According to the Bardo Thödol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead
by Lygia Cabus
And collaborate in the funding of this publisher.
https://www.youtube.com/@BRASILWEIRDNEWS
The question of the existence, or not, of intelligent extraterrestrial life [on other planets, systems, galaxies], subterranean life, life underground, in the depths of the sea, or even meta-terrestrial or meta-dimensional life [inhabitants of other dimensions of existence, of parallel universes], has been the subject of study for countless thinkers and scientists throughout millennia.
Currently, in this technocratic postmodern era, this theme remains fertile ground in the fields of scientific investigation.
It is a topic that is now organized into specific disciplines, specializations ranging from Thanatology to Exobiology to Astronomical Archaeology and more: the speculative studies of Exopolitics.
In this context emerge characters whose existense, although unproven, does not prevent them from becoming popular, true contemporary myths.
These are, especially, the reptilians and the Pleiadians, who already have a "history" of being traditionally rivals, cosmic protagonists of the eternal conflict of the old Manichean [Antiquity, Persia]: Good against Evil, Darkness against Light.
Ufologists-exobiologists talk a lot about these alien races, among which they also recognize sub-races, hybrids, various mutants, and rarer or unexplained types [such as foofighters].
Recently, on May 14, 2026, Dr. Hal Puthoff, a quantum physicist who has worked with the NSA and CIA, advised the US government on UAP science, and served as chief science advisor to Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace, appeared on a YouTube podcast, The Diary Of A CEO, where he stated that the United States government has already had contact with "at least four distinct types" of non-human, non-terrestrial life.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-z0k5xu1hM]
In this context, characters emerge whose existence, although unproven, does not prevent them from becoming popular myths and true contemporary myths.
These are, in particular, the reptilians and the Pleiadians, who already have a history of traditional rivalry, cosmic protagonists of the eternal Manichean conflict [of Antiquity, Persia]: Good against Evil, Darkness against Light.
Ufologists and exobiologists talk a lot about these alien races, among which they also recognize sub-races, hybrids, various mutants, and rarer or more inexplicable types [such as the foofighters].
THE CREATOR MANSIONS
While hypotheses about aliens accumulate, among books, essays, magazines, photographs, supposed "communications," texts, and study groups, all available on the internet, nothing is said, however, about the "Races" of Spirits that manifest in the different material bodies of intelligent beings [animated with self-awareness, according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead], who inhabit the unimaginable ontological planes — which are STATES of Being and Exists — coexisting, simultaneous in the Universe. The inhabitants of the "many Mansions" of the Creator.
Occult science and the oldest cosmogonic myths describe the Principle of All Things in a way very similar to contemporary Astrophysics.
Long before the Big Bang theory appeared, archaic accounts already spoke of a Being who was alone, the Great Spirit.
This being, made of enigmatic energy, feeling alone and lamenting its solitude, manifested its desire to BE more than one, and thus everything was immediately created.
The Spirit, inert and dark matter, was "activated," "awakened," and set itself in motion, manifesting a Supreme Will.
This Will created the "whirlwind," Fohat, the first agent Spirit, which, moving in circles, gave form and meaning to the first aggregates of spiritual energy particles that, many rotations later, became the raw matter known on planets like Earth and in other modalities unknown to human beings.
The spirits of beings [living and inanimate], although ultimately being the beings themselves, stripped of any and all environmental adaptation and/or "clothing," are, these spirits, the first and last most mysterious reality of the Universe, at least for the humans of planet Earth.
No one — at the level of proven scientific knowledge — knows what they are made of, how they arose in the context of Creation, or how many there are in the entire Cosmos.
Some believe that God creates a new soul [a term that will be used here as a synonym for Spirit] for each being or each child born into the world.
Theosophists, on the contrary, affirm that all spirits are contemporaneous with the Big Bang and undertake a long journey of changes and improvements throughout Eternity [which, in fact, would have an end, when all universal matter gathers and enters a state of latency/rest [called PRALAYA]; that is, returns to being One and Only, and very quiet].
Since spirits are a reality, or at least a possibility, always denied or scorned by contemporary objective science [although accepted by the science of Antiquity], practically everything that is known about this FORM OF BEING is knowledge inherited from very ancient magical and religious cultures; and the older the tradition, the more detailed the panorama of existence beyond this life and the less fantastical the accounts that describe both the post-mortem and the "pre-planetary life".
