Sometimes we just need a hug. We’re distraught or tired or lonely or hurt or scared or, hey, we just need a hug. Our feelings, including the desire for the hug that would assuage them, reside in our astral body. After we die, we still retain our astral body once we’ve laid aside our physical and etheric bodies, as discussed in the two previous posts. What happens with our desire for a hug when we no longer have a body to receive it?
The answer lies in the period referred to by Dr. Steiner as Kamaloca, which means Place of Desires in Sanskrit. In last month’s post we explored a process occurring during the Kamaloca period wherein we experience the karmic relationships of our previous life. This month we will discuss another aspect of Kamaloca: our habits and desires.
What we want in life initially matches our basic needs, but our desires soon reach beyond what we actually need. Food, clothing and shelter, though influenced strongly by economics and culture, are also influenced by our individual choices. The way we satisfy both our needs and our desires during life has an influence on what we encounter in Kamaloca. Once we’ve crossed death’s threshold, we must let go of all these things we’ve enjoyed while residing in our physical body. The more deeply immersed we are in the material world, the more arduous is the task of letting go.
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:
After death there follows for the human spirit a time during which the soul is shaking off its inclinations toward physical existence in order to follow once more the laws of the spirit-soul world only and thus set the spirit free. The more the soul was bound to the physical, the longer, naturally, will this time last. It will be short for the man who has clung but little to physical life, and long for the one whose interests are completely bound up with it, who at death has many desires, wishes and impulses still living in the soul.
The easiest way to gain an idea of this condition in which the soul lives during the time immediately after death is afforded by the following consideration. Let us take a somewhat crass example—the pleasure of the “bon vivant”. His pleasure is derived from food. The pleasure is naturally not bodily but belongs to the soul. The pleasure lives in the soul as does the desire for the pleasure. To satisfy the desire, however, the corresponding bodily organs, the palate, etc., are necessary. After death the soul has not immediately lost such a desire, but it no longer possesses the bodily organ that provides the means for satisfying it. For another reason, but one that acts far more strongly in the same way, the human soul now experiences all the suffering of burning thirst that one would undergo in a waterless waste. The soul thus suffers burning pain by being deprived of the pleasure because it has laid aside the bodily organ through which it can experience that pleasure. It is the same with all that the soul yearns for and that can only be satisfied through the bodily organs. This condition of burning privation lasts until the soul has learned to cease longing for what can only be satisfied through the body. The time passed in this condition may be called the region of desires, although it has of course nothing to do with a “locality.”
Excerpt from: Theosophy: Chapter III: The Soul in the Soul World After Death. Germany, 1904.
This may sound pretty scary and awful, but our spirit wants more than anything to advance on the path toward perfection. To do this we must first cleanse the astral body of all passions and desires connected with our physical body because the only way to get to the next level is in purity. Our spirit wants this and willingly undergoes the suffering it takes to liberate itself. We choose this.
What if we started earlier? If we realize that we will, ultimately, take full responsibility for the choices we make that bind us to the physical world, we might look at our desires differently. We might adjust the degree to which we placate ourselves each time a desire arises. We might start exercising some self-discipline. That’s one way to change the world.