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--solid matter of the astral
world.* We have found seven sub-states of physical matter--solid,
liquid, gaseous, and four etheric--under which are
*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. [See also The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception and The
Desire Body by Max Heindel.--B.S.F.]
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 Jļva, the One Life animating all, and by means of the astral
matter currents of Jļva surround, sustain, nourish every particle of physical
matter, the currents of Jļva 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, Jļva
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 Vedantin 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.*
*[In this regard,
e-motions--which originate in the astral or desire body--are indeed
actualized thoughts, or thoughts put into motion. It is these emotions
or actualized thoughts which impel us to action--one of the proper functions
of the astral or desire body. From this consideration, it is evident how
crucial it is for us to control our mental life and the kind of thoughts we
harbor and encourage as part of our inner life. Furthermore, it is our
responsibility to create wholesome "desire or astral elementals"--our own
thought-forms clothed with astral "substance" or "desire-stuff" to become
emotional-forms--which are assimilated by other people through their own
astral bodies. The emotional-forms and thought-forms created by the persons
inhabiting any area make up the psychic atmosphere of that area: wholesome or
harmful as the case may be. The psychic atmosphere of any area impacts the
behavior of the inhabitants as a whole of that area.--B.S.F.]
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 kāmic aura, as belonging to the Kāma or desire-body,
commonly called the astral body of man.** For the astral body is the
vehicle of man's kāmic consciousness, the seat of all
**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 kāmic aura, then, is
merely such part of the kāmic body as extends beyond the physical.
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.* If the person we are
studying is one of mediocre
*See for a fuller
description the articles on "Dreams" before referred to. [See also The
Silver Cord and the Seed-Atoms, The Rosicrucian Fellowship, Oceanside,
California.--B.S.F.]
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
*[This phenomenon
has been called the Māyāvi Rūpa or "illusionary body."--B.S.F.]
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 Kāmaloka; 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 kāmalokic 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 Kāmaloka 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 Kāmaloka 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
Kāmaloka into Devachan*, he cannot carry thither with him thought-forms
of an evil
*[Devachan
means, literally, "dwelling place of the gods," and is the World of Thought or
Manāsic World--to be treated in the next section.--B.S.F.]
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
**[These are the
Skāndas or "bundles" of tendencies which are stored in the more
permanent seed-atoms or archetypal energy patterns which define the
accumulated nature of the Ego from life to life.--B.S.F.]
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.
THE
MIND BODIES
We have already studied at some length the physical and astral bodies of
man. We have studied the physical both in its visible and invisible parts,
working on the physical plane; we have followed the various lines of its
activities, have analysed the nature of its growth, and have dwelt upon its
gradual purification . Then we have considered the astral body in a similar
fashion, tracing its growth and functions, dealing with the phenomena
connected with its manifestation on the astral plane, and also with its
purification. Thus we have gained some idea of human activity on two out
of seven great planes of our universe. Having done so, we can
now pass on to the third great plane, the mind world; when we have
learned something of this we shall have under our eyes the physical, the
astral, and the mental worlds--our globe and the two spheres surrounding
it--as a triple region, wherein man is active during his earthly incarnations
and wherein he dwells also during the periods which intervene between the
death that closes one earth-life and the birth which opens another.
These three concentric spheres are man's school-house and kingdom: in
them he works out his development, in them his evolutionary pilgrimage; beyond
them he may not consciously pass until the gateway of Initiation has opened
before him, for out of these three worlds there is no other way.
This third region, that I have called the mind world, includes, though it
is not identical with, that which is familiar to Theosophists under the name
of Devachan or Devaloka, the land of the Gods, the happy or blessed land, as
some translate it. Devachan bears that name because of its nature and
condition, nothing interfering with that world which may cause pain or sorrow;
it is a specially guarded state, into which positive evil is not allowed to
intrude, the blissful resting-place of man in which he peacefully assimilates
the fruits of his physical life.
A preliminary word of explanation regarding the mind world as a whole is
necessary in order to avoid confusion. While, like the other regions, it
is sub-divided into seven sub-planes, it has the peculiarity that these seven
are grouped into two sets--a three and a four. The three upper sub-planes are
technically called arūpa, or without body, owing to their extreme subtlety,
while the four lower are called rūpa, or with body. Man has two
vehicles of consciousness, consequently, in which he functions on this plane,
to both of which the term mind body is applicable. The lower of these,
the one with which we shall first deal, may, however, be allowed to usurp the
exclusive use of the name until a better one be found for it; for the higher
one is known as the causal body, for reasons which will become clear further
on. Students will be familiar with the distinction between the Higher and
Lower Manas; the causal body is that of the Higher Manas, the
permanent body of the Ego, or man, lasting from life to life; the mind
body is that of the Lower Manas, lasting after death and passing into
Devachan, but disintegrating when the life on the rūpa levels of
Devachan is over.