Christians speak of Paradise, of a Jerusalem whose sidewalks are made of precious stones; Muslims rave about gardens full of trees that bend down offering fruit and numerous perpetual virgins to satisfy the sexual desires of good disembodied believers; these same religions describe scorching hells full of tireless executioners.
BEING IN A NO-PLACE
Then, in the wide literature of the post-mortem, highlights the ancient Bardo Thödol [Brahmanic-Vedantinian Buddhism + Bön-Pá religion of Tibetan tradition], knowledge millennia older than the Jewish and Christian scriptures and the Islamic patchwork of the Quran.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead speaks of BEING in a NON-PLACE experiencing different MENTAL STATES and PSYCHIC DISPOSITIONS that determine the sensations and perceptions of the afterlife and the conditions of a next life.
It is a situation in which the Spirit, stripped of all biographical references from past lives in a given world, except for memories of any guilt, remorse, and/or virtues and joys, finds itself in a form-free, without a worldly being state, without a planetary reference state [except for the form it believes it possesses]: this situation is called the Intermediate State, a precise translation of the terms Bardo Thödol [State of Bardo, Intermediate State].
In the Bardo state, the individual finds themselves in what Kardecists would call a "wandering spirit" — meaning temporarily without direction, without guidance, without patterns of modus vivendi, meaning or, apparently, purpose for existence.
SELF-AWARE BEINGS
One of those things that nobody knows is when, how, and why this or that Spirit [which can be understood as an Egoic Unit], created simultaneously with the creation of the Universe, incarnated or materialized [atomized and molecularized?] for the first time.
Above all, nobody knows why an Egoic Unit of Divine essence would leave the subatomic reality of BEING pure energy to enter into an integrated union with a body-form, constituted of planetary matter and subject to a series of limitations, bad or less bad, depending on the category of being into which it transforms itself according to its appetites and tendencies.
This willingness to place oneself in a state of impurity in exchange for certain sensory experiences is what the mythology of many peoples understands as "the fall of Man" [or, the fall of the Spirit into matter, which is absolutely not to be confused with the mythological Fall of the Angels].
Despite the uncertainties and ignorance about the evolutions [the movement, the conversion, the transformations] of Spirits in material environments, occult science has preserved for millennia the dogma that describes this phenomenon, through which all Spirits pass: experiences between materialization and dematerialization, more or less dense and heavy:
Breath becomes stone;
the stone becomes a plant;
the plant becomes an animal; the animal becomes a man;
man becomes a spirit and the spirit becomes a god.
[BLAVATSKY, 2000]
What the ancient axiom clearly states is that every self-aware Spirit in this present time was once a stone, a plant, an animal, a man, and will again be Pure Spirit and finally, one with God, "a god".
Another way of saying this is to admit that all Spirits experience all the Kingdoms of Physical and Metaphysical Nature [planetary and dimensional] of BEING: mineral, vegetable, animal in all their intermediate manifestations. (Mentepsychosis)
Ghosts & Elementals: Both among the great religions [Christianity, Islam, Buddhism] and among the most primitive regional cults, the idea of Spirit has been worn down by the distortion of information, which transforms religious rites into practices of superstition. The most widespread understanding of Spirit is restricted, generically associated with:
1. disembodied human beings;
2. Elemental beings, inhabitants of the four elements [for some, five: water, earth, fire, air, ether] who act unpredictably, both beneficially and malevolently.
In the realm of popular knowledge, and especially in the doctrines of Catholic and Islamic Christianity, which see the devil everywhere, all these creatures, whether ghosts or elementals, are demonic, and relating to such beings is, essentially, of course, a sin.
With less scandal and terror, it can be more accurately said that relating to disembodied beings and/or elementals is as unnecessary as it is unhealthy; this is when it does not become a dangerous adventure, a gateway to mental insanity.
Angels, the beings closest to the Almighty, are agents of the good contained in all Divine Will [even if this Will sometimes seems to produce a catastrophe]. Angels perform the cosmic functions of messengers and guardians [even combatants] of the Kingdom of God.
Angels are present in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim doctrines, presented in a hierarchy of powers and attributions. The most widely accepted classification distinguishes nine categories of Angelic Spirits, the "Angels":
ANGELS
* Angels, as properly defined, are only one of these nine categories of celestial beings, the lowest one in fact, meaning, furthest from God, according to Christian theology. The term Angel has been adopted as a general term to refer to any being from any of the categories of those beings considered as a kind of working team of the Creator, God's militia.
Click on the image to view it clearly in its original size.
