Section 5

* See for a fuller description the articles on '* Dreams" be- fore referred to.
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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 sleepi- ness 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 lat- ter will awaken and the astral will quickly re-enter 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 ac- curately, with greater power of comprehension, than when he is 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
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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 be- cause he 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 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 suc- cess more impossible, as each effort sets up strong vi- brations in the physical brain, and still further over- powers 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
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astral bod}^ 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, reason- able, 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 help- ful to them in their physical life. All these are stages of progress, marking the evolution and improving or- ganization 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 ex- periences : 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
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body and that power of functioning in it which render us more efficient servants ; whether with or without phy- sical 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 other- wise 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 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 continous 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
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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 in- dividual Self, of the fact that the body is only a gar- ment 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 with- out it.
I When this stage is reached a man begins to under- stand 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 phy- sical life begins to assume its true proportion, and noth- ing 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 possi-
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)ilities of the astral body, let us consider now certain )henomena connected with it. It may show itself to ither people apart from the physical body, either during •r after earth-life. A persoii who has complete mastery >ver the astral body can, of course, leave the physical .t any time and go to a friend at a distance. If the )erson thus visited be clairvoyant, i.e., has developed .stral sight, he will see his friend's astral body if not, uch a visitor might slightly densify his vehicle by draw- ng into it from the surrounding atmosphere particles f physical matter, and thus "materialize" sufficiently 0 make himself visible to physical sight. This is the xplanation of many of the appearances of friends at a [istance, phenomena which are far more common than Qost people imagine, owing to the reticence of timid oik who are afraid of being laughed at as superstitious, ^'ortunately that fear is lessening, and if people would •nly have the courage and common sense to say what hey know to be true, we should soon have a large mass f evidence on the appearances of people whose physical >odies are far away from the places where their astral lodies show themselves. These bodies may, under cer- ain circumstances, be seen by those who do not normally xercise astral vision, without materialization being re- orted to. If a person's nervous system be overstrained -nd the physical body be in weak health so that the )ulses of vitality throb less strongly than usual, the lervous activity so largely dependent on the etheric Louble may be unduly stimulated, and under these con- Litions the man may become temporarily clairvoyant.
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A mother, for instance, who knows her son to be dan- gerously ill in a foreign land, and who is racked by anxiety about him, may thus become susceptible to as- tral 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 un- conscious, 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 uncom- mon, especially where the dying person has a strong wish to reach some one to whom he is closely bound by affection, or where he desires to communicate some par- ticular piece of information, and has passed away with- out 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. Dur- ing its connection with the physical body the sub-states of astral matter are intermixed with each other, the denser and the rarer kinds interpenetrating and inter- mingling. But after death a re-arrangement 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
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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 Kamaloka ; 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 Rub-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 pas- sage to the fifth, his stay on each sub-plane correspond- ing to the strength of those parts of his nature repre- sented 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 kamalokic levels, and the more we can get rid of those elements here the briefer will be the de- lay 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 persis- tently withdrawn from the lower passions that the mat-
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ter by which they can find expression will cease to func- tion 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, feel- ing 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 Kamaloka 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 to 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 trans- form it into the next sub-state. If this has been done for every sub-state of matter in the astral body, if it has been purified to the last possible degree of delicacy, then its passage through Kamaloka will be of inconceivable rapidity, and the man will flash through it untrammelled in his flight to loftier regions.
One other matter remains in connection with the purification of the astral body, both by physical and
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mental processes, and that is the effect of such purifica- tion on the new astral body that will in due course of time be formed for use in the next succeeding incarna- tion. When the man passes out of Kamaloka 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 manifesta- tion, 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 fash- ioning 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 insure 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, i]i which wliat we call lives are really only
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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 pre- ceding 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 to-day we are not free of it to-morrow, 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 animal, weary of the ty- ranny of the senses. Then the man will no longer con-, sent to submit, he will decide that the bonds of his cap- tivity 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 be- ginning 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