THE ROSICRUCIAN COSMO-CONCEPTION, Part One

This book is a more in-depth study of my last post, 'The Rosicrucian Mystery.' As it goes into much greater detail it is too big  to post in one piece so I have split it into four parts. A link to the next part can be found at the bottom and where necessary I have repeated the diagrams to save the reader having to 'flip' back to a previous part. Much of this book gives a lot of food for thought but I must admit that parts of it seem like science fiction. Perhaps I don't know enough yet! Any reader wishing to read the book in one go (quite a task) or download it can find it by clicking on the URL at the top of the page.

T. G.

http://www.rosicrucian.com/rcc/rcceng00.htm

Part One

of

The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception

or

Mystic Christianity

An Elementary Treatise Upon
Man's Past Evolution, Present Constitution
and Future Development

By

Max Heindel

Its Message and Mission:

A SANE MIND
A SOFT HEART
A SOUND BODY

Twenty-eighth Edition

THE ROSICRUCIAN FELLOWSHIP
International Headquarters
Mt. Ecclesia
Oceanside, California, U.S.A.

Creed or Christ

No man loves God who hates his kind,

Who tramples on his brother's heart and soul;

Who seeks to shackle, cloud, or fog the mind

By fears of hell has not perceived our goal.

God-sent are all religions blest;

And Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life,

To give the heavy laden rest

And peace from sorrow, sin, and strife.

Behold the Universal Spirit came

To all the churches, not to one alone;

On Pentecostal morn a tongue of flame

Round each apostle as a halo shone.

Since then, as vultures ravenous with greed,

We oft have battled for an empty name,

And sought by dogma, edict, cult, or creed,

To send each other to the quenchless flame.

Is Christ then twain? Was Cephas, Paul,

To save the world, nailed to the tree?

Then why divisions here at all?

Christ's love enfolds both you and me.

His pure sweet love is not confined

By creed which segregate and raise a wall.

His love enfolds, embraces human kind,

No matter what ourselves or Him we call.

Then why not take Him at His word?

Why hold to creeds which tear apart?

But one thing matters, be it heard

That brother love fill every heart.

There's but one thing the world has need to know.

There's but one balm for all our human woe:

There's but one way that leads to heaven above—

That way is human sympathy and love.

--Max Heindel.

A Word to the Wise

The founder of the Christian Religion stated an occult maxim when He said: "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter therein" (Mark X:15). All occultists recognize the far-reaching importance of this teaching of Christ, and endeavor to "live" it day by day.
When a new philosophy is presented to the world it is met in different ways by different people.
One person will grasp with avidity any new philosophical effort in an endeavor to ascertain how far it supports his own ideas. To such a one the philosophy itself is of minor importance. Its prime value will be its vindication of his ideas. If the work comes up to expectation in that respect, he will enthusiastically adopt it and cling to it with a most unreasoning partisanship; if not, he will probably lay the book down in disgust and disappointment, feeling as if the author had done him an injury.
Another adopts an attitude of skepticism as soon as he discovers that it contains something which he has not previously read, heard, or originated in his own thought. He would probably resent as extremely unjustified the accusation that his mental attitude is the acme of self-satisfaction and intolerance; such is nevertheless the case; and thus he shuts his mind to any truth which may possibly be hidden in that which he off-hand rejects.

Both these classes stand in their own light. "Set" ideas render them impervious to rays of truth. "A little child" is the very opposite of its elders in that respect. It is not imbued with an overwhelming sense of superior knowledge, nor does it feel compelled to look wise or to hide its nescience of any subject by a smile or a sneer. It is frankly ignorant, unfettered by preconceived opinions and therefore eminently teachable. It takes everything with that beautiful attitude of trust which we have designated "child-like faith," wherein there is not the shadow of a doubt. There the child holds the teaching it receives until proven or disproven.

In all occult schools the pupil is first taught to forget all else when a new teaching is being given, to allow neither preference nor prejudice to govern, but to keep the mind in a state of calm, dignified waiting. As skepticism will blind us to truth in the most effective manner, so this calm, trustful attitude of the mind will allow the intuition, or "teaching from within," to become aware of the truth contained in the proposition. That is the only way to cultivate an absolutely certain perception of truth.

The pupil is not required to believe off-hand that a given object which he has observed to be white, is really black, when such a statement is made to him; but he must cultivate an attitude of mind which "believeth all things" as possible. That will allow him to put by for the time being even what are generally considered "established facts," and investigate if perchance there be another viewpoint hitherto unobserved by him whence the object referred to would appear black. Indeed, he would not allow himself to look upon anything as "an established fact," for he realizes thoroughly the importance of keeping his mind in the fluidal state of adaptability which characterizes the little child. He realizes in every fiber of his being that "now we see through a glass, darkly," and Ajax-like he is ever on the alert, yearning for "Light, more Light."

The enormous advantage of such an attitude of mind when investigating any given subject, object or idea must be apparent. Statements which appear positively and unequivocally contradictory, which have caused an immense amount of feeling among the advocates of opposite sides, may nevertheless be capable of perfect reconciliation, as shown in one such instance mentioned in the present work. The bond of concord is only discovered by the open mind, however, and though the present work may be found to differ from others, the writer would bespeak an impartial hearing as the basis of subsequent judgment. If the book is "weighed and found wanting," the writer will have no complaint. He only fears a hasty judgment based upon lack of knowledge of the system he advocates—a hearing wherein the judgment is "wanting" in consequence of having been denied an impartial "weighing." He would further submit, that the only opinion worthy of the one who expresses it must be based upon knowledge.
As a further reason for care in judgment we suggest that to many it is exceedingly difficult to retract a hastily expressed opinion. Therefore it is urged that the reader withhold all expressions of either praise or blame until study of the work has reasonably satisfied him of its merit or demerit.

The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception is not dogmatic, neither does it appeal to any other authority than the reason of the student. It is not controversial, but is sent forth in the hope that is may help to clear some of the difficulties which have beset the minds of students of the deeper philosophies in the past. In order to avoid serious misunderstanding, it should be firmly impressed upon the mind of the student, however, that there is no infallible revelation of this complicated subject, which includes everything under the sun and above it also.

An infallible exposition would predicate omniscience upon the part of the writer, and even the Elder Brothers tell us that they are sometimes at fault in their judgment, so a book which shall say the last word on the World-Mystery is out of the question, and the writer of the present work does not pretend to give aught but the most elementary teachings of the Rosicrucians.

The Rosicrucian Brotherhood has the most far-reaching, the most logical conception of the World-Mystery of which the writer has gained any knowledge during the many years he has devoted exclusively to the study of this subject. So far as he has been able to investigate, their teachings have been found in accordance with facts as he knows them. Yet he is convinced that The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception is far from being the last word on the subject; that as we advance greater vistas of truth will open to us and make clear many things which we now "see through a glass, darkly." At the same time he firmly believes that all other philosophies of the future will follow the same main lines, for they appear to be absolutely true.

In view of the foregoing it will be plain that this book is not considered by the writer as the Alpha and Omega, the ultimate of occult knowledge, and even though is entitled "The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception," the writer desires to strongly emphasize that is not to be understood as a "faith once for all delivered" to the Rosicrucians by a founder of the Order or by any other individual. It is emphatically stated that this work embodies only the writer's understanding of the Rosicrucian teachings concerning the World-Mystery, strengthened by his personal investigations of the inner Worlds, the ante-natal and post-mortem states of man, etc. The responsibility upon one who wittingly or unwittingly leads others astray is clearly realized by the writer, and he wishes to guard as far as possible against that contingency, and also to guard others against going wrong inadvertently.

What is said in this work is to be accepted or rejected by the reader according to his own discretion. All care has been used in trying to make plain the teaching; great pains have been taken to put it into words that shall be easily understood. For that reason only one term has been used throughout to convey each idea. The same word will have the same meaning wherever used. When any word descriptive of an idea is first used, the clearest definition possible to the writer is given. None but English terms and the simplest language have been used. The writer has tried to give as exact and definite descriptions of the subject under consideration as possible; to eliminate all ambiguity and to make everything clear. How far he has succeeded must be left to the student to judge; but having used every possible means to convey the teaching, he feels obliged to guard also against the possibility of this work being taken as a verbatim statement of the Rosicrucian teachings. Neglect of this precaution might give undue weight to this work in the minds of some students. That would not be fair to the Brotherhood nor to the reader. It would tend to throw the responsibility upon the Brotherhood for the mistakes which must occur in this as in all other human works. Hence the above warning.

During the four years which have elapsed since the foregoing paragraphs were written, the writer has continued his investigations of the invisible worlds, and experienced the expansion of consciousness relative to these realms of nature which comes by practice of the precepts taught in the Western Mystery School. Others also who have followed the method of soul-unfoldment herein described as particularly suited to the Western peoples, have likewise been enabled to verify for themselves many things here taught. Thus the writer's understanding of what was given by the Elder Brothers has received some corroboration and seems to have been substantially correct, therefore he feels it a duty to state this for the encouragement of those who are still unable to see for themselves.

If we said that the vital body is built of prisms instead of points, it would have been better, for it is by refraction through these minute prisms that the colorless solar fluid changes to a rosy hue as observed by other writers beside the author.

Other new and important discoveries have also been made; for instance, we know now that the Silver Cord is grown anew in each life, that one part sprouts from the seed atom of the desire body in the great vortex of the liver, that the other part grows out of the seed atom of the dense body in the heart, that both parts meet in the seed atom of the vital body in the solar plexus, and that this union of the higher and lower vehicles causes the quickening. Further development of the cord between the heart and solar plexus during the first seven years has an important bearing on the mystery of child life, likewise its fuller growth from the liver to the solar plexus, which takes place during the second septenary period, is a contributory cause of adolescence. Completion of the Silver Cord marks the end of child life, and from that time the solar energy which enters through the spleen and is tinted by refraction through the prismatic seed atom of the vital body located in the solar plexus, commences to give a distinctive and individual coloring to the aura which we observe in adults.

Introduction

The Western world is undoubtedly the vanguard of the human race, and, for reasons given in the following pages, it is held by the Rosicrucian that neither Judaism nor "popular Christianity," but true Esoteric Christianity is to be its world-religion.

Buddha, great, grand and sublime, may be the "light of Asia," but Christ will yet be acknowledged the "Light of the World." As the sun outshines the brightest star in the heavens, dispels every vestige of darkness and gives life and light to all beings, so, in a not too distant future, will the true religion of Christ supersede and obliterate all other religions, to the eternal benefit of mankind.

In our civilization the chasm that stretches between mind and heart yawns deep and wide and, as the mind flies on from discovery to discovery in the realms of science, the gulf becomes ever deeper and wider and the heart is left further and further behind. The mind loudly demands and will be satisfied with nothing less than a materially demonstrable explanation of man and his fellow-creatures that make up the phenomenal world. The heart feels instinctively that there is something greater, and it yearns for that which it feels is a higher truth than can be grasped by the mind alone. The human soul would fain soar upon ethereal pinions of intuition; would fain lave in the eternal fount of spiritual light and love; but modern scientific views have shorn its wings and it sits fettered and mute, unsatisfied longings gnawing at its tendrils as the vulture of Prometheus' liver.

Is this necessary? Is there no common ground upon which head and heart may meet, each assisting the other, each by the help of the other becoming more effective in the search for universal truth, and each receiving equal satisfaction?

As surely as the pre-existing light created the eye whereby the light is seen; as surely as the primordial desire for growth created the digestive and assimilative system for the attainment of that end; as surely as thought existed before the brain and built and still is building the brain for its expression; as surely as the mind is now forging ahead and wringing her secrets from nature by the very force of its audacity, just so surely will the heart find a way to burst its bonds and gratify its longings. At present it is shackled by the dominant brain. Some day it will gather strength to burst its prison bars and become a power greater than the mind.

It is equally certain that there can be no contradiction in nature, therefore the heart and the mind must be capable of uniting. To indicate this common ground is precisely the purpose of this book. To show where and how the mind, helped by the intuition of the heart, can probe more deeply into the mysteries of being than either could do alone; where the heart, by union with the mind, can be kept from going astray; where each can have full scope for action, neither doing violence to the other and where both mind and heart can be satisfied.

Only when that co-operation is attained and perfected will man attain the higher, truer understanding of himself and of the world of which he is a part; only that can give him a broad mind and a great heart.
At every birth what appears to be a new life comes among us. We see the little form as it lives and grows, becoming a factor in our lives for days, months or years. At last there comes a day when the form dies and goes to decay. The life that came, whence we know not, has passed to the invisible beyond, and in sorrow we ask ourselves, Whence came it? What was it here? and Whither has it gone?
Across every threshold the skeleton form of Death throws his fearsome shadow. Old or young, well or ill, rich or poor, all, all alike must pass out into that shadow and throughout the ages has sounded the piteous cry for a solution of the riddle of life—the riddle of death.

So far as the vast majority of people are concerned the three great questions, Whence have we come? Why are we here? Whither are we going? remain unanswered to this day. It has unfortunately come to be the popularly accepted opinion that nothing can be definitely known about these matters of deepest interest to humanity. Nothing could be more erroneous than such an idea. Each and every one, without exception, may become capable of obtaining first-hand, definite information upon this subject; may personally investigate the state of the human spirit, both before birth and after death. There is no favoritism, nor are special gifts required. Each of us has inherently the faculty for knowing all of these matters; but! — Yes, there is a "but," and a "but" that must be written large. These faculties are present in all, though latent in most people. It requires persistent effort to awaken them and that seems to be a powerful deterrent. If these faculties, "awake and aware," could be had for a monetary consideration, even if the price were high, many people would pay it to gain such immense advantage over their fellow-men, but few indeed are those willing to live the life that is required to awaken them. That awakening comes only by patient, persistent effort. It cannot be bought; there is no royal road to it.
It is conceded that practice is necessary to learn to play the piano, and that it is useless to think of being a watchmaker without being willing to serve an apprenticeship. Yet when the matter of the soul, of death and the beyond, of the great causes of being, are the questions at issue, many think they know as much as anyone and have an equal right to express an opinion, though they may never have given the subject an hour's study.

As a matter of fact, no one unless qualified by study of the subject should expect serious consideration for an opinion. In legal cases, where experts are called to testify, they are first examined as to their competency. The weight of their testimony will be nil, unless they are found to be thoroughly proficient in the branch of knowledge regarding which their testimony is sought.

If, however, they are found to be qualified—by study and practice— to express an expert opinion, it is received with the utmost respect and deference; and if the testimony of one expert is corroborated by others equally proficient, the testimony of each additional man adds immensely to the weight of the previous evidence.

The irrefutable testimony of one such man easily counterbalances that of one or a dozen or a million men who know nothing of that whereof they speak, for nothing, even though multiplied by a million, will still remain nothing. This is as true of any other subject as of mathematics.

As previously said, we recognize these facts readily enough in material affairs, but when things beyond the world of sense, when the super-physical world is under discussion; when the relations of God to man, the inner-most mysteries of the immortal spark of divinity, loosely termed the soul, are to be probed, then each clamors for as serious consideration of his opinions and ideas regarding spiritual matters as is given to the sage, who by a life of patient and toilsome research has acquired wisdom in these higher things.

Nay, more; many will not even content themselves with claiming equal consideration for their opinions, but will even jeer and scoff at the words of the sage, seek to impugn his testimony as fraud, and, with the supreme confidence of deepest ignorance, asseverate that as they know nothing of such matters, it is absolutely impossible that anyone else can.

The man who realizes his ignorance has taken the first step toward knowledge.

The path to first-hand knowledge is not easy. Nothing worth having ever comes without persistent effort. It cannot be too often repeated that there are no such things as special gifts of "luck." All that anyone is or has, is the result of effort. What one lacks in comparison with another is latent in himself and capable of development by proper methods.

If the reader, having grasped this idea thoroughly, should ask, what he must do to obtain this first-hand knowledge, the following story may serve to impress the idea, which is the central one in occultism:

A young man came to a sage one day and asked, "Sire, what must I do to become wise?" The sage vouchsafed no answer. The youth after repeating his question a number of times, with a like result, at last left him, to return the next day with the same question. Again no answer was given and the youth returned on the third day, still repeating his question, "Sire what must I do to become wise?"

Finally the sage turned and went down to a near-by river. He entered the water, bidding the youth follow him. Upon arriving at a sufficient depth the sage took the young man by the shoulders and held him under the water, despite his struggles to free himself. At last, however, he released him and when the youth had regained his breath the sage questioned him:

"Son, when you were under the water what did you most desire?"

The youth answered without hesitation, "Air, air! I wanted air!"

"Would you not rather have had riches, pleasure, power or love, my son? Did you not think of any of these?" queried the sage.

"No, sire! I wanted air and thought only of air," came the instant response.

"Then," said the sage, "To become wise you must desire wisdom with as great intensity as you just now desired air. You must struggle for it, to the exclusion of every other aim in life. It must be your one and only aspiration, by day and by night. If you seek wisdom with that fervor, my son, you will surely become wise."

That is the first and central requisite the aspirant to occult knowledge must possess—an unswerving desire, a burning thirst for knowledge; a zeal that allows no obstacle to conquer it; but the supreme motive for seeking this occult knowledge must be an ardent desire to benefit humanity, entirely disregarding self in order to work for others. Unless prompted by the motive, occult knowledge is dangerous.

Without possessing these qualifications—especially the latter—in some measure, any attempt to tread the arduous path of occultism would be a hazardous undertaking. Another prerequisite to this first-hand knowledge, however, is the study of occultism at second-hand. Certain occult powers are necessary for the first-hand investigation of matters connected with the pre-natal and post-mortem states of man, but no one need despair of acquiring information about this conditions because of undeveloped occult powers. As a man may know about Africa either by going there personally or by reading descriptions written by travelers who have been there, so may he visit the superphysical realms if he will but qualify himself therefore, or he may learn what others who have so qualified themselves report as a result of their investigations.

Christ said, "The Truth shall make you free," but Truth is not found once and forever. Truth is eternal, and the quest for Truth must also be eternal. Occultism knows of no "faith once for all delivered." There are certain basic truths which remain, but which may be looked at from many sides, each giving a different view, which complements the previous ones; therefore, so far as we can see at present, there is no such achievement possible as arriving at the ultimate truth.

Wherein this work differs from some philosophical works the variations are caused by difference of viewpoint, and all respect is paid to the conclusions reached and the ideas set forth by other investigators. It is the earnest hope of the writer that the study of the following pages may help to make the student's ideas fuller and more rounded than they were before.

Chapter I

The Visible and Invisible Worlds

The first step in Occultism is the study of the invisible Worlds. These Worlds are invisible to the majority of people because of the dormancy of the finer and higher senses whereby they may be perceived, in the same way that the Physical World about us is perceived through the physical senses. The majority of people are on a similar footing in regard to the super-physical Worlds as the man who is born blind is to our world of sense; although light and color are all about him, he is unable to see them. To him they are non-existent and incomprehensible, simply because he lacks the sense of sight wherewith to perceive them. Objects he can feel; they seem real; but light and color are beyond his ken.
So with the greater part of humanity. They feel, and see objects and hear sounds in the Physical World, but the other realms, which the clairvoyant calls the higher Worlds, are as incomprehensible to them as light and color are to the blind man. Because the blind man cannot see color and light, however, is no argument against their existence and reality. Neither is it an argument, that because most people cannot see the super-physical Worlds no one can do so. If the blind man obtains his sight, he will see light and color. If the higher senses of those blind to the super-physical Worlds are awakened by proper methods, they also will be able to behold the Worlds which are now hidden from them.

While many people make the mistake of being incredulous concerning the existence or reality of the super-sensuous Worlds, there are also many who go to the other extreme, and, having become convinced of the verity of invisible Worlds, think that when a person is clairvoyant all truth is at once open to him; that when one can "see," he at once "knows all about" these higher Worlds.

This is a great mistake. We readily recognize the fallacy of such a contention in matters of everyday life. We do not think that a man who was born blind, but has obtained his sight, at once "knows all about" the Physical World. Nay, more; we know that even those of us who have been able to see the things about us all our lives are far from having a universal knowledge of them. We know that it requires arduous study and years of application to know about even that infinitesimal part of things that we handle in our daily lives, and reversing the Hermetic aphorism, "as above, so below," we gather at once that it must be the same in the other Worlds. At the same time it is also true that there are much greater facilities for acquiring knowledge in the super-physical Worlds than in our present dense physical condition, but not so great as to eliminate the necessity for close study and the possibility of making a mistake in observation. In fact, all the testimony of reliable and qualified observers prove that much more care in observation is needed there than here.

Clairvoyants must first be trained before their observations are of any real value, and the more proficient they become the more modest they are about telling of what they see; the more they defer to the versions of others, knowing how much there is to learn and realizing how little the single investigator can grasp of all the detail incident to his investigations.

This also accounts for the varied versions, which superficial people think are an argument against the existence of the higher Worlds. They contend that if these Worlds exist, investigators must necessarily bring back identical descriptions. If we take an illustration from everyday life, the fallacy of this becomes apparent.