(a) The Mind Body.-This vehicle
of consciousness belongs to, and is formed of, the matter of the four lower
levels of Devachan. While it is especially the vehicle of consciousness for
that part of the mental plane, it works upon and through the astral and
physical bodies in all the manifestations that we call those of the mind in
our ordinary waking consciousness. In the undeveloped man, indeed, it cannot
function separately on its own plane as an independent vehicle of
consciousness during his earthly life, and when such a man exercises his
mental faculties, they must clothe themselves in astral and physical matter
ere he can become conscious of their activity.* The mind body is the
vehicle of the Ego, the Thinker, for all his reasoning work, but
*[This entanglement
of the lower mind with the desire nature has been called Kāma Manas or "desire
mind".--B.S.F.]
during his early life it is feebly organized and somewhat inchoate and
helpless, like the astral body of the undeveloped man.
The matter of which the mind body is composed is of an exceedingly rare
and subtle kind. We have already seen that astral matter is much less dense
than even the ether of the physical plane, and we have now to enlarge our
conception of matter still further, and to extend it to include the idea of a
substance invisible to astral sight as well as to physical, far too subtle to
be perceived even by the "inner" senses of man. This matter belongs to the
fifth plane counting downwards, or the third plane counting upwards, of our
universe, and in this matter the Self manifests as mind, as in the next below
it (the astral) it manifests as sensation. There is one marked peculiarity
about the mind body, as its outer part shows itself in the human aura; it
grows, increases in size and in activity, incarnation after incarnation, with
the growth and development of the man himself. This peculiarity is one to
which so far we are now accustomed. A physical body is built incarnation after
incarnation, varying according to nationality and sex, but we think of it as
very much the same in size since Atlantean days. In the astral body we found
growth in organization as the man progressed. But the mind body
literally grows in size with the advancing evolution of the man. If we
look at a very undeveloped person, we shall find that the mind body is even
difficult to distinguish--that it is so little evolved that some care is
necessary to see it at all. Looking then at a more advanced man, one who is
not spiritual, but who has developed the faculties of the mind, who has
trained and developed the intellect, we shall find that the mind body is
acquiring a very definite development, and that it has an organization that
can be recognized as a vehicle of activity; it is a clear and definitely
outlined object, fine in material and beautiful in colour, continually
vibrating with enormous activity, full of life, full of vigour, the expression
of the mind in the world of the mind.
As regards its nature, then, made of this subtle matter; as regards its
functions, the immediate vehicle in which the Self manifests as intellect; as
regards its growth, growing life after life in proportion to the intellectual
development, becoming also more and more definitely organized as the
attributes and the qualities of the mind become more and more clearly marked.
It does not, like the astral body, become a distinct representation of the man
in form and feature when it is working in connection with the astral and
physical bodies; it is oval--egg-like--in outline, interpenetrating of course
the physical and astral bodies, and surrounding them with a radiant atmosphere
as it develops--becoming, as I said, larger and larger as the intellectual
growth increases. Needless to say, this egg-like form becomes a very beautiful
and glorious object as the man develops the higher capacities of the mind: it
is not visible to astral sight, but is clearly seen by the higher vision which
belongs to the world of mind. Just as an ordinary man living in the physical
world sees nothing of astral world--though surrounded by it--until the as
senses are opened, so a man in whom only the physical and astral senses are
active will see nothing of the mind world, or of forms composed of its matter,
unless mental senses be opened, albeit it surrounds us on every side.
These keener senses, the senses which belong to mind world, differ very
much from the senses with which we are familiar here. The very word "senses"
in fact, is a misnomer, for we ought rather to say mental "sense." The mind
comes into contact with the things of its own world as it were directly oven
its whole surface. There are no distinct organs for sight, hearing, touch,
taste and smell; all the vibrations which we should here receive through
separate sense-organs, in that region give rise to all these characteristics
once when they come into touch with the mind. The mind body receives them all
at one and the same time and is, as it were, conscious all over of everything
which is able to impress it at all.
