Undoubtedly the ego is only very partially expressed by his physical body, yet we should not be accurate in speaking of him as dissociated from that body. If we figure the ego as a solid body and the physical plane as a surface, the solid body if laid upon that surface could manifest itself through that surface only as plane figure, which would obviously be an exceedingly partial expression. We can see also that if the various sides of the solid were laid upon the surface successively we might obtain expressions which differed considerably, though all of them would be imperfect, because in all cases the solid would have an extension in an entirely different direction, which could by no means be expressed in the two dimensions of the superficies. We shall obtain a nearly accurate symbolism of the facts as far as the ordinary man is concerned if we suppose the solid to be conscious only so far as it is in contact with the surface, although the results gained through the manifestation of such consciousness would inhere in the solid as a whole, and would be present in any later expression of it, even though that might differ considerably from previous expressions.

It is only in the case of those already somewhat advanced that we can speak of the ego as having a conscious existence among his fellows on his own plane. From the moment that he breaks off from his group-soul and commences his separate existence, he is a conscious entity; but the consciousness is of an exceedingly vague nature. The only physical sensation which occasionally comes to some persons is at the moment of awakening in the morning. There is a state intermediate between sleeping and waking in which a man is blissfully conscious that he exists, and yet is not conscious of any surrounding objects, not capable of any moment. Indeed, he sometimes knows that any movement would break the spell of happiness and bring him down into the ordinary waking world, and so he endeavors to remain still as long as possible.

That condition — a consciousness of existence and of intense bliss — closely resembles that of the ego of the average man upon the higher mental plane. He is wholly centered there only for ...

When the ego is still undeveloped the forces of the higher mental plane pass through him practically without affecting him, as he cannot respond to more than a very few of these extremely fine vibrations. It needs powerful and comparatively coarse vibrations to affect him at first, and these do not exist upon his own plane, and for that reason he has to put himself down to lower levels in order to find them. Therefore full consciousness comes to him at first only in the lowest and densest of his vehicles, his attention being focussed for a long time down in the physical plane; so that, although that plane is so much lower than his own and offers so much less scope for activity, in those early stages he feels himself much more alive when he is working there. As the consciousness increases and widens its scope he gradually begins to work more and more in matter one stage higher — that is, in astral matter.

At a much later stage, when he has attained to clear working in astral matter, he begins to be able also to express himself through the matter of his mental body and the end of his present effort is achieved when he works as fully and clearly in the matter of the causal body on the higher mental plane as he does now on the physical plane.

These stages of full development of consciousness must not be confounded with the mere learning to use to some extent the respective vehicles. A man is using his astral body whenever he expresses an emotion; he is using his mental body whenever he thinks. But that is very far from his being able to utilize either of them as independent vehicles through which consciousness can be fully expressed. When a man is fully conscious in his astral body, he has already made a considerable amount of progress; ...

One step of further development lies open to him — the consciousness of the heaven-world; and then his life and memory are continuous during the whole of each descent into incarnation. Yet one step more raises the full consciousness to the level of the ego on the higher mental plane, and after that he has always with him the memory of all his lives, and he is capable of consciously directing the various lower manifestations of himself at all points of his progress.

It must not be supposed that the development of any of these stages of consciousness is ever sudden. The actual rending of the veil between two stages is usually a fairly rapid process, sometimes even instantaneous. A man who has normally no memory of what happens on the astral plane may unintentionally, by some accident or illness, or intentionally by certain definite practices, bridge over the interval and make the connection, so that from that time onward his astral consciousness will be continuous, and his memory of what happens while the physical body is asleep will therefore be perfect. But long before such an effort or accident is possible for him the full consciousness must have been working in the astral body, even though in the physical life he knew nothing of it.

In exactly the same way a man must have been for a long time thoroughly practised in the use of his mental body as a vehicle before he can hope to break the barrier between that and the astral, so that he can have the pleasure of continuous recollection. By analogy this lead us to see that the ego must have been fully conscious and active on his own plane for a long time before any knowledge of that existence can come through to us in our physical life.

