its
true light.

In a deep metaphysical sense all that is conditioned is illusory. All
phenomena are literally "appearances", the outer masks in which the