MAN AND HIS BODIES/PART 3

 

THE ASTRAL OR DESIRE BODY

 

We have studied the physical body of man both as to its visible and invisible parts, and we understand that man - the living, conscious entity - in his "waking" consciousness, living in the physical world, can only show so much of his knowledge and manifest so much of his powers as he is able to express through his physical body. According to the perfection or imperfection of its development will be the perfection or imperfection of his expression on the physical plane; it limits him while he functions in the lower world, forming a veritable "ring pass-not" around him. That which cannot pass through it cannot manifest on earth, and hence its importance to the developing man. In the same way when the man is functioning without the physical body in another region of the universe, the astral plane or astral world, he is able to express on that plane just so much of his knowledge and his powers, of himself in short, as his astral body enables him to put forth. It is at once his vehicle and his limitation. The man is more than his bodies; he has in him much that he is unable to manifest either on the physical or on the astral plane; but so much as he is able to express may be taken as the man himself in that particular region of the universe. What he can show of himself down here is limited by the physical body; what he can show of himself in the astral world is limited by the astral body; so we shall find as we rise to higher worlds in our study, that more and more of the man is able to express itself as he himself develops in his evolution, and also gradually brings towards perfection higher and higher vehicles of consciousness.

It may be well to remind the reader, as we are entering on fields comparatively untrodden and to the majority unknown, that no claim is here put forward to infallible knowledge or to perfect power of observation. Errors of observation and of inference may be made on planes above the physical as well as on the physical, and this possibility should always be kept in mind. As knowledge increases and training is prolonged, more and more accuracy will be reached, and such errors will thus gradually be eliminated. But as the writer is only a student, mistakes are likely to be made and to need correction in the future. They may creep in on matters of detail, but will not touch the general principles nor vitiate the main conclusions.

First, let the meaning of the words astral plane or astral world be clearly grasped. The astral world is a definite region of the universe, surrounding and interpenetrating the physical, but imperceptible to our ordinary observation because it is composed of a different order of matter. If the ultimate physical atom be taken and broken up, it vanishes so far as the physical world is concerned; but it is found to be composed of numerous particles of the grossest kind of astral matter – the solid matter of the astral world.* [* The word "astral", starry, is not a very happy one, but it has been used during so many centuries to denote super-physical matter that it would now be difficult to dislodge it. It was probably at first chosen by observers in consequence of the luminous appearance of astral as compared with physical matter. The student is advised to read, on this whole subject, Manual No. V., The Astral Plane, by C. W. Leadbeater.]  We have found seven sub-states of physical matter - solid, liquid, gaseous, and four etheric - under which are classified the innumerable combinations which make up the physical world. In the same way we have seven sub-states of astral matter corresponding to the physical, and under these may be classified the innumerable combinations which similarly make up the astral world. All physical atoms have their astral envelopes, the astral matter thus forming what may be called the matrix of the physical, the physical being embedded in the astral. The astral matter serves as a vehicle for Jīva, the One Life animating all, and by means of the astral matter currents of Jīva surround, sustain, nourish every particle of physical matter, the currents of Jīva giving rise not only to what a popularly called vital forces, but also to all electric, magnetic, chemical, and other energies, attraction, cohesion, repulsion and the like, all of which are differentiations of the One Life in which universes swim as fishes in the sea. From the astral world, thus intimately interpenetrating the physical, Jīva passes to the ether of the latter, which then becomes the vehicle of all these forces to the lower sub-states of physical matter, wherein we observe their play. If we imagine the physical world to be struck out of existence without any other change being made, we should still have a perfect replica of it in astral matter; and if we further imagine everyone to be dowered with working astral faculties, men and women would at first be unconscious of any difference in their surroundings; "dead" people who wake up in the lower regions of the astral world often find themselves in such a state and believe themselves to be yet living in the physical world. As most of us have not yet developed astral vision, it is necessary to enforce this relative reality of the astral world as a part of the phenomenal universe, and to see it with the mental eye, if not with the astral. It is as real as - in fact, not being quite so far removed from the One Reality, it is more real than - the physical; its phenomena are open to competent observation like those of the physical plane. Just as down here a blind man cannot see physical objects, and as many things can only be observed with the help of apparatus - the microscope, spectroscope, etc. - so is it with the astral plane. Astrally blind people cannot see astral objects at all, and many things escape ordinary astral vision, or clairvoyance. But at the present stage of evolution many people could develop the astral senses and are developing them to some extent, thus enabling themselves to receive the subtler vibrations of the astral plane. Such persons are indeed liable to make many mistakes, as a child makes mistakes when he begins to use physical senses, but these mistakes are corrected by wider experience, and after a time they can see and hear as accurately on the astral as on the physical plane. It is not desirable to force this development by artificial means, for until some amount of physical strength has been evolved the physical world is about as much as can conveniently be managed, and the intrusion of astral sights, sounds and general phenomena is apt to be disturbing and even alarming. But the time comes when this stage is reached and when the relative reality of the astral part of the invisible world is borne in upon the waking consciousness.