There are many in whom the ego has already to some extent awakened from the condition of mere bliss which was described above, and is at least partially conscious of his own surroundings, and therefore of other egos. From that time on he leads a life and has interests and activities on his own plane; but even then we must remember that he puts down into the personality only a very small part of himself, and that that part constantly becomes ...

When this stage is reached he usually comes under the influence of a Master; indeed often his first clear consciousness of anything outside himself is his touch with that Master. The tremendous power of the Master's influence magnetises him, draws his vibrations into harmony with its own, and multiplies manyfold the rate of his development. It rays upon him like sunshine upon a flower, and he evolves rapidly under its influence. This is why, while the earlier stages of progress are so slow as to be almost imperceptible, when the Master turns His attention upon the man, develops him and arouses his own will to take part in the work, the speed of his advancement increases in geometrical progression.

Of that stream of divine influence poured upon the ego by the Master, the amount which can be passed on to the personality depends upon the connection between it and the ego, which is very different in different cases. There is almost infinite variety in human life. The spiritual force rays upon the ego, and some little of it certainly comes through into the personality, because though the ego has put forth a part of himself he does not cut himself off entirely from it, notwithstanding the fact that in the case of all ordinary people the ego and the personality are very different things.

The ego in ordinary men has not much grasp of the personality, nor a clear conception of his purpose in sending it forth; and, again, the small piece which meets us in the personality grows to have ways and opinions of its own. It is developing by the experience which it gains, and this is passed on to the ego; but along with this real development it usually gathers a good deal which is hardly worthy of that name. It acquires knowledge, but also prejudices, which are not really knowledge at all. It does not become quite free from these prejudices — not only of knowledge (or rather its absence) but of feeling and action as well — until the man reaches adeptship. It gradually discovers these things to be prejudices, and progresses through them; but it has always a great deal of limitation from which the ego is entirely free.

As to the amount of the spiritual force which is passed to the personality, one can only decide in a particular case by using ...

One may sometimes see by clairvoyance many of these influences at work. On a certain day, for example, we may see a characteristic of the personality much intensified, with no outward reason. The cause is often to be found in what is taking place at some higher level — the stimulation of that quality in the ego. Sometimes a man finds himself overflowing with affection or devotion, and quite unable on the physical plane to understand why. The cause is usually, again, the stimulation of the ego, or it may be that the ego is taking some special interest in the personality for the time being.

In meditation we sometimes draw such attention on the part of the ego, though it is well to keep in mind that we must try to reach up to join that higher activity, rather than to interrupt it to draw down its attention to the lower. Remember, physical meditation is not for the ego, but for the training of the various vehicles to be a channel for the ego. The higher influence is certainly invited by right meditation, which is always effective, even though on the physical plane things may seem to be very dull and quite without zest. If he ego is at all developed, he will meditate also on his own level; but it does not follow that his meditation will syncronize with that of the personality.... The yoga of a fairly well developed ego is to try to raise his consciousness first into the buddhic plane and then through its various stages. He does this without reference to what the personality happens to be doing at the time. Such an ego would probably also send down a little of himself at the personal meditation, though his own meditations are very different.

The reaching upwards of the ego himself often means ...

Meditation and the study of spiritual subjects in this earthly life make a very great difference in the life of the ego. The ordinary person who has not taken up spiritual matters seriously has only a thread of connection between the higher and the lower self. The personality in his case seems to be all, and the ego, though he undoubtedly exists on his own plane, is not at all likely to be doing anything actively there. He is very much like a chicken which is growing inside an egg. But in the case of some of us who have been making efforts in the right direction, we may hope that the ego is becoming quite vividly conscious. He has broken through his shell, and is living a life of great activity and power. As we go on, we shall become able to unify our personal consciousness with the life of the ego, as far as that is possible, and then we shall have only the one consciousness; even down here we shall have the consciousness of the ego, who will know all that is going on. But with many people at the present day there is often considerable opposition between the personality and the ego.