Whether ghosts, elementals, angels, or demons, common sense has conceived of the idea of Spirit as something that evokes the supernatural in the gloomy and cadaverous visions of "hauntings" or in the images of ethereal, luminous, vaporous, "divine" beings.
However, in the sphere of esoteric knowledge, where the root of words and ultimate realities is not lost, in this context, Spirit refers to Individuality, whether of the One, of the Whole, before the dawn of manifestation in the Universe, or the Individuality of each of the manifested beings in their peculiar degrees and qualities of sensitivity, perception, consciousness, and intelligence; on a scale of evolution that, in the case of brute beings [such as stones, minerals in general], comes very close to degree zero.
[In other words, as far as is known, a stone does not feel pain or get "upset" if someone kicks it; This does not mean that there, in that rock, does not dwell a Spirit imprisoned by virtue of an evolutionary stage of brute Being.
The "Great Arcanum," which the French occultist Eliphas Levi summarizes in the phrase "It is divinity in Man"; the simple Truth that few people manage to absorb despite the simplicity of the statement is that the Spirit is Everything—it is the Whole, it is in everything and permeates everything, while constituting everything in the total configuration of the BEING of all things, be it the brightest star in the Cosmos, a microorganism smaller than a grain of talc, or even the energy that moves phenomena of Nature such as the trajectory of a comet or a current of wind.
The Spirit of Unity, when in motion, generates diversity. The movement is triggered by the thought of the One; a word in the mind of the One, a small phrase that says I AM.
An affirmation that sets in motion the undifferentiated vastness of primordial Being [the black "Abyss of Waters"], thus generating the multiplicity of beings. Each being, a Spirit-unity [which esotericists call a monad], arises [because it is not "born," it results from a physicochemical reaction] crude, insensible.
But the demented monad has Eternities to evolve throughout its existence, guided by universal movement, which consists of the interaction of beings in circular trajectories, whether spheroidal, elliptical, or spiral, rotating at different speeds, under different conditions of temperature and pressure. It is the cosmic cauldron stirred by the first thought of God.
For the monad, what matters is that it may take a hundred Manvataras [Eternities of manifestations of the Universe], but at some point, after much "suffering" [in the sense of experiencing and being provoked by experiences]—suffering, with the accidents and hardships of the journey of merely existing—it, the monad, reaches a state of sensitivity. [And from then on it will "suffer" even more intensely].
The Spirit-monad acquires perceptions, vague consciousness, and finally, self-awareness, the germ of intelligence. It has become an "Egoic Individuality," an "I AM", and only by having reached this type of consciousness do Egoic Spirits begin to manifest the divine condition that pulsates in their origins. It is no longer a monad, it is Manas.
EVERYTHING IS MENTAL
The first principle of the philosophy of the mythical Hermes Trismegistus states: "Everything is Mental."
This place, called the Universe or Cosmos, the stage for so many events enacted by Egoic Spirits, is a place/non-place, a graphic space, even numerical, but not, in fact, not geological or geometric, but an instance of BEING, of a mental nature, where various planes coexist, more or less suited to different ontological states [of BEING]; these are the different "Worlds".
Mental worlds, constituted of mental matter aggregated by the force of mental manifestation which is THOUGHT-WORD.
And no longer the primordial thought of the One Who Was Alone, but by the thoughts, generated by sensations-emotions precisely of the Egoic Spirits, the Spirit-Manas, the "I AM" and their reveries around the conditions of "I Am..."
And as they aggregate, they gather by the affinity of similar thoughts, these thoughts, the emotions, form the Kingdoms and the corresponding worlds, "tempered" by these thoughts; environments, ranging from hell to heaven, passing through Earth [and/or other planets physically habitable by human beings].
FIVE RACES OF SPIRITS
Egoic Spirits, self-aware animate beings [as opposed to brutes, unconscious beings], therefore inhabit numerous worlds, and although in the context of popular culture they are known as angels, gods, men, demons, whatever the theology, it is easy to see that all these beings have traits in common from an anatomical-morphological and psychological point of view.
They all seem to have the basic form of their bodies structured in the pentagrammatic pattern [five extremities, five-pointed star] – head, torso, limbs, and a more or less erect posture [bipedal].
This could characterize them all as humanoids [from the point of view of the human species]; or, who knows, they are all "divinoid," "theomorphic," from the point of view of the metaphysical ethnography of self-aware beings.
Judeo-Christian Theology and Theurgy distinguish the mass of self-aware Spirits into three well-defined types: Angels, Men, and Demons.
