20. A Chapter of Occult History

Those who aspired to be united with Osiris had therefore to be referred to the life after death. But as the experiences accessible after death had now become still less intense, even when men were united with Osiris they were only able to experience faintly and weakly that which constituted their highest bliss—the union with Osiris. But through the belief implanted in them by the priests, they knew and firmly hoped that they would indeed be united with Osiris, and in solemn moments after death they felt themselves as members of the Osiris-soul. This consciousness of belonging to Osiris gradually faded away. While culture was progressing to higher stages on the physical plane, a decline was taking place in the spiritual world between death and rebirth. Man's vision of the world of Devachan became steadily fainter. And when the Initiates came over into that world, they still could not tell of happenings in the physical world that would have had any special significance for that other world. What happened in the spiritual world was entirely the result of its own prevailing conditions. Happenings in the physical world could be of little interest to the souls of the Dead. What man could do in the physical world was a preparation for the Osiris-experience, but it was a preparation for something that could be experienced only in the deepest spiritual depths of yonder world.