In esoteric literature, mental plane or devachan has been described as a plane where all sorrow and evil are excluded by the action of the great spiritual intelligences who supervise human evolution. It is the blissful resting-place of the individual soul where one peacefully assimilates the fruits of one’s physical life.
Just as one’s future condition is determined largely by the nature of one’s desires, so is one’s life on the mental plane largely determined by one’s desires and ideals. In spite of the idea entertained by many people that it is easier to deal with things on the physical plane than those on the astral and mental planes, the truth is quite the opposite.
For the very fineness of mental matter, and its ready response to mental impulses, makes it far easier to move and direct by action of the will, than either astral or physical matter. The mental plane gives free expression to the ideals entertained by the individual during earth-life, and in fact, may be spoken as largely a reflection of those ideals. On the mental plane these ideals tend towards a real manifestation. This is true not only of high ideals, but of the lowest as well.
If one were to consider the emotional and intellectual nature of the soul of a primitive person, one will see that to put such a soul in the environment of cultured civilised people would make such a soul miserable. In fact, such a heaven would seem like hell. There are many reports of clairvoyants, seers, and communicators with departed souls, who assert positively the existence of heaven in exact accordance with the religious teachings of their tribe or race.
It is very easy to dismiss these reports either as pure fantasy or dreams of the priests. But a closer examination will reveal the fact that there is a striking similarity in the fundamentals although they differ in details.
The spiritualist knows that these reports are all truthful and is based on actual psychic experiences of certain members of a particular tribe, class or group of people. Even a little understanding of the nature of the mental plane will explain this matter.
The clairvoyants, among the old American Indians, who were able to penetrate the lower planes of the mental plane, were thoughtful when they reported of the existence of the happy hunting grounds of their departed brothers on the other side. The heaven world of the Red Indians was precisely as their medicine men had taught them it would be.
When such a soul awakened from the soul slumber, it would find itself perfectly at home, surrounded by all that made life pleasant to it, including great forests, streams, plenty of buffalo and deer to be shot etc.
Though these things exist, they exist only mentally. Like a very intense dream these things appear to such a soul, but it does not realise that it is merely a dream. Even in earth-life, we sometimes experience dreams which seem so real that partake in them as if they were the only substantial reality.