Suppose a newspaper sends twenty reporters to a city with orders to "write it up." Reporters are, or ought to be, trained observers. It is their business to see everything and they should be able to give as good descriptions as can be expected from any source. Yet it is certain that of the twenty reports, no two would be exactly alike. It is much more likely that they would be totally different. Although some of them might contain leading features in common, others might be unique in quality and quantity of description.

Is it an argument against the existence of the city that these reports differ? Certainly not! It is easily accounted for by the fact that each saw the city from his own particular point of view and instead of these varying reports being confusing and detrimental, it is safe to say that a perusal of them all would give a fuller, better understanding and description of the city than if only one were read and the others were thrown in the wastebasket. Each report would round out and complement the others.

The same is true regarding accounts made by investigators of the higher Worlds. Each has his own peculiar way of looking at things and can describe only what he sees from his particular point of view. The account he gives may differ from those of others, yet all be equally truthful from each individual observer's viewpoint.

It is sometimes asked, Why investigate these Worlds? Why is it not best to take one World at a time; to be content for the present time with the lessons to be learned in the Physical World, and, if there are invisible Worlds why not wait until we reach them before investigating? "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof!" Why borrow more?

If we knew without doubt that at some time, sooner or later, each one of us must be transported to a far country where, under new and strange conditions, we must live for many years, is it not reasonable to believe that if we had an opportunity to learn of that country in advance of our removal to it we would gladly do so? Knowledge would render it much easier for us to accommodate ourselves to new conditions.

There is only one certainty in life and that is—Death! As we pass into the beyond and are confronted by new conditions, knowledge of them is sure to be of the greatest help.

But that is not all. To understand the Physical World, which is the world of effects, it is necessary to understand the super-physical World, which is the world of causes. We see street cars in motion and we hear the clicking of telegraph instruments, but the mysterious force which causes phenomena remains invisible to us. We say it is electricity, but the name gives us no explanation. We learn nothing of the force itself; we see and hear only its effects.

If a dish of cold water be placed in an atmosphere of a sufficiently low temperature ice crystals immediately begin to form and we can see the process of their formation. The lines along which the water crystallizes were in it all the time as lines of force but they were invisible until the water congealed. The beautiful "frost flowers" on a windowpane are visible manifestations of currents of the higher Worlds which operate upon us all the time, unrecognized by most of us, but none the less potent.
The higher Worlds are thus the worlds of causes, of forces; and we cannot really understand this lower World unless we know the others and realize the forces and causes of which all material things are but the effects.

As to the reality of these higher Worlds compared with that of the Physical World, strange as it may seem, these higher Worlds, which to the majority appear as mirages, or even less substantial, are, in truth, much more real and the objects in them more lasting and indestructible than the objects in the Physical World. If we take an example we shall readily see this. An architect does not start to build a house by procuring the material and setting the workmen to laying stone upon stone in a haphazard way, without thought or plan. He "thinks the house out." Gradually it takes form in his mind and finally there stands a clear idea of the house that is to be—a thought-form of a house.

This house is yet invisible to all but the architect. He makes it objective on paper. He draws the plans and from this objective image of the thought-form the workmen construct the house of wood, iron, or stone, accurately corresponding to the thought-form originated by the architect.

Thus the thought-form becomes a material reality. The materialist would assert that it is much more real, lasting and substantial that the image in the architect's mind. But let us see. The house could not have been constructed without the thought-form. The material object can be destroyed by dynamite, earthquake, fire, or decay, but the thought-form will remain. It will exist as long as the architect lives and from it any number of houses similar to the one destroyed may be constructed. Not even the architect himself can destroy it. Even after his death this thought-form can be recovered by those who are qualified to read the memory of nature, which will be dealt with later.

Having thus seen the reasonableness of such Worlds existing around and about us, and having satisfied ourselves of their reality, their permanency, and of the utility of a knowledge concerning them, we shall now examine them severally and singly, commencing with the Physical World.

Chemical Region of the Physical World

In the Rosicrucian teaching the universe is divided into seven different Worlds, or states of matter, as follows:

1. World of God.
2. World of Virgin Spirits.
3. World of Divine Spirit.
4. World of Life Spirit.
5. World of Thought.
6. Desire World.
7. Physical World.

The division is not arbitrary but necessary, because the substance of each of these Worlds is amenable to laws which are practically inoperative in others. For instance, in the Physical World, matter is subject to gravity, contraction and expansion. In the Desire World there is neither heat nor cold, and forms levitate as easily as they gravitate. Distance and time are also governing factors of existence in the Physical World, but are almost non-existent in the Desire World.

The matter of these worlds also varies in density, the Physical World being the densest of the seven.
Each World is subdivided into seven Regions or subdivisions of matter. In the Physical World, the solids, liquids and gases form the three denser subdivisions, the remaining four being ethers of varying densities. In the other Worlds similar subdivisions are necessary, because the matter of which they are composed is not of uniform density.

There are still two further distinctions to be made. The three dense subdivisions of the Physical World—the solids, liquids and gases—constitute what is termed the Chemical Region. The substance in this Region is the basis of all dense Form.

The Ether is also physical matter. It is not homogeneous, as material science alleges, but exists in four different states. It is the medium of ingress for the quickening spirit which imparts vitality to the Forms in the Chemical Region. The four finer or etheric subdivisions of the Physical World constitute what is known as the Etheric Region.

In the World of Thought the three higher subdivisions are the basis of abstract thought, hence they, collectively, are called the Region of Abstract Thought. The four denser subdivisions supply the mind-stuff in which we embody and concrete our ideas and are therefore termed the Region of Concrete Thought.

The careful consideration given by the occultist to the characteristics of the Physical World might seem superfluous were it not that he regards all things from a view point differing widely from that of the materialist. The latter recognizes three states of matter—solids, liquids, and gases. These are all chemical, because derived from the chemical constituents of Earth. From this chemical matter all the forms of mineral, plant, animal, and man have been built, hence they are as truly chemical as the substances which are commonly so termed. Thus whether we consider the mountain or the cloud that envelops its top, the juice of the plant or the blood of the animal, the spider's thread, the wing of the butterfly or the bones of the elephant, the air we breathe or the water we drink—all are composed of the same chemical substance.

What is it then which determines the conformation of this basic substance into the multiplex variety of Forms which we see about us? It is the One Universal Spirit, expressing Itself in the visible world as four great streams of Life, at varying stages of development. This fourfold spiritual impulse molds the chemical matter of the Earth into variegated forms of the four Kingdoms—mineral, plant, animal, and man. When a form has served its purpose as a vehicle of expression for the three higher streams of life, the chemical forces disintegrate that form so that the matter may be returned to its primordial state, and thus made available for the building of new forms. The spirit or life which molds the form into an expression of itself is, therefore, as extraneous to the matter it uses as a carpenter is apart from and personally independent of the house he builds for his own occupancy.

As all the forms of mineral, plant, animal, and man are chemical, they must logically be as dead and devoid of feeling as chemical matter in it primitive state, and the Rosicrucian asserts that they are.
Some scientists contend that there is feeling in all tissue, living or dead, to whatever kingdom it belongs. They include even the substances ordinarily classed as mineral in their category of objects having feeling, and to prove their contentions they submit diagrams with curves of energy obtained from tests. Another class of investigators teach that there is no feeling even in the human body, except in the brain, which is the seat of feeling. They say it is the brain and not the finger which feels the pain when the latter is injured. Thus is the house of Science divided against itself on this as on most other points.
The position taken by each is partly right. It depends upon what we mean by "feeling." If we mean simply response to impacts, such as the rebound of a rubber ball that is dropped to the ground, of course it is correct to attribute feeling to mineral, plant, and animal tissue; but if we mean pleasure and pain, love and hate, joy and sorrow, it would be absurd to attribute them to the lower forms of life, to detached tissue, to minerals in their native state, or even to the brain, because such feelings are expressions of the self-conscious immortal spirit, and the brain is only the keyboard of the wonderful instrument upon which the human spirit plays its symphony of life, just as the musician expresses himself upon his violin.

As there are people who are quite unable to understand that there must be and are higher Worlds, so there are some who, having become slightly acquainted with the higher realms, acquire the habit of undervaluing this Physical World. Such an attitude is as incorrect as that of the materialist. The great and wise Beings who carry out the will and design of God placed us in this physical environment to learn great and important lessons which could not be learned under other conditions, and it is our duty to use our knowledge of the higher Worlds in learning to the best of our ability the lessons which this material world has to teach us.

In one sense the Physical World is a sort of model school or experiment station to teach us to work correctly in the others. It does this whether or not we know of the existence of those other worlds, thereby proving the great wisdom of the originators of the plan. If we had knowledge of none but the higher Worlds, we would make many mistakes which would become apparent only when physical conditions are brought to bear as criterion. To illustrate: Let us imagine the case of an inventor working out his idea of a machine. First he builds the machine in thought, and in his mind he sees it complete and in operation, performing most beautifully the work it is designed to do. He next makes a drawing of the design, and in doing so perhaps finds that modifications in his first conception are necessary. When, from the drawings, he has become satisfied that the plan is feasible, he proceeds to build the actual machine from suitable material.

Now it is almost certain that still further modifications will be found necessary before the machine will work as intended. It may be found that it must be entirely remodeled, or even that it is altogether useless in its present form, must be discarded and a new plan evolved. But mark this, for here is the point: the new idea or plan will be formulated for the purpose of eliminating the defects in the useless machine. Had there been no material machine constructed, thereby making evident the faults of the first idea, a second and correct idea would not have been formed.

This applies equally to all conditions of life—social, mercantile, and philanthropic. Many plans appear excellent to those conceiving them, and may even look well on paper, but when brought down in the actual test of utility they often fail. That however, should not discourage us. It is true that "we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes," and the proper light in which to regard this Physical World is as a school of valuable experience, in which we learn lessons of the utmost importance.

The Etheric Region of the Physical World.

As soon as we enter this realm of nature we are in the invisible, intangible World, where our ordinary senses fail us, hence this part of the Physical World is practically unexplored by material science.

Air is invisible, yet modern science knows that it exists. By means of instruments its velocity as wind can be measured; by compression it can be made visible as liquid air. With ether, however, that is not so easy. Material science finds that it is necessary to account in some way for the transmission of electricity, with or without wires. It is forced to postulate some substance of a finer kind that it knows, and it calls that substance "ether." It does not really know that ether exists, as the ingenuity of the scientist has not, as yet, been able to devise a vessel in which it is possible to confine this substance, which is altogether too elusive for the comfort of the "wizard of the laboratory." He cannot measure, weigh, nor analyze it by any apparatus now at his disposal.

Truly, the achievements of modern science are marvelous. The best way to learn the secrets of nature, however, is not by inventing instruments, but by improving the investigator himself. Man has within himself faculties which eliminate distance and compensate for lack of size to a degree as much greater than the power of telescope and microscope as theirs exceeds that of the naked eye. These senses or faculties are the means of investigation used by occultists. They are their "open sesame" in searching for truth.

To the trained clairvoyant ether is as tangible as are the solids, liquids, and gases of the Chemical Region to ordinary beings. He sees that the vital forces which give life to the mineral forms of plant, animal and man flow into these forms, by means of the four states of ether. The names and specific functions of these four ethers are as follows.

Chemical Ether:

This ether is both positive and negative in manifestation. The forces which cause assimilation and excretion work through it. Assimilation is the process whereby the different nutritive elements of food are incorporated into the body of plant, animal and man. This is carried on by forces with which we shall become acquainted later. They work along the positive pole of the chemical ether and attract the needed elements, building them into the forms concerned. These forces do not act blindly nor mechanically, but in a selective way (well-known to scientists by its effects) thereby accomplishing their purpose, which is the growth and maintenance of the body.

Excretion is carried on by forces of the same kind, but working along the negative pole of the chemical ether. By means of this pole they expel from the body the materials in the food which are unfit for use, or those which have outlived their usefulness in the body and should be expurgated from the system. This, like all other processes independent of man's volition, is also wide, selective, and not merely mechanical in its operation, as seen, for instance, in the case of the action of the kidneys, where only the urine is filtered through when the organs are in health; but it is known that when the organs are not in health, the valuable albumen is allowed to escape with the urine, the proper selection not being made because of an abnormal condition.

Life Ether:

As the chemical ether is the avenue for the operation of the forces the object of which is the maintenance of the individual form, so the life ether is the avenue for the operation of the forces which have for their object the maintenance of the species—the forces of propagation.

Like the chemical ether, the life ether also has its positive and negative pole. The forces which work along the positive pole are those which work in the female during gestation. They enable her to do the positive, active work of bringing forth a new being. On the other hand the forces which work along the negative pole of the life ether enable the male to produce semen.

In the work on the impregnated ovum of the animal and man, or upon the seed of the plant, the forces working along the positive pole of the life ether produce male plants, animals and men; while the forces which express themselves through the negative pole generate females.

Light Ether:

This ether is both positive and negative, and the forces which play along its positive pole are the forces which generate that blood heat in the higher species of animal and in man, which makes them individual sources of heat. The forces which work along the negative pole of the light ether are those which operate through the senses, manifesting as the passive functions of sight, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling. They also build and nourish the eye.

In the cold-blooded animals the positive pole of the light ether is the avenue of the forces which circulate the blood, and the negative forces have the same functions in regard to the eye as in the case of the higher animals and man. Where eyes are lacking, the forces working in the negative pole of the light ether are perhaps building or nourishing other sense organs, as they do in all that have sense organs.

In plants the forces which work along the positive pole of the light ether cause the circulation of the juices of the plant. Thus in winter, when the light ether is not charged with sunlight as in summer, the sap ceases to flow until the summer sun again invests the light ether with its force. The forces which work along the negative pole of the light ether deposit the chlorophyll, the green substance of the plant and also color the flowers. In fact, all color, in all kingdoms is deposited by means of the negative pole of the light ether. Therefore animals have the deepest color on the back and flowers are deepest colored on the side turned towards the light. In the polar regions of the earth, where the rays of the sun are weak, all color is lighter and in some cases is so sparingly deposited that in winter it is withdrawn altogether and the animals become white.

Reflecting Ether:

It has heretofore been stated that the idea of the house which has existed in the mind can be recovered from the memory of nature, even after the death of the architect. Everything that has ever happened has left behind it an ineffaceable picture in this reflecting ether. As the giant ferns of the childhood of the Earth have left their pictures in the coal beds, and as the progress of the glacier of a bygone day may be traced by means of the trail it has left upon the rocks along its path, even so are the thoughts and acts of men ineffaceably recorded by nature in this reflecting ether, where the trained seer may read their story with an accuracy commensurate with his ability.

The reflecting ether deserves its name for more than one reason, for the pictures in it are but reflections of the memory of nature. The real memory of nature is found in a much higher realm. In this reflecting ether no thoroughly trained clairvoyant cares to read, as the pictures are blurred and vague compared to those found in the higher realm. Those who read in the reflecting ether are generally those who have no choice, who, in fact, do not know what they are reading. As a rule ordinary psychometrists and mediums obtain their knowledge through the reflecting ether. To some slight extent the pupil of the occult school in the first stages of his training also reads in the  reflecting ether, but he is warned by his teacher of the insufficiencies of this ether as a means of acquiring accurate information, so that he does not easily draw wrong conclusions.

This ether is also the medium through which thought makes an impression upon the human brain. It is most intimately connected with the fourth subdivision of the World of Thought. This is the highest of the four subdivisions contained in the Region of Concrete Thought and the home world of the human mind. There a much clearer version of the memory of nature is found than in the reflecting ether.

The Desire World

Like the Physical World, and every other realm of nature, the Desire World has the seven subdivisions called "Regions," but unlike the Physical World, it does not have the great divisions corresponding to the Chemical and Etheric Regions. Desire stuff in the Desire World persists through its seven subdivisions or regions as material for the embodiment of desire. As the Chemical Region is the realm of form and as the Etheric Region is the home of the forces carrying on life activities in those forms, enabling them to live, move and propagate, so the forces in the Desire World, working in the quickened dense body, impel it to move in this or that direction.

If there were only the activities of the Chemical and Etheric Regions of the Physical World, there would be forms having life, able to move, but with no incentive for so doing. This incentive is supplied by the cosmic forces active in the Desire World and without this activity playing through every fiber of the vitalized body, urging action in this direction or that, there would be no experience and no moral growth. The functions of the different ethers would take care of the growth of the form, but moral growth would entirely lacking. Evolution would be an impossibility, both as to form and life, for it is only in response to the requirements of spiritual growth that forms evolve to higher states. Thus we at once see the great importance of this realm of nature.

Desires, wishes, passions, and feelings express themselves in the matter of the different regions of the Desire World as form and feature express themselves in the Chemical Region of the Physical World. They take forms which last for a longer or shorter time, according to the intensity of the desire, wish, or feeling embodied in them. In the Desire World the distinction between the forces and the matter is not so definite and apparent as in the Physical World. One might almost say that here the ideas of force and matter are identical or interchangeable. It is not quite so, but we may say that to a certain extent the Desire World consists of force-matter.

When speaking of the matter of the Desire World, it is true that it is one degree less dense that the matter of the Physical World, but we entertain an entirely wrong idea if we imaging it is finer physical matter. That idea, though held by many who have studied occult philosophies, is entirely erroneous. The wrong impression is caused principally by the difficulty of giving the full and accurate description necessary for a thorough understanding of the higher worlds. Unfortunately, our language is descriptive of material things and therefore entirely inadequate to describe the conditions of the super-physical realms, hence all that is said about these realms must be taken tentatively, as similes, rather than as accurate descriptions.

Though the mountain and the daisy, the man, the horse, and a piece of iron, are composed of one ultimate atomic substance, we do not say that the daisy is a finer form of iron. Similarly it is impossible to explain in words the change or difference in physical matter when it is broken up into desire-stuff. If there were no difference it would be amenable to the laws of the Physical World, which it is not.
The law of matter of the Chemical Region is inertia-the tendency to remain in status quo. It takes a certain amount of force to overcome this inertia and cause a body which is at rest to move, or to stop a body in motion. Not so with the matter of the Desire World. That matter itself is almost living. It is in unceasing motion, fluid, taking all imaginable and unimaginable forms with inconceivable facility and rapidity, at the same time coruscating and scintillating in a thousand ever-changing shades of color, incomparable to anything we know in this physical state of consciousness. Something very faintly resembling the action and appearance of this matter will be seen in the play of colors on an abalone shell when held in the sunlight and moved to and fro.

That is what the Desire World is—ever-changing light and color—in which the forces of animal and man intermingle with the forces of innumerable Hierarchies of spiritual beings which do not appear in our Physical World, but are as active in the Desire World as we are here. Some of them will be dealt with later and their connection with man's evolution described.

The forces sent out by this vast and varied hose of Beings mold the ever-changing matter of the Desire World into innumerable and differing forms of more or less durability, according to the kinetic energy of the impulse which gave them birth.

From this slight description it may be understood how difficult it is for a neophyte who has just had his inner eyes opened to find his balance in the World of Desire. The trained clairvoyant soon ceases to wonder at the impossible descriptions sometimes brought through by mediums. They may be perfectly honest, but the possibilities of parallax, and of getting out of focus are legion, and of the subtlest nature, and the real wonder is that they ever communicate anything correctly. All of us had to learn to see, in the days of our infancy, as we may readily find by watching a young babe. It will be found that the little one will reach for objects on the other side of the room or the street, or for the Moon. He is entirely unable to gauge distances. The blind man who has been made to see will, at first, often close his eyes to walk from one place to another, declaring, until he has learned to use his eyes, that it is easier to walk by feeling than by sight. So the one whose inner organs of perception have been vivified must also be trained in the use of his newly acquired faculty. At first the neophyte will try to apply to the Desire World the knowledge derived from his experience in the Physical World, because he has not yet learned the laws of the world into which he is entering. This is the source of a vast amount of trouble and perplexity. Before he can understand, he must become as a little child, which imbibed knowledge without reference to any previous experience.

To arrive at a correct understanding of the Desire World it is necessary to realize that it is the world of feeling, desires, and emotions. These are all under the domination of two great forces—Attraction and Repulsion, which act in a different way in the three denser Regions of the Desire World from that in which they act in the three finer or upper Regions, while the central Region may be called neutral ground.

This central Region is the Region of feeling. Here interest in or indifference to an object or an idea sways the balance in favor of one of the two previously mentioned forces, thereby relegating the object or idea to the three higher or the three lower Regions of the Desire World, or else they will expel it. We shall see presently how this is accomplished.

In the finest and rarest substance of the three higher Regions of the Desire World the force of Attraction alone holds sway, but it is also present in some degree in the denser matter of the three lower Regions, where it works against the force of Repulsion, which is dominant there. The disintegrating force of Repulsion would soon destroy every form coming into these three lower Regions were it not that it is thus counteracted. In the densest or lowest Region, where it is strongest, it tears and shatters the forms built there in a way dreadful to see, yet it is not a fatalistic force. Nothing in nature is vandalistic. All that appears so is but working towards good. So with this force in its work in the lowest Region of the Desire World. The forms here are demoniac creations, built by the coarsest passions and desires of man and beast.