For this it is necessary not only to have an astral body, as we all of us have, but to have it fully organized and in working order, the consciousness being accustomed to act in it, not only to act through it on the physical body. Everyone is constantly working through the astral body, but comparatively few work in it separated from the physical. Without the general action through the astral body there would be no connection between the external world and the mind of man, no connection between impacts made on the physical senses and the perception of them by the mind. The impact becomes a sensation in the astral body, and is then perceived by the mind. The astral body, in which are the centres of sensation, is often spoken of as the astral man, just as we might call the physical body the physical man; but it is of course only a vehicle - a sheath, as the Vedāntin would call it - in which the man himself is functioning, and through which he reaches, and is reached by, the grosser vehicle, the physical body.

As to the constitution of the astral body, it is made up of the seven sub-states of astral matter, and may have coarser or finer materials drawn from each of these. It is easy to picture a man in a well-formed astral body; you can think of him as dropping the physical body and standing up in a subtler, more luminous copy of it, visible in his own likeness to clairvoyant vision, though invisible to ordinary sight. I have said "a well-formed astral body," for an undeveloped person in his astral body presents a very inchoate appearance. Its outline is undefined, its materials are dull and ill-arranged, and if withdrawn from the body it is a mere shapeless, shifting cloud, obviously unfit to act as an independent vehicle; it is, in truth, rather a fragment of astral matter than an organized astral body - a mass of astral protoplasm of an amoeboid type. A well-formed astral body means that a man has reached a fairly high level of intellectual culture or of spiritual growth, so that the appearance of the astral body is significant of the progress made by its owner; by the definiteness of it outline, the luminosity of its materials, and the perfection of its organization, one may judge of the stage of evolution reached by the Ego using it.

As regards the question of its improvement - a question important to us all - it must be remembered that the improvement of the astral body hinges on the one side on the purification of the physical body, and on the other on the purification and development of the mind. The astral body is peculiarly susceptible to impressions from thought, for astral matter responds more rapidly than physical to every impulse from the world of mind. For instance, if we look at the astral world we find it full of continually changing shapes; we find there "thought-forms" - forms composed of elemental essence and animated by a thought - and we also notice vast masses of this elemental essence, from which continually shapes emerge and into which they again disappear; watching carefully, we may see that currents of thought thrill this astral matter, that strong thoughts take a covering of it and persist as entities for a long time, while weak thoughts clothe themselves feebly and waver out again, so that all through the astral world changes are ever going on under thought-impulses. The astral body of man, being made of astral matter, shares this readiness to respond to the impact of thought, and thrills in answer to every thought that strikes it, whether the thoughts come from without, from the minds of other men, or come from within, from the mind of its owner.

