Review: The Astral Plane

by C.W. Leadbeater

Today I'm reviewing The Astral Plane by Charles Webster Leadbeater. The copyright on my copy is 1933 but the first edition was printed in 1895: 129 years ago! I'm reviewing this book at a Facebook friend's request.  

The author, C.W. Leadbeater, was one of the most prominent authors in Theosophy, which was a spiritual movement started by Russian mystic Helena P. Blavatsky in 1875. The book was published after her death in 1891. I've read several Theosophy books, including Leadbeater's The Inner Life and A.E. Powell's The Astral Body,  but I'm still pretty ignorant about the movement. They remind me of the younger Eckankar, the "out-of-body religion (cult?)"  founded by Paul Twitchell. Twitchell and Blavatsky had similar stories: both supposedly traveled to India and studied with secret esoteric masters with amazing spiritual powers. Both took it upon themselves to bring their "knowledge" to the Western world as a not-so-secret society, spooning out esoteric secrets for a price. Frankly, I think Theosophy goes deeper and has a lot more street credentials than Eckankar, but I'll leave that subject for another day.

I don't know if the book is still in print, but it probably is. At any rate, it's easy to find online copies. I acquired my copy more than 40 years ago.

The book is small in size, but it has 183 pages and a very small font, which provides a lot of content despite the small package.

Even though the book is small, it took a long time to read because it was written in 1890s British English. It's more cumbersome than today's writing. I'll give you an example:

"Illustrations taken from the physical plane seem generally to misrepresent rather than elucidate astral phenomena, because they can never be more than partially applicable; but the recollection of two simple facts of ordinary life may help to make this important branch of our subject clearer, if we are careful not to push the analogy further than it will hold good." (pg. 165)

The whole book is like that!

Leadbeater was extensively trained in Theosophy and supposedly got to the state where he had full astral sight. As he tells it:

"I worked at it for forty-two days, and seemed to myself to be on the brink of the final victory, when the Master Himself intervened and performed the final act of breaking through which completed the process, and enabled me thereafter to use astral sight while still retaining full consciousness in the physical body--which is equivalent to saying that the astral consciousness and memory became continuous whether the physical body was awake or asleep." (page X)

So we're supposed to just take his word for it. Call me cynical but I've heard that line before and I'm not buying it. He doesn't give any examples of his direct observations, nor any of his direct OBEs, so as far as I'm concerned, all the "information" he gives is unsubstantiated and therefore questionable. I suspect much of the information are hand-me-downs from other teachings of Theosophy, which are hand-me-downs from a variety of ancient Hindu scriptures, Vedas, Upanishads, Patanjali, etc..

For example, he states that there are seven planes of existence, each of which has seven layers or sub-planes. In order of materiality, from densest to finest, they are:

• Physical
• Astral
• Mental
• Buddhic
• Nirvanic
• Two others that are so far above our present power they're "left out of consideration"
  

Oddly, Leadbeater doesn't say much about the planes of existence themselves, other than saying there are too many places to describe.

Instead, the vast majority of the book describes the various entities that may be seen on the astral plane. That includes the nirmanakaya (those who have achieved nirvana but renounce it in order to work for the good of mankind), ordinary people after death, astral shells, vitalized shells, astral shades, dead people waiting for their next incarnation, victims of sudden death and suicide, and so forth. 

Much of this is just blatant fear mongering. For example, he describes "vitalized shells" like this:

"Let it suffice here to mention that it is almost always a malevolent bring--a true tempting demon, whose evil influence is limited only by the extent of its power. Like the shade, it is frequently used to further the horrible purposes of the Voodoo and Obeah forms of magic." (pg. 74)

He also describes the "Vampire" and the "Werewolf" which have "unearthly horror and of extreme rarity." But again, he doesn't say whether he's actually seen these things or if he's just passing down lore from elsewhere. I personally have never seen anything like that so I tend to think of it as fear mongering, especially in light of ridiculous claims like this about vampires:

"Since the eighth sphere cannot claim him until after the death of the body, he preserves it in a kind of cataleptic trance by the horrible expedient of the transfusion into it of blood drawn from other human beings by his semi-materialized astral, and thus postpones his final destiny by the commission of wholesale murder." (pg. 81)

Here's another claim regarding werewolves made in the book that I see as nonsensical fear mongering:

 "When a perfectly cruel and brutal man does this, there are certain circumstances under which the body may be seized upon by other astral entities and materialized, not into the human form, but into that of some wild animal--usually the wolf; and in that condition it will range the surrounding country killing other animals, and even human beings, thus satisfying not only its own craving for blood, but that of the fiends who drive it on." (pg. 82)

On the astral plane, it is possible to shape-shift and take on the appearance of a vampire or werewolf, and I firmly believe that is the origin of such horrors. But Leadbeater seems to categorize them differently than a "run of the mill astral shapeshifter." And I simply refuse to accept them walking around on the physical plane. (Ask me again after the next season of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch!)

