The Three States

Although we find ourselves in a body now, is that all we can identify with, or are we more than we might first know? Is the physical world all there is, or do other universes (or categories of universe) exist? Can death mean different things depending on your point of reference?

These are questions that our western Agnostic Reflex tends to deem unanswerable, but there are those mystic theosophers who have suggested otherwise. In fact, some have even documented their direct experience of another world! It is the world of the Imaginal (not to be confused with imaginary) - the mundus imaginalis - Na-koja-abad, the "land of no-where".

Our mystics have suggested three categories of universe:
the physical sensory world of phenomena
the suprasensory world the Soul or Angel-Souls (mundus imaginalis)
the world of pure archangelic Intelligences

To these three worlds correspond three organs of knowledge:
the senses
the imagination
the intellect

And also anthropology:
body
soul
spirit

To these mystics, man is not limited by the physical world, but extends from this world to the "resurrections" in the other worlds. Man exists vertically as all three simultaneously, but experiences them horizontally as though they were independent. Thinking about this is what has led me to the symbolic representation of these States of Being by the states that water passes through.

Water can exist in three forms: solid, liquid, and gas - symbolizing the physical, imaginal, and intellectual. The solid state is marked by consistancy and coldness; the gaseous state by rapid change and heat; and the liquid state is the intermediary, marked by its ability to change accordingly (as the imagination plays an intermediary role between the senses and the intellect). Do we not experience some form of the liquid state each night when we dream? (Although it is still tied to the body, so we do not experience the imagination to its fullest extent.)

Whichever form it takes is still water; the transformation of one state to the next, although changing the conditions and possibilities for the form of water, cannot change its essence. The outer forms are continually changing - your essence remains the same. Death to one form is birth (or resurrection) to another.

When an ice cube melts, where does it go? We know it hasn't ceased to exist, but only changed form. Its essence remains the same.

When our body dies, where do we go? We haven't ceased to exist, but only changed form. Our essence remains the same.

The detachment/disinterest from the body-ego (or limitations thereof) leads to the awareness of other possibilities of Being - supraindividual states. It can lead the drop of water back to the ocean (or water-essence). The light which shines from within begins to melt away any illusion of independent solidity.