Angels are dispassionate Spirits who act for good and always in fulfillment of God's Will; Demons are disciples/followers of a legion of rebellious angelic Spirits, according to legend, led by the Angel Lucifer [who would be a Seraphim, as he was of the highest rank] – later called Satan, meaning "adversary."
This is a clear allegory indicating that the Race of Angels [which Tibetans would recognize as Devas], although generally impartial, are also subject to the temptation of inner division, of doubt in the face of a choice.
Finally, Men, protected by angels, tempted by demons, are traditionally described as "made in the image and likeness" of God, a microcosm.
These hesitant beings, always confronted with the difficulty of choosing between right and wrong, in Christian theology, with all the elements inherited from Persian Manichaeism, seem more like trophies being fought over by the two forces that Mani believed governed the Universe: Good and Evil.
The Judeo-Christian doctrine presents this rather simplistic scheme of three ontological categories to represent the "demography" of Egoic Spirits.
In Tibet, Buddhism proposes a much more complex but more plausible framework, distinguishing five psychological profiles that characterize the five Races of the "Spirits of God."
It is a differentiation that Tibetans use for didactic convenience, as there are no fixed limits between one psychological type and another, independent of the physical environment suitable as a habitat.
What defines the dominant essence in an egoic Spirit, whether in hell, on Earth, or in heaven, is the predominance of psychological-behavioral tendencies—of being, feeling, thinking, acting, and reacting.
These psychological types can be understood as Races of Spirits [again, for didactic purposes] that group themselves by affinities in "worlds" configured according to the physical and metaphysical needs of each Race.
These Races of Egoic Spirits are five, listed here according to the elevation of their perception, senses, intelligence, and capacities:
1.DEVAS
IMAGE: Devas, angels from a Christian perspective, gods for Hindus. They inhabit the Kingdom of Paradise but are not free from karma, and the Devas must also follow the cycles of Samsara. After a life in Devakhan [the place of the Devas], they will have to be reborn in one of the five Kingdoms of God's Spirits.
The Devas are very powerful. Their lives in devic form/condition and world are very long. A Deva lives as a Deva, on average, 30,000 Earth years. [LOCHTEFELD, 2005].
IMAGE. Asuras: They are warlike, proud, and very sensitive to the appeals of their human devotees. The figure represents a famous Asura: Varuna. This ruler of architecture and metallurgy is considered responsible for the cycles of the Sun, the Moon, the tides, and the topographical structure of planet Earth.
In the animal kingdom, he dominates crocodiles and snakes. In comparative religion, he corresponds to Hephaestus of the Greeks; Vulcan of the Romans.
Many of them eat, but the most elevated [spiritually elevated, protagonists of a just and righteous previous life and, many, not all, almost totally detached from the ephemeral reality of life in the incarnate state] – these no longer need to eat or drink in the physical sense. A large part of them do not need [because they do not wish to] eat or drink.
All can fly and, in any case, move very quickly. In popular understanding, the Devas correspond to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic angels. In physical-metaphysical-anatomical terms, the Devas can be:
[I] Amorphous or Formless Meditative: they live in meditation renouncing any sensory or relational experience.
[II] Corporeal and Dispassionate, they are like the sexless angels of the Judeo-Christians. Among the Dispassionate, there is a category called Suddhavasa devas, who are the guardians of religion in the Lower worlds. Other devas, although asexual and without passions, still appreciate self-expression in a corporeal form but live devoted to meditation, seeking the absolute tranquility of "mental matter" within themselves.
They cease to be disturbed by thoughts, becoming indifferent even to the joy of attaining such serenity, and their yearning without anxiety is to reach the supreme pleasure of feeling "nothing"...
Only the Dispassionate Devas, called Brahman devas, although meditative, are interested in beings of the lower worlds, lament their sufferings, and interfere within their sphere of power.
[III] Humanoid Devas of Kamadhãtu, similar in appearance to humans but larger. They live similarly to humans, are susceptible to passions and the intoxication of the grossest material pleasures.
With their legendary abode located on Mount Meru [or Sumeru, a sacred, mythical mountain situated in an uncertain location, considered the center of the World/Universe in Hindu Cosmology], they are the ones who most resemble the Olympian gods of Greece.
CELESTIAL ABODES
In the "heavens," and there are several "celestial worlds" [LOCHTEFELD, 2005], life is full of pleasures and joys; there is no suffering, anxiety, or dissatisfaction of any kind. However, all this ends when the time for reincarnation arrives; because nothing can guarantee that a deva cannot be reborn in another Kingdom.