Let us study this astral body under these impacts from within and without. We see it permeating the physical body and extending around it in every direction like a coloured cloud. The colours vary with the nature of the man, with his lower, animal passional nature, and the part outside the physical body is called the kâmic aura, as belonging to the Kâma or desire-body, commonly called the astral body of man.* [* This separation of the "aura" from the man, as though it were something different from himself, is misleading, although very natural from the point of view of observation. The "aura" is the cloud round the body, in ordinary parlance; really, the man lives on the various planes in such garments as befit each, and all these garments or bodies interpenetrate each other; the lowest and smallest of these is called "the body", and the mixed substances of the other garments are called the aura when they extend beyond that body. The kâmic aura, then, is merely such part of the kâmic body as extends beyond the physical.]  For the astral body is the vehicle of man's kâmic consciousness, the seat of all animal passions and desires, the centre of the senses, as already said, where all sensations arise. It changes its colours continually as it vibrates under thought-impacts; if a man loses his temper, flashes of scarlet appear; if he feels love, rose-red thrills through it. If the man's thoughts are high and noble they demand finer astral matter to answer to them, and we trace this action on the astral body in its loss of the grosser and denser particles from each sub-plane, and its gain of the finer and rarer kinds. The astral body of a man whose thoughts are low and animal, is gross, thick, dense and dark in colour - often so dense that the outline of the physical body is almost lost in it; whereas that of an advanced man is fine, clear, luminous and bright in colour - a really beautiful object. In such a case the lower passions have been dominated, and the selective action of the mind has refined the astral matter. By thinking nobly, then, we purify the astral body, even without having consciously worked towards that end. And be it remembered that this inner working exercises a potent influence on the thoughts that are attracted from without to the astral body; a body which is made by its owner to respond habitually to evil thoughts acts as a magnet to similar thought-forms in its vicinity, whereas a pure astral body acts on such thoughts with a repulsive energy, and attracts to itself thought-forms composed of matter congruous with its own.

As said above, the astral body hinges on one side to the physical, and it is affected by the purity or impurity of the physical body. We have seen that the solids, liquids, gases and ethers of which the physical body is composed may be coarse or refined, gross or delicate Their nature will in turn affect the nature of their corresponding astral envelopes. If, unwisely careless about the physical, we build into our dense bodies solid particles of an impure kind, we attract to ourselves the corresponding impure kind of what we will call the solid astral. As we, on the other hand, build into our dense bodies solid particles of purer type, we attract the correspondingly purer type of solid astral matter. As we carry on the purification of the physical body by feeding it on clean food and drink, by excluding from our diet the polluting kinds of aliment - the blood of animals, alcohol and other things that are foul and degrading - we not only improve our physical vehicle of consciousness, but we also begin to purify the astral vehicle and take from the astral world more delicate and finer materials for its construction. The effect of this is not only important as regards the present earth-life, but it has a distinct bearing also - as we shall see later - on the next post-mortem state, on the stay in the astral world, and also on the kind of body we shall have in the next life upon earth.

Nor is this all: the worse kinds of food attract to the astral body entities of a mischievous kind belonging to the astral world, for we have to do not only with astral matter, but also with what are called the elementals of that region. These are entities of higher and lower types existing on that plane, given birth to by the thoughts of men; and there are also in the astral world depraved men, imprisoned in their astral bodies, known as elementaries. The elementals are attracted towards people whose astral bodies contain matter congenial to their nature, while the elementaries naturally seek those who indulge in vices such as they themselves encouraged while in physical bodies. Any person endowed with astral vision sees, as he walks along our London streets, hordes of loathsome elementals crowding round our butchers' shops; and in beer-houses and gin-palaces elementaries specially gather, feasting on the foul emanations of the liquors, and thrusting themselves, when possible, into the very bodies of the drinkers. These beings are attracted by those who build their bodies out of these materials, and such people have these surroundings as part of their astral life. So it goes on through each stage of the astral plane; as we purify the physical we draw to ourselves correspondingly pure stages of the astral matter.