The tendency of every form in the Desire World is to attract itself all it can of a like nature and grow thereby. If this tendency to attraction were predominate in the lowest Regions, evil would grow like a weed. There would be anarchy instead of order in the Cosmos. This prevented by the preponderating power of the force of Repulsion in this Region. When a coarse desire form is being attracted to another of the same nature, there is a disharmony in their vibrations, whereby one has a disintegrating effect upon the other. Thus, instead of uniting and amalgamating evil with evil, they act with mutual destructiveness and in that way the evil in the world is kept within reasonable bounds. When we understand the working of the twin forces in this respect we are in a position to understand the occult maxim, "A lie is both murder and suicide in the Desire World."

Anything happening in the Physical World is reflected in all the other realms of nature and, as we have seen, builds its appropriate form in the Desire World. When a true account of the occurrence is given, another form is built, exactly like the first. They are then drawn together and coalesce, strengthening each other. If, however, an untrue is given, a form different from and antagonistic to the first, or true one, is created. As they deal with the same occurrence, they are drawn together, but as their vibrations are different they act upon each other with mutual destructiveness. Therefore, evil and malicious lies can kill anything that is good, if they are strong enough and repeated often enough. But, conversely, seeking for the good in evil will, in time, transmute the evil into good. If the form that is built to minimize the evil is weak, it will have no effect and will be destroyed by the evil form, but if it is strong and frequently repeated it will have the effect of disintegrating the evil and substituting the good. That effect, be it distinctly understood, it not brought about by lying, nor denying the evil, but by looking for the good. The occult scientist practices very rigidly this principle of looking for good in all things, because he knows what a power it possesses in keeping down evil.

There is a story of Christ which illustrates this point. Once when walking with His disciples they passed the decaying and ill-smelling carcass of a dog. The disciples turned in disgust, commenting upon the nauseating nature of this sight; but Christ looked at the dead body and said "Pearls are not whiter than its teeth." He was determined to find the good, because He knew the beneficial effect which would result in the Desire World from giving it expression.

The lowest Region of the Desire World is called "the Region of Passion and Sensual Desire." The second subdivision is best described by the name of "Region of Impressionability." Here the effect of the twin forces of Attraction and Repulsion is evenly balanced. This is a neutral Region, hence all our impressions which are built of the matter of this Region are neutral. Only when the twin feelings, which we shall meet in the fourth Region, are brought to bear, do the twin forces come into play. The mere impression of anything, however, in and of itself, is entirely separate from the feeling it engenders. The impression is neutral and is an activity of the second Region of the Desire World, where pictures are formed by the forces of sense-perception in the vital body of man.

In the third Region of the Desire World, the force of Attraction, the integrating, upbuilding force, has already gained the upper hand over the force of Repulsion, with its destructive tendency. When we understand that the mainspring in this force of Repulsion is self-assertion, a pushing away of all others that it may have room, we shall understand that it gives way most easily to a desire for other things, so that the substance of the third Region of the Desire World is principally dominated by the force of Attraction towards other things, but in a selfish way, and therefore this is the Region of Wishes.
The Region of Coarse Desires may be likened to the solids in the Physical World; the Region of Impressionability to the fluids; and the fluctuating, evanescent nature of the Region of Wishes will make that compare with the gaseous portion of the Physical World. These three Regions give the substance for the forms which make for experience, soul-growth and evolution, purging the altogether destructive and retaining the materials which may be used for progress.

The fourth Region of the Desire World is the "Region of Feeling." From it comes the feeling concerning the already described forms and upon the feeling engendered by them depends the life which they have for us and also their effect upon us. Whether the objects and ideas presented are good or bad in themselves is not important this stage. It is our feeling, whether of Interest or Indifference that is the determining factor as to the fate of the object or idea.

If the feeling with which we meet an impression of an object or an idea is Interest, it has the same effect upon that impression as sunlight and air have upon a plant. That idea will grow and flourish in our lives. If, on the other hand, we meet an impression or idea with Indifference, it withers as does a plant when put in a dark cellar.

Thus from this central Region of the Desire World come the incentive to action, or the decision to refrain there from (though the latter is also action in the eyes of the occult scientist), for at the present stage of our development the twin feelings, Interest and Indifference furnish the incentive to action and are the springs that move the world. At a later stage these feelings will cease to have any weight. Then the determining factor will be duty.

Interest starts the forces of Attraction or Repulsion.

Indifference simply withers the object or idea against which it is directed, so far as our connection with it is concerned.

If our interest in an object or an idea generates Repulsion, that naturally causes us to expurgate from our lives any connection with the object or idea which roused it; but there is a great difference between the action of the force of Repulsion and the mere feeling of Indifference. Perhaps an illustration will make more clear the operation of the twin Feelings and the twin Forces.

Three men are walking along a road. They see a sick dog; it is covered with sores and is evidently suffering intensely from pain and thirst. This much is evident to all three men—their senses tell them that. Now Feeling comes. Two of them take an "interest" in the animal, but in the third there is a feeling of "indifference." He passes on, leaving the dog to its fate. The others remain; they are both interested, but each manifests it in a quite different way. The interest of one man is sympathetic and helpful, impelling him to care for the poor beast, to assuage pains and nurse it back to health. In him the feeling of interest has aroused the force of Attraction. The other man's interest is of a different kind. He sees only a loathsome sight which is revolting to him and wishes to rid himself and the world of it as quickly as possible. He advises killing the animal outright and burying it. In him the feeling of interest generates the destructive force of Repulsion.

When the feeling of Interest arouses the force of Attraction and it is directed toward low objects and desires, these work themselves out in the lower Regions of the Desire World, where the counteracting force of Repulsion operates, as previously described. From the battle of the twin forces—Attraction and Repulsion—results all the pain and suffering incident to wrongdoing or misdirected effort, whether intentional or otherwise.

Thus we may see how very important is the Feeling we have concerning anything, for upon that depends the nature of the atmosphere we create for ourselves. If we love the good, we shall keep and nourish as guardian angels all that is good about us; if the reverse, we shall people our path with demons and our own breeding.

The names of the three upper Regions of the Desire World are "Region of Soul-Life," "Region of Soul-Light," and "Region of Soul-Power." In these abide Art, Altruism, Philanthropy, and all the activities of the higher soul-life. When we think of these Regions as radiating the qualities indicated by their names, into the forms of the three lower Regions, we shall understand correctly the higher and lower activities. Soul-power, however, may for a time be used for evil purposes as well as for good, but eventually the force of Repulsion destroys vice and the force of Attraction builds virtue upon its shattered ruins. All things, in the ultimate, work together for good.

The Physical and the Desire Worlds are not separated from each other by space. They are "closer than hands and feet." It is not necessary to move to get from one to the other, nor from one Region to the next. Just as solids, liquids, and gases are all together in our bodies, inter-penetrating one another, so are the different Regions of the Desire World within us also. We may again compare the lines of force along which ice-crystals form in water to the invisible causes originating in the Desire World, which appear in the Physical World and give us the incentive to action, in whatever direction it may be.
The Desire World, with its innumerable inhabitants, permeates the Physical World, as the lines of force do the water—invisibly, but everywhere present and potent as the cause of everything in the Physical World.

The World of Thought

The World of Thought also consists of seven Regions of varying qualities and densities, and, like the Physical World, the World of Thought is divided into two main divisions—the Region of Concrete Thought, comprising the four densest Regions; and the Region of Abstract Thought, comprising the three Regions of finest substance. This World of Thought is the central one of the five Worlds from which man obtains his vehicles. Here spirit and body meet. It is also the highest of the three Worlds in which man's evolution is being carried forward at the present time, the two higher Worlds being practically in abeyance as yet, so far as man is concerned.

We know that the materials of the Chemical Region are used in building all physical forms. These forms are given life and the power of motion by the forces at work in the Etheric Region, and some of these living forms are stirred into activity by means of the twin Feelings of the Desire World. The Region of Concrete Thought furnishes the mind-stuff in which ideas generated in the Region of Abstract Thought clothe themselves as thought-forms, to act as regulators and balance wheels upon the impulses engendered in the Desire World by impacts from the phenomenal World.

Thus we see how the three Worlds, in which man is at present evolving, complement one another, making a whole that shows forth the Supreme Wisdom of the Great Architect of the system to which we belong, and Whom we reverence by the holy name of God.

Taking a more detailed view of the several divisions of the Region of Concrete Thought we find that the archetypes of physical form no matter to what kingdom they may belong, are found in its lowest subdivision, or the "Continental Region." In this Continental Region are also the archetypes of the continents and the isles of the world, and corresponding to these archetypes are they fashioned. Modifications in the crust of the Earth must first be wrought in the Continental Region. Not until the archetypal model has been changed can the Intelligences which we (to hide our ignorance concerning them) call the "Laws of Nature," bring about the physical conditions which alter the physical features of the Earth according to the modifications designed by the Hierarchies in charge of evolution. They plan changes as an architect plans the alteration of a building before the workmen give it concrete expression. In like manner are changes in the flora and fauna due to metamorphoses in their respective archetypes.

When we speak of the archetypes of all the different forms in the dense world it must not be thought that these archetypes are merely models in the same sense in which we speak of an object constructed in miniature, or in some material other than that appropriate for its proper and final use. They are not merely likenesses nor models of the forms we see about us, but are creative archetypes; that is, they fashion the forms of the Physical World in their own likeness or likenesses, for often many work together to form one certain species, each archetype giving part of itself to build the required form.
The second subdivision of the Region of Concrete Thought is called the "Oceanic Region." It is best described as flowing, pulsating vitality. All the forces that work through the four ethers which constitute the Etheric Region are there seen as archetypes. It is a stream of flowing life, pulsating through all forms, as blood pulsates through the body, the same life in all forms. Here the trained clairvoyant sees how true it is that "all life is one."

The "Aerial Region" is the third division of the Region of Concrete Thought. Here we find the archetype of desires, passions, wishes, feelings, and emotions such as we experience in the Desire World. Here all the activities of the Desire World appear as atmospheric conditions. Like the kiss of summer breeze come the feelings of pleasure and joy to the clairvoyant sense; as the sighing of the wind in the tree-tops seem the longings of the soul and like flashes of lighting the passions of warring nations. In this atmosphere of the Region of Concrete Thought are also pictures of the emotions of man and beast.

The "Region of Archetypal Forces" is the fourth division of the Region of Concrete Thought. It is the central and most important region in the five Worlds wherein man's entire evolution is carried on. On the one side of this Region are the three higher Regions of the World of Thought, the World of Life Spirit and the World of Divine Spirit. On the other side of this Region of Archetypal Forces are the three lower Regions of the World of Thought, the Desire and the Physical Worlds. Thus this Region becomes a sort of "crux," bounded on one side by the Realms of Spirit, on the other by the Worlds of Form. It is a focusing point, where Spirit reflects itself in matter.

As the name implies, this Region is the home of the Archetypal Forces which direct the activity of the archetypes in the Region of Concrete Thought. From this Region Spirit works on matter in a formative manner.Diagram 1 shows the idea in a schematic way the forms in the lower World being reflections of the Spirit in the higher Worlds. The fifth Region, which is the one nearest to the focusing point on the Spirit side, reflects itself in the third Region, which is nearest the focusing point on the Form side. The sixth Region reflects itself in the second and the seventh reflects itself in the first.

The whole of the Region of Abstract thought is reflected in the World of Desire; the World of Life Spirit in the Etheric Region of the Physical World; and the World of Divine Spirit in the Chemical Region of the Physical World.

Diagram 2 will give a comprehensive idea of the seven Worlds which are the sphere of our development, but we must carefully keep in mind that these Worlds are not placed one above another, as shown in the diagram. They inter-penetrate—that is to say, that as in the case where the relation of the Physical World and the Desire World was compared, where we likened the Desire World to the lines of force in freezing water and the water itself to the Physical World, in the same way we may think of the lines of force as being any of the seven Worlds, and the water, as in our illustration, would correspond to the next denser World in the scale. Another illustration may perhaps make the subject clearer.

Let us use a spherical sponge to represent the dense earth—the Chemical Region. Imagine that sand permeates every part of the sponge and also forms a layer outside the sponge. Let the sand represent the Etheric Region, which in a similar manner permeates the dense earth and extends beyond its atmosphere.

Let us further imagine this sponge and sand immersed in a spherical glass vessel filled with clear water, and a little larger than the sponge and sand. We place the sponge and sand in the center of the vessel as the yolk is placed in the center of an egg. We have now a space of clear water between the sand and the vessel. The water as a whole will represent the Desire World, for just as the water percolates between the grains of sand, through every pore of the sponge, and forms that clear layer, so the Desire World permeates both the dense Earth and the ether and extends beyond both of these substances.

We know there is air in water, and if we think of the air in the water (in our illustration), as representing the World of Thought, we shall have a firm mental picture of the way in which the World of Thought, being finer and more subtle, inter-penetrates the two denser Worlds.

Finally, imagine that the vessel containing the sponge, sand and water is placed in the center of a large spherical vessel; then the air in the space between the two vessels would represent that part of the World of Thought which extends beyond the Desire World.

Each of the planets in our solar system has three such inter-penetrating Worlds, and if we think of each of the planets consisting of three Worlds as being individual sponges, and of the fourth World, the World of Life Spirit, as being the water in a large vessel where these three cold separate sponges swim, we shall understand that as the water in the vessel fills the space between the sponges and percolates through them, so the World of Life Spirit pervades inter-planetary space and inter-penetrates the individual planets. It forms a common bond between them, so that as it is necessary to have a boat and be able to control it, if we wish to sail from America to Africa, so it is necessary to have a vehicle correlated to the World of Life Spirit under our conscious control in order to be able to travel from one planet to another.

In a manner similar to that in which the World of Life Spirit correlates us to the other planets in our own solar system does the World of Divine Spirit correlate us to the other solar systems. We may regard the solar systems as separate sponges, swimming in a World of Divine Spirit, and thus it will be apparent that in order to travel from one solar system to another it would be necessary to be able to function consciously in the highest vehicle of man, the Divine Spirit.

Chapter II

The Four Kingdoms

The three Worlds of our planet are at present the field of evolution for a number of different kingdoms of life, at various stages of development. Only four of these need concern us at present, viz.: the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms.

These four kingdoms are related to the three Worlds in different ways, according to the progress these groups of evolving life have made in the school of experience. So far as form is concerned the dense bodies of all the kingdoms are composed of the same chemical substances—the solids, liquids, and gases of the Chemical Region. The dense body of a man is as truly a chemical compound as is the stone, although the latter is ensouled by mineral life only. But even when speaking from the purely physical standpoint, and laying aside all other considerations for the time being, there are several important differences when we compare the dense body of the human being with the mineral of the Earth. Man moves, grows, and propagates his species—the mineral, in its native state, does none of these things.

Comparing man with the forms of the plant kingdom, we find that both plant and man have a dense body, capable of growth and propagation. But Man has faculties not possessed by the plant. He feels, has the power of motion, and the faculty of perceiving things exterior to himself.

When we compare man with the animal we see that both have the faculties of feeling, motion, growth, propagation, and sense-perception. In addition, man has the faculty of speech, a superior structure of the brain, and also hands—which are a very great physical advantage. We may note especially the development of the thumb, which makes the hand much more valuable than even that of the anthropoid. Man has also evolved a definite language in which to express his feelings and thoughts, all of which places the dense body of the human being in a class by itself, beyond the three lower kingdoms.
To account for these differences in the four kingdoms we must go to the invisible Worlds, and seek the causes which give one kingdom that which is denied to another.

To function in any world, and express the qualities peculiar to it, we must first possess a vehicle made of its material. In order to function in the dense Physical World it is necessary to have a dense body, adapted to our environment. Otherwise we should be ghosts, as they are commonly called, and be invisible to most physical beings. So we must have a vital body before we can express life, grow, or externalize the other qualities peculiar to the Etheric Region.

To show feeling and emotion it is necessary to have a vehicle composed of the materials of the Desire World, and a mind formed of the substance of the Region of Concrete Thought is necessary to render thinking possible.

When we examine the four kingdoms in relation to the Etheric Region, we find that the mineral does not possess a separate vital body, and at once we see the reason why it cannot grow, propagate, or show sentient life.

As a hypothesis necessary to account for other known facts, material science holds that in the densest solid, as in the rarest and most attenuated gas, no two atoms touch each other; that there is an envelope of ether around each atom; that the atoms in the universe float in an ocean of ether.

The occult scientist knows this to be true of the Chemical Region and that the mineral does not possess a separate vital body of ether. And as it is the planetary ether alone which envelops the atoms of the mineral, that makes the difference described. It is necessary, as we have shown, to have a separate, vital body, desire body, etc., to express the qualities of a particular realm, because the atoms of the World of Desire, of the World of Thought and even of the Higher Worlds, inter-penetrate the Mineral as well as the dense human body, and if the inter-penetration of the planetary ether, which is the ether that envelops the atoms of the mineral, were enough to make it feel and propagate its inter-penetration by the planetary World of Thought would also be sufficient to make it think. This it cannot do, because it lacks a separate vehicle. It is penetrated by the planetary ether only, and is therefore incapable of individual growth. Only the lowest of the four states of ether—the chemical—is active in the mineral. The chemical forces in minerals are due to that fact.

When we consider plant, animal, and man in relation to the Etheric Region we note that each has a separate, vital body, in addition to being penetrated by the planetary ether which forms the Etheric Region. There is a difference, however, between the vital bodies of the plants and the vital bodies of animal and man. In the vital body of the plant only the chemical and the life ethers are fully active. Hence the plant can grow by the action of the chemical ether and propagate its species through the activity of the life ether of the separate, vital body which it possesses. The light ether is present, but is partially latent or dormant and reflecting ether is lacking. Therefore it is evident that the faculties of sense-perception and memory, which are the qualities of these ethers, cannot be expressed by the plant kingdom.

Turning our attention to the vital body of the animal we find that in it the chemical, life and light ethers are dynamically active. Hence the animal has the faculties of assimilation and growth, caused by the activities of the chemical ether; and the faculty of propagation by means of the life ether—these being the same as in plants. But in addition, it has the faculties of generating internal heat and of sense-perception. The fourth ether, however, is inactive in the animal, hence it has no thought nor memory. That which appears as such will be shown later to be of a different nature.

When we analyze the human being, we find that in him all four ethers are dynamically active in the highly organized vital body. By means of the activities of the chemical he is able to assimilate food and to grow; the forces at work in the life ether enable him to propagate his species; the forces in the light ether supply the dense body with heat, work on the nervous system and muscles, thus opening the doors of communication with the outside world by way of the senses; and the reflecting ether enables the spirit to control its vehicle by means of thought. This ether also stores past experience as memory.

The vital body of plant, animal, and man, extends beyond the periphery of the dense body as the Etheric Region, which is the vital body of a planet, extends beyond its dense part, showing again the truth of the Hermetic axiom "As above, so below." The distance of this extension of the vital body of man is about an inch and a half. The part which is outside the dense body is very luminous and about the color of a new-blown peach-blossom. It is often seen by persons having very slight involuntary clairvoyance. The writer has found, when speaking with such persons, that they frequently are not aware they see anything unusual and do not know what they see.

The dense body is built into the matrix of this vital body during ante-natal life, and with one exception, it is an exact copy, molecule for molecule, of the vital body. As the lines of force in freezing water are the avenues of formation for ice crystals, so the lines of force in the vital body determine the shape of the dense body. All through life the vital body is the builder and restorer of the dense form. Were it not for the etheric heart the dense heart would break quickly under the constant strain we put upon it. All the abuses to which we subject the dense body are counteracted, so far as lies in its power, by the vital body, which is continually fighting against the death of the dense body.

The exception mentioned above is that the vital body of a man is female or negative, while that of a woman is male or positive. In that fact we have the key to numerous puzzling problems of life. That woman gives way to her emotions is due to the polarity noted, for her positive, vital body generates an excess of blood and causes her to labor under an enormous internal pressure that would break the physical casement were not a safety-valve provided in the periodical flow, and another in the tears which relieve the pressure on special occasions—for tears are "white bleeding."

Man may have and has as strong emotions as woman, but he is usually able to suppress them without tears, because his negative vital body does not generate more blood than he can comfortably control.
Unlike the higher vehicles of humanity, the vital body (except under certain circumstances, to be explained when the subject of "Initiation" is dealt with) does not ordinarily leave the dense body until the death of the latter. Then the chemical forces of the dense body are no longer held in check by the evolving life. They proceed to restore the matter to its primordial condition by disintegration so that it may be available for the formation of other forms in the economy of nature. Disintegration is thus due to the activity of the planetary forces in the chemical ether.

In texture the vital body may be crudely compared to one of those picture frames made of hundreds of little pieces of wood which interlock and present innumerable points to the observer. These points enter into the hollow centers of the dense atoms, imbuing them with vital force that sets them vibrating at a higher rate than that of the mineral of the earth which is not thus accelerated and ensouled.

When a person is drowning, or falling from a height, or freezing, the vital body leaves the dense body, the atoms of which become temporarily inert in consequence, but at resuscitation it re-enters the dense body and the "points" are again inserted in the dense atoms. The inertia of the atoms causes them to resist the resumption of vibration and that is the cause of the intense prickly pain and the tingling sensation noted at such times, but not ordinarily, for the same reason that we become conscious of the starting or stopping of a clock, but are oblivious to its tick when it is running.