To be reborn as a deva, the Spirit must remain pure in the wisdom of goodness, something that can escape any deva: over 30,000 years in Paradise, the Spirit tends to forget the religious plan of existence.
Therefore, some religious sages, such as the monks [lamas] of Tibetan Buddhism, advise, during the Bardo state [intermediate between two lives], to avoid the desire for the Kingdom and worlds of the Devas:
"In the eastern continent of Lupah... going there, this Continent, although happy and easy, is one where religion does not predominate. Do not enter there" [SAMDUP, 2003].
In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, however, the advice is different:
"To him who is to be born as a deva, exotic temples [dwellings] built with various precious metals will appear. One may enter there. Enter." [SAMDUP, 2003].
2. ASURAS
In Indian cosmology, the Asuras are superhuman beings [LOCHTEFELD, 2005]. Asura is the name for these creatures in Sanskrit, Pali, and Korean; in Tibet, they are the Lha-ma-yin; in Japan, they are the Ashura; and in China, Axiuluo.
While serenity and benevolence are characteristic of the Devas, the Asuras are restless and, although not necessarily malevolent, are passionate and, in their revolt, do not spare aggression against those they consider rivals in any matter.
They are powerful but, frequently, their passions make them amoral and/or unethical, partly because they are deeply dominated by arrogance and personal pride.
In popular culture, the word "Asura" refers to "anti-gods," "non-gods," or they are even confused with elementals, evil gods, genies, evil spirits, demons.
However, among scholars of Eastern theogony/cosmogony, the Asuras are divine beings.
As Helena Petrovna Blavatsky explains in the Theosophical Glossary:
"Asu means "breath" [speech/word] and it is with this breath that Prajapati [Brahma/God the Father] creates the Asuras... In the Vedas, the Suras are always related to Surya, the Sun, considered as inferior deities [devas].
In its primitive and esoteric meaning, based on another etymology, asura [from asu, life, vital spirit or breath – of God – and ra, [that has or possesses]] means a spiritual [less material] or divine being,”
[BLAVATSKY, p. 60 – In Google Books].
Much of the rebellious nature of the Asuras is due to the fact that they are deeply devoted, loyal to the Brahma-Shiva-Vishnu Trinity, loyal to their friends from other worlds and realms, loyal to their Buddhas, their tutelary deities, a type of Spirit so elevated that it transcends belonging to any spiritual Race.
Thus, any poorly placed attitude or word can be considered an outrage, arousing fury, indignation, instigating self-love fueled by a rigid concept of dignity.
They are vain, proud, and belligerent, bordering on, and often plunging into, the realm of Pride and cruelty.
From the point of view of comparative religion, they would then be "demigods." They can also be identified with the Greek Heroes or even with the Titans, many of whom became demigods, such as Hercules, for example. In the Judeo-Christian context, they would be the "Fallen Angels."
In any case, whatever name they are identified by, these beings are rulers of social phenomena in the worlds of all Realms.
Regarding the Asura worlds, the Tibetan Book of the Dead describes them thus:
"He who is to be born as an asura will see a delightful forest, with circles of fire spinning in opposite directions" [SAMDUP, 2003].
3. MEN
The human worlds are, undeniably, the most challenging for the complex intelligences endowed with Egoic Spirits. Only in the Human Kingdom can the Spirit's condition/Race be modified through choices between good and bad actions.
The other Kingdoms are, vocationally, places of reward, expiation, or return to a previous, original, essential condition that continues to prevail even after an incarnation in the Human Kingdom.
A human being's existential situation at birth and throughout their life, their health, social position, physical and psychological qualities — all of this is determined — in most cases — by the Law of Just Retribution — the Law of Karma.
And the karmic debt incurred in a human incarnation must be annulled in another human incarnation.
No one compensates for their "sins" in infernal worlds; rather, as popular wisdom says: "What goes around comes around."
[Those who "go to hell" after death simply return to the place from which they came and to which they must return because, despite human incarnation, they remained inhabitants of Hell, belonging to the race of demons.]
This does not mean that only Egos of human essence inhabit human worlds.
Devas, Asuras, Rakshasas, Pretas, all are subject to and capable of suffering, experiencing one or more human incarnations, always with the goal of perfecting the I AM. Human worlds are, therefore, workshops of spiritual evolution.
In the post-mortem, this intermediate state of being, the one that tends to be reborn in a human world, in the manner called birth by the womb or birth by the germ, will have the vision of "males and females in union" in a setting of "large and beautiful houses" [SAMDUP, 2003].