It is not easy to convey in words any clear idea of the way this sense
receives an aggregate of impressions without confusion, but it may perhaps be
best described by saying that if a trained student passes into that region,
and there communicates with another student, the mind in speaking speaks at
once by colour, sound and form, so that the complete thought is conveyed as a
coloured and musical picture instead of only a fragment of it being shown, as
is done here by the symbols we call words. Some readers may have heard of
ancient books written by great Initiates in colour-language, the language of
the Gods; that language is known to many chelās, and is taken, so far as form
and colour are concerned, from the mind-world "speech," in which the
vibrations from a single thought give rise to form, to colour, and to sound.
It is not that the mind thinks a colour, or thinks a sound, or thinks a form;
it thinks a thought, a complex vibration in subtle matter, and that thought
expresses itself in all these ways by the vibrations set up. The matter of the
mind world is constantly being thrown into vibrations which give birth to
these colours, to these sounds, to these forms; and if a man be functioning in
the mind body apart from the astral and the physical, he finds himself
entirely freed from the limitations of their sense-organs, receptive at every
point to every vibration that in the lower world would present itself as
separate and different from its fellows.
When, however, a man is thinking in his waking consciousness and is
working through his astral and physical bodies, then the thought has its
producer in the mind body and passes out, first to the astral and then to the
physical; when we think, we are thinking by our mind body--that is, the agent
of thought, the consciousness which expresses itself as "I". The "I" is
illusory, but it is the only "I" known to the majority of us. When we were
dealing with the consciousness the physical body, we found that the man
himself was not conscious of all that was going on in the physical body
itself, that its activities were partially independent of him, that he was not
able to think as the tiny separate cells were thinking, that he did not really
share the consciousness of the body as a whole. But when we come to the mind
body we come to a region so closely identified with the man that it seems to
be himself. "I think," "I know"--can we go behind that? The mind is the Self
in the mind body, and it is that which for most of us seems the goal of our
search after the Self. But this is only true if we are confined to the waking
consciousness. Anyone who has learned that the waking consciousness, like the
sensations of the astral body, is only a stage of our journey as we seek the
Self, and who has further learned to go beyond it, will be aware that this in
its turn is but an instrument of the real man. Most of us, however, as I say,
do not separate, cannot separate in thought the man from his mind body, which
seems to them to be his highest expression, his highest vehicle, the highest
self they can in any way touch or realize. This is the more natural and
inevitable in that the individual, the man, at this stage of evolution, is
beginning to vivify this body and to bring it into preeminent activity. He has
vivified the physical body as a vehicle of consciousness in the past, and is
using it in the present as a matter of course. He is vivifying the astral body
in the backward members of the race, but in very large numbers this work is at
least partially accomplished; in this Fifth Race he is working at the mind
body, and the special work on which humanity should now be engaged is the
building, the evolution of this body.
We are, then, much concerned to understand how the mind body is built and
how it grows. It grows by thought. Our thoughts are the materials we build
into this mind body; by the exercise of our mental faculties, by the
development of our artistic powers, our higher emotions, we are literally
building the mind body day by day, each month and year of our lives. If you
are not exercising your mental abilities; if, so far as your thoughts are
concerned, you are a receptacle and not a creator; if you are constantly
accepting from outside instead of forming from within; if, as you go through
life, the thoughts of other people are crowding into your mind; if this be all
you know of thought and of thinking, then, life after life, your mind body
cannot grow; life after life you come back very much as you went out; life
after life you remain as an undeveloped individual. For it is only by the
exercise of the mind itself, using its faculties creatively, exercising them,
working with them, constantly exerting them--it is only by these means that
the mind body can develop, and that the truly human evolution can proceed.
The very moment you begin to realize this you will probably try to change
the general attitude of your consciousness in daily life; you will begin to
watch its working; and as soon as you do this you will notice that, as just
said, a great deal of your thinking is not your thinking at all, but the mere
reception of the thoughts of other people; thoughts that come you not know
how; thoughts that arrive you do not know whence; thoughts that take
themselves off again you not know whither; and you will begin to feel,
probably with some distress and disappointments that instead of the mind being
highly evolved it is little more than a place through which thoughts are
passing. Try yourself, and see how much of the content of your consciousness
is your own, and how much of it consists merely of contributions from outside.