Perhaps he was using these fear tactics to drive would-be students to Theosophy where they can be "properly trained by the experts" to deal with such ghastly entities. If the carrot doesn't work, use the stick, right?

He does say:

"Intending explorers of the astral plane need have little fear of encountering the unpleasant creatures described under this head, for, as before stated, they are even now extremely rare, and as time goes on their number will happily steadily diminish." (pgs. 83-84)

But then, later, when describing Elementals and Nature Spirits, he's back to fear mongering:

"There is, however, undoubtedly a sort of bias or tendency permeating nearly all of their subdivisions which operates to render them rather hostile than friendly towards man. Every neophyte knows this, for in most cases his first impression of the astral plane is of the presence all round him of vast hosts of protean spectres who advance upon him in threatening guise, but always retire or dissipate harmlessly if boldly faced." (pg. 101)

He takes it a step forward and actually gives good advice:

"Though tricky and mischievious, they are rarely malicious unless provoked by some unwarrantable intrusion or annoyance; but as a body they also partake to some extent of the universal feeling of distrust for man, and they generally seem inclined to resent somewhat the first appearance of a neophyte on the astral plane, so that he usually makes their acquaintance under some unpleasant or terrifying form. If, however, he declines to be frightened by any of their freaks, they soon accept him as a necessary evil and take no further notice of him, while some among them may even after a time become friendly and manifest pleasure on meeting him." (pg. 115)

Clearly the author is describing the guardian of the threshold but attributing it to Elementals. His advice is sound, but I don't think it has anything to do with Elementals.

That brings us to a discussion of something the author calls "The Fifth Root Race" which I only know about from my study of Edgar Cayce. Cayce was born in 1877, so he was 18 years old when this book was published. I wonder if the book--or Theosophy in general--influenced Cayce? Or perhaps Cayce influenced Leadbeater? But again, those are best left for a future discussion.

I do agree with Leadbeater on some points, such as:

"The horrible doctrine of eternal punishment, too, is responsible for a vast amount of most pitiable and entirely groundless terror among those newly arrived in this higher life." (pg. 61)

Another curious feature of this book is that he describes godlike inhabitants of the astral plane: Kamadevas, Rupadevas, and Arupadevas. Likewise, he talks about "devas" in general, and four "Kings" or "Regents of the Earth" describing them as associated with the "elements" of earth, water, air, and fire. Since the author gives us no idea of his direct experiences, I can only assume this all comes from the ancient traditions of India (or Blavatsky) and not from his own observations. In other words, secondhand information, also known as hearsay.

Toward the end of the book, Leadbeater branches out and talks about other phenomena, such as churchyard ghosts, apparitions of the dying, haunted localities, family ghosts, bell-ringing and stone-throwing ghosts, fairies, communicating entities (think seances). This is all pretty old-school and not very enlightening.

He also talks about various phenomena related to seances and physical mediumship: clairvoyance, prevision, second-sight, etheric currents, astral forces, etheric pressure, latent energy, sympathetic vibrations, mantras, disintegration, materialization, table tipping, spirit photography, reduplication, precipitation, slate writing, levitation, spirit lights, handling fire, and so forth. Much of this is described as real phenomena with scant explanations, but I wrote most of it off as nonsense in the light of modern science.

That's not to say I don't believe in mediumship. On the contrary, I've studied it extensively. I have an entire shelf of my bookcase dedicated to mediumship and channeling. (Compare that to the four shelves for my astral projection books.) I've also known many talented spirit mediums whose gifts seem "real." Any doubters in the audience should read the excellent book The Truth About Medium by Gary Schwartz, Ph.D.

I give this book just 1 and 1/2 stars out of 5. It's hard to take the book seriously when it talks about physical manifestations of vampires and werewolves. There are no astral projection narratives and no techniques. It's just a "data dump" (of questionable data) with little substance to back it up, topped off with fear mongering.

The previous book I reviewed, Jurgen Ziewe's Elysium Unveiled, is a much better description of non-physical environments and their inhabitants. It's also much newer and not burdened with superstition and fear mongering.

Bob Peterson
08 October 2024

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