There are certain cases where the vital body partly leaves the dense body, such as when a hand "goes to sleep." Then the etheric hand of the vital body may be seen hanging below the dense arm like a glove and the points cause the peculiar pricking sensation felt when the etheric hand re-enters the dense hand. Sometimes in hypnosis the head of the vital body divides and hangs outside the dense head, one half over each shoulder, or lies around the neck like the collar of a sweater. The absence of prickly sensation at awakening in cases like this is because during the hypnosis part of the hypnotist's vital body had been substituted for that of the victim.

When anesthetics are used the vital body is partially driven out, along with the higher vehicles, and if the application is too strong and the life ether is driven out, death ensues. This same phenomenon may also be observed in the case of materializing mediums. In fact the difference between a materializing medium and an ordinary man or woman is just this: In the ordinary man or woman the vital body and the dense body are, at the present stage of evolution, quite firmly interlocked, while in the medium they are loosely connected. It has not always been so, and the time will come again when the vital body may normally leave the dense vehicle, but that is not normally accomplished at present. When a medium allows his or her vital body to be used by entities from the Desire World who wish to materialize, the vital body generally oozes from the left side—through the spleen, which is its particular "gate." Then the vital forces cannot flow into the body as they do normally, the medium becomes greatly exhausted, and some of them resort to stimulants to counteract the effects, in time becoming incurable drunkards.

The vital force from the sun, which surrounds us as a colorless fluid, is absorbed by the vital body through the etheric counterpart of the spleen, wherein in undergoes a curious transformation of color. It becomes pale rose-hued and spreads along the nerves all over the dense body. It is to the nervous system what the force of electricity is to a telegraph system. Though there be wires, instruments, and telegraph operators all in order, if the electricity is lacking, no message can be sent. The Ego, the brain, and the nervous system may be in seemingly perfect order, but if the vital force be lacking to carry the message of the Ego through the nerves to the muscles, the dense body will remain inert. This is exactly what happens when part of the dense body becomes paralyzed. The vital body has become diseased and the vital force can no longer flow. In such cases, as in most sickness, the trouble is with the finer invisible vehicles. In conscious or unconscious recognition of this fact, the most successful physicians use suggestion—which works upon the higher vehicles—as aid to medicine. The more a physician can imbue his patient with faith and hope, the speedier disease will vanish and give place to perfect health.
During the health the vital body specializes a superabundance of vital force, which, after passing through a dense body, radiates in straight lines in every direction from the periphery thereof, as the radii of a circle do from the center; but during ill-health, when the vital body becomes attenuated, it is not able to draw to itself the same amount of force and in addition the dense body is feeding upon it. Then the lines of the vital fluid which pass out from the body are crumpled and bent, showing the lack of force behind them. In health the great force of these radiations carries with it germs and microbes which are inimical to the health of the dense body, but in sickness, when the vital force is weak, these emanations do not so readily eliminate disease germs. Therefore the danger of contracting disease is much greater when the vital forces are low than when one is in robust health.

In cases where parts of the dense body are amputated, only the planetary ether accompanies the separated part. The separate vital body and the dense body disintegrate synchronously after death. So with the etheric counterpart of the amputated limb. It will gradually disintegrate as the dense member decays, but in the meantime the fact that the man still possesses the etheric limb accounts for his assertion that he can feel his fingers or suffers pain in them. There is also a connection with a buried member, irrespective of distance. A case is on record where a man felt severe pain, as if a nail had been driven into the flesh of an amputated limb, and he persisted until the limb was exhumed, when it was found that a nail had been driven into it at the time it was boxed for burial. The nail was removed and the pain instantly stopped. It is also in accordance with these facts that people complain of pain in a limb for perhaps two or three years after the amputation. The pain will then cease. This is because the disease remains in the still undetached etheric limb, but as the amputated part disintegrates, the etheric limb follows suit and thus the pain ceases.

Having noted the relations of the four kingdoms to the Etheric Region of the Physical World, we will next turn our attention to their relation to the Desire World.

Here we find that both minerals and plants lack a separate desire body. They are permeated only by the planetary desire body, the Desire World. Lacking the separate vehicle, they are incapable of feeling, desire, and emotion, which are faculties pertaining to the Desire World. When a stone is broken, it does not feel; but it would be wrong to infer that there is no feeling connected with such an action. That is the materialistic view, or the view taken by the uncomprehending multitude. The occult scientist knows that there is no act, great or small, which is not felt throughout the universe, and even though the stone, because it has no separate desire body, cannot feel, the Spirit of the Earth feels because it is Earth's desire body that permeates the stone. When a man cuts his finger, the finger, having no separate desire body, does not feel the pain, but the man does, because it is his desire body which permeates the finger. If a plant is torn up by the roots, it is felt by the Spirit of the Earth as a man would feel if a hair were torn from his head. This Earth is a living, feeling body, and all the forms which are without separate desire bodies through which their informing spirits may experience feeling, are included in the desire body of the Earth and that desire body has feeling. The breaking of a stone and the breaking off of flowers are productive of pleasure to the Earth, while the pulling out of plants by the root causes pain. The reason is given in the latter part of this work, for at this stage of our study the explanation would be incomprehensible to the general reader.

The planetary Desire World pulsates through the dense and vital bodies of animal and man in the same way that it penetrates the mineral and plant, but in addition to this, animal and man have separate desire bodies, which enable them to feel desire, emotion and passion. There is a difference, however. The desire body of the animal is built entirely of the material of the denser regions of the Desire World, while in the case of even the lowest of human races a little matter of the higher Regions enters into the composition of the desire body. The feelings of animals and the lowest human races are almost entirely concerned with the gratification of the lowest desires and passions which find their expression in the matter of the lower Regions of the Desire World. Hence, in order that they may have such emotions to educate them for something higher, it is necessary that they should have the corresponding materials in their desire bodies. As man progresses in the school of life, his experiences teach him, and his desires become purer and better. Thus by degrees the material of his desire body undergoes a corresponding change. The purer and brighter material of the higher Regions of the Desire World replaces the murky colors of the lower part. The desire body also grows in size, so that in a saint it is truly a glorious object to behold, the purity of its colors and its luminous transparency being beyond adequate simile. It must be seen to be appreciated.

At present the materials of both the lower and the higher Regions enter into the composition of the desire bodies of the great majority of mankind. None are so bad that they have not some good trait. This is expressed in the materials of the higher Regions which we find in their desire bodies. But, on the other hand, very, very few are so good that they do not use some of the materials of the lower Regions.
In the same way that the planetary vital and desire bodies inter-penetrate the dense material of the Earth, as we saw in the illustration of the sponge, the sand and the water, so the vital and desire bodies inter-penetrate the dense body of plant, animal, and man. But during the life of man his desire body is not shaped like his dense and vital bodies. After death it assumes that shape. During life it has the appearance of a luminous ovoid which, in waking hours, completely surrounds the dense body, as the albumen does the yolk of an egg. It extends from twelve to sixteen inches beyond the dense body. In this desire body there are a number of sense centers, but, in the great majority of people, they are latent. It is the awakening of these centers of perception that corresponds to the opening of the blind man's eyes in our former illustration. The matter in the human desire body is in incessant motion of inconceivable rapidity. There is in it no settled place for any particle, as in the dense body. The matter that is at the head one moment may be at the feet in the next and back again. There are no organs in the desire body, as in the dense and vital bodies, but there are centers of perception, which, when active, appear as vortices, always remaining in the same relative position to the dense body, most of them about the head. In the majority of people they are mere eddies and are of no use as centers of perception. They may be awakened in all, however, but different methods produce different results.

In the involuntary clairvoyant developed along improper, negative lines, these vortices turn from right to left, or in the opposite direction to the hands of a clock—counterclockwise.

In the desire body of the properly trained voluntary clairvoyant, they turn in the same direction as the hands of a clock—clockwise, glowing with exceeding splendor, far surpassing the brilliant luminosity of the ordinary desire body. These centers furnish him with means for the perception of things in the Desire World and he sees, and investigates as he wills, while the person whose centers turn counter-clockwise is like a mirror, which reflects what passes before it. Such a person is incapable of reaching out for information. The reason for this belongs to a later chapter, but the above is one of the fundamental differences between a medium and a properly trained clairvoyant. It is impossible for most people to distinguish between the two; yet there is one infallible rule that can be followed by anyone: No genuinely developed seer will ever exercise this faculty for money or its equivalent; nor will he use it to gratify curiosity; but only to help humanity.

No one capable of teaching the proper method for the development of this faculty will ever charge so much a lesson. Those demanding money for the exercise of, or for giving lessons in these things never have anything worth paying for. The above rule is a safe and sure guide, which all may follow with absolute confidence.

In a far distant future man's desire body will become as definitely organized as are the vital and dense bodies. When that stage is reached we shall all have the power to function in the desire body as we do now in the dense body, which is the oldest and best organized of these bodies of man—the desire body being the youngest.

The desire body is rooted in the liver, as the vital body is in the spleen.

In all warm-blooded creatures, which are the highest evolved, and have feelings, passions and emotions, which reach outward into the world with desire, which may be said to really live in the fuller meaning of the term and not merely vegetate—in all such creatures the currents of the desire body flow outward from the liver. The desire stuff is continually welling out in streams or currents which travel in curved lines to every point of the periphery of the ovoid and then return to the liver through a number of vortices, much as boiling water is continually welling outward from the source of heat and returning to it after completing its cycle.

The plants are devoid of this impelling, energizing principle, hence they cannot show life and motion as can the more highly developed organisms.

Where there is vitality and motion, but no red blood, there is no separate desire body. The creature is simply in the transition stage from plant to animal and therefore it moves entirely in the strength of the group-spirit.

In the cold-blooded animals which have a liver and red blood, there is a separate desire body and the group-spirit directs the currents inward, because in their case the separate spirit (of the individual fish or reptile for instance) is entirely outside the dense vehicle.

When the organism has evolved so far that the separate spirit can commence to draw into its vehicles then it (the individual spirit) commences to direct the currents outward, and we see the beginning of passionate existence and warm blood. It is the warm, red blood in the liver of the organism sufficiently evolved to have an Indwelling spirit which energizes the outgoing currents of desire stuff that cause the animal or the man to display desire and passion. In the case of the animal the spirit is not yet entirely indwelling. It does not become so until the points in the vital body and the dense body come into correspondence, as explained in Chapter XII. For this reason the animal is not a "liver," that is, he does not live as completely as does man, not being capable of as fine desires and emotions, because not as fully conscious. The mammalia of today are on a higher plane than was man at the animal stage of his evolution, because they have warm, red blood, which man did not have at that stage. This difference in status is accounted for by the spiral path of evolution, which also accounts for the fact that man is a higher type of humanity than the present Angels were in their human stage. The present mammalia, which have in their animal stage attained to the possession of warm, red blood, and are therefore capable of experiencing desire and emotion to some extent will, in the Jupiter Period, be a purer and better type of humanity than we are now, while from among our present humanity there will be some, even in the Jupiter Period, who will be openly and avowedly wicked. Moreover, they will not then be able to conceal their passions as is now possible, but will be unabashed about their evil doing.
In the light of this exposition of the connection between the liver and the life of the organism, it is noteworthy that in several European languages (English, German, and the Scandinavian tongues) the same word signifies the organ of the body (the liver) and also "one who lives."

When we turn our attention to the four kingdoms in their relation to the World of Thought we find that minerals, plants and animals lack a vehicle correlating them to that World. Yet we know some animals think, but they are the highest domesticated animals which have come into close touch with man for generations and have thus developed a faculty not possessed by other animals, which have not had that advantage. This is on the same principle that a highly charged wire will "induce" a weaker current of electricity in a wire brought close to it; or that a man of strong morals will arouse a like tendency in a weaker nature, while one morally weak will be overthrown if brought within the influence of evil characters. All we do, say, or are, reflects itself in our surroundings. This is why the highest domestic animals think. They are the highest of their kind, almost on the point of individualization, and man's thought vibrations have "induced" in them a similar activity of a lower order. With the exceptions noted, the animal kingdom has not acquired the faculty of thought. They are not individualized. This is the great and cardinal difference between the human and other kingdoms. Man is an individual. The animals, plants and minerals are divided into species. They are not individualized in the same sense that man is.

It is true that we divide mankind into races, tribes and nations; we note the difference between the Caucasian, the Negro, the Indian, etc.; but that is not to the point. If we wish to study the characteristics of the lion or the elephant or any other species of the lower animals, all that is necessary is to take any member of that species for that purpose. When we learn the characteristics of one animal, we know the characteristics of the species to which it belongs. All members of the same animal tribe are alike. That is the point. A lion, or its father, or its son, all look alike; there is no difference in the way they will act under like conditions. All have the same likes and dislikes; one is the same as another.

Not so with human beings. If we want to know about the characteristics of Negroes, it is not enough that we examine one single individual. It would be necessary to examine each individually, and even then we will arrive at no knowledge concerning Negroes as a whole, simply because that which was a characteristic of the single individual does not apply to the race collectively.

If we desire to know the character of Abraham Lincoln it will avail us nothing to study his father, his grandfather, or his son, for they would differ entirely. Each would have his own peculiarities quite distinct from the idiosyncrasies of Abraham Lincoln.

On the other hand, minerals, plants, and animals are described if we devote our attention to the description of one of each species; while there are as many species among human beings as there are individuals. Each individual person is a "species," a law unto himself, altogether separate and apart from any other individual, as different from his fellow men as one species in the lower kingdom is from another. We may write the biography of a man, but an animal can have no biography. This is because there is in each man an individual, indwelling spirit which dictates the thoughts and actions of each individual human being; while there is one "group-spirit" common to all the different animals or plants of the same species. The group-spirit works on the all from the outside. The tiger which roams in the wilds of the Indian jungle and the tiger penned up in the cage of a menagerie are both expressions of the same group-spirit. It influences both alike from the Desire World, distance being almost annihilated in the inner Worlds.

The group-spirits of the three lower kingdoms are variously located in the higher Worlds, as we shall see when we investigate the consciousness of the different kingdoms; but to properly comprehend the positions of these group-spirits in the inner Worlds it is necessary to remember and to clearly understand what has been said about all the forms that are in the visible world having crystallized from models and ideas in the inner Worlds, as illustrated by the architect's house and the inventor's machine. As the juices of the soft body of the snail crystallize into the hard shell which it carries upon its back, so the Spirits in the higher Worlds have, in a similar manner, crystallized out from themselves the dense, material bodies of the different kingdoms.

Thus the so-called "higher" bodies, although so fine and cloudy as to be invisible, are not by any means "emanations" from the dense body, but the dense vehicles of all kingdoms correspond to the shell of the snail, which is crystallized from its juices, the snail representing the spirit; and the juices of its body in their progress towards crystallization representing the mind, desire body and vital body. These various vehicles were emanated by the spirit from itself for the purpose of gaining experience through them. It is the spirit that moves the dense body where it will, as the snail moves its house, and not the body that controls the movements of the spirit. The more closely the spirit is able to enter into touch with its vehicle the better can it control and express itself through that vehicle, and vice versa. That is the key to the different states of consciousness in the different kingdoms. A study of diagram 3 and diagram 4 should give a clear understanding of the vehicles of each kingdom, the manner in which they are correlated to the different Worlds and the resulting state of consciousness.

From diagram 3 we learn that the separate Ego is definitely segregated within the Universal Spirit in the Region of Abstract Thought. It shows that only man possesses the complete chain of vehicles correlating him to all divisions of the three Worlds. The animal lacks one link of chain—the mind; the plant lacks two links; the mind and the desire body; and the mineral lacks three links of the chain of the vehicles necessary to function in a self-conscious manner in the Physical World—the mind, the desire and the vital bodies.

The reason for the various deficiencies is that the Mineral Kingdom is the expression of the latest stream of evolving life; the Plant Kingdom is ensouled by a life wave that has been longer upon the path of evolution; the life wave of the animal kingdom has a still longer past; while Man, that is to say, the life now expressing itself in the human form, has behind it the longest journey of all the four kingdoms, and therefore leads. In time, the three life-waves which now animate the three lower kingdoms will reach the human, and we shall have passed to higher stages of development.

To understand the degree of consciousness which results from the possession of the vehicles used by the life evolving in the four kingdoms, we turn our attention to diagram 4, which show that man, the Ego, the Thinker, has descended into the Chemical Region of the Physical World. Here he has marshaled all his vehicles, thereby attaining the state of waking consciousness. He is learning to control his vehicles. The organs of neither the desire body nor the mind are yet evolved. The latter is not yet even a body. At present it is simply a link, a sheath for the use of the Ego as a focusing point. It is the last of the vehicles that have been built. The spirit works gradually from finer into coarser substance, the vehicles also being built in finer substance first, then in coarser and coarser substance. The dense body was built first and has now come into its fourth stage of density; the vital body is in its third stage and the desire body in its second, hence it is still cloud-like, and the sheath of mind is filmier still. As those vehicles have not, as yet, evolved any organs, it is clear that they alone would be useless as vehicles of consciousness. The Ego, however, enters into the dense body and connects these organless vehicles with the physical sense centers and thus attains the waking state of consciousness in the Physical World.

The student should particularly note that it is because of their connection with the splendidly organized mechanism of the dense body that these higher vehicles become of value at present. He will thus avoid a mistake frequently made by people who, when they come into the knowledge that there are higher bodies, grow to despise the dense vehicle; to speak of it as "low" and "vile"—turning their eyes to heaven and wishing that they might soon be able to leave this earthly lump of clay and fly about in their "higher vehicles."

These people generally do not realize the difference between "higher" and "perfect." Certainly, the dense body is the lowest vehicle in the sense that it is the most unwieldy, correlating man to the world of sense with all the limitations thus implied. As stated, it has an enormous period of evolution back of it; is in its fourth state of development and has now reached a great and marvelous degree of efficiency. It will, in time, reach perfection, but even at present it is the best organized of man's vehicles. The vital body is in its third stage of evolution, and less completely organized than the dense body. The desire body and the mind are, as yet, mere clouds—almost entirely unorganized. In the very lowest human beings these vehicles are not even definite ovoids; they are more or less undefined in form.

The dense body is a wonderfully constructed instrument and should be recognized as such by everyone pretending to have any knowledge of the constitution of man. Observe the femur, for instance. This bone carries the entire weight of the body. On the outside it is built of a thin layer of compact bone, strengthened on the inside by beams and cross-beams of cancellated bone, in such a marvelous manner that the most skilled bridge or construction engineer could never accomplish the feat of building a pillar of equal strength with so little weight. The bones of the skull are built in a similar manner, always the least possible material is used and the maximum of strength obtained. Consider the wisdom manifested in the construction of the heart and then question if this superb mechanism deserves to be despised. The wise man is grateful for his dense body and takes the best possible care of it, because he knows that it is the most valuable of his present instruments.

The animal spirit has in its descent reached only the Desire World. It has not yet evolved to the point where it can "enter" a dense body. Therefore the animal has no individual indwelling spirit, but a group-spirit, which directs it from without. The animal has the dense body, the vital body and the desire body, but the group-spirit which directs it is outside. The vital body and the desire body of an animal are not entirely within the dense body, especially where the head is concerned. For instance, the etheric head of a horse projects far beyond and above the dense physical head. When, as in rare cases it happens, the etheric head of a horse draws into the head of the dense body, that horse can learn to read, count and work examples in elementary arithmetic. To this peculiarity is also due the fact that horses, dogs, cats and other domesticated animals sense the Desire World, though not always realizing the difference between it and the Physical World. A horse will shy at the sight of a figure invisible to the driver; a cat will go through the motions of rubbing itself against invisible legs. The cat sees the ghost, however without realizing that it has no dense legs available for frictional purposes. The dog, wiser than a cat or horse, will often sense that there is something he does not understand about the appearance of a dead master whose hands it cannot lick. It will howl mournfully and slink into a corner with its tail between its legs. The following illustration may perhaps be of service to show the difference between the man with his indwelling spirit and the animal with its group-spirit.

Let us imagine a room divided by means of a curtain, one side of the curtain representing the Desire World and the other the Physical. There are two men in the room, one in each division; they cannot see each other, nor can they get into the same division. There are, however, ten holes in the curtain and the man who is in the division representing the Desire World can put his ten fingers through these holes into the other division, representing the Physical World. He now furnishes an excellent representation of the group-spirit which is in the Desire World. The fingers represent the animals belonging to one species. He is able to move them as he wills, but he cannot use them freely nor as intelligently as the man who is walking about in the Physical division uses his body. The latter sees the fingers which are thrust through the curtain and he observes that they all move, but he does not see the connection between them. To him it appears as if they were all separate and distinct from one another. He cannot see that they are fingers of the man behind the veil and are governed in their movements by his intelligence. If he hurts one of the fingers, it is not only the finger that he hurts, but chiefly the man on the other side of the curtain. If an animal is hurt, it suffers, but not to the degree that the group-spirit does. The finger has no individualized consciousness; it moves as the man dictates—so do the animals move as the group-spirit dictates. We hear of "animal instinct" and "blind instinct." There is no such vague, indefinite thing as "blind" instinct. There is nothing "blind" about the way the group-spirit guides its members—there is Wisdom, spelled with capitals. The trained clairvoyant, when functioning in the Desire World, can communicate with these spirits of the animal species and finds them much more intelligent than a large percent of human beings. He can see the marvelous insight they display in marshaling the animals which are their physical bodies.

