Jain Agam Sahitya

Author(s): K R Chandra
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 64

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The Concept of Ātman
as perceived at astral levels, rather than to the Self as bereft of the astral and causal bodies.
Modern physics has found out to very important facts :50 (i) the mind of the experimenter can in some cases influence matter; and (ii) matter-energy can neither be created nor destroyed. All matter is energy and as energy can be changed or modified, the ‘matter' is merely energy at different levels of “existence". For all practical purposes scince is now telling us that matter cannot be destroyed. It can only be changed from one form to another form, that is, from one vibrational frequency to another one. Little is known about the subtle energies involved in thoughts, emotions, the human aura and the soul. There is now a sufficient accummulation of research-data to show that the energies which make up an individual person's thoughts, emotions, personality, memory banks and soul continue in existence after death and decay of the physical body.
The experiences of many saints, sages, seers, prophets and mystics over the ages, and the experiences and reports of certain enlightened persons who in last hundred years have reached levels of cosmic consciousness, and the research currently under way in several countries, have revealed that there are seven levels of consciousness and correspondingly seven 'bodies' or layers or worlds in which life subsists at different times. These bodies or worlds are known as follows51 : (i) The Earth or Physical Plane serves as the substratum of physical bodies along with the etheric on astral bodies. (ii) Lowest Astral Plane is a dark, dismal, dangerous and often frightening world and it serves as a habitat of greedy, self-centered, unloving resentful persons who often have fierce desires and lusts associated with physical bodies. It is also an abode of the less desirable "creatures” of non-human lines of evolutions. This level is traditionally referred to as hell, hades or or purgatory. It is the human and non-human astral bodies from this plane which attract them selves by way of obsession to the magnetic auras or astral bodies of persons living on the earth