Now, of course, the possibilities of the astral body largely depend on the nature of the materials we build into it; as by the process of purification we make these bodies finer and finer, they cease to vibrate in answer to the lower impulses, and begin to answer to the higher influences of the astral world. We are thus making an instrument which, though by its very nature sensitive to influences coming to it from without, is gradually losing the power of responding to the lower vibrations, and is taking on the power of answering to the higher - an instrument which is tuned to vibrate only to the higher notes. As we can take a wire to produce a sympathetic vibration, choosing to that end its diameter, its length and its tension, so we can attune our astral bodies to give out sympathetic vibrations when noble harmonies are sounded in the world around us. This is not a mere matter of speculation or of theory; it is a matter of scientific fact. As here we tune the wire on the string, so there we can tune the strings of the astral body; the law of cause and effect holds good there as well as here; we appeal to the law, we take refuge in the law, and on that we rely. All we need is knowledge, and the will to put the knowledge into practice. This knowledge you may take and experiment on first, if you will, as a mere hypothesis, congruous with facts known to you in the lower world; later on, as you purify the astral body, the hypothesis will change into knowledge; it will be a matter of your own first-hand observation, so that you will be able to verify the theories you originally accepted only as working hypothesis.

Our possibilities, then, of mastering the astral world, and of becoming of real service there, depend first of all on this process of purification. There are definite methods of Yoga by which development of the astral senses may be helped forward in a rational and healthy way, but it is not of the least use to try to teach these to anyone who has not been using these simple preparatory means of purification. It is a common experience that people are very anxious to try some new and unusual method of progress, but it is idle to instruct people in Yoga when they will not even practice these preparatory stages in their ordinary life. Suppose one began to teach some very simple form of Yoga to an ordinary unprepared person; he would take it up eagerly and enthusiastically because it was new, because it was strange, because he hoped for very quick results, and before he had been working at it for even a year he would get tired of the regular strain of it in his daily life and disheartened by the absence of immediate effect; unused to persistent effort, steadily maintained day after day, he would break down and give up his practice; the novelty outworn, weariness would soon assert itself. If a person cannot or will not accomplish the simple and comparatively easy duty of purifying the physical and astral bodies by using a temporary self-denial to break the bonds of evil habits in eating and drinking, it is idle for him to hanker after more difficult processes which attract by reason of their novelty and would soon be dropped as an intolerable burden. All talk even of special methods is idle until these ordinary humble means have been practiced for some time; but with the purification new possibilities will begin to show themselves. The pupil will find knowledge gradually flow into him, keener vision will awaken, vibrations will reach him from every side, arousing in him response which could not have been made by him in the days of blindness and obtuseness. Sooner or later, according to the Karma of his past, this experience becomes his, and just as a child mastering the difficulties of the alphabet has the pleasure of the book it can read, so the student will find coming to his knowledge and under his control possibilities of which he had not dreamed in his careless days, new vistas of knowledge opening out before him, a wider universe unfolding on every side.

If, now, for a few moments, we study the astral body as regards its functions in the sleeping and waking states, we shall be able easily and rapidly to appreciate its functions when it becomes a vehicle of consciousness apart from the body. If we study a person when he is awake and when he is asleep, we shall become aware of one very marked change as regards the astral body; when he is awake, the astral activities - the changing colours and so on - all manifest themselves in and immediately around the physical body; but when he is asleep a separation has occurred, and we see the physical body - the dense body and the etheric double - lying by themselves on the bed, while the astral body is floating in the air above them.* [* See for a fuller description the articles on “Dreams” before referred to.]  If the person we are studying is one of mediocre

development, the astral body when separated from the physical is the somewhat shapeless mass before described; it cannot go far away from its physical body, it is useless as a vehicle of consciousness and the man within it is in a very vague and dream condition, unaccustomed to act away from his physical vehicle; in fact, he may be said to be almost asleep, failing the medium through which he has been accustomed to work, and he is not able to receive definite impressions from the astral world or express himself clearly through the poorly-organized astral body. The centres of sensation in it may be affected by passing thought-forms, and he may answer in it to stimuli that rouse the lower nature; but the whole effect given to the observer is one of sleepiness and vagueness, the astral body lacking all definite activity and floating idly, inchoate, above the sleeping physical form. If anything should occur tending to lead or drive it away from its physical partner, the latter will awaken and the astral will quickly reenter it. But if a person be observed who is much more developed, say one who is accustomed to function in the astral world and to use the astral body for that purpose, it will be seen that when the physical body goes to sleep and the astral body slips out of it, we have the man himself before us in full consciousness; the astral body is clearly outlined and definitely organized, bearing the likeness of the man, and the man is able to use it as a vehicle - a vehicle far more convenient than the physical. He is wide awake, and is working far more actively, more accurately, with greater power of comprehension, than when he was confined in the denser physical vehicle, and he can move about freely and with immense rapidity at any distance, without causing the least disturbance to the sleeping body on the bed.