It is the spirit of the group which gathers its flocks of birds in the fall and compels them to migrate to the south, neither too early nor too late to escape the winter's chilly blast; that directs their return in the spring, causing them to fly at just the proper altitude, which differs for the different species.

The group-spirit of the beaver teaches it to build its dam across a stream at exactly the proper angle. It considers the rapidity of the flow, and all the circumstances, precisely as a skilled engineer would do, showing that it is as up-to-date in every particular of the craft as the college-bred, technically-educated man. It is the wisdom of the group-spirit that directs the building of the hexagon cell of the bee with such geometrical nicety; that teaches the snail to fashion its house in an accurate, beautiful spiral; that teaches the ocean mollusk the art of decorating its iridescent shell. Wisdom, wisdom everywhere! So grand, so great that one who looks with an observant eye is filled with amazement and reverence.
At this point the thought will naturally occur that if the animal group-spirit is so wise, considering the short period of evolution of the animal as compared with that of man, why does not the latter display wisdom to a much greater degree and why must man be taught to build dams and geometrize, all of which the group spirit does without being taught?

The answer to that question has to do with the descent of the Universal Spirit into matter of ever-increasing density. In the higher Worlds, where its vehicles are fewer and finer, it is in closer touch with cosmic wisdom which shines out in a manner inconceivable in the dense Physical World, but as the spirit descends, the light of wisdom becomes temporarily more and more dimmed, until in the densest of all the Worlds, it is held almost entirely in abeyance.

An illustration will make this clearer. The hand is man's most valuable servant; its dexterity enables it to respond to his slightest bidding. In some vocations, such as bank teller, the delicate touch of the hand becomes so sensitive, that it is able to distinguish a counterfeit coin from a genuine in a way so marvelous that one would almost think the hand were endowed with individual intelligence.

Its greatest efficiency is perhaps reached in the production of music. It is capable of producing the most beautiful, soul-stirring melodies. The delicate, caressing touch of the hand elicits the tenderest strains of soul-speech from the instrument, telling of the sorrows, the joys, the hopes, the fears and the longings of the soul in a way that nothing but music can do. It is the language of the heaven world, the spirit's true home, and comes to the divine spark imprisoned in flesh as a message from its native land. Music appeals to all, regardless of race, creed, or other worldly distinction. The higher and more spiritual the individual the plainer does it speak to him and even "the savage breast" is not unmoved by it.

Let us now imagine a master musician putting on thin gloves and trying to play his violin. We note at once that the delicate touch is less subtle; the soul of the music is gone. If he puts another and a heavier pair of gloves over the first pair, his hand is hampered to such an extent that he may occasionally create a discord instead of the former harmony. Should he at last put on, in addition to the two pairs of gloves already hampering him, a pair of still heavier mittens, he would, temporarily, be entirely unable to play, and one who had not heard him play previously to the time he put on the gloves and the mittens, would naturally think that he had never been able to do so, especially if ignorant of the hampering of his hands.

So it is with the Spirit; every step down, every descent into coarser matter is to it what the putting on of a pair of gloves would be to the musician. Every step down limits its power of expression until it has become accustomed to the limitations and has found its focus, in the same way that the eye must find its focus after we enter a house on a bright summer day. The pupil of the eye contracts to its limit in the glare of the sun and on entering the house all seems dark; but, as the pupil expands, and admits the light, the man is enabled to see as well in the dimmer light of the house as he did in the sunlight.

The purpose of man's evolution here is to enable him to find his focus in the Physical World, where at present the light of wisdom seems obscured. But when in time we have "found the light," the wisdom of man will shine forth in his actions, and far surpass the wisdom expressed by the group-spirit of the animal.

Besides, a distinction must be made between the group spirit and the virgin spirits of the life wave now expressing itself as animals. The group-spirit belongs to a different evolution and is the guardian of the animal spirits.

The dense body in which we function is composed of numerous cells, each having separate cell-consciousness, though of a very low order. While these cells form part of our body they are subjected to and dominated by our consciousness. An animal group-spirit functions in a spiritual body, which is its lowest vehicle This vehicle consists of a varying number of virgin spirits imbued for the time being with the consciousness of the group-spirit. The latter directs the vehicles built by the virgin spirits in its charge, caring for them and helping them to evolve their vehicles. As its wards evolve, the group-spirit also evolves, undergoing a series of metamorphoses, in a manner similar to that in which we grow and gain experience by taking into our bodies the cells of the food we eat, thereby also raising their consciousness by enduing them with ours for a time.

Thus while a separate, self-conscious Ego is within each human body and dominates the actions of its particular vehicle, the spirit of the separate animal is not yet individualized and self-conscious, but forms part of the vehicle of a self-conscious entity belonging to a different evolution—the group-spirit.
The group-spirit dominates the actions of the animals in harmony with cosmic law, until the virgin spirits in its charge shall have gained self-consciousness and become human. Then they will gradually manifest wills of their own, gaining more and more freedom from the group-spirit and becoming responsible for their own actions. The group-spirit will influence them, however (although in a decreasing degree), as race, tribe, community, or family spirit until each individual has become capable of acting in full harmony with cosmic law. Not until that time will the Ego be entirely free and independent of the group-spirit, which will then enter a higher phase of evolution.

The position occupied by the group-spirit in the Desire World gives to the animal a consciousness different from that of man, who has a clear, definite waking consciousness. Man sees things outside of himself in sharp, distinct outlines. Owing to the spiral path of evolution, the higher domestic animals, particularly the dog, horse, cat and elephant see objects in somewhat the same way, though perhaps not so clearly defined. All other animals have an internal "picture consciousness" similar to the dream-state in man. When such an animal is confronted by an object, a picture is immediately perceived within, accompanied by a strong impression that the object is inimical or beneficial to its welfare. If the feeling is one of fear, it is associated with a suggestion from the group-spirit how to escape the threatened danger. This negative state of consciousness renders it easy for the group-spirit to guide the dense bodies of its charges by suggestion, as the animals have no will of their own.

Man is not so easily managed from without, either with or without his consent. As evolution progresses and man's will develops more and more, he will become non-amenable to outside suggestion and free to do as he pleases regardless of suggestions from others. This is the chief difference between man and the other kingdoms. They act according to law and the dictates of the group-spirit (which we call instinct), while man is becoming more and more a law unto himself. We do not ask the mineral whether or not it will crystallize, nor the flower whether it will or will not bloom, nor the lion whether it will or will not cease to prey. They are all, in the smallest as in the greatest matter, under the absolute domination of the group-spirit, being without free will and initiative which, in some degree, are possessed by every human being. All animals of the same species look nearly alike, because they emanate from the same group-spirit, while among the fifteen hundred millions of human beings who people the Earth no two look exactly alike, not even twins when adolescent, because the stamp that is put upon each by the indwelling individual Ego makes the difference in appearance as well as in character.

That all oxen thrive on grass, and all lions eat flesh, while "one man's meat is another man's poison" is another illustration of the all-inclusive influence of the group-spirit as contrasted with the Ego which makes each human being require a different proportion of food from every other. Doctors note with perplexity the same peculiarity in administering medicine. Its acts differently upon different individuals, while the same medicine will produce identical effects on two animals of the same species, owing to the fact that animals all follow the dictates of the group-spirit and Cosmic Law—always act similarly in identical circumstances. Man alone is, in some measure, able to follow his own desires within certain limits. That his mistakes are many and grievous, is granted, and to many it might seem better if he were forced into the right way, but if this were done, he would never learn to do right. Lessons of discrimination between good and evil cannot be learned unless he is free to choose his own course and has learned to eschew the wrong as a veritable "womb of pain." If he did right only because he had no choice, and had no chance to do otherwise, he would be but an automaton and not an evolving God. As the builder learns by his mistakes, correcting past errors in future buildings, so man, by means of his blunders, and the pain they cause him, is attaining to a higher (because self-conscious) wisdom than the animal, which acts wisely because it is impelled to action by the group-spirit. In time the animal will become human, have liberty of choice and will make mistakes and learn by them as we do now.

Diagram 4 shows that the group-spirit of the plant kingdom has its lowest vehicle in the Region of Concrete Thought. It is two steps removed from its dense vehicle and consequently the plants have a consciousness corresponding to that of dreamless sleep. The group-spirit of the mineral has it slowest vehicle in the Region of Abstract Thought and it is, therefore, three steps removed from its dense vehicle; hence it is in a state of deep unconsciousness similar to the trance condition.

We have now shown that man is an individual indwelling spirit, an Ego separate from all other entities, directing and working in one set of vehicles from within, and that plants and animals are directed from without by a group-spirit having jurisdiction over a number of animals or plants in our Physical World. They are separate only in appearance.

The relations of plant, animal and man to the life currents in the Earth's atmosphere are symbolically represented by the cross. The Mineral Kingdom is not represented, because as we have seen, it possesses no individual vital body, hence cannot be the vehicle for currents belonging to the higher realms. Plato, who was an Initiate, often gave occult truths. He said "The World-Soul is crucified."
The lower limb of the cross indicates the plant with its root in the chemical mineral soil. The group-spirits of plants are at the center of the Earth. They are (it will be remembered) in the Region of Concrete Thought, which inter-penetrates the Earth, as do all the other Worlds. From these group-spirits flow streams or currents in all directions to the periphery of the Earth, passing outward through the length of plant or tree.

Man is represented by the upper limb; his is the inverted plant. The plant takes its food through the root. Man takes his food through the head. The plant stretches its generative organs towards the sun. Man, the inverted plant, turns his towards the center of the earth. The plant is sustained by the spiritual currents of the group-spirit in the center of the earth, which enter into it by way of the root. Later it will be shown that the highest spiritual influence comes to man from the sun, which sends its rays through man, the inverted plant, from the head downwards. The plant inhales the poisonous carbon-dioxide exhaled by man and exhales the life-giving oxygen used by him.

The animal, which is symbolized by the horizontal limb of the cross, is between the plant and the man. Its spine is in a horizontal position and through it play the currents of the animal group-spirit which encircle the Earth. No animal can be made to remain constantly upright, because in that case the currents of the group-spirit could not guide it, and if it were not sufficiently individualized to endure the spiritual currents which enter the vertical human spine, it would die. It is necessary that a vehicle for the expression of an individual Ego shall have three things—an upright walk, that it may come into touch with the currents just mentioned; an upright larynx, for only such a larynx is capable of speech (parrots and starlings are examples of this effect of the upright larynx); and, owing to the solar currents, it must have warm blood. The latter is of the utmost importance to the Ego, which will be logically explained and illustrated later. These requisites are simply mentioned here as the last words on the status of the four kingdoms in relation to each other and to the Worlds.

Chapter III

Man and the Method of Evolution

Activities of Life; Memory and Soul-Growth

Our study thus far of the seven Worlds or states of matter has shown us that each serves a definite purpose in the economy of nature, and that God, the Great Spirit, in Whom we actually and in fact "live and move and have our being," is the Power that permeates and sustains the whole Universe with Its Life; but while that Life flows into and is immanent in every atom of the six lower Worlds and all contained therein, in the Seventh—the highest—the Triune God alone is.

The next highest or sixth realm is the World of Virgin Spirits. Here those sparks from the divine "Flame: have their being before they commence their long pilgrimage through the five denser Worlds for the purpose of developing latent potentialities into dynamic powers. As the seed unfolds its hidden possibilities by being buried in the soil, so these virgin spirits will, in time, when they have passed through matter (the school of experience), also become divine "Flames," capable of bringing forth universes from themselves.

The five Worlds constitute the field of man's evolution, the three lower or denser being the scene of the present phase of his development. We will now consider his as related to these five Worlds by means of his appropriate vehicles, remembering the two grand divisions into which two of these Worlds are divided, and than man has a vehicle for each of these divisions.

The Sevenfold Constitution of Man

In the waking state these vehicles are all together. They inter-penetrate one another as the blood, the lymph, and other juices of the body inter-penetrate. Thus is the Ego enabled to act in the Physical World.

We ourselves, as Egos, function directly in the subtle substance of the Region of Abstract Thought, which we have specialized within the periphery of our individual aura. Thence we view the impressions made by the outer world upon the vital body through the senses, together with the feelings and emotions generated by them in the desire body, and mirrored in the mind.

From these mental images we form our conclusions, in the substance of the Region of Abstract Thought, concerning the subjects with which they deal. Those conclusions are ideas. By the power of will we project an idea through the mind, where it takes concrete shape as a thought-form by drawing mind-stuff around itself from the Region of Concrete Thought.

The mind is like the projecting lens of a stereopticon. It projects the image in one of three directions, according to the will of the thinker, which ensouls the thought-form.

1. It may be projected against the desire body in an endeavor to arouse feeling which will lead to immediate action.
   1. If the thought awakens Interest, one of the twin forces, Attraction or Repulsion, will be stirred up.
      If Attraction, the centripetal force, is aroused, it seizes the thought, whirls it into the desire body, endows the image with added life and clothes it with desire-stuff. Then the thought is able to act on the etheric brain, and propel the vital force through the appropriate brain centers and nerves to the voluntary muscles which perform the necessary action. Thus the force in the thought is expended and the image remains in the ether of the vital body as memory of the act and the feeling that caused it.
   2. Repulsion is the centrifugal force and if that is aroused by the thought there will be a struggle between the spiritual force (the will of the man) within the thought-form, and the desire body. This is the battle between conscience and desire, the higher and the lower nature. The spiritual force, in spite of resistance will seek to clothe the thought-form in the desire-stuff needed to manipulate the brain and muscles. The force of Repulsion will endeavor to scatter the appropriated material and oust the thought. If the spiritual energy is strong it may force its way through to the brain centers and hold its clothing of desire-stuff while manipulating the vital force, thus compelling action, and will then leave upon the memory a vivid impression of the struggle and the victory. If the spiritual energy is exhausted before action has resulted, it will be overcome by the force of Repulsion, and will be stored in the memory, as are all other thought-forms when they have expended their energy.
      If the thought-form meets the withering feeling of Indifference it depends upon the spiritual energy contained in it whether it will be able to compel action, or simply leave a weak impress upon the reflecting ether of the vital body after its kinetic energy has been exhausted.
2. Where no immediate action is called for by the mental images of impacts from without, these may be projected directly upon the reflecting ether, together with the thoughts occasioned by them, to be used at some future time. The spirit, working through the mind, has instant access to the storehouse of conscious memory and may at any time resurrect any of the pictures found there, endue them with new spiritual force, and project them upon the desire body to compel action. Each time such a picture is thus used it will gain in vividness, strength and efficiency, and will compel action along its particular line grooves, and produces the phenomenon of thought, "gaining" or "growing" upon us by repetition.
3. A third way of using a thought-form is when the thinker projects it toward another mind to act as a suggestion, to carry information, etc., as in thought-transference, or it may be directed against the desire body of another person to compel action, as in the case of a hypnotist influencing a victim at a distance. It will then act in precisely the same manner as if it were the victim's own thought. If in line with his proclivities it will act as per paragraph 1a. If contrary to his nature, as described in 1b or 1c.

When the work designed for such a projected thought-form has been accomplished, or its energy expended in vain attempts to achieved its object, it gravitates back to its creator, bearing with it the indelible record of the journey. It success or failure is imprinted on the negative atoms of the reflecting ether of its creator's vital body, where it forms that part of the record of the thinker's life and action which is sometimes called the sub-conscious mind.

This record is much more important than the memory to which we have conscious access, for the latter is made up from imperfect and illusive sense-perceptions and is the voluntary memory or conscious mind.

The involuntary memory or sub-conscious mind comes into being in a different way, altogether beyond our control at present. As the ether carries to the sensitive film in the camera an accurate impression of the surrounding landscape, taking in the minutest detail regardless of whether the photographer has observed it or not, so the ether contained in the air we inspire carries with it an accurate and detailed picture of all our surroundings. Not only of material things, but also the conditions existing each moment within our aura. The slightest thought, feeling or emotion is transmitted to the lungs, where it is injected into the blood. The blood is one of the highest products of the vital body as it is the carrier of nourishment to every part of the body, and the direct vehicle of the Ego. The pictures it contains are impressed upon the negative atoms of the vital body, to serve as arbiters of the man's destiny in the post mortem state.

The memory (or so-called mind), both conscious and sub-conscious, relates wholly to the experiences of this life. It consists of impressions of events on the vital body. These may be changed or even eradicated, as noted in the explanation concerning the forgiveness of sins which is given a few pages further on, which change or eradication depends upon the elimination of these impressions from the ether of the vital body.

There is also a superconscious memory. That is the storehouse of all faculties acquired and knowledge gained in previous lives, though perhaps latent in the present life. This record is indelibly engraven on the life spirit. It manifests ordinarily, though not to the full extent, as conscience and character which ensoul all thought-forms, sometimes as counselor, sometimes compelling action with resistless force, even contrary to reason and desire.

In many women, in whom the vital body is positive, and in advanced people of either sex where the vital body has been sensitized by a pure and holy life, by prayer and concentration, this superconscious memory inherent in the life spirit is occasionally, to some extent, above the necessity of clothing itself in mind stuff and desire matter in order to compel action. It does not always need to incur the danger of being subjected to and perhaps overruled by a process of reasoning. Sometimes, in the form of intuition or teaching from within, it impresses itself directly upon the reflecting ether of the vital body. The more readily we learn to recognize it and follow its dictates, the oftener it will speak, to our eternal welfare.
By their activities during waking hours the desire body and the mind are constantly destroying the dense vehicle. Every thought and movement breaks down tissue. On the other hand, the vital body faithfully endeavors to restore harmony and build up what the other vehicles are tearing down. It is not able, however, to entirely withstand the powerful onslaughts of the impulses and thoughts. It gradually loses ground and at last there comes a time when it collapses. Its "points" shrivel-up, so to say. The vital fluid ceases to flow along the nerves is sufficient quantity; the body becomes drowsy, the Thinker is hampered by its drowsiness and forced to withdraw, taking the desire body with him. This withdrawal of the higher vehicle leaves the dense body interpenetrated by the vital body in the senseless state we call sleep.

Sleep, however, is not by any means an inactive state, as people generally suppose. If it were, the body would be no different on awakening in the morning from its condition when it went to sleep at night; its fatigue would be just as great. On the contrary, sleep is a period of intense activity and the more intense it is the greater its value, for it eliminates the poisons resulting from tissue destroyed by the mental and physical activities of the day. The tissues are re-built and the rhythm of the body restored. The more thoroughly this work is done the greater the benefit accruing from sleep.

The Desire World is an ocean of wisdom and harmony. Into this the Ego takes the mind and the desire body when the lower vehicles have been left to sleep. There the first care of the Ego is the restoration of the rhythm and harmony of the mind and the desire body. This restoration is accomplished gradually as the harmonious vibrations of the Desire World flow through them. There is an essence in the Desire World corresponding to the vital fluid which permeates the dense body by means of the vital body. The higher vehicles, as it were, steep themselves in this elixir of life. When strengthened, they commence work on the vital body, which was left with the sleeping dense body. Then the vital body begins to specialize the solar energy anew, rebuilding the dense body, using particularly the chemical ether as its medium in the process of restoration.

It is this activity of the different vehicles during sleep which forms the basis for the activity of the following day. Without that there would be no awakening, for the Ego was forced to abandon his vehicles because their weariness rendered them useless. If the work of removing that fatigue were not done, the bodies would remain asleep, as sometimes happens in natural trance. It is just because of this harmonizing, recuperative activity that sleep is better than doctor or medicine in preserving health. Mere rest is nothing is comparison with sleep. It is only while the higher vehicles are in the Desire World that there is a total suspension of waste and an influx of restoring force. It is true that during rest the vital body is not hampered in its work by tissue being broken down by active motion and tense muscles, but still it must contend with the wasting energy of thought and it does not then receive the outside recuperative force from the desire body as during sleep.

It happens, however, that at times the desire body does not fully withdraw, so that part of it remains connected with the vital body, the vehicle for sense perception and memory. The result is that restoration is only partly accomplished and that the senses and actions of the Desire World are brought into the physical consciousness as dreams. Of course most dreams are confused as the axis of perception is askew, because of the improper relation of one body to another. The memory is also confused by this incongruous relation of the vehicles and as a result of the loss of the restoring force, dream-filled sleep is restless and the body feels tired on awakening.

During the life the threefold spirit, the Ego, works on and in the threefold body, to which it is connected by the link of mind. This work brings the threefold soul into being. The soul is the spiritualized product of the body.

As proper food feeds the body in a material sense, so the activity of the spirit in the dense body, which results in right action, promotes the growth of the Conscious Soul. As the forces from the sun play in the vital body and nourish it, that it may act on the dense body, so the memory of actions done in the dense body-the desires, feelings and emotions of the desire body and the thoughts and ideas in the mind-cause the growth of the Intellectual Soul. In like manner the highest desires and emotions of the desire body form the Emotional Soul.

This threefold soul in turn enhances the consciousness of the threefold spirit.
The Emotional Soul, which is the extract of the desire body, adds to the efficiency of the Human Spirit, which is the spiritual counterpart of the desire body.