Stop yourself suddenly now and then during the day, and see what you are
thinking about, and on such a sudden checking you will probably either find
that you are thinking about nothing--a very common experience--or that you are
thinking so vague that a very slight impression is made upon anything you can
venture to call your mind. When you have tried this a good many times, and by
the very trying have become more self-conscious than you were, then begin to
notice the thoughts you find in your mind, and see what difference there is
between their condition when they came into the mind and their condition when
they go out of it--what you have added to them during their stay with you. In
this way your mind will become really active, and will be exercising its
creative powers, and if you be wise you will follow some such process as this:
first, you will choose the thoughts that you will allow to remain in the mind
at all; whenever you find in the mind a thought that is good you will dwell
upon it, nourish it, strengthen it, try to put into it more than it had at
first; and send it out as a beneficent agent into the astral world; when you
find in the mind a thought that is evil you will turn it out with all
imaginable promptitude. Presently you will find that as you welcome into your
mind all thoughts that are good and useful, and refuse to entertain thoughts
which are evil, this result will appear: that more and more good thoughts will
flow into your mind from without, and fewer and fewer evil thoughts will flow
into it. The effect of making your mind full of good and useful
thoughts will be that it will act as a magnet for all the similar thoughts
that are around you; as you refuse to give any sort of habourage to evil
thoughts, those that approach you will be thrown back by an automatic action
of the mind itself. The mind body will take on the characteristic of
attracting all thoughts that are good from the surrounding atmosphere, and
repelling all thoughts that are evil, and it will work upon the good and make
them more active, and so constantly gather a mass of mental material which
will form its content, and will grow richer every year. When the time
comes when the man shall shake off the astral and physical bodies finally,
passing into the mind world, he will carry with him the whole of this
gathered-up material; he will take with him the content of consciousness into
the region to which it properly belongs, and he will use his devachanic life
in working up into faculties and powers the whole of the materials which it
has stored.
At the end of the devachanic period the mind body will hand on to the
permanent causal body the characteristics thus fashioned, that they may be
carried on into the next incarnation. These faculties, as the man
returns, will clothe themselves in the matter of the rūpa planes of the mind
world, forming the more highly organized and developed mind body for the
coming earth-life, and they will show themselves through the astral and
physical bodies as the "innate faculties," those with which the child comes
into the world. During the present life we are gathering together
materials in the way which I have sketched; during the devachan life we work
up these materials, changing them from separate efforts of thought into
faculty of thought, into mental powers and activities. That is the
immense change made during the devachanic life, and inasmuch as it is limited
by the use we are making of the earth-life, we shall do well to spare no
efforts now. The mind body of the next incarnation depends on
the work we are doing in the mind body of the present; here is, then, the
immense importance to the evolution of the man of the use which he is now
making of his mind bodes; it limits his activities in Devachan, and by
limiting those activities it limits the mental qualities with which he will
return for his next life upon earth. We cannot isolate one life from
another, nor miraculously create something out of nothing. Karma brings the
harvest according to our sowing: scanty or plentiful is the crop as the
labourer gives seed and tillage.
The automatic action of the mind body, spoken of above, may perhaps be
better understood if we consider the nature of the materials on which it draws
for its building. The Universal Mind, to which it is allied in its inmost
nature, is the storehouse in its material aspect from which it draws these
materials. They give rise to every kind of vibration, varying in quality and
in power according to the combinations made. The mind body automatically draws
to itself from the general storehouse matter that can maintain the
combinations already existing in it, for there is a constant changing of
particles in the mind body as in the physical, and the place of those which
leave is taken by similar particles that come. If the man finds that he has
evil tendencies and sets to work to change them, he sets up a new set of
vibrations, and the mind body, moulded to respond to the old one resists the
new, and there is conflict and suffering. But gradually, as the older
particles are thrown out and are replaced by others that answer to the new
vibrations--being attracted from outside by their very power to respond to
them--the mind body changes its character, changes, in fact, its materials,
and its vibrations become antagonistic to the evil and attractive to the good.
Hence the extreme difficulty of the first efforts, met and combated by
the old form-aspect of the mind; hence the increasing ease of right thinking
as the old form changes, and finally, the spontaneity and the pleasure that
accompany the new exercise.