"Entering" the germ literally means taking possession of the organism formed by the "mound of impurities" [the sperm and ovum in the human womb].
In the human worlds, situations of passion, desire, doubt, pride, and vanity predominate. Birth in the human world is considered advantageous amidst the Samsaric Realms [of the cycle of reincarnations].
This is because the Human Realms provide the acquisition of Enlightenment [improvement, wisdom, learning] in a more objective and rapid way through the multiple "conditions of life" they offer; that is, precisely because in the human worlds "men are not born equal nor are they all equal," especially in relation to those existential situations that make people reflect on things like: "the world is unjust."
In the human world there are poor, middle-class, rich, ugly, beautiful, fat, thin, healthy, sick, etc.
And although these seemingly inexplicable differences may revolt and/or sadden many people, in truth, inequalities embody individual and collective evolutionary purposes.
According to the Bardo Thödol, choosing this germ is the first and most difficult task of the future human being; much of their next life will depend on this choice, which can result in a fruitful and/or even pleasant experience or, conversely, a wretched, miserable one.
Other Races of Spirit capable of being born from this germ are the Rakshasas and the Pretas. Asuras and Devas have a supranormal birth, and the same happens with the purest of Spirits, those totally liberated from dense matter, free from all mental conditioning; constituted of pure energy, they are the Buddhas, the Enlightened Ones, and the Bodhisattvas – bodies of wisdom.
4. PRETAS: THE KINGDOM OF HUNGRY GHOSTS
Just as in the infernal worlds, the Spirits of the Black Race [in Japan, called Gaki] atone, purify themselves from the weight of past errors through suffering.
They are tormented by the miseries of insatiable hunger and thirst, partly because their necks, very thin, "narrow as the eye of a needle", do not allow them to feed themselves to satiety. In contrast, their stomachs are "as large as drums" [LOCHTEFELD, 2005].
According to popular belief, the Pretas are "hungry demons," "shells" or coverings of avaricious and selfish men after death.
They are reborn as pretas in Kama-Loka. ...[They are] specters, ghosts, souls of the dead. ...They inhabit the region of shadows, are generally associated with the bhutas and, like them, often frequent cemeteries and animate dead bodies [BLAVATSKY, 1995].
This lamentable state stems from the subjective "gluttony" of these creatures, Egos dominated by ambition, avarice, meanness, but also by physical, objective desires, such as voracity for food and sex, complacency in sleep, laziness, yearning for fame and riches in other lives, in other worlds, whether in preta worlds or in any other of the five Kingdoms of existence.
Right: Buddhist Hell – The "Hell Gardens" in Thailand, a counterpoint to the idyllic Gardens of Eden. Located in the Wang Saen Suk monastery, a 90-minute drive south of Bangkok.
At the entrance, colorful pictograms inform: "Welcome to Hell!" The place is a kind of "theme park" where very expressive wooden sculptures show the various sufferings that the Spirit experiences in the infernal worlds. See more at Thai's Hell Garden.
Center: Rakshasas – regarding appearance, some describe the males as extremely ugly, unlike the females, considered beautiful despite some zoomorphic traits present in their physical constitution.
Left: The world of the Pretas or Gaki, in Japan: hunger, thirst, sadness, endless dissatisfaction, is the reality created around beings dominated by greed.
5. RÂKSACHAS: THE KINGDOM OF NARAKA
The rakshasas are inhabitants of the worlds called the Infernal Realms or the Kingdom of Naraka.
Dante Alighieri was right when he conceived of several hells; in fact, numerous infernal worlds exist where Egos suffer the weight of their evil actions.
But this does not stem from divine punishment; rather, such worlds are infernal because the rakshasas are infernal beings, consumed by the most perverse feelings and desires. According to H. P. Blavatsky:
Rakshasas [Sanskrit]: Literally "eaters of raw flesh" and, according to popular superstition, evil spirits, demons.
Esoterically, however, they are the gibborim [giants] of the Bible, the fourth race of the Atlanteans.
Exoterically, the rakshasas are giants, titans, enemies of the gods: they are demons, genies, or evil spirits endowed with great power; They torment humanity with all kinds of evil; they frequent cemeteries, eat raw meat, hinder or disturb sacrifices, and change shape at will. They are the ogres or cannibals of India... A class of rakshasas are [the guardians of the treasures] of Kuvera, [deity of riches].
[BLAVASTKY ─ Theosophical Glossary].