The Intellectual Soul gives added power to the Life Spirit, because the Intellectual Soul is extracted from the vital body, which is the material counterpart of the Life Spirit.

The Conscious Soul increases the consciousness of the Divine Spirit because it (the Conscious Soul) is the extract of the dense body, which latter is the counterpart of the Divine Spirit.

Death and Purgatory

So man builds and sows until the moment of death arrives. Then the seed-time and the periods of growth and ripening are past. The harvest time has come, when the skeleton specter of Death arrives with his scythe and hour-glass. That is a good symbol. The skeleton symbolizes the relatively permanent part of the body. The scythe represents the fact that this permanent part, which is about to be harvested by the spirit, is the fruitage of the life now drawing to a close. The hour-glass in his hand indicates that the hour does not strike until the full course has been run in harmony with unvarying laws.
When that moment arrives a separation of the vehicles takes place. As his life in the Physical World is ended for the time being, it is not necessary for man to retain his dense body. The vital body, which as we have explained, also belongs to the Physical World, is withdrawn by way of the head, leaving the dense body inanimate.

The higher vehicles—vital body, desire body and mind—are seen to leave the dense body with a spiral movement, taking with them the soul of one dense atom. Not the atom itself, but the forces that played through it. The results of the experiences passed through in the dense body during the life just ended have been impressed upon this particular atom. While all the other atoms of the dense body have been renewed from time to time, this permanent atom has remained. It has remained stable, not only through one life, but it has been a part of every dense body ever used by a particular Ego. It is withdrawn at death only to reawaken at the dawn of another physical life, to serve again as the nucleus around which is built the new dense body to be used by the same Ego. It is therefore called the "Seed-Atom." During life the seed-atom is situated in the left ventricle of the heart, near the apex. At death it rises to the brain by way of the pneumogastric nerve, leaving the dense body, together with the higher vehicles, by way of the sutures between the parietal and occipital bones.

When the higher vehicles have left the dense body they are still connected with it by a slender, glistening, silvery cord shaped much like two figure sixes reversed, one upright and one horizontally placed, the two connected at the extremities of the hooks. (See diagram 5 1/2.)

One end is fastened to the heart by means of the seed-atom, and it is the rupture of the seed-atom which causes the heart to stop. The cord itself is not snapped until the panorama of the past life, contained in the vital body, has been reviewed.

Care should be taken, however, not to cremate or embalm the body until at least three days after death, for while the vital body is with the higher vehicles, and they are still connected with the dense body by means of the silver cord, any post mortem examination or other injury to the dense body will be felt, in a measure, by the man.

Cremation should be particularly avoided in the first three days after death, because it tends to disintegrate the vital body, which should be kept intact until the panorama of the past life has been etched into the desire body.

The silver cord snaps at the point where the sixes unite, half remaining with the dense body and the other half with the higher vehicles. From the time the cord snaps the dense body is quite dead.
In the beginning of 1906 Dr. McDougall made a series of experiments in the Massachusetts General Hospital, to determine, if possible, whether anything not ordinarily visible left the body at death. For this purpose he constructed a pair of scales capable of registering differences of one-tenth of an ounce.
The dying person and his bed were placed on one of the platforms of the scale, which was then balanced by weights placed on the opposite platform. In every instance it was noted that at the precise moment when the dying person drew the last breath, the platform containing the weights dropped with startling suddenness, lifting the bed and the body, thus showing that something invisible, but having weight, had left the body. Thereupon the newspapers all over the country announced in glaring headlines that Dr. McDougall had "weighed the soul."

Occultism hails with joy the discoveries of modern science, as they invariably corroborate what occult science has long taught. The experiments of Dr. McDougall showed conclusively that something invisible to ordinary sight left the body at death, as trained clairvoyants had seen, and as had been stated in lectures and literature for many years previous to Dr. McDougall's discovery.

But this invisible "something" is not the soul. There is a great difference. The reporters jump at conclusions when they state that the scientists have "weighed the soul." The soul belongs to higher realms and can never be weighed on physical scales, even though they registered variations of one-millionth part of a grain instead of one-tenth of an ounce.

It was the vital body which the scientists weighed. It is formed of the four ethers and they belong to the Physical World.

As we have seen, a certain amount of this ether is "superimposed" upon the ether which envelops the particles of the human body and is confined there during physical life, adding in a slight degree to the weight of the dense body of plant, animal and man. In death it escapes; hence the diminution in weight noticed by Dr. McDougall when the persons with whom he experimented expired.

Dr. McDougall also tried his scales in weighing dying animals. No diminution was found here, though one of the animals was a St. Bernard dog. That was taken to indicate that animals have no souls. A little later, however, Professor La V. Twining, head of the Science Department of the Los Angeles Polytechnic School, experimented with mice and kittens, which he enclosed in hermetically sealed glass flasks. His scales were the most sensitive procurable and were enclosed in a glass case from which all moisture had been removed. It was found that all the animals observed lost weight at death. A good sized mouse, weighing 12.886 grams, suddenly lost 3.1 milligrams at death.

A kitten used in another experiment lost one hundred milligrams while dying and at its last gasp it suddenly lost an additional sixty milligrams. After that it lost weight slowly, due to evaporation.
Thus the teaching of occult science in regard to the possession of vital bodies by animals was also vindicated when sufficiently fine scales were used, and the case where the rather insensitive scales did not show diminution in the weight of the St. Bernard dog shows that the vital bodies of animals are proportionately lighter than in man.

When the "silver cord" is loosened in the heart, and man has been released from his dense body, a moment of the highest importance comes to the Ego, and it cannot be too seriously impressed upon the relatives of a dying person that it is a great crime against the departing soul to give expression to loud grief and lamentations, for it is just then engaged in a matter of supreme importance and a great deal of the value of the past life depends upon how much attention the soul can give to this matter. This will be made clearer when we come to the description of man's life in the Desire World.

It is also a crime against the dying to administer stimulants which have the effect of forcing the higher vehicles back into the dense body with a jerk, thus imparting a great shock to the man. It is not torture to pass out, but it is torture to be dragged back to endure further suffering. Some who have passed out have told investigators that they had, in that way, been kept dying for hours and had prayed that their relatives would cease their mistaken kindness and let them die.

When the man is freed from the dense body, which was the heaviest clog upon his spiritual power (like the heavy mitten on the hand of the musician in our previous illustration), his spiritual power comes back in some measure, and he is able to read the pictures in the negative pole of the reflecting ether of his vital body, which is the seat of the sub-conscious memory.

The whole of his past life passes before his sight like a panorama, the events being presented in reverse order. The incidents of the days immediately preceding death come first and so on back through manhood or womanhood to youth, childhood and infancy. Everything is remembered.

The man stands as a spectator before this panorama of his past life. He sees the pictures as they pass and they impress themselves upon his higher vehicles, but he has no feeling about them at this time. That is reserved until the time when he enters into the Desire World, which is the world of feeling and emotion. At present he is only in the Etheric Region of the Physical World.

This panorama lasts from a few hours to several days, depending upon the length of time the man could keep awake, if necessary. Some people can keep awake only twelve hours, or even less; others can do so, upon occasion, for a number of days, but as long as the man can remain awake, the panorama lasts.
This feature of life after death is similar to that with takes place when one is drowning or falling from a height. In such cases the vital body also leaves the dense body and the man sees his life in a flash, because he loses consciousness at once. Of course the "silver cord" is not broken, or there could be no resuscitation.

When the endurance of the vital body has reached its limit, it collapses in the way described when we were considering the phenomenon of sleep. During physical life, when the Ego controls its vehicles, this collapse terminates the waking hours; after death the collapse of the vital body terminates the panorama and forces the man to withdraw into the Desire World. The silver cord breaks at the point where the sixes unite, and the same division is made a during sleep, but with this important difference, that thought the vital body returns to the dense body, it no longer interpenetrates it, but simply hovers over it. It remains floating over the grave, decaying synchronously with the dense vehicle. Hence, to the trained clairvoyant, a graveyard is a nauseating sight and if only more people could see it as he does, little argument would be necessary to induce them to change from the present unsanitary method of disposing of the dead to the more rational method of cremation, which restores the elements to their primordial condition without the objectionable features incident to the process of slow decay.

In leaving the vital body the process is much the same as when the dense body is discarded. The life forces of one atom are taken, to be used as a nucleus for the vital body of a future embodiment. Thus, upon his entrance into the Desire World the man has the seed-atoms of the dense and the vital bodies, in addition to the desire body and the mind.

If the dying man could leave all desires behind, the desire body would very quickly fall away from him, leaving him free to proceed into the heaven world, but that is not generally the case. Most people, especially if they die in the prime of life, have many ties and much interest in life on earth. They have not altered their desires because they have lost their physical bodies. In fact often their desires are even augmented by a very intense longing to return. This acts in such a manner as to bind them to the Desire World in a very unpleasant way, although unfortunately, they do not realize it. On the other hand, old and decrepit persons and those who are weakened by long illness and are tired of life, pass on very quickly.

The matter may be illustrated by the ease with which the seed falls out of the ripe fruit, no particle of the flesh clinging to it, while in the unripe fruit the seed clings to the flesh with the greatest tenacity. Thus it is especially hard for people to die who were taken out of their bodies by accident while at the height of their physical health and strength, engaged in numerous ways in the activities of physical life; held by the ties of wife, family, relatives, friends, pursuits of business and pleasure.

The suicide, who tries to get away from life, only to find that he is as much alive as ever, is in the most pitiable plight. He is able to watch those whom he has, perhaps, disgraced by his act, and worst of all, he has an unspeakable feeling of being "hollowed out." The part in the ovoid aura where the dense body used to be is empty and although the desire body has taken the form of the discarded dense body, it feels like an empty shell, because the creative archetype of the body in the Region of Concrete Thought persists as an empty mold, so to speak, as long as the dense body should properly have lived. When a person meets a natural death, even in the prime of life, the activity of the archetype ceases, and the desire body adjusts itself so as to occupy the whole of the form, but in the case of suicide that awful feeling of "emptiness" remains until the time comes when, in the natural course of events, his death would have occurred.

As long as the man entertains the desires connected with earth life he must stay in his desire body and as the progress of the individual requires that he pass on to higher Regions, the existence in the Desire World must necessarily become purgative, tending to purify him from his binding desires. How this is done is best seen by taking some radical instances.

The miser who loved his gold in earth life loves it just as dearly after death; but in the first place he cannot acquire any more, because he has no longer a dense body wherewith to grasp it and worst of all, he cannot even keep what he hoarded during life. He will, perhaps, go and sit by his safe and watch the cherished gold or bonds; but the heirs appear and with, it may be, a stinging jeer at the "stingy old fool" (whom they do not see, but who both sees and hears them), will open his safe, and though he may throw himself over his gold to protect it, they will put their hands through him, neither knowing nor caring that he is there, and will then proceed to spend his hoard, while he suffers in sorrow and impotent rage.
He will suffer keenly, his sufferings all the more terrible on account of being entirely mental, because the dense body dulls even suffering to some extent. In the Desire World, however, these sufferings have full sway and the man suffers until he learns that gold may be a curse. Thus he gradually becomes contented with his lot and at last is freed from his desire body and is ready to go on.

Or take the case of the drunkard. He is just as fond of intoxicants after death as he was before. It is not the dense body that craves drink. It is made sick by alcohol and would rather be without it. It vainly protests in different ways, but the desire body of the drunkard craves the drink and forces the dense body to take it, that the desire body may have the sensation of pleasure resulting from the increased vibration. That desire remains after the death of the dense body, but the drunkard has in his desire body neither mouth to drink not stomach to contain physical liquor. He may and does get into saloons, where he interpolates his body into to bodies of the drinkers to get a little of their vibrations by induction, but that is too weak to give him much satisfaction. He may and also does sometimes get inside a whiskey cask, but that is of no avail either for there are in the cask no such fumes as are generated in the digestive organs of a tippler. It has no effect upon him and he is like a man in an open boat on the ocean. "Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink;" consequently he suffers intensely. In time, however, he learns the uselessness of longing for drink which he cannot obtain. As with so many of our desires in the Earth life, all desires in the Desire World die for want of opportunity to gratify them. When the drunkard has been purged, he is ready, so far as this habit is concerned, to leave this state of "purgatory" and ascend into the heaven world.

Thus we see that it is not an avenging Deity that makes purgatory or hell for us, but our own individual evil habits and acts. According to the intensity of our desires will be the time and suffering entailed in their expurgation. In the cases mentioned it would have been no suffering to the drunkard to lose his worldly possessions. If he had any, he did not cling to them. Neither would it have caused the miser any paid to have been deprived of intoxicants. It is safe to say that he would not have cared if there were not a drop of liquor in the world. But he did care about his gold, and the drunkard cared about his drink and so the unerring law gave to each that which was needed to purge him of his unhallowed desires and evil habits.

This is the law that is symbolized in the scythe of the reaper, Death; the law that says, "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." It is the law of cause and effect, which rules all things in the three Worlds, in every realm of nature—physical, moral and mental. Everywhere it works inexorably, adjusting all things, restoring the equilibrium wherever even the slightest action has brought about a disturbance, as all action must. The result may be manifested immediately or it may be delayed for years or for lives, but sometime, somewhere, just and equal retribution will be made. The student should particularly note that its work is absolutely impersonal. There is in the universe neither reward nor punishment. All is the result of invariable law. The action of this law will be more fully elucidated in the next chapter, where we shall find it associated with another Great Law of the Cosmos, which also operates in the evolution of man. The law we are now considering is called the law of Consequence.

In the Desire World it operates in purging man of the baser desires and the correction of the weaknesses and vices which hinder his progress, by making him suffer in the manner best adapted to that purpose. If he had made others suffer, or has dealt unjustly with them, he will be made to suffer in that identical way. Be it noted, however, that if a person has been subject to vices, or has done wrong to others, but has overcome his vices, or repented and, as far as possible, made right the wrong done, such repentance, reform and restitution have purged him of those special vices and evil acts. The equilibrium has been restored and the lesson learned during that embodiment, and therefore will not be a cause of suffering after death.

In the Desire World life is lived about three times as rapidly as in the Physical World. A man who has lived to be fifty years of age in the Physical World would live through the same life events in the Desire World in about sixteen years. This is, of course, only a general gauge. There are persons who remain in the Desire World much longer than their term of physical life. Others again, who have led lives with few gross desires, pass through in a much shorter period, but the measure above given is very nearly correct for the average man of present day.

It will be remembered that as the man leaves the dense body at death, his past life passes before him in pictures; but at that time he has no feeling concerning them.

During his life in the Desire World also these life pictures roll backwards, as before; but not the man has all the feelings that it is possible for him to have as, one by one, the scenes pass before him. Every incident in his past life is now lived over again. When he comes to a point where he has injured someone, he himself feels the pain as the injured person felt it. He lives through all the sorrow and suffering he has caused to others and learns just how painful is the hurt and how hard to bear is the sorrow he has caused. In addition there is the fact already mentioned that the suffering is much keener because he has no dense body to dull the pain. Perhaps that is why the speed of life there is tripled—that the suffering may lose in duration what it gains in sharpness. Nature's measures are wonderfully just and true.

There is another characteristic peculiar to this phase of post mortem existence which intimately connected with the fact (already mentioned) that distance is almost annihilated in the Desire World. When a man dies, he at once seems to swell out in his vital body; he appears to himself to grow into immense proportions. This feeling is due to the fact, not that the body really grows, but that the perceptive faculties receive so many impressions from various sources, all seeming to be close at hand. The same is true of the desire body. The man seems to be present with all the people with whom on earth he had relations of a nature which require correction. If he has injured one man in San Francisco and another in New York, he will feel as if part of him were in each place. This gives him a peculiar feeling of being cut to pieces.

The student will now understand the importance of the panorama of the past life during the purgative existence, where this panorama is realized in definite feelings. If it lasted long and the man were undisturbed, the full, deep, clear impression etched into the desire body would make life in the Desire World more vivid and conscious and the purgation more thorough than if, because of distress at the loud outbursts of grief on the part of his relatives, at the death bed and during the three-day period previously mentioned the man had only vague impression of his past life. The spirit which has etched a deep clear record into its desire body will realize the mistakes of the past life so much more clearly and definitely than if the pictures were blurred on account of the individual's attention being diverted by the suffering and grief around him. His feeling concerning the things which cause his present suffering in the Desire World will be much more definite if they are drawn from a distinct panoramic impression than if the duration of the process were short.

This sharp, clear-cut feeling is of immense value in future lives. It stamps upon the seed-atom of the desire body an ineffaceable impression of itself. The experiences will be forgotten in succeeding lives, but the Feeling remains. When opportunities occur to repeat the error in later lives, this Feeling will speak to us clearly and unmistakably. It is the "still, small voice" which warns us, though we do not know why; but the clearer and more definite the panoramas of past lives has been, the oftener, stronger and clearer shall we hear this voice. Thus we see how important it is that we leave the passing spirit in absolute quietness after death. By so doing we help it to reap the greatest possible benefit from the life just ended and to avoid perpetuating the same mistakes in future lives, while our selfish, hysterical lamentations may deprive it of much of the value of the life it has just concluded.

The mission of purgatory is to eradicate the injurious habits by making their gratification impossible. The individual suffers exactly as he has made others suffer through his dishonesty, cruelty, intolerance, or what not. Because of this suffering he learns to act kindly, honestly, and with forbearance toward others in future. Thus, in consequence of the existence of this beneficent state, man learns virtue and right action. When he is reborn he is free from evil habits, at least every evil act committed is one of free will. The tendencies to repeat the evil of past lives remain, for we must learn to do right consciously and of our own will. Upon occasion these tendencies tempt us, thereby affording us an opportunity of ranging ourselves on the side of mercy and virtue as against vice and cruelty. But to indicate right action and to help us resist the snares and wiles of temptation, we have the feeling resulting from the expurgation of evil habits and the expiation of the wrong acts of past lives. If we heed that feeling and abstain from the particular evil involved, the temptation will cease. We have freed ourselves from it for all time. If we yield we shall experience keener suffering than before until at last we have learned to live by the Golden Rule, because the way of the transgressor is hard. Even then we have not reached the ultimate. To good to others because we want them to do good to us is essentially selfish. In time we must learn to do good regardless of how we are treated by others; as Christ said, we must love even our enemies.

There is an inestimable benefit in knowing about the method and object of this purgation, because we are thus enabled to forestall it by living our purgatory here and now day by day, thus advancing much faster than would otherwise be possible. An exercise is given in the latter part of this work, the object of which is purification as an aid to the development of spiritual sight. It consists of thinking over the happenings of the day after retiring at night. We review each incident of the day, in reverse order, taking particular note of the moral aspect, considering whether we acted rightly or wrongly in each particular case regarding actions, mental attitude and actions, mental attitude and habits. By thus judging ourselves day by day, endeavoring to correct mistakes and wrong actions, we shall materially shorten or perhaps even eliminate the necessity for purgatory and be able to pass to the first heaven directly after death. If in this manner, we consciously overcome our weaknesses, we also make a very material advance in the school of evolution. Even if we fail to correct our actions, we derive an immense benefit from judging ourselves, thereby generating aspirations toward good, which in time will surely bear fruit in right action.

In reviewing the day's happenings and blaming ourselves for wrong, we should not forget to impersonally approve of the good we have done and determine to do still better. In this way we enhance the good by approval as much as we abjure the evil by blame.

Repentance and reform are also powerful factors in shortening the purgatorial existence, for nature never wastes effort in useless processes. When we realize the wrong of certain habits or acts in our past life, and determine to eradicate the habit and to redress the wrong committed, we are expunging the pictures of them from the sub-conscious memory and they will not be there to judge us after death. Even though we are not able to make restitution for a wrong, the sincerity of our regret will suffice.
Nature does not aim to "get even," or to take revenge. Recompense may be given to our victim in other ways.

Much progress ordinarily reserved for future lives will be made by the man who thus takes time by the forelock, judging himself and eradicating vice by reforming his character. This practice is earnestly recommended. It is perhaps the most important teaching in the present work.

The Borderland

Purgatory occupies the three lower Regions of the Desire World. The first heaven is in the upper Regions. The central Regions is a sort of borderland—neither heaven nor hell. In this Region we find people who are honest and upright; who wronged no one, but were deeply immersed in business and thought nothing of the higher life. For them the Desire World is a state of the most indescribable monotony. There is no "business" in that world nor is there, for a man of that kind, anything that will take its place. He has a very hard time until he learns to think of higher things than ledgers and drafts.
The men who thought of the problem of life and came to the conclusion that "death ends it all;" who denied the existence of things outside the material-sense world—these men also feel this dreadful monotony. They had expected annihilation of consciousness, but instead of that they find themselves with an augmented perception of persons and things about them. They had been accustomed to denying these things so vehemently that they often fancy the Desire World an hallucination, and may frequently be heard exclaiming in the deepest despair, "When will it end? When will it end?"

