The Three Cages for the Bird of Paradise

Raggiana Paradise

There are three sheaths or bodies that encase the invisible soul. The thinnest layer is the Causal body. The Causal body stands at the fusion point of Mind and Matter. The next layer beneath the Causal body is the Astral. Then finally, the physical sheath makes up for what we are.

The Astral layers have many dimensions - going up from lower to the higher. The physical knows only the 4 dimensions of space-time. At physical death one moves on to one of the many astral dimensions according to the karma on earth. It would be worth to state here that there is no good or evil or rewards or punishments. These are merely the physical understanding of higher terms.

For example, the life of a worm groveling in the dirt may seem repulsive to us; and we can describe our notions of hell accordingly. But to a worm the dirt is bliss. It may not want the "human" heaven. Then we can describe our mental agonies as hell or punishment for some act.

The astral is a consciousness and has the cycles of birth and death as in the physical.

When we birth ourselves in the physical world we come here only after having worked out the script thoroughly in the astral plane. Every minute detail is worked out. Then we die to the astral before being born in the physical. In fact there is a transition period of the change in consciousness when the body is being developed in the womb and until a certain age of our childhood. During this period we are in both worlds. Slowly we die completely to the astral and are totally attuned to the physical earth.

On physical death too, we are for sometime partly in the astral and partly in the physical. Finally, we dissolve completely into the astral to write another script for the journey back into the physical.

In the physical world all that we sense to be outside is actually inside. They are projections of the brain. The sense of seeing things outside is actually images on the retina worked out by the brain. The sense of touch is also, by a similar reasoning actually inside of us. And so goes for all the physical phenomena. Nothing is outside except for images.

All that we love or hate or admire or criticize are there within us. When we criticize something we actually detest something within our own being. The pain and the bliss are all there within. So the complexities that we see outside of us are there to be resolved within.

If you hate George Bush, you actually hate the George Bush within you! The George Bush outside is actually an image.

Therefore, OBSERVATION is the key to the raise in awareness, and unless awareness is raised beyond a certain level we are always in the eternal trap of MAYA. The cycle of birth and death in both the astral and physical worlds will continue. Once we come out of the trap of Maya we move onto the higher dimensions of the astral field. In the Higher realms of the astral, we experience creation as exhaustless expressions of changing light.

The astral beings also smell, taste, and touch light. But Astral desires are connected with an astral being's power to precipitate all objects and experiences as forms of light or as condensed thoughts or dreams.

The Higher astral beings have the power to create or modify any astral object through sheer will power.

Here again it would be worthy to note that there two types of dwellers on the astral planes - the lower temporary ones who oscillate between the physical and the astral and the Higher temporary ones who oscillate between the astral and the still Higher Causal.

The Causal sheath is the last one. Causal beings objectify through sheer thought power. The just have to think and Lo, Behold! The objects manifest. It’s something like you think of a red Ferrari and there it is in front of you.

Causal beings are nearest to the Supreme One. They also undergo death and rebirth and shuttle between the astral and the causal. When this last veil is broken; at the final death, the Soul merges into the Supreme One.

Every act, whether in the Causal or the Astral or the Physical worlds, is nothing more than relativities of divine ideas in the cosmic dream - Idea identities emanating from the Supreme One. Karma is created by the unredeemed Soul and it remains corked in one or all of the three sheaths.

The day I will I am set on the Path to freedom. That moment I am freed from the shackles of Space-Time-Relativities.

Till I desire this freedom I am trapped in the images and images and images all around. It is all images and nothing but images - and images that are real because we are trapped in the illusion.

"Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out (i.e., shall reincarnate no more). . . . To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne."- Revelation 3:12, 21.

Vedanta points out that God is the only Reality; all creation or separate existence is Maya or illusion.

Bird of Paradise