Devachan
Devachan, du sanscrit. La "demeure des dieux". Etat intermédiaire entre deux vies terrestres dans lequel l'Ego – l'Atma-Buddhi-Manas ou la Trinité faite Une – entre après la séparation d'avec le kâma rûpa et la désintégration des principes inférieurs utilisés sur terre.
(source : "Glossaire Théosophique" d'Héléna Blavatsky)
Devachan (leçon 131)
en cours de traduction
To those who are practically ignorant of the basic realities of life would say again as I have said before in effect, they have no adequate conception of the devachanic plane or the conditions of existence on that plane when they jeopardize all that is desirable and possible of individual existence on that plane by filling their minds full of the trivialities of their present life, and their auric sphere with reflections from other minds which will afford no basis for a real devachanic bliss.
As you would smile tenderly though pityingly at your child's concept of maturity, so "those who know" can only smile wistfully at your feeble concepts of life in its maturer aspects when those concepts are devoid of evil. We often hear an undeveloped disciple voice his desire to "renounce devachan" for the purpose of returning at once to earth life, for the good of humanity. This occurs as a result of hearing or reading of such a consummation by some high Initiate, but the words are spoken in utter ignorance of that which must be renounced, or even of their power to make such a renunciation.
Such a disciple is no more capable of making an intelligent renunciation of that character thon would be a three-year-old child.
If you to whom I speak are among this class, I can assure you that you might as well say you will renounce the period between meals, given to digestion and assimilation of the food you take to sustain your body ; for one period is as necessary to the soul as the other is to the body.
If you had evolved to the degree where material food was no more requisite to the health of the body, as have those higher Initiates, you might then be able to make such a statement with more understanding. Instead of impossible renunciation of devachan, it would be more to the purpose if you would use the energy so lost, in strengthening your high ideals or forming new ones which would furnish the substance for assimilation in your devachanic life.
Many wrong ideas are prevalent concerning the nature of subconscious life. Devachan is supposed to be a state of self-deception, a dream. If you consider your present life a dream, then also are you justified in considering devachan a dream, and not otherwise, for one is as real as the other.
I would ask you : "To what degree have you penetrated the hidden desires, motives, and private acts of the friend to whom you are most devotedly attached ?" "Is not the fact that you are utterly unable to reach to those hidden places one of the chief sources of the discontent you feel whenever he or she is absent from you, and even when present in a lesser degree ?" You can never get close enough to your friend to satisfy your desire, and it is because of your belief in his possession of virtues now concealed from you that you so desire closer intimacy with your friend. It is not the faults, the weaknesses, the contemptible little things of the lower nature that you are so desirous of contacting. Your devachanic experience, so far as that one friend is concerned, is a full realization of the highest attributes of your friend, a unifying of your consciousness with the higher aspects of that soul, and all the virtues and beauties of mind and body which you believe exist and which do exist in the Higher Self of that friend.
You cannot so identify yourself with your friend in earth life, but you can "lay up treasures in heaven" by your desire for and appreciation of beautiful attributes, your appreciation of beautiful things, where, metaphorically speaking, no moth or rust of the lower – the material – self can corrupt or destroy, or thieves break through to steal them. If you could not come to some knowledge of those attributes and assimilate them into your consciousness in your devachanic experience you could never bring them into manifestation in yourself, no matter how many earth lives you might live.
However much you may desire immediate re-embodiment, so long as there is a single higher attribute still undeveloped in your nature a period of devachan is a necessity and is desirable. The majority of adult human beings absolutely require the rest of devachan as much as they do the rest of sleep ; for the astral brain – the seat of the skandas – becomes as weary as does the physical brain in the case of the undeveloped.
(source : Les Enseignements du Temple de Maître Hilarion)