Such people are really in a pitiable state. They are generally beyond the reach of any help whatever and suffer much longer than almost anyone else. Besides, they have scarcely any life in the Heaven world, where the building of bodies for future use is taught, so they put all their crystallizing thoughts into whatsoever body they build for a future life, and thus a body is built that has the hardening tendencies we see, for instance, in consumption. Sometimes the suffering incident to such decrepit bodies will turn the thoughts of the entities ensouling them to God, and their evolution can proceed; but in the materialistic mind lies the greatest danger of losing touch with the spirit and becoming an outcast. Therefore the Elder Brothers have been very seriously concerned for the last century regarding the fate of the Western World and were it not for their special beneficent action in its behalf, we should have had a social cataclysm compared with which the French Revolution was child's play. The trained clairvoyant can see how narrowly humanity has escaped disasters of a nature so devastating that continents would have been swept into the sea. The reader will find a more extended and thorough exposition of the connection of materialism with volcanic outbursts in Chapter XVIII, where the list of the eruptions of Vesuvius would seem to corroborate the statement of such a connection, unless it is credited to "coincidence," as the skeptic generally does when confronted with facts and figures he cannot explain.

The First Heaven

When the purgatorial existence is over the purified spirit rises into the first heaven, which is located in the three highest Regions of the Desire World, where the results of its sufferings are incorporated in the seed-atom of the desire body, thus imparting to it the quality of right feeling, which acts as an impulse to good and a deterrent from evil in the future. Here the panorama of the past again unrolls itself backward, but this time it is the good acts of life that are the basis of feeling. When we come to scenes where we helped others we realize anew all the joy of helping which was ours at the time, and in addition we feel all the gratitude poured out to us by the recipient of our help. When we come to scenes where we were helped by others, we again feel all the gratitude that we then felt toward our benefactor. Thus we see the importance of appreciating the favors shown us by others, because gratitude makes for soul-growth. Our happiness in heaven depends upon the joy we gave others, and the valuation we placed upon what others did for us.

It should be ever borne in mind that the power of giving is not vested chiefly in the monied man. Indiscriminate giving of money may even be an evil. It is well to give money for a purpose we are convinced is good, but service is a thousandfold better. As Whitman says,

Behold! I do not give lectures, or a little charity; When I give, I give myself.

A kind look, expression of confidence, a sympathetic and loving helpfulness—these can be given by all regardless of wealth. Moreover, we should particularly endeavor to help the needy one to help himself, whether physically, financially, morally, or mentally, and not cause him to become dependent upon us or others.

The ethics of giving, with the effect on the giver as a spiritual lesson, are most beautifully shown in Lowell's "The Vision of Sir Launfal." The young and ambitious knight, Sir Launfal, clad in shining armor and astride a splendid charger, is setting out from his castle to seek The Holy Grail. On his shield gleams the cross, the symbol of the benignity and tenderness of Our Savior, the meek and lowly One, but the knight's heart is filled with pride and haughty disdain for the poor and needy. He meets a leper asking alms and with a contemptuous frown throws him a coin, as one might cast a bone to a hungry cur, but

The leper raised not the gold from the dust,
"Better to me the poor man's crust,
Better the blessing of the poor,
Though I turn empty from his door.
That is not true alms which the hand can hold;
He gives only worthless gold
Who gives from a sense of duty;
But he who gives from a slender mite,
And gives to that which is out of sight—
That thread of all-sustaining Beauty
Which runs through all and doth all unite,—
The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms,
The heart outstretches its eager palms,
For a god goes with it and makes it store
To the soul that was starving in darkness before.

On his return sir Launfal finds another in possession of his castle, and is driven from the gate.

An old bent man, worn out and frail,
He came back from seeking the Holy Grail;
Little he recked of his earldom's loss,
No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross,
But deep in his heart the sign he wore,
The badge of the suffering and the poor.

Again he meets the leper, who again asks alms. This time the knight responds differently.

And Sir Launfal said: "I behold in thee
An image of Him Who died on the tree;
Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns,
Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns,
And to thy life were not denied
The wounds in the hands and feet and side;
Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me;
Behold, through him I give to Thee!"

A look in the leper's eye brings remembrance and recognition, and

The heart within him was ashes and dust;
He parted in twain his single crust,
He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink,
And gave the leper to eat and drink.

A transformation takes place:

The leper no longer crouched by his side,
But stood before him glorified,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And the Voice that was softer that silence said,
"Lo, it is I, be not afraid!
In many lands, without avail,
Thou has spent thy life for the Holy Grail;
Behold, it is here!—This cup which thou
Did'st fill at the streamlet for me but now;
This crust is my body broken for thee,
This water the blood I shed on the tree;
The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,
In what so we share with another's need;
Not what we give, but what we share—
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three—
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me."

The first heaven is a place of joy without a single drop of bitterness. The spirit is beyond the influence of the material, earthly conditions, and assimilates all the good contained in the past life as it lives it over again. Here all ennobling pursuits to which the man aspired are realized in fullest measure. It is a place of rest, and the harder has been the life, the more keenly will rest be enjoyed. Sickness, sorrow, and pain are unknown quantities. This is the Summerland of the spiritualists. There the thoughts of the devout Christian have built the New Jerusalem. Beautiful houses, flowers, etc., are the portion of those who aspired to them; they build them themselves by thought from the subtle desire stuff. Nevertheless these things are just as real and tangible to them as our material houses are to us. All gain here the satisfaction which earth life lacked for them.

There is one class there who lead a particularly beautiful life—the children. If we could but see them we would quickly cease our grief. When a child dies before the birth of the desire body, which takes place about the fourteenth year, it does not go any higher than the first heaven, because it is not responsible for its actions, any more than the unborn child is responsible for the pain it causes the mother by turning and twisting in her womb. Therefore the child has not purgatorial existence. That which is not quickened cannot die, hence the desire body of a child, together with the mind, will persist until a new birth, and for that reason such children are very apt to remember their previous life as instanced in the case cited elsewhere.

For such children the first heaven is a waiting-place where they dwell from one to twenty years, until an opportunity for a new birth is offered. Yet it is more than simply a waiting-place, because there is much progress made during this interim.

When a child dies there is always some relative awaiting it, or, failing that there are people who loved to "mother" children in the earth life who find delight in taking care of a little waif. The extreme plasticity of the desire stuff makes it easy to form the most exquisite living toys for the children, and their life is one beautiful play; nevertheless their instruction is not neglected. They are formed into classes according to their temperaments, but quite regardless of age. In the Desire World it is easy to give object-lessons in the influence of good and evil passions on conduct and happiness. These lessons are indelibly imprinted upon the child's sensitive and emotional desire body, and remain with it after rebirth, so that many a one living a noble life owes much of it to the fact that he was given this training.
Often when a weak spirit is born, the Compassionate ones (the invisible Leaders who guide our evolution) cause it to die in early life that it may have this extra training to fit it for what may be perhaps a hard life. This seems to be the case particularly where the etching on the desire body was weak in consequence of a dying person having been disturbed by the lamentations of his relatives, or because he met death by accident or on the battle-field. He did not under those circumstances experience the appropriate intensity of feeling in his post mortem existence, therefore, when he is born and dies early life, the loss is made us as above. Often the duty of caring for such a child in the heaven life falls to those who were the cause of the anomaly. They are thus afforded a chance to make up for the fault and to learn better. Or perhaps they become the parents of the one they harmed and care for it during the few years it lives. It does not matter then if they do lament hysterically over its death, because there would be no pictures of any consequence in a child's vital body.

This heaven is also a place of progression for all who have been studious, artistic, or altruistic. The student and the philosopher have instant access to all the libraries of the world. The painter has endless delight in ever-changing color combinations. He soon learns that his thought blends and shapes these colors at will. His creations glow and scintillate with a life impossible of attainment to one who works with the dull pigments of Earth. He is, as it were, painting with living, glowing materials and able to execute his designs with a facility which fills his soul with delight. The musician has not yet reached the place where his art will express itself to the fullest extent. The Physical World is the world of Form. The Desire World, where we find purgatory and the first heaven, is particularly the world of Color; but the World of Thought, where the second and third heavens are located, is the sphere of Tone. Celestial music is a fact and not a mere figure of speech. Pythagoras was not romancing when spoke of the music of the spheres, for each one of the heavenly orbs has its definite tone and together they sound the celestial symphony which Goethe also mentions in the prolog to his "Faust," where the scene is laid in heaven. The Archangel Raphael says,

The Sun intones his ancient song
'Mid rival chant of brother spheres.
His prescribed course he speeds along
In thund'rous way throughout the years.

Echoes of that heavenly music reach us even here in the Physical World. They are our most precious possession, even though they are as elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp, and cannot be permanently created, as can other works of art—a statue, a painting, or a book. In the Physical World tone dies and vanishes the moment after it is born. In the first heaven these echoes are, of course, much more beautiful and have more permanency, hence there the musician hears sweeter strains than ever he did during earth life.

The experiences of the poet are akin to those of the musician, for poetry is the soul's expression of it innermost feelings in words which are ordered according to the same laws of harmony and rhythm that govern the outpouring of the spirit in music. In addition, the poet finds a wonderful inspiration in the pictures and colors which are the chief characteristics of the Desire World. Thence he will draw the material for use in his next incarnation. In like manner does the author accumulate material and faculty. The philanthropist works out his altruistic plans for the upliftment of man. If he failed in one life, he will see the reason for it in the first heaven and will there learn how to overcome the obstacles and avoid the errors that made his plan impracticable.

In time a point is reached where the result of the pain and suffering incident to purgation, together with the joy extracted from the good actions of the past life, have been built into the seed-atom of the desire body. Together these constitute what we call conscience, that impelling force which warns us against evil as productive of pain and inclines us toward good as productive of happiness and joy. Then man leaves his desire body to disintegrate, as he left his dense body and vital body. He takes with him the forces only of the seed-atom, which are to form the nucleus of future desire bodies, as it was the persistent particle of his past vehicles of feeling.

As stated above, the forces of the seed-atom are withdrawn. To the materialist force and matter are inseparable. The occultist knows differently. To him they are not two entirely distinct and separate concepts, but the two poles of one spirit.

Matter is crystallized spirit. Force is the same spirit not yet crystallized.

This has been said before, but it cannot be too strongly impressed upon the mind. In this connection the illustration of the snail is very helpful. Matter, which is crystallized spirit, corresponds to the snail's house, which is crystallized snail. The chemical force which moves matter, making it available for the building of form, and the snail which moves its house are also good correspondences. That which is now the snail will in time become the house, and that which is now force will in time become matter when it has crystallized further. The reverse process of resolving matter back into spirit is also going on continually. The coarser phase of this process we see as decay when a man is leaving his vehicles behind and at that time the spirit of an atom is easily detachable from the coarser spirit which has been manifesting as matter.

The Second Heaven

At last the man, the Ego, the threefold spirit, enters the second heaven. He is clad in the sheath of mind, which contains the three seed-atoms—the quintessence of the three discarded vehicles.

When the man dies and loses his dense and vital bodies there is the same condition as when one falls asleep. The desire body, as has been explained, has no organs ready for use. It is now transformed from an ovoid to a figure resembling the dense body which has been abandoned. We can easily understand that there must be an interval of unconsciousness resembling sleep and then the man awakes in the Desire World. It not infrequently happens, however, that such people are, for a long time, unaware of what has happened to them. They do not realize that they have died. They know that they are able to move and think. It is sometimes even a very hard matter to get them to believe that they are really "dead." They realize that something is different, but they are not able to understand what it is.

Not so, however, when the change is made from the first heaven, which is in the Desire World, to the second heaven, which is in the Region of Concrete Thought. Then the man leaves his desire body. He is perfectly conscious. He passes into a great stillness. For the time being everything seems to fade away. He cannot think. No faculty is alive, yet he knows that he is. He has a feeling of standing in "The Great Forever;" of standing utterly alone, yet unafraid; and his soul is filled with a wonderful peace, "which passeth all understanding."

In occult science this is called "The Great Silence."

Then comes the awakening. The spirit is now in its home-World—heaven. Here the first awakening brings to the spirit the sound of "the music of the spheres." In our Earth life we are so immersed in the little noises and sounds of our limited environment that we are incapable of hearing the music of the marching orbs, but the occult scientist hears it. He knows that the twelve signs of the Zodiac and the seven planets form the sounding-board and strings of "Apollo's seven-stringed lyre." He knows that were a single discord to mar the celestial harmony from that grand Instrument there would be "a wreck of matter and a crash of worlds."

The power of rhythmic vibration is well known to all who have given the subject even the least study. For instance, soldiers are commanded to break step when crossing a bridge, otherwise their rhythmic tramp would shatter the strongest structure. The Bible story of the sounding of the ram's horn while marching around the walls of the city of Jericho is not nonsensical in the eyes of the occultist. In some cases similar things have happened without the world smiling in supercilious incredulity. A few years ago, a band of musicians were practicing in a garden close to the very solid wall of an old castle. There occurred at a certain place in the music a prolonged and very piercing tone. When this note was sounded the wall of the castle suddenly fell. The musicians had struck the keynote of the wall and it was sufficiently prolonged to shatter it.

When it is said that this is the world of tone, it must not be thought that there are no colors. Many people know that there is an intimate connection between color and tone; than when a certain note is struck, a certain color appears simultaneously. So it is also in the Heaven World. Color and sound are both present; but the tone is the originator of the color. Hence it is said, that this is particularly the world of tone, and it is this tone that builds all forms in the Physical World. The musician can hear certain tones in different parts of nature, such as the wind in the forest, the breaking of the surf on the beach, the roar of the ocean and the sounding of many waters. These combined tones make a whole which is the key-note of the Earth—its "tone." As geometrical figures are created by drawing a violin bow over the edge of a glass plate containing sand, so the forms we see around us are the crystallized sound-figures of the archetypal forces which play into the archetypes in the Heaven World.

The work done by man in the Heaven World is many-sided. It is not in the least an inactive, dreamy not illusory existence. It is a time of the greatest and most important activity in preparing for the next life, as sleep is an active preparation for the work of the following day.

Here the quintessence of the three bodies is built into the threefold spirit. As much of the desire body as the man had worked upon during life, by purifying his desires and emotions, will be welded into the human spirit, thus giving an improved mind in the future.

As much of the vital body as the life spirit had worked upon, transformed, spiritualized, and thus saved from the decay to which the rest of the vital body is subject, will be amalgamated with the life spirit to insure a better vital body and temperament in the succeeding lives.

As much of the dense body as the divine spirit has save by right action will be worked into it and will bring better environment and opportunities.

The spiritualization of the vehicle is accomplished by cultivation of the faculties of observation, discrimination and memory, devotion to high ideals, prayer, concentration, persistence and right use of the life forces.

The second heaven is the real home of man—the Ego, the Thinker. Here he dwells for centuries, assimilating the fruit of the last earth life and preparing the earthly conditions which will be best suited for his next step in progress. The sound or tone which pervades this Region, and is everywhere apparent as color, is his instrument, so to speak. It is this harmonious sound vibration which, as an elixir of life, builds into the threefold spirit the quintessence of the threefold body, upon which it depends for growth.

The life in the second heaven is an exceedingly active one, varied in many different ways. The Ego assimilates the fruits of the last earth life and prepares the environment for a new physical existence. It is not enough to say that the new conditions will be determined by conduct and action in the life just closed. It is required that the fruits of the past be worked into the World which is to be the next scene of activity while the Ego is gaining fresh physical experiences and gathering further fruit. Therefore all the denizens of the Heaven World work upon the models of the Earth, all of which are in the Region of Concrete Thought. They alter the physical features of the Earth, and bring about the gradual changes which vary its appearance, so that on each return to physical life a different environment has been prepared, wherein new experiences may be gained. Climate, flora, and fauna are altered by man under the direction of higher Beings, to be described later. Thus the world is just what we ourselves, individually and collectively, have made it; and it will be what we make it. The occult scientist sees in everything that happens a cause of a spiritual nature manifesting itself, not omitting the prevalence and alarmingly increasing frequency of seismic disturbances, which it traces to the materialistic thought of modern science.

It is true that purely physical causes can bring about such disturbances, but is that the last word on the subject? Can we always get the full explanation by merely recording what appears on the surface? Surely not! We see two men conversing on the street and one suddenly strikes the other, knocking him down. One observer may say that an angry knocked the man down. Another may scoff at this answer and declare that he saw the arm lifted, the muscles contract, the arm shooting out and coming in contact with the victim, who was knocked down. That is also true, but it is safe to say that had there not first been the angry thought, the blow would not have been struck. In like manner the occultist says that if materialism had not been, seismic disturbances would not have occurred.

Man's work in the Heaven World is not confined solely to the alternation of the surface of the Earth which is to be the scene of his future struggles in the subjugation of the Physical World. He is also actively engaged in learning how to build a body which shall afford a better means of expression. It is man's destiny to become a Creative Intelligence and he is serving his apprenticeship all the time. During his heaven life he is learning to build all kinds of bodies—the human included.

We have spoken of the forces which work along the positive and negative poles of the different ethers. Man himself is part of that force. Those whom we call dead are the ones who help us to live. They in turn are helped by the so-called "nature spirits," which they command. Man is directed in this work by Teachers from the higher creative Hierarchies, which helped him to build his vehicles before he attained self-consciousness, in the same way he himself now builds his bodies in sleep. During heaven life they teach him consciously. The painter is taught to build an accurate eye, capable of taking in a perfect perspective and of distinguishing colors and shades to a degree inconceivable among those not interested in color and light.

The mathematician has to deal with space, and the faculty for space perception is connected with the delicate adjustment of the three semi-circular canals which are situated inside the ear, each pointing in one of the three dimensions in space. Logical thought and mathematical ability are in proportion to the accuracy of the adjustment of these semi-circular canals. Musical ability is also dependent upon the same factor, but in addition to the necessity for the proper adjustment of the semi-circular canals, the musician requires extreme delicacy of the "fibers of Corti," of which there are about ten thousand in the human ear, each capable of interpreting about twenty-five gradations of tone. In the ears of the majority of people they do not respond to more than from three to ten of the possible gradations. Among ordinary musical people the greatest degree of efficiency is about fifteen sounds to each fiber; but the master musician, who is able to interpret and bring down music from the Heaven World, requires a greater range to be able to distinguish the different notes and detect the slightest discord in the most complicated chords. Persons who require organs of such exceeding delicacy for the expression of their faculties are specially taken care of, as the higher state of their development merits and demands. None other ranks so high as the musician, which is reasonable when we consider that while the painter draws his inspiration chiefly from the world of color—the nearer Desire World—the musician attempts to bring us the atmosphere of our heavenly home world (where, as spirits, we are citizens), and to translate them into the sounds of earth life. His is the highest mission, because as a mode of expression for soul life, music reigns supreme. That music is different from and higher than all the other arts can be understood when we reflect that a statue or painting, when once created, is permanent. They are drawn from the Desire World and are therefore more easily crystallized, while music, being of the Heaven World, is more elusive and must be re-created each time we hear it. It cannot be imprisoned, as shown by the unsuccessful attempts to do so partially by means of such mechanical devices as phonographs and piano-players. The music so reproduced loses much of the soul-stirring sweetness it possesses when it comes fresh from its own world, carrying to the soul memories of its home and speaking to it in a language that no beauty expressed in marble or upon canvas can equal.

The instrument through which man senses music is the most perfect sense organ in the human body. The eye is not by any means true, but the ear is, in the sense that it hears every sound without distortion, while the eye often distorts what it sees.

In addition to the musical ear, the musician must also learn to build a long, fine hand with slender fingers and sensitive nerves, otherwise he would not be able to reproduce the melodies he hears.
It is a law of nature that no one can inhabit a more efficient body that he is capable of building. He first learns to build a certain grade of body and afterwards he learns to live in it. In that way he discovers its defects and is taught how to remedy them.

All men work unconsciously at the building of their bodies during ante-natal life until they have reached the point where the quintessence of former bodies—which they have saved—is to be built in. Then they work consciously. It will therefore be seen that the more a man advances and the more he works on his vehicles, thus making them immortal, the more power he has to build for a new life. The advanced pupil of an occult school sometimes commences to build for himself as soon as the work during the first three weeks (which belongs exclusively to the mother) has been completed. When the period of unconscious building has passed the man has a chance to exercise his nascent creative power, and the true original creative process—"Epigenesis"—begins.

Thus we see that man learns to build his vehicles in the Heaven World, and to use them in the Physical World. Nature provides all phases of experience in such a marvelous manner and with such consummate wisdom that as we learn to see deeper and deeper into her secrets we are more and more impressed with our own insignificance and with an ever-growing reverence for God, whose visible symbol nature is. The more we learn of her wonders, the more we realize that this world system is not the vast perpetual motion machine unthinking people would have us believe. It would be quite as logical to think that if we toss a box of loose type into the air the characters will have arranged themselves into the words of a beautiful poem by the time they reach the ground. The greater the complexity of the plan the greater the argumental weight in favor of the theory of an intelligent Divine Author.

The Third Heaven

Having assimilated all the fruits of his last life and altered the appearance of the Earth in such a manner as to afford him the necessary environment for his next step towards perfection; having also learned by work on the bodies of others, to build a suitable body through which to express himself in the Physical World and having at last resolved the mind into the essence which builds the three-fold spirit, the naked individual spirit ascends into the higher Region of the World of Thought—the third heaven, Here, by the ineffable harmony of this higher world, it is strengthened for its next dip into matter.

