Section 6

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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.
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The Mind Bodies.
We have already studied at some length the physical and astral bodies of man. We have studied the physi- cal bqth in its visible and invisible parts, working on the physical plane ; we have followed the various lines of its activities, have analj^zed 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 phe- nomena 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 the 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 surround- ing it — as a triple region, wherein man is active during his earthly incarnations and wherein he dwells also dur- ing 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
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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 phy- sical 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-divid- ed 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 arupa, or without body, owing to their extreme subtlety, while the four lower are called rupa, 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 apj^licable. 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 familar with the distinction between the Higher and Lower Manas ; the casual body is that of the Higher J\Ianas, the permanent hody of the Ego, or man, lasting from life to life ; the mind body is that of the Lower ]\Ianas, lasting after death and passing into
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Devachan, but disintegrating when the life on the rupa 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 physi- cal 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 separ- ately 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 be- come conscious of their activity. The mind body is the vehicle of the Ego, the Thinker, for all his reasoning work, but 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 al- ready 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 in- visible to astral sight as well as to physical, far too sub- tle to be perceived even by the ''inner" senses of man. This matter belongs to the fifth plane counting down- wards, or the third plane counting upwards, of our uni- verse, and in this matter the Self manifests as mind,
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as in the next below it (the astral) it manifests as sen- sation. There is one marked peculiarity about the mind body, as its outer part shows itself in the human arua; it grows, increases in size and in activity, in- carnation after incarnation, with the growth and de- velopment of the man himself. This peculiarity is one to which so far we are not 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 organiz§,tion as the man pro- gressed. 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. Look- ing then at a more advanced man, one who is not spirit- ual, 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 develop- ment, and that it has an organization that can be recog- nized as a vehicle of activity ; it is a clear and definitely outlined object, fine in material and beautiful in color, continually vibrating with enormous activity, full of life, full of vigor, the expression of the mind in the world of the mind.
As regards its nature, then made of this subtle mat- ter; 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 in-
tellectnal development becoming also more and more def- initely 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 con- nection with the astral and physical bodies; it is oval — egg-like — in outline, interpenetrating of course the phy- sical 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 beau- tiful 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 the astral world — though surrounded by it — until the astral 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 the mental senses be opened, albeit it surrounds us on every side.
These keener senses, the senses which belong to the 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 the mental ''sense." The mind comes into contact with the things of its own world as it were directly over 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,
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in that region give rise to all these characteristics at 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 re- gion, and there communicates with another student, the mind in speaking speaks at once by color, sound, and form, so that the complete thought is conveyed as a colored 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 color-language, the lan- guage of the Gods ; that language is known to many chelas and is taken, so far as form and color are con- cerned, from the mind world ''speech," in which the vibrations from a single thought give rise to form, to color, and to sound. It is not that the mind thinks a color, 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 vibra- tions set up. The matter of the mind world is constant- ly being thrown into vibrations which give birth to these colors, 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
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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 phj^sical ; 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 of the physical body, we found that the man himself was not conscious of all that was going on in the physi- cal body itself, that its activities were partially inde- pendent of him, that he was not able to think as the tiny separate cells were thinking, that he did not really share that 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. Any one 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
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mind body, which seems to them to be his highest expres- sion, 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 evolu- tion, is beginning to vivify this body and to bring it into pre-eminent 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 work- ing 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 Die 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 think- ing, then, life after life, your mind body cannot grow; life after life yon come back very much as you went out ; life after life you remain as an undeveloped individual.
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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 do not know how; thoughts that arrive you do not know whence ; thoughts that take themselves off again you do not know whither ; and you will begin to feel, probably with some distress and disappointment, that instead of the mind being highly evolved it is little more than a place through which thoughts are passing. Try your- self, and see how much of the content of your conscious- ness 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 noth- ing— a very common experience — :or that you are think- ing so vaguely 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.
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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 wel- come into your mind all thoughts that are good and use- ful, 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 mak- ing 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 harborage 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 surround- ing 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 ma- terial which will form its content, and will grow richer
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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 pro- perly belongs, and he will use his devachanic life in working up into faculties and powers the whole of the n>.aterials which it has stored.