Another way of helping the growth of the mind body is the practice
of concentration; that is, the fixing of the mind on a point and holding it
there firmly, not allowing it to drift or wander. We should train
ourselves in thinking steadily and consecutively, not allowing our minds to
run suddenly from one thing to another, not to fritter their energies away
over a large number or insignificant thoughts. It is a good practice to follow
a consecutive line of reasoning, in which one thought grows naturally out of
the thought that went before it, thus gradually developing in ourselves the
intellectual qualities which make our thoughts sequential and therefore
essentially rational; for when the mind thus works, thought following thought
in definite and orderly succession, it is strengthening itself as an
instrument of the Self for activity in the mind world. This
development of the power of thinking with concentration and sequence will show
itself in a more clearly outlined and definite mind body, in a rapidly
increasing growth, in steadiness and balance, the efforts being well repaid by
the progress which results from them.
(b) the Causal Body.--Let us now
pass on to the second mind body, known by its own distinctive name of causal
body. The name is due to the fact that all the causes reside in this body
which manifest themselves as effects on the lower planes. This body is the
"body of Manas," the form-aspect of the individual, of the true man. It
is the receptacle, the storehouse, in which all the man's treasures are stored
for eternity, and it grows as the lower nature hands up more and
more that is worthy to be built into its structure. The causal body is
that into which everything is woven which can endure, and in which are stored
the germs of every quality, to be carried over to the next incarnation; thus
the lower manifestations depend wholly on the growth and development of this
man for "whom the hour never strikes."
The causal body, it is said above, is the form-aspect of the individual.
Dealing, as we do here, only with the present human cycle, we may say
that until that comes into existence there is no man; there may
be the physical and etheric tabernacles prepared for his habitation; passions,
emotions and appetites may gradually be gathered to form the kāmic nature in
the astral body; but there is not man until the growth through the physical
and astral planes has been accomplished, and until the matter of the mind
world is beginning to show itself within the evolved lower bodies. When, by
the power of the Self preparing its own habitation, the matter of the mind
plane begins slowly to evolve, then there is a downpouring from the great
ocean of Ātmā-Buddhi which is ever brooding over the evolution of man--and
this, as it were, meets the upward-growing, unfolding mind-stuff, comes into
union with it, fertilizes it, and at that point of union the causal
body, the individual, is formed. Those who are able to
see in those lofty regions say that this form-aspect of the true man is like a
delicate film of subtlest matter, just visible, marking where the individual
begins his separate life; that delicate, colourless film of subtle matter is
the body that lasts through the whole of the human evolution, the thread on
which all the lives are strung, the reincarnating Sūtrātmā, the "thread-self".
It is the receptacle of all which is in accordance with the Law, of
every attribute which is noble and harmonious, and therefore
enduring.*It is that which marks the growth of man, the stage of
evolution to which he has
*[As such, the
causal body is, in us, the Holy Grail.--B.S.F.]
attained. Every great and noble thought, every pure and lofty emotion, is
carried up and worked into his substance.
Let us take the life of an ordinary man and try to see how much of that
life will pass upwards for the building of the causal body, and let us imagine
it pictorially as a delicate film; it is to be strengthened, to be made
beautiful with colour, made active with life, made radiant and glorious,
increasing in size as the man grows and develops. At a low stage of evolution
he is not showing much mental quality, but rather he is manifesting much
passion, much appetite. He feels sensations and seeks them; they are the
things to which he turns. It is as though this inner life of the man puts
forth a little of the delicate matter of which it is composed, and round that
the mind body gathers; and the mind body puts forth into the astral world, and
there comes into contact with the astral body, and becomes connected with it,
so that a bridge is formed along which anything capable of passing can pass.
The man sends his thoughts downwards by this bridge into the world of
sensations, of passions, of animal life, and the thoughts intermingle with all
these animal passions and emotions; thus the mind body becomes entangled with
the astral body and they adhere to each other and are difficult to separate
when the time of death comes. But if the man, during the life which he is
spending in these lower regions, has an unselfish thought, a thought of
service to someone he loves, and makes some sacrifice in order to do service
to his friend, he has then set up something that is able to endure, something
that is able to live, something that has in it the nature of the higher world;
that can pass upwards to the causal body and be worked into its substance,
making it more beautiful, giving it perhaps its first touch of intensity of
colour; perhaps all through the man's life there will only be a few of these
things that are able to endure, to serve as food for the growth of the real
man. So the growth is very slow, for all the rest of his life does not aid it;
all his evil tendencies born of ignorance and fed by exercise, have their
germs drawn inward and thrown into latency, as the astral body which gave them
home and form is dissipated in the astral world; they are drawn inward into
the mind body and lie latent there, lacking material for expression in the
devachanic world; when the mind body in its turn perishes, they are drawn into
the causal body, and there still lie latent, as in suspended animation. They
are thrown outwards as the Ego, returning to earth-life reaches the astral
world, reappearing there as evil tendencies brought over from the past. Thus
the causal body may be spoken of as the storehouse of evil as well as good,
being all that remains of the man after the lower vehicles are dissipated, but
the good is worked into its texture and aids its growth, while the evil, with
the exception noted below, remains as germ.
