CHAPTER IV.

THE CONSTITUTION
OF MAN.
The astounding practical material- ism to which we have been reduced in this country can hardly be more clearly shown than it is by the expressions that we employ in common life. We speak quite ordinarily of man as having a soul, of "saving" our souls, and so on, evidently regarding the physical body as the real man and the soul as a mere appanage, a vague something to be considered as the property of the body. With an idea so little defined as this, it can hardly be a matter of sur- prise that many people go a little fur- ther along the same lines, and doubt whether this vague something exists at all. So it would seem that the or- dinary man is very often quite uncer- tain whether he possesses a soul or not ; still less does he know that that soul
The Constitution of Man. 33
is immortal. That he should remain in this pitiable condition of ignorance seems strange, for there is a very great deal of evidence available, even in the outer world, to show that man has an existence quite apart from his body, capable of being carried on at a dis- tance from it while it is living, and en- tirely without it when it is dead.
Until we have entirely rid ourselves of this extraordinary delusion that the body is the man, it is quite impossible that we should at all appreciate the real facts of the case. A little investigation immediately shows us that the body is only a vehicle by means of which the man manifests himself in connection with this particular type of gross mat- ter out of which our visible world is built.
Furthermore, it shows that other and subtler types of matter exist — not only the ether admitted by modern science as interpenetrating all known sub- stances, but other types of matter which interpenetrate ether in turn, and are
34 An Outline of Theosopby.
as much finer than ether as it is than solid matter.
The question will naturally occur to the reader as to how it will be possible for man to become conscious of the existence of types of matter so wonder- fully fine, so minutely subdivided. The answer is that he can become conscious of them in the same way as he becomes conscious of the lower matter — by re- ceiving vibrations from them. And he is enabled to receive vibrations from them by reason of the fact that he possesses matter of these finer types as part of himself — that just as his body of dense matter is his vehicle for per- ceiving and communicating with the world of dense matter, so does the finer matter within him constitute for him a vehicle by means of which he can perceive and communicate with the world of finer matter which is imper- ceptible to the grosser physical senses.
This is by no means a new idea. It will be remembered that St. Paul re- marks that "there is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body," and that
The Constitution of Man. 35
he furthermore refers to both the soul and the spirit in man, by no means employing the two words synonymous- ly, as is so often ignorantly done at the present day. It speedily becomes evi- dent that man is a far more complex being than is ordinarily supposed ; that not only is he a spirit within a soul, but that this soul has various vehicles of different degrees of density, the phy- sical body being only one, and the low- est of them. These various vehicles may all be described as bodies in rela- tion to their respective levels of mat- ter. It might be said that there exist around us a series of worlds one within the other (by interpenetration), and that man possesses a body for each of these worlds by means of which he may observe it and live in it.
He learns by degrees how to use these various bodies, and in that way gains a much more complete idea of the great complex world in which he lives ; for all these other inner worlds are in reality still part of it. In this way he
36 An Outline of Theosophy.
comes to understand very many things which before seemed mysterious to him; he ceases to identify himself with his bodies, and learns that they are only vestures which he may put off and resume or change without being himself in the least affected thereby. Once more we must repeat that all this is by no means metaphysical specula- tion or pious opinion, but definite scien- tific fact, thoroughly well known ex- perimentally to those who have studied Theosophy. Strange as it may seem to many to find precise statements taking the place of hypotheses upon questions such as these, I am speaking here of nothing that is not known by direct and constantly-repeated observation to a large number of students. Assuredly "we know whereof we speak/' not by faith but by experiment, and therefore we speak with confidence.
To these inner worlds or different levels of nature we usually give the name of planes. We speak of the vis- ible world as "the physical plane/'
The Constitution of Man. 37
though under that name we include also the gases and the various grades of ether. To the next stage of mater- iality the name of "the astral plane" was given by the mediaeval alchemists (who were \vell aware of its exist- ence), and we have adopted their title. Within this exists yet another world of still finer matter, of which we speak as "the mental plane," because of its matter is composed what is commonly called the mind in man. There are other still higher planes, but I need not trouble the reader with designa- tions for them, since we are at present dealing only with man's manifestation in the lower worlds.
It must always be borne in mind that all these worlds are in no way removed from us in space. In fact, they all occupy exactly the same space, and are all equally about us always. At the moment our consciousness is focussed in and working through our physical brain, and thus we are con- scious only of the physical world, and
38 An Outline of Theosophy.
not even of the whole of that. But we have only to learn to focus that consciousness in one of these higher vehicles, and at once the physical fades from our view, and we see instead the world of matter which corresponds to the vehicle used.
Recollect that all matter is in es- sence the same. Astral matter does not differ in its nature from physical mat- ter any more than ice differs in its nature from steam. It is simply the same thing in a different condition. Physical matter may become astral, or astral may become mental, if only it be sufficiently subdivided, and caused to vibrate with the proper degree of rapidity.
THE TRUE MAN. What, then, is the true man? He is in truth an emanation from the Lo- gos, a spark of the Divine fire. The spirit within him is of the very essence of the Deity, and that spirit wears his soul as a vesture — a vesture which en- closes and individualizes it, and seems
The Constitution of Man. 39
to our limited vision to separate it for a time from the rest of the Divine Life. The story of the original for- mation of the soul of man, and of the enfolding of the spirit within it, is a beautiful and interesting one, but too long for inclusion in a merely elemen- tary work like this. It may be found in full detail in those of our books which deal with this part of the doctrine. Suffice it here to say that all three as- pects of the Divine Life have their