If such a person has not yet learned to link together his astral and physical vehicles, if there be a break in consciousness when the astral body slips out as he falls asleep, then, while he himself will be wide awake and fully conscious on the astral plane, he will not be able to impress on the physical brain on his return to his denser vehicle the knowledge of what he has been doing during his absence; under these circumstances his "waking" consciousness - as it is the habit to term the most limited form of our consciousness - will not share the man's experiences in the astral world, not because be does not know them, but because the physical organism is too dense to receive these impressions from him. Sometimes, when the physical body awakes, there is a feeling that something has been experienced of which no memory remains; yet this very feeling shows that there has been some functioning of consciousness in the astral world away from the physical body, though the brain is not sufficiently receptive to have even an evanescent memory of what has occurred. At other times, when the astral body returns to the physical, the man succeeds in making a momentary impression on the etheric double and dense body, and when the latter is awake there is a vivid memory of an experience gained in the astral world; but the memory quickly vanishes and refuses to be recalled, every effort rendering success more impossible, as each effort sets up strong vibrations in the physical brain, and still further overpowers the subtler vibrations of the astral. Or yet again, the man may succeed in impressing new knowledge on the physical brain without being able to convey the memory of where or how that knowledge was gained; in such cases ideas will arise in the waking consciousness as though spontaneously generated, solutions will come of problems before uncomprehended, light will be thrown on questions before obscure. When this occurs, it is an encouraging sign of progress, showing that the astral body is well organized and is functioning actively in the astral world, although the physical body is still but very partially receptive. Sometimes, however, the man succeeds in making the physical brain respond, and then we have what is regarded as a very vivid, reasonable and coherent dream, the kind of dream which most thoughtful people have occasionally enjoyed, in which they feel more alive, not less, than when "awake," and in which they may even receive knowledge which is helpful to them in their physical life. All these are stages of progress marking the evolution and improving organization of the astral body.

But, on the other hand, it is well to understand that persons who are making real and even rapid progress in spirituality may be functioning most actively and usefully in the astral world without impressing on the brain when they return the slightest memory of the work in which they have been engaged, although they may be aware in their lower consciousness of an ever-increasing illumination and widening knowledge of spiritual truth. There is one fact which all students may take as a matter of encouragement, and on which they may rely with confidence, however blank their physical memory may be as regards super-physical experiences: as we learn to work more and more for others, as we endeavour to become more and more useful to the world, as we grow stronger and steadier in our devotion to the Elder Brothers of humanity, and seek ever more earnestly to perform perfectly our little share in Their great work, we are inevitably developing that astral body and that power of functioning in it which render us more efficient servants; whether with or without physical memory, we leave our physical prisons in deep sleep and work along useful lines of activity in the astral world, helping people we should otherwise be unable to reach, aiding and comforting in ways we could not otherwise employ. This evolution is going on with those who are pure in mind, elevated in thought, with their hearts set on the desire to serve. They may be working for many a year in the astral world without bringing back the memory to their lower consciousness, and exercising powers for good to the world far beyond anything of which they suppose themselves to be capable: to them, when Karma permits, shall come the full unbroken consciousness which passes at will between the physical and astral worlds; the bridge shall be made which lets the memory cross from the one to the other without effort, so that the man returning from his activities in the astral world will don again his physical vesture without a moment's loss of consciousness. This is the certainty that lies before all those who choose the life of service. They will one day acquire this unbroken consciousness; and then to them life shall no longer be composed of days of memoried work and nights of oblivion, but it will be a continuous whole, the body put aside to take the rest necessary for it, while the man himself uses the astral body for his work in the astral world; then they will keep the links of thought unbroken, knowing when they leave the physical body, knowing while they are passing out of it, knowing their life away from it, knowing when they return and again put it on: thus they will carry on week after week, year after year, the unbroken, unwearied consciousness which gives the absolute certainty of the existence of the individual Self, of the fact that the body is only a garment that they wear, put on and off at pleasure, and not a necessary instrument of thought and life. They will know that so far from its being necessary to either, life is far more active, thought far more untrammelled without it.