The spirit of essence, the rakshasic "race," constructs its own worlds as environments where the reflections of its own thoughts prevail [as, indeed, throughout the Universe, environments are created by aggregates of thoughts of the same nature]: hatred, violence, envy, lust, greed.
Hunger, thirst, the sensation of suffering terrible tortures, such as dismemberment that hurts but does not kill, agonies, unimaginable afflictions characterize life in the infernal worlds.
The life of infernal suffering can be extremely long, up to 60,000 earthly years.
The sufferings of hell include experiencing life and death in a single day. Of the infernal worlds, Avici's hell is said to be the worst.
According to the text "The Kingdoms of Dharma," translated [from an unnamed source] by Sérgio Pereira Alves:
The first suffering is uninterrupted time, meaning there is no rest. The suffering is continuous; there is no time to breathe for even a minute or a second. The second suffering is uninterrupted space.
In Avici's Hell, space is filled with one or more people. If there is too much space, a person will multiply until they occupy all the space. Thus, this hell can be filled with just one person. The third is uninterrupted suffering.
The person has to suffer all kinds of suffering in the world. There is no hell that has more suffering than this Hell of Avici. Such suffering is called unlimited suffering.
The fourth suffering is the uninterrupted degree, meaning that this hell does not differentiate whether the person is a god in heaven, a human in the human realm, a hungry ghost within the realm of ghosts, or an animal within the animal realm. If the person "qualifies," anyone can enter Avici's Hell and can receive the same treatment.
The fifth suffering is uninterrupted life. There are numerous lives and deaths within a day and a night, and between one life and one death, the person suffers.
But no rakshasa is condemned to be a wretch for eternity: sooner or later, the dynamic that governs all things in the Universe, whose principle is movement, change, also acts upon these so-called demonic spirits, modifying their mind and perception [way of thinking, perceiving, feeling, a change in thought patterns because, after all, "Everything is mental"].
Consequently, the rakshasa will see his reality modified. He will die to hell; he will die in his life in hell and may then be reborn [reincarnated] in a Kingdom of better worlds.
SPIRITUAL MISCEGENATION
It is never too much to emphasize that the classification is purely didactic, serving only to organize thought in understanding the subject. Cosmic reality does not obey any insurmountable limit.
The five "Races" of Spirits, in their many lives, transit through the five types of worlds. A spirit of the Asura type can "be born" in a world of Men or in a Rakchasic world, for example.
These five Races, therefore, have a common existential element: they are necessarily reincarnating Egoic Spirits [I Am].
The Devas, which according to the study of comparative religion, correspond both to the Judeo-Christian Angels — more specifically, to the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, and Powers — and to the gods of the pagan pantheons [such as the Greeks], this Deva can "incarnate," "be born" in a human world, although it is not an essentially human Being.
In worlds inhabited by Egoic Spirits, the populations—from the point of view of the essence, nature, or Race of the Spirits—are more or less mixed, and possibly the Human worlds are the most spiritually mixed because they offer an astonishing diversity of ontological experiences.
In the Human worlds, virtues and vices coexist in complex relationships that demand a high capacity for discernment of all the Intelligences that an Egoic Spirit possesses [analytical, emotional, mathematical intelligence, etc.].
In these worlds, one suffers much, but one learns much more. Sometimes one suffers as much as in the worst of Hells [because there are many infernal worlds].
Therefore, the human condition is a state of being that demands a good dose of heroism among other "abilities."
A human being, before being human, is an Egoic Spirit, an Ego, an I Am.
The same Egoic Spirit that manifests today as a human being, in an Aeon, may be manifesting as an Asura; or, conversely, an Asura may lose the harmony [of its unity of Being] and manifest in a rakashika life [as a demon inhabiting hell] or, on the opposite path, achieving a state of peace and well-being, conquer a life as a Deva; and a preta, one day manages to cultivate within itself a spark of hope and die and be reborn as a human being; perhaps a boring, sad, grumpy human being, always dragging chains of dissatisfaction, but human nonetheless!
Better than the depressed and repressed-envious state and, above all, the insolently hungry, endless hunger and thirst of the pretas.
And so the populations of the worlds of the five Realms of Being evolve, progress, regress, and often work throughout an Eternity [Maha-avatara, period of God's manifestation in the Universe].
INCARNATIONS:
TRANSITING BETWEEN THE KINGDOMS OF GOD
Admitting that the Spirits incarnated on Earth belong to different "Races," different psychic, mental-emotional structures, it is possible to understand how and why so many humans seem so little "human."
It's because they aren't; not in essence. Some are more like angels while others behave like demons.
