The Devachanic Plane: Its Characteristics and Inhabitants

I've owned this little book "The Devachanic Plane", (The Mental Plane), for ten years now. Like many other Leadbeater books, its substance can be traced into some Alice A Bailey books and other New Age and Spiritualist works. (AAB didn't borrow from them, they just coincide I am certain.) It was first published over 100 years ago, so you'd expect the style to conform to that era.However, that said, the actual content of the book is overwhelmingly New Age, and of course predates all of the modern texts and popular books on this subject. What subject? Life after death. The Eastern religious idea of "devachan" is that it's a place we go to after physical death to experience and replay aspects of the life just ended. For some folks it's a brief sojourn between lifetimes; for others it's an extended experience covering many times the duration of the physical life being re-examined.Devachan is defined in this book to be the next plane (or set of non-physical worlds) above the astral plane (or astral worlds). In many more modern books the devachanic plane is called the mental plane. The Christian "heaven" is said to be part of devachan. ie It exists as part of the mental plane.This book describes the general characteristics of the mental plane. It says how it may also be accessed in elevated prayer or meditation by a few more advanced people who are still incarnating physically. Leadbeater describes each successive "subplane" or "world" which has its own blissful aspects to experience. There are many individual case studies (or stories) giving examples of the devachanic life of various people departed from the physical world. There are also descriptions of some of the angels and other beings residing on the mental plane.This book is excellent as a teaching tool for spiritual people. It gives insights of value about "life after death", and also instructs about essential ideas to do with energies and karma, dreamlife and meditation.