When this stage is reached a man begins to understand the world and his own life in it far better than he did before, begins to realize more of what lies in front of him, more of the possibilities of the higher humanity. Slowly he sees that just as man acquires first physical and then astral consciousness, so there stretch above him other and far higher ranges of consciousness that he may acquire one after the other, becoming active on loftier planes, ranging through wider worlds, exercising vaster powers, and all as the servant of the Holy Ones for the assistance and benefit of humanity. Then physical life begins to assume its true proportion, and nothing that happens in the physical world can affect him as it did ere he knew the fuller, richer life, and nothing that death can do can touch him either in himself or in those he desires to assist. The earth-life takes its true place as the smallest part of human activity, and it can never again be as dark as it used to be, for the light of the higher regions shines down into its obscurest recesses.

Turning from the study of the functions and possibilities of the astral body, let us consider now certain phenomena connected with it. It may show itself to other people apart from the physical body, either during or after earth-life. A person who has complete mastery over the astral body can, of course, leave the physical at any time and go to a friend at a distance. If the person thus visited be clairvoyant, i.e., has developed astral sight, he will see his friend's astral body; if not, such visitor might slightly densify his vehicle by drawing into it from the surrounding atmosphere particles of physical matter, and thus "materialize" sufficiently to make himself visible to physical sight.  This is the explanation of many of the appearances of friends at a

distance, phenomena which are far more common than most people imagine, owing to the reticence of timid folk who are afraid of being laughed at as superstitious. Fortunately that fear is lessening, and if people would only have the courage and common sense to say what they know to be true, we should soon have a large mass of evidence on the appearances of people whose physical bodies are far away from the places where their astral bodies show themselves. These bodies may, under certain circumstances, be seen by those who do not normally exercise astral vision, without materialization being resorted to. If a person's nervous system be overstrained and the physical body be in weak health, so that the pulses of vitality throb less strongly than usual, the nervous activity so largely dependent on the etheric double may be unduly stimulated, and under these conditions the man may become temporarily clairvoyant. A mother, for instance, who knows her son to be dangerously ill in a foreign land, and who is racked by anxiety about him, may thus become susceptible to astral vibrations, especially in the hours of the night at which vitality is at its lowest; under these conditions, if her son be thinking of her, and his physical body be unconscious, so as to permit him to visit her astrally, she will be likely to see him. More often such a visit is made when the person has just shaken off the physical body at death. These appearances are by no means uncommon, especially where the dying person has a strong wish to reach someone to whom he is closely bound by affection, or where he desires to communicate some particular piece of information, and has passed away without fulfilling his wish.

If we follow the astral body after death, when the etheric double has been shaken off as well as the dense body, we shall observe a change in its appearance. During its connection with the physical body the sub-states of astral matter are intermixed with each other, the denser and the rarer kinds inter-penetrating and intermingling. But after death a rearrangement takes place, and the particles of the different sub-states separate from each other, and, as it were, sort themselves out in the order of their respective densities, the astral body thus assuming a stratified condition, or becoming a series of concentric shells of which the densest is outside. And here we are again met with the importance of purifying the astral body during our life on earth, for we find that it cannot, after death, range the astral world at will; that world has its seven sub-planes, and the man is confined to the sub-plane to which the matter of his external shell belongs; as this outermost covering disintegrates he rises to the next sub-plane, and so on from one to another. A man of very low and animal tendencies would have in his astral body much of the grossest and densest kind of astral matter, and this would hold him down on the lowest level of Kâmaloka; until this shell is disintegrated to a great extent the man must remain imprisoned in that section of the astral world, and suffer the annoyances of that most undesirable locality. When this outermost shell is sufficiently disintegrated to allow escape, the man passes to the next level of the astral world, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that he is able to come into contact with the vibrations of the next sub-plane of astral matter, thus seeming to himself to be in a different region: there he remains till the shell of the sixth sub-plane is worn away and permits his passage to the fifth, his stay on each sub-plane corresponding to the strength of those parts of his nature represented in the astral body by the amount of the matter belonging to that sub-plane. The greater the quantity, then, of the grosser sub-states of matter, the longer the stay on the lower kâmalokic levels, and the more we can get rid of those elements here the briefer will be the delay on the other side of death. Even where the grosser materials are not eliminated completely - a process long and difficult being necessary for their entire eradication - the consciousness may during earth-life be so persistently withdrawn from the lower passions that the matter by which they can find expression will cease to function actively as a vehicle of consciousness - will become atrophied, to borrow a physical analogy. In such case, though the man will be held for a short time on the lower levels, he will sleep peacefully through them, feeling none of the disagreeables accompanying them; his consciousness, having ceased to seek expression through such kinds of matter, will not pass outwards through them to contact objects composed of them in the astral world.