But the evil which a man works in life, when he puts into its execution
his thought, does more injury to the causal body than merely to lie latent in
it, as the germ of future sin and sorrow. It is not only that the evil
does not help the growth of the true man, but where it is subtle and
persistent it drags away, if the expression may be permitted, something
of the individual himself. If vice be persistent, if
evil be continually followed, the mind body becomes so entangled with the
astral that after death it cannot free itself entirely, and some of its very
substance is torn away from it, and when the astral dissipates this goes
back to the mind stuff of the mind world and is lost to the
individual; in this way, if we think again of our image of a film, or bubble,
it may be to some extent thinned by vicious living--not only delayed in its
progress, but something wrought upon it which makes it more difficult to build
into. It is as though the film were in some way affected as to capacity of
growth, sterilized or atrophied to some extent.** Beyond this, in
ordinary cases, the harm wrought to the causal body does not go.
**[In this sense,
the causal body--the outer vehicle of the Ego--is sinless because it errs
through omission (i.e., weakness) rather than commission or deliberate
malice.--B.S.F.]
But where the Ego has become strong both in intellect and will without at
the same time increasing in unselfishness and love, where it contracts itself
round its own separated centre instead of expanding as it grows, building a
wall of selfishness around it and using its developing powers for the "I"
instead of for the all; in such cases arises the possibility alluded to in so
many of the world-scriptures, of more dangerous and ingrained evil, of the Ego
setting itself consciously against the Law, of fighting deliberately against
evolution. Then the causal body itself, wrought on by vibrations on the mental
plane of intellect and will, but both turned to selfish ends, shows the dark
hues which result from contraction and loses the dazzling radiance which is
its characteristic property. Such harm cannot be worked by a
poorly developed Ego nor by ordinary passional or mental faults; to effect
injury so far-reaching the Ego must be highly evolved, and must have its
energies potent on the mānasic plane. Therefore is it that ambition,
pride and the powers of the intellect used for selfish aims are so far more
dangerous, so far more deadly in their effects, than the more palpable faults
of the lower nature, and the "Pharisee" is often further from
the "kingdom of God" than "the publican and the sinner." Along this
line is developed the "black magician," the man who conquers passion and
desire, develops will and the higher powers of the mind, not to offer them
gladly as forces to help forward the evolution of the whole, but in order to
grasp all he can for himself as unit, to hold and not to share. These
set themselves to maintain separation as against unity, they strive to retard
instead of to quicken evolution: therefore they vibrate in discord with the
whole instead of in harmony, and are in danger of that rending
of the Ego which means the loss of all the fruits of evolution.***
***[This is perhaps
the greatest calamity that can befall the evolution of an
individual.--B.S.F.]
All of us who are beginning to understand something of this causal body
can make its evolution a definite object in our life; we can strive to think
unselfishly and so contribute to its growth and activity. Life after life,
century after century, millennium after millennium, this evolution of the
individual proceeds, and in aiding its growth by conscious effort we are
working in harmony with the divine will, and carrying out the purpose for
which we are here. Nothing good that is once woven into the texture of
this causal body is ever lost, nothing is dissipated: for this is the man that
lives for ever.
Thus we see that by the law of evolution everything that is evil,
however strong for the time it may seem, has within itself the germ of its own
destruction, while everything that is good has in it the seed of
immortality; the secret of this lies in the fact that everything evil
is inharmonious, that it sets itself against the cosmic law; it is therefore
sooner or later broken up by that law, dashed into pieces against it, crushed
into dust. Everything that is good, on the other hand, being in harmony with
the law, is taken on by it, carried forward; it becomes part of the stream of
evolution, of that "not ourselves which makes for righteousness," and therefor
it can never perish, can never be destroyed. Here lie not only the hope of man
but the certainty of his final triumph; however slow the growth, it is there;
however long the way, it has its ending. The individual which is our Self is
evolving, and cannot now be utterly destroyed; even though by our folly we may
make the growth slower than it need be, none the less everything we contribute
to it, however little, lasts in it for ever and is our possession for all the
ages that lie in front.