Devachan

Devachan is a composite term formed by the Sanskrit word deva (देव), "god", and the Tibetan word can, "place" or "land." It can be translated as "blissful realm", corresponding to the Mahayanic sukhāvatī or the Hindu devaloka or svarga.

Devachan is a kind of temporary paradise, a place (or state) of bliss and of supreme felicity. H. P. Blavatsky defines it as follows:

The “dwelling of the gods”. A state intermediate between two earth-lives, into which the EGO (Atmâ-Buddhi-Manas or the Trinity made One) enters, after its separation from Kâma Rupa, and the disintegration of the lower principles on earth.

Devachan is sometimes connected to the religious concept of Heaven. However, due to the important differences that exist between the two concepts, Mahatma K. H. rejected such a comparison:

Nor has the latter [Devachan] —even omitting all “anthropomorphic ideas of God”— any resemblance to the paradise or heaven of any religion, and it is H.P.B.’s literary fancy that suggested to her the wonderful comparison.

Period of gestation

When the division of, or purification of the fifth principle has been accomplished in Kama loca by the contending attractions of the fourth and sixth principles, the real Ego passes into a period of unconscious gestation.

A “spirit,” or the spiritual Ego, cannot descend to the medium, but it can attract the spirit of the latter to itself, and it can do this only during the two intervals—before and after its “gestation period” . . . known in the Arhat esoteric doctrine as “Bar-do.” We have translated this as the “gestation” period, and it lasts from a few days to several years, according to the evidence of the adepts.

Devachanic ego

“Who goes to Devachan?” The personal Ego of course, but beatified, purified, holy. Every Ego — the combination of the sixth and seventh principles — which, after the period of unconscious gestation is reborn into the Devachan, is of necessity as innocent and pure as a new-born babe.

Usually, two and a half Principles enter in Devachan, although in some cases only the two highest do it:

The seventh and the sixth [principles], that is to say the immortal spirit and its vehicle, the immortal or spiritual soul, enter therein alone (an exceptional case) or, which nearly always takes place, the soul carries in the case of very good people (and even the indifferent and sometimes the very wicked), the essence, so to speak, of the fifth principle which has been withdrawn from the personal EGO (the material soul). It is the latter only, in the case of the irredeemably wicked and when the spiritual and impersonal soul has nothing to withdraw from its individuality (terrestrial personality). Because the latter had nothing to offer but the purely material and sensual—that becomes annihilated.

Activity in Devachan

Immense growths, for example, of knowledge itself are possible in Devachan, for the spiritual entity which has begun the “pursuit” of such knowledge during life. Nothing can happen to a spirit in Devachan, the keynote of which has not been struck during life; the conditions of a subjective existence are such that the importation of quite external impulses and alien thoughts is impossible. But the seed of thought once sown, the current of thoughts once set going (the metaphor may freely be varied to suit any taste), and then its developments in Devachan may be infinite, for the sixth sense there and the sixth principle are our instructors; and in such society there can be no isolation, as physical humanity understands the term..

Duration of Devachan

. . . lasts so long as the merits of the old Ego entitle the being to reap the fruit of its reward in its new regenerated Egoship. It occurs after the gestation period is over, and the new spiritual Ego is reborn—like the fabled Phœnix from its ashes—from the old one. The locality, which the former inhabits, is called by the northern Buddhist Occultists “Deva-chan,” the word answering, perhaps, to Paradise or the Kingdom of Heaven of the Christian elect.

Further reading

• Devachan at Theosopedia