Heroes and villains, victims and executioners, the passive and the active, the lazy and the industrious—thus the diversity of the "human species," of the human Being, intrigues biology, psychiatry, psychology, challenges genetics, pedagogy, and, faced with an artistic-intellectual prodigy or a "heartless" villain, it is pertinent to ask: "Is this a person?"— and, even if someone said "more or less," it would possibly not be an insane answer; on the contrary, this "more or less" may be very close to the truth.
Rebirth as a human being is very difficult to achieve. It is a rare occurrence [in terms of individuals] because most people waste their earthly life amidst material desires, emotions, thoughts, and useless attitudes.
Most of those who die in the human worlds take a long time to return. There is a very high turnover of spiritual races seeking in these worlds the means to obtain purification, refinement, and improvement of the Self, of the I AM.
The fact is that the human condition is experienced not only by Devas and Asuras, Rakshasas and Pretas, but also by spirits in a stage of transcendence from an animal condition, and even by spirits free from Karma [more evolved "Races," which are energetically purer, stronger, and more powerful] such as Buddhas and Bodhisattvas [Nirmanakayas]—who voluntarily submit to the limitations of the Human Kingdom in order to assist their "brothers" on the evolutionary journey.
Regarding Inequalities: In the human worlds, situations of passion, desire, doubt, pride, and vanity predominate. Birth in the human world is considered advantageous amidst the Samsaric Realms [of the cycle of reincarnations].
These worlds provide the acquisition of Enlightenment [improvement, wisdom, learning] in a more objective and rapid way through the multiple "conditions of life" they offer.
The inequalities among men, which most perceive as injustice of Fate or God, are precisely what makes the human condition unique; only in the human condition can the Spirit evolve.
Furthermore, inequalities very accurately reflect existential configurations resulting from the race of the incarnated Spirit.
This is explained when one admits that, although people do not retain the memory of their pre-earthly life, it is they themselves, as Spirits of a certain race, who carry out fundamental operations for the configuration of the earthly life they will face.
Choices such as: choice of family environment [including phenotypic genetic traits, appearance] and social environment.
For this reason, the poor, the middle class, the rich, the ugly, the beautiful, the fat, the thin, the healthy, the sick, the intelligent, the foolish, very bad people, very good people, people who are neither here nor there, etc., coexist in the human world.
And although these seemingly unfounded differences may revolt and/or sadden many people, in truth, inequalities embody individual and collective evolutionary choices and purposes.
Certain "impressions," perceptions among human beings, so often expressed in language that is thought to be merely figurative, these perceptions and "figurations" may be truer than they seem. Amidst the metaphors of praise and insults, there is much literalness, reality.
If people frequently refer to each other as "angel," "goddess," "my hero!", or even "so-and-so is a fool," a door, a demon, a useless "burden," a sack, a vulture... often the Spirit in question is, in fact, a "pig-spirit," for example.
Thus, this mass of spirits incarnated in the human worlds, although all having anthropomorphic anatomy, is constituted of different Races of Spirits.
Therefore, looking at the people walking in the streets can be like looking at a rich invisible fauna.
Hidden by the "human garment" [body], on this Earth, there coexist tapirs and lions, worms, bitches, doors, rakshasa demons and preta demons; but also gods, angels, buddhas.
It remains to learn to recognize the specimens, the races that surround us in order to choose very well those with whom we associate. We divide our lives so as not to risk having dinner with the devil or sleeping with snakes.
Bibliography
AGRIPPA DE NETTESHEIM, Henrique Cornélio.
Os Três Livros de Filosofia Oculta.
[Compilação e comentários de Donald Tyson. Trd. Marcos Malvezzi]
São Paulo: Madras,
2008.
BLAVATSKY, H. P.. A Doutrina
Secreta ─ vol. I. [Trad. Raymundo
Mendes Sobral]. São Paulo: Pensamento, 2000.
................................ Glossário Teosófico, vols. I & II online ─
In E-Snips Livros
Esotéricos ─
acessado em
15/02/2009
DEVAS. In WIKIPEDIA ─ acessado em
03/01/2009
LOCHTEFELD, James G.. The Six Realms of Existence: setembro de 2005. In Carthage College Personal Webhosting Sever, Kenosha/Wisconsin ─ acessado em 03/2/2009
PEREIRA ALVES, Sérgio. Os Reinos do Dharma ─ acessado em 14/02/2009.
Sofä da Sala 2007
Fevereiro, 2012, JULHO, 2025
@ligiacabus