The passage through Kâmaloka of one who has so purified the astral body that he has only retained in it the purest and finest elements of each sub-plane - such as would at once pass into the matter of the sub-plane next above if raised another degree - is swift indeed. There is a point known as the critical point between every pair of sub-states of matter; ice may be raised a point at which the least increment of heat will change it into liquid; water may be raised to a point at which the next increment will change it into vapour. So each sub-state of astral matter may be carried to a point of fineness at which any additional refinement would transform it into the next sub-state. If this has be done for every sub-state of matter in the astral body, it has been purified to the last possible degree of delicacy, then its passage through Kâmaloka will be of inconceivable rapidity, and the man will flash through it untrammeled in his flight to loftier regions.

One other matter remains in connection with the purification of the astral body, both by physical and mental processes, and that is the effect of such purification on the new astral body that will in due course of time be formed for use in the next succeeding incarnation. When the man passes out of Kâmaloka into Devachan, he cannot carry thither with him thought-forms of an evil type; astral matter cannot exist on the devachanic level, and devachanic matter cannot answer to the coarse vibrations of evil passions and desires. Consequently all that the man can carry with him when he finally shakes off the remnants of his astral body will be the latent germs or tendencies which, when they can find nutriment or outlet, manifest as evil desires and passions in the astral world. But these he does take with him, and they lie latent throughout his devachanic life. When he returns for rebirth he brings these back with him and throws them outwards; they draw to themselves from the astral world by a kind of magnetic affinity the appropriate materials for their manifestation, and clothe themselves in astral matter congruous with their own nature, so forming part of the man's astral body for the impending incarnation. Thus we are not only living in an astral body now, but are fashioning the type of the astral body which will be ours in another birth - one reason the more for purifying the present astral body to the utmost, using our present knowledge to ensure our future progress.

For all our lives are linked together, and none of them can be broken away from those that lie behind it or from those that stretch in front. In truth, we have but one life in which what we call lives are really only days. We never begin a new life with a clean sheet on which to write an entirely new story; we do but begin a new chapter which must develop the old plot. We can no more get rid of the karmic liabilities of a preceding life by passing through death, than we can get rid of the pecuniary liabilities incurred on one day by sleeping through a night; if we incur a debt today we are not free of it tomorrow, but the claim is presented until it is discharged. The life of man is continuous, unbroken; the earth lives are linked together, and not isolated. The processes of purification and development are also continuous, and must be carried on through many successive earth-lives. Some time or other each of us must begin the work; some time or other each will grow weary of the sensations of the lower nature, weary of being in subjection to the animals, weary of the tyranny of the senses. Then the man will no longer consent to submit, he will decide that the bonds of his captivity shall be broken. Why, indeed, should we prolong our bondage, when it is in our own power to break it at any moment? No hand can bind us save our own, and no hand save our own can set us free. We have our right of choice, our freedom of will, and inasmuch as one day we shall all stand together in the higher world, why should we not begin at once to break our bondage, and to claim our divine birthright? The beginning of the shattering of the fetters, of the winning of liberty, is when a man determines that he will make the lower nature the servant of the higher, that here on the plane of physical consciousness he will begin the building of the higher bodies, and will seek to realize those loftier possibilities which are his by right divine, and are only obscured by the animal in which he lives.