The Kamaru Pa - the Emotional Nature and Its Activities

Summary

The talk presents a sustained exposition of the Hindu concept of the Kamarupa, described as the desire body or emotional body of human beings. It begins by noting that Indian schools do not fully agree on the term’s exact meaning, and therefore the speaker attempts to synthesize a composite view. The Kamarupa is explained as the body or form of desire, with desire understood broadly to include volition, emotional impulse, fantasy, and imagination. The speaker repeatedly connects this Eastern framework to Western psychology, especially the anima-animus problem, Jungian shadow dynamics, and Freud’s symbolic dream interpretation. A central claim is that human beings are composed of multiple bodies or vehicles, only one of which is physical. The desire body is associated with the physical body through the etheric instrument and is said to be the vehicle that persists after death. It is divided into lower and higher regions, corresponding to Kamaloka and Devachan. Kamaloka is compared to purgatory, while Devachan is likened to paradise. The speaker emphasizes that these are not arbitrary punishments or rewards imposed by an external judge, but natural consequences of the quality of one’s own emotional life. Desire, emotion, and volition shape experience both in life and after death. The talk stresses that desire is the root of motion, action, and much of human achievement. Need arises from desire, and motion in animals and humans alike is driven by desire to survive, possess, or attain. Yet desire can also become destructive when uncontrolled. The speaker argues that emotional excess, ambition, greed, tyranny, jealousy, and hatred create suffering in ordinary life and continue into the after-death state. In this sense, Kamaloka is a realm in which one lives inside the total atmosphere of one’s own desires, animosities, and habits. The individual is forced to experience the consequences of what he has cultivated emotionally, much as a dreamer inhabits a world created by his own mind. Dreams are used throughout as the main analogy for the after-death emotional state. In dreams, a person may travel, meet the dead, face enemies, or experience vast landscapes, but all of it is generated within the dreamer’s own psychic field. Likewise, in Kamaloka, the individual encounters symbolic forms created by his own emotional life. The speaker links this to modern psychology, neurosis, psychosis, archetypal imagery, and the need for interpretation. He also invokes a wide range of religious and literary parallels: Dante’s Inferno and Paradiso, Swedenborg, Andrew Jackson Davis, the Greek mysteries, the Egyptian underworld, and Buddhist teachings on illusion and desirelessness. A major theme is that the emotional body is both a source of bondage and a potential instrument of spiritual growth. Negative emotions create dense, distorted forms in the Kamarupa, which can persist after death and become obstacles to rebirth. The speaker describes these as shells, complexes, or “dweller on the threshold” conditions. He also suggests that emotional patterns can influence physical health, citing Paracelsus and the idea that grief, hate, and fear contribute to disease. Blood is presented as the vehicle of karma and the liver as its center, making the emotional body deeply tied to bodily life and functional disorders. The higher aspect of the Kamarupa is Devachan, the sphere of sublimated, constructive emotion. Here the individual experiences the rewards of unselfishness, beauty, love, and spiritual aspiration. The speaker gives examples such as Dr. Schweitzer, Beethoven, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and other figures whose desires were refined into service, art, or devotion. This higher emotional state is not final liberation, but a blessed condition in which the person can live harmoniously with himself. The talk also identifies this purified emotional vehicle with the soul, the wedding garment, the Holy Grail, and the bride of the Lamb in Revelation. The conclusion is that human evolution consists in redeeming and transmuting desire. The Kamarupa must be purified through discipline, faith, spiritual conviction, and the replacement of illusion with truth. The speaker ties this to avatars such as Krishna and Christ, who are said to break the karmic patterns of the world through divine intervention and cleansing blood. Ultimately, the emotional body is portrayed as the raw material of soul-making: through suffering, refinement, and sublimation, desire becomes a luminous vehicle for higher consciousness and eventual union with reality.