After a time comes the desire for new experience and the contemplation of a new birth. This conjures up a series of pictures before the vision of the spirit—a panorama of the new life in store for it. But, mark this well—this panorama contains only principal events. The spirit has free will as to detail. It is as if a man going to a distant city had a time-limit ticket, with initial choice of route. After he has chosen and begun his journey it is not sure that he can change to another route during the trip. He may stop over in as many places as he wishes, within his time limit, but he cannot go back. Thus as he proceeds on his journey, he becomes more and more limited by his past choice. If he had chosen a steam road, using soft coal, he must expect to be soiled and dusty. Had he chosen a road burning anthracite or using electricity he would have been cleaner. So it is with the man in a new life. He may have to live a hard life, but he is free to choose whether he will live it cleanly or wallow in the mire. Other conditions are also within his control, subject to limits of his past choices and acts.

The pictures in the panorama of the coming life, of which we have just spoken, begin at the cradle and end at the grave. This is the opposite direction to that in which they travel in the after-death panorama, already explained, which passes before the vision of the spirit immediately following its release from the dense body. The reason for this radical difference in the two panoramas is that in the before-birth panorama the object is to show the returning Ego how certain causes or acts always produce certain effects. In the case of the after-death panorama the object is the reverse, i.e., to show how each event in the past life was the effect of some cause further back in the life. Nature, or God, does nothing without a logical reason, and the further we search the more apparent it becomes to us that Nature is a wise mother, always using the best means to accomplish her ends.

But it may be asked, Why should we be reborn? Why must we return to this limited and miserable earth existence? Why can we not get experience in those higher realms without coming to Earth? We are tired of this dreary, weary earth life!

Such queries are based upon misunderstandings of several kinds. In the first place, let us realize and engrave it deep upon the tablets of our memory that the purpose of life is not happiness, but experience. Sorrow and pain are our most benevolent teachers, while the joys of life are but fleeting.

This seems a stern doctrine and the heart cries out passionately at even the thought that it may possibly be true. Nevertheless, it is true, and upon examination it will be found not such a stern doctrine after all.

Consider the blessings of pain. If we could place our hand upon a hot stove and feel no pain, the hand might be allowed to remain until it and perhaps the arm were burned away, without our knowing anything about it until too late to save them. It is the pain resulting from the contact with the hot stove which makes us snatch our hand away before serious damage is done. Instead of losing the hand, we escape with a blister which quickly heals. This is an illustration from the Physical World. We find that same principle applies in the Moral and Mental Worlds. If we outrage morality the pangs of conscience bring us pain that will prevent us from repeating the act and if we do not heed the first lesson, nature will give us harder and harder experiences until at last the fact is forced into our consciousness that "the way of the transgressor is hard." This will continue until at last we are forced to turn in a new direction and take a step onward toward a better life.

Experience is "knowledge of the effects which follow acts." This is the object of life, together with the development of "Will," which is the force whereby we apply the results of experience. Experience must be gained, but we have the choice whether we gain it by the hard path of personal experience or by observation of other people's acts, reasoning and reflecting thereon, guided by the light of whatever experience we have already had.
This is the method by which the occult student should learn, instead of requiring the lash of adversity and pain. The more willing we are to learn in that way, the less we shall feel the stinging thorns of "the path of pain" and the more quickly shall we gain "the path of peace."

The choice is ours, but so long as we have not learned all there is to learn in this world, we must come back to it. We cannot stay in the higher worlds and learn there until we have mastered the lessons of earth life. That would be as sensible as to send a child to kindergarten one day and to college the next. The child must return to the kindergarten day after day and spend years in the grammar school and the high school before its study has developed its capacity sufficiently to enable it to understand the lessons taught in college.

Man is also in school—the school of experience. He must return many times before he can hope to master all the knowledge in the world of sense. No one earth life, however rich in experience, could furnish the knowledge, so nature decrees that he must return to Earth, after intervals of rest, to take up his work where he dropped it, exactly as a child takes up its work in school each day, after the intervening sleep of night. It is not argument against this theory to say that man does not remember his former lives. We cannot recall all the events of our present lives. We do not recollect our labors in learning to write, yet we have acquired a knowledge of the art of writing, which proves that we did learn. All the faculties we possess are a proof that we acquired them sometime, somewhere. Some people do remember their past, however, as a remarkable instance related at the end of the next chapter will show, and is but one among many.

Again, if their were no return to Earth, what is the use of living? Why strive for anything? Why should a life of happiness in an eternal heaven be the reward for a good life? What benefit could come from a good life in a heaven where everybody is already happy? Surely in a place where everybody is happy and contented there is no need for sympathy, self-sacrifice or wise counsel! No one would need them here; but on Earth there are many who need those very things and such humanitarian and altruistic qualities are of the greatest service to struggling humanity. Therefore the Great Law, which works for Good, brings man back to work again in the world for the benefit to himself and others, with his acquired treasures, instead of letting them go to waste in a heaven where no one needs them.

Preparations for Rebirth

Having thus seen the necessity for repeated embodiments, we will next consider the method by which this purpose is accomplished.

Previous to taking the dip into matter, the threefold spirit is naked, having only the forces of the four seed-atoms (which are the nuclei of the threefold body and the sheath of mind). Its descent resembles the putting on of several pairs of gloves of increasing thickness, as previously illustrated. The forces of the mind of the last life are awakened from their latency in the seed-atom. This begins to attract to itself materials from the highest subdivision of the Region of Concrete Thought, in a manner similar to that in which a magnet draws to itself iron filings.

If we hold a magnet over a miscellaneous heap of filings of brass, silver, gold, iron, lead and other metals, we shall find that it selects only iron filings and that even of them it will take no more than its strength enables it to lift. Its attractive power is of a certain kind and is limited to a certain quantity of that kind. The same is true of the seed-atom. It can take, in each Region, nothing except the material for which it has an affinity and nothing beyond a certain definite quantity even of that. Thus the vehicle built around this nucleus becomes an exact counterpart of the corresponding vehicle of the last life minus the evil which has been expurgated and plus the quintessence of good which has been incorporated in the seed-atom.

The material selected by the threefold spirit forms itself into a great bell-shaped figure, open at the bottom and with the seed-atom at the top. If we conceive of the illustration spiritually we may compare it to a diving-bell descending into a sea composed of fluids of increasing density. These correspond to the different subdivisions of each World. The matter taken into the texture of the bell-shaped body makes it heavier, so that it sinks into the next lower subdivision and it takes from that its proper quota of matter. Thus it becomes still heavier and sinks yet deeper until it has passed through the four subdivisions of the Region of Concrete Thought and the sheath of the new mind of the man is complete. Next the forces in the seed-atom of the desire body are awakened. It places itself at the top of the bell, inside, and the materials of the seventh Region of the Desire World draw around it until it sinks to the sixth Region, getting more material there, and this process continues until the first Region of the Desire World is reached. The bell has now two layers—the sheath of mind outside and the new desire body inside.

The seed-atom of the vital body is next aroused into activity, but here the process of information is not so simple as in the case of the mind and the desire body, for it must be remembered that those vehicles were comparatively unorganized, while the vital body and the dense body are more organized and very complicated. The material, of a given quantity and quality, is attracted in the same manner and under the operation of the same law as in the case of the higher bodies, but the building of the new body and the placement in the proper environment is done by four great Beings of immeasurable wisdom, which are the Recording Angels, the "Lords of Destiny." They impress the reflecting ether of the vital body in such a way that the pictures of the coming life are reflected in it. It (the vital body) is built by the inhabitants of the Heaven World and the elemental spirits in such a manner as to form a particular type of brain. But mark this, the returning Ego itself incorporates therein the quintessence of its former vital bodies and in addition to this also does a little original work. This is done that in the coming life there may be some room for original and individual expression, not predetermined by past action.

It is very important to remember this fact. There is too great a tendency to think that all which now exists is the result of something that previously existed, but if that were the case there would be no margin left for new and original effort and for new causes. The chain of cause and effect is not a monotonous repetition. There is an influx of new and original causes all the time. That is the real backbone of evolution—the only thing that gives it meaning and makes it other than an unrolling of latent actualities. This is "Epigenesis"—the free-will that consists of the freedom the inaugurate something entirely new, not merely a choice between two courses of action. This is the important factor which alone can explain the system to which we belong in a satisfactory manner. Involution and Evolution is themselves are insufficient; but coupled with Epigenesis we have a full triad of explanation.

The fate of an individual generated under the law of Consequence, is of great complexity and involves association with Egos in and out of physical existence, at all times. Even those living at one time may not be living in the same locality, so that it is impossible for one individual's destiny to be all worked out in one lifetime or in one place. The Ego is therefore brought into a certain environment and family with which it is some way related. As regards the fate to be worked out, it is sometimes immaterial into which one of several environmental the Ego is reborn, and when such is the case, it is allowed its choice as far as possible, but once an Ego is so placed the agents of the Lords of Destiny watch unseen, that no act of free will shall frustrate the working out of the portion of fate selected. If we do aught of such as to circumvent that part, they will make another move, so as to enforce fulfillment of the destiny.
It cannot be too often reiterated, however, that this does not render man helpless. It is merely the same law that governs after we have fired a pistol. We are then unable to stop the bullet, or even to deflect it from its course in any way. Its direction was determined by the position in which the pistol was held when we fired. That could have been changed at any time before the trigger was pulled, as up to that time we had full control. The same is true regarding new actions which make future destiny. We may, up to a certain point, modify or even altogether counteract certain causes already set in motion, but once started, and no further action taken, they will get beyond our control. This is called "ripe" fate and it is this kind that is meant when it is said that the Lords of Destiny check every attempt to shirk it. With regard to out past we are to a great extent helpless, but in regard to future action we have full control, except insofar as we are hampered by our past actions. By and by, however, as we learn that we are the cause of our own sorrow or joy, we shall awake to the necessity of ordering our lives more in harmony with the laws of God and thus rise above these laws of the Physical World. That is the key to emancipation; as Goethe says:

From every power that all the world enchains
Man frees himself when self-control he gains.

The vital body, having been molded by the Lords of Destiny, will give form to the dense body, organ of organ. This matrix or mold is then placed in the womb of the future mother. The seed-atom for the dense body is in the triangular head of one of the spermatozoa in the semen of the father. This alone makes fertilization possible and here is the explanation of the fact that so many times sex-unions are unfruitful. The chemical constituents of the seminal fluid and the ova are the same at all times and were these the only requirements, the explanation of the phenomenon of infertility, if sought in the material, visible world alone, would not be found. It becomes plain, however, when we understand that as the molecules of water freeze only along the lines of force in the water and manifest as ice crystals instead of freezing into a homogeneous mass, as would be the case if there were no lines of force previous to coagulation, so there can be no dense body built until there is a vital body in which to build the material; also there must be a seed-atom for the dense body, to act as gauge of the quality and quantity of the matter which is to be built into that dense body. Although at the present stage of development there is never full harmony in the materials of the body, because that would mean a perfect body, yet the discord must not be so great as to be disruptive of the organism.

Thus while heredity in the first place is true only as regards the material of the dense body and not the soul qualities, which are entirely individual, the incoming Ego also does a certain amount of work on its dense body, incorporating in it the quintessence of its past physical qualities. No body is an exact mixture of the qualities of its parents, although the Ego is restricted to the use of the materials taken from the bodies of the father and mother. Hence a musician incarnates where he can get the material to build the slender hand and the delicate ear, with it sensitive fibers of Corti and its accurate adjustment of the three semicircular canals. The arrangement of these materials, however, is, to the extent named, under the control of the Ego. It is as though a carpenter were given a pile of boards to use in building a house in which to live, but is left to his own judgment as to the kind of house he wishes to build.

Except in the case of a very highly developed being, this work of the Ego is almost negligible at the present stage of man's evolution. The greatest scope is given in the building of the desire body, very little in that of the vital body and almost none in the dense body; yet even this little is sufficient to make each individual an expression of his own spirit and different from the parents.

When the impregnation of the ovum has taken place, the desire body of the mother works upon it for a period of from eighteen to twenty-one days, the Ego remaining outside in its desire body and mind sheath, yet always in close touch with the mother. Upon the expiration of that time the Ego enters the mother's body. The bell-shaped vehicles draw themselves down over the head of the vital body and the bell closes at the bottom. From this time the Ego broods over its coming instrument until the birth of the child and the new earth life of the returning Ego commences.

Birth of the Dense Body

The vehicles of the new-born do not at once become active. The dense body is helpless for a long time after birth. Reasoning from analogy we can readily see that the same must be the case with the higher vehicles. The occult scientist sees it, but even without clairvoyance reason will show that this must be so. As the dense body is slowly prepared for the separate, individual life within the protecting cover of the womb, so the other bodies are gradually born and nurtured into activity, and while the times given in the following description are but approximate, they are nevertheless accurate enough for general purposes and show the connection between the Microcosm and the Macrocosm—the individual and the world.

In the period immediately following birth the different vehicles inter-penetrate one another, as, in our previous illustration, the sand penetrates the sponge and the water both sand and sponge. But, though they are all present, as in adult life, they are merely present. None of their positive faculties are active.
The vital body cannot use the forces which operate along the positive pole of the ethers. Assimilation, which works along the positive pole of the chemical ether, is very dainty during childhood and what there is of it is due to the macrocosmic vital body, the ethers of which act as a womb for the child's vital body until the seventh year, gradually ripening it during that period. The propagative faculty, which works along the positive pole of the life ether, is also latent. The heating of the body—which is carried on along the positive pole of the light ether—and the circulation of the blood are due to the macrocosmic vital body, the ethers acting on the child and slowly developing it to the point where it can control these functions itself. The forces working along the negative pole of the ethers are so much the more active. The excretion of solids, carried on along the negative pole of the chemical ether (corresponding to the solid subdivision of the Chemical Region), is too unrestrained, as is also the excretion of fluid, which is carried on along the negative pole of the life ether (corresponding to the second or fluid subdivision of the Chemical Region). The passive sense-perception, which is due to the negative forces of the light ether, is also exceedingly prominent. The child is very impressionable and it is "all eyes and ears."

During the earlier years the forces operating along the negative pole of the reflecting ether are also extremely active. In those years children can "see" the higher Worlds and they often prattle about what they see until the ridicule of their elders or punishment for "telling stories" teaches them to desist.
It is deplorable that the little ones are forced to lie—or at least to deny the truth—because of the incredulity of their "wise" elders. Even the investigations of the Society for Physical Research have proven that children often have invisible playmates, who frequently visit them until they are several years old. During those years the clairvoyance of the children is of the same negative character as that of the mediums.

It is the same with the forces working in the desire body. The passive feeling of physical pain is present, while the feeling of emotion is almost entirely absent. The child will, of course, show emotion on the slightest provocation, but the duration of that emotion is but momentary. It all on the surface.
The child also has the link of mind, but is almost incapable of individual thought activity. It is exceedingly sensitive to forces working along the negative pole and is therefore imitative and teachable.

Thus it is shown that all the negative qualities are active in the new-born entity, but before it is able to use its different vehicles, the positive qualities must be ripened.

Each vehicle is therefore brought to a certain degree of maturity by the activity of the corresponding vehicle of the macrocosm, which acts as a womb for it until that degree is reached.

From the first to the seventh year the vital body grows and slowly matures within the womb of the macrocosmic vital body and because of the greater wisdom of this vehicle of the macrocosm the child's body is more rounded and well-built than in later life.

Birth of the Vital Body

While the macrocosmic vital body guides the growth of the child's body it is guarded from the dangers which later threaten it when the unwise individual vital body takes unchecked charge. This happens in the seventh year, when the period of excessive, dangerous growth begins, and continues through the next seven years. During this time the macrocosmic desire body performs the function of a womb for the individual desire body.

Were the vital body to have continual and unrestrained sway in the human kingdom, as it has in the plant, man would grow to an enormous size. There was a time in the far distant past when man was constituted like a plant, having only a dense body and a vital body. The traditions of mythology and folk-lore all over the world concerning giants in olden times are absolutely true, because then men grew as tall trees, and for the same reason.

Birth of the Desire Body

The vital body of the plant builds leaf after leaf, carrying the stem higher and higher. Were it not for the macrocosmic desire body it would keep on in that way indefinitely, but the macrocosmic desire body steps in at a certain point and checks further growth. The force that is not needed for further growth is then available for other purposes and is used to build the flower and the seed. In like manner the human vital body, when the dense body comes under its sway, after the seventh year, makes the latter grow very rapidly, but about the fourteenth year the individual desire body is born from the womb of the macrocosmic desire body and is then free to work on its dense body. The excessive growth is then checked and the force theretofore used for that purpose becomes available for propagation, that the human plant may flower and bring forth. Therefore the birth of the personal desire body marks the period of puberty. From this period the attraction towards the opposite sex is felt, being especially active and unrestrained in the third septenary period of life—from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, because the restraining mind is then still unborn.

Birth of the Mind

After the fourteenth year, the mind is in turn brooded over and nurtured by the macrocosmic mind, unfolding its latent possibilities and making it capable of original thought. The forces of the individual's different vehicles have now been ripened to such a degree that he can use them all in his evolution, therefore at the twenty-first year the Ego comes into possession of its complete vehicle. It does this by means of the blood-heat and by developing individual blood. This is done in connection with the full development of the light ether.

The Blood the Vehicle of the Ego

In infancy, and up to the fourteenth year, the red marrow-bones do not make all the blood corpuscles. Most of them are supplied by the thymus gland, which is largest in the fetus and gradually diminishes as the individual blood-making faculty develops in the growing child. The thymus gland contains, as it were, a supply of blood corpuscles given by the parents, and consequently the child, which draws its blood from that source, does not realize its individuality. Not until the blood is made by the child does it think of itself as "I," and when the thymus gland disappears, at the age of fourteen, the "I" feeling reaches its full expression, for then the blood is made and dominated entirely by the Ego. The following will make clear the idea and its logic:

It will be remembered that assimilation and growth depend upon the forces working along the positive pole of the vital body's chemical ether. That is set free at the seventh year, together with the balance of the vital body. Only the chemical ether is fully ripe at that time; the other parts need more ripening. At the fourteenth year the life ether of the vital body, which has to do with propagation, is fully ripe. In the period from seven to fourteen years of age the excessive assimilation has stored up an amount of force which goes to the sex organs and is ready at the time the desire body is set free.

This force of sex is stored in the blood during the third of the seven-year periods and in that time the light ether, which is the avenue for the blood-heat, is developed and controls the heart, so that the body is neither too hot nor too cold. In early childhood the blood very often rises to an abnormal temperature. During the period of excessive growth it is frequently the reverse, but in the hot-headed, unrestrained youth, passion and temper very often drive the Ego out by over-heating the blood. We very appropriately call this an ebullition or boiling over of temper and describe the effect as causing the person to "lose his head," i.e., become incapable of thought. That is exactly what happens when passion, rage, or temper overheats the blood, thus drawing the Ego outside the bodies. The description is accurate when, of a person in such a state, we say, "He has lost control of himself." The Ego is outside of his vehicles and they are running amuck, bereft of the guiding influence of thought, part of the work of which is to act as a brake on impulse. The great and terrible danger of such outbursts is that before the owner re-enters his body some disembodied entity may take possession of it and keep him out. This is called "obsession." Only the man who keeps cool and does not allow excess of heat to drive him out can think properly. As proof of the assertion that the Ego cannot work in the body when the blood is either tool hot or too cold we will call attention to the well-known fact that excessive heat makes one sleepy and, if carried beyond a certain point, it drives the Ego out, leaving the body in a faint, that is, unconscious. Excessive cold has also a tendency to make the body sleepy or unconscious. It is only when the blood is at or near the normal temperature that the Ego can use it as a vehicle of consciousness.

To further show the connection of the ego with the blood we may mention the burning blush of shame, which is an evidence of the manner in which the blood is driven to the head, thus over-heating the brain and paralyzing thought. Fear is the state when the Ego wants to barricade himself against some outside danger. He then drives the blood to the center and grows pale, because the blood has left the periphery of the body and has lost heat, thus paralyzing thought. His blood "freezes," he shivers and his teeth chatter, as when the temperature is lowered by atmospheric conditions. In fever the excess of heat causes delirium.

The full-blooded person, when the blood is not too hot, is active in body and mind, while the anemic person is sleepy. In one the Ego has better control; in the other less. When the Ego wants to think it drives blood, at the proper heat, to the brain. When a heavy meal centers the activity of the Ego upon the digestive tracts, the man cannot think; he is sleepy.

The old Norsemen and the Scots recognized that the Ego is in the blood. No stranger could become associated with them as a relative until he had "mixed blood" with them and thus become one of them. Goethe, who was an Initiate, also showed this in his "Faust." Faust is about to sign the compact with Mephistopheles and asks, "Why not sign with ordinary ink? Why use blood?" Mephisto answers, "Blood is a most peculiar essence." He knows, that who has the blood has the man; that without the warm blood, no Ego can find expression.

The proper heat for the real expression of the Ego is not present until the mind is born from the macrocosmic Concrete Mind, when the individual is about twenty-one years old. Statutory law also recognizes this as the earliest age when the man is deemed fit to exercise a franchise.

At the present stage of human development the man goes through these principal stages in each life cycle, from one birth to the next.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four