On the four levels i e, level 4 to level 7 of the mental plane, some degree of illusion is still possible. It appears less for the individual life force which can function there in full consciousness during the physical life than for an undeveloped individual life force after death, as explained previously. The lower mental plane is thus still a region of possibility and error while on the higher mental plane, there is much that the ego or the individual life force does not know, but what it does know, it knows correctly. The life of the individual life force in the causal body on the causal plane will be discussed in detail later. There is a radical difference between the lower and the higher mental planes. In the lower mental plane, matter is dominant while on the higher planes, life is the prominent thing. The difficulty in the lower planes is to give life expression in the forms, but in the higher it is quite the reverse, to hold and give form to the flood of life.
It is said to be difficult to describe the difference between the matter of various sub-planes of the mental world, because there are no adjectives to describe the lowest sub-plane and thus none for the higher sub-planes. All that can be said is that as one ascends, the material becomes finer, the light more living and transparent. There are more overtones in the sound, more delicate shades in the colours, newer colours appear as one rises through the sub-planes. It has been said poetically and truly, that the light of a lower plane is darkness to the one above it. On the highest sub-plane, the matter is vivified by an energy which flows like light from above and this comes from the buddhic plane.
As one descends through each sub-plane, the matter of each sub-plane becomes the energy of the sub-plane immediately below. The original energy, plus the matter of the higher sub-planes becomes the vivifying energy of the next lower sub-plane. Thus the seventh or the lowest sub-plane consists of the original energy six times enclosed or veiled, and is therefore so much weaker or less active as compared to the first sub-plane.
There are a large number of people whose only higher thoughts are those which are only connected with affection and devotion. One who loves another deeply, or feels strong devotion to a personal deity, makes a strong mental image of that friend or of the deity and inevitably takes that mental image into the mental world. This is because it is to that level of matter that it naturally belongs. This results in the following: the love that forms and retains the image is a very powerful force and is strong enough to act upon the ego of the friend which exists on the causal plane, for it is the ego that is the individual life force loved, not the physical body which was only a partial representation of it. The ego of the friend, eagerly responds to the vibration, and pours itself into the thought form which has been made for it. The friend is therefore truly present with the individual more vividly than ever before. The key point to note is that it makes no difference whether the friend is what we call living or dead, because the appeal is made to the ego itself on its own true level. The ego always responds and if one has a hundred friends, one can simultaneously respond to the affection of everyone of them.
Hence one can express oneself in the heavens to an indefinite number of people. In the limited physical world one is accustomed to thinking of one’s friends as only the limited manifestation which one knows on the physical plane. In the heaven world on the other hand, one is clearly much nearer to the reality in one’s friend than one was ever on earth, as one is now two stages or planes (physical and astral) nearer to the home of the ego itself.
This articles has been taken from the book Life Beyond Death by Anil Sharma