There are other things to be taken into account. It is by no means always accurate to judge the ego by his manifestation in the personality. An ego of intensely practical type may make much more show on the physical plane than another of far higher development, if the energy of the latter happens to be concentrated almost exclusively upon the causal or buddhic levels. Therefore people who see only on the physical plane are frequently entirely wrong in their estimation of the relative position of others.

If you have to deal with a fairly advanced ego, you will sometimes find him rather inconsiderate of his body. You see whatever is put down into the personality is so much taken from him! I have again and again seen cases in which the ego was to some extent impatient and withdrew into himself somewhat; but on the other hand in cases such as these there is always a flow between the ego and the personality, which is not possible with the ordinary man. In the ordinary man the part is, as it were, put down and left, though not of course quite cut off; but at this more advanced ...

As to the work of the ego, he may be learning things on his own plane; or he may be helping other egos — there are many kinds of work for which he may need an accession of strength. And then he may forget for a time to pay his personality proper attention, just as even a good man may occasionally, under some special pressure of business, forget his horse or his dog. Sometimes when that happens the personality reminds him of its existence by blundering into some foolishness which causes serious suffering. You may have noticed that sometimes, after you have completed a special piece of work that has needed the cooperation of the ego to a large extent — as, for example, lecturing to a large audience — he takes away the energy and leaves the personality with only enough to feel rather dispirited. For a time he admitted that there was some importance in the work, and therefore poured down a little more of himself, but afterwards he leaves the poor personality feeling rather depressed.

Of course, depression comes much more often from other reasons, such as the presence of an astral entity in a low-spirited condition, or of some non-human beings. And joy also is not always due to the influence of the ego, for the fact is that the man does not think much about his own feelings when he is in a fit condition to receive an influx of power. Joy may be produced by the proximity of harmonious nature-spirits, or in a variety of other ways. The channel between the ego and personality is by no means always open. Sometimes it appears to be almost choked up — a condition of affairs which is quite a possibility in view of its narrowness in most cases. Then the force may break through again on some occasion, such as that of a conversion. But for many of us there is a constant flow in some measure. Meditation, conscientiously done, opens the channel and keeps it open. Always remember, though, that it is better to try to go up to the ego than to bring it down to the personality.

Every ego has a certain knowledge of his own. He obtains a glimpse, between lives, of his past and future; in the undeveloped man this awakens the ego for a moment, after which he falls ...

Suppose you have an ego whose principal method of manifesting himself is by affection. That quality is what he wants exhibited by his personality, and if you down here try to feel strong affection and make a specialty of that, the ego will promptly throw more of himself down into the personality, because he finds in it exactly what he desires. Be careful to provide what he needs, and he will quickly take advantage of it. Egos on their own plane can help other egos, when they are sufficiently developed to do so. The ego of the ordinary person has rather a vegetable consciousness or life, and seems to be only just aware of other egos. The personality will not know what the ego does, unless they have been unified. The ego may know the Master while the personality does not. The study of inner things, and living the life, wakes up the ego. Purely unselfish devotion belongs to the higher planes and concerns him.

I do not think the experiences of the personality can be transmitted to the ego, but the essence of them may. He cares little for the details, but he wants the essence of it. Any of those thoughts that we consider evil are impossible for the ego. For precise definition he must come down into the physical body. He devotes himself more especially during the heaven-life to the assimilation of the experiences of the personality, but he is doing it all the time. When you take up the study of Theosophy, and live the life, you begin to call the attention of the ego by sending up vibrations to which he can respond. The ordinary man has in his life little that appeals to the ego.

High unselfish affection and devotion belong to the highest astral sub-plane, and these reflect themselves in the corresponding matter of the mental plane, so that they touch the causal, not the lower mental. Thus only unselfish thoughts affect the ego. All the lower thoughts affect the permanent atoms, but not the ego; and corresponding to them you would find gaps in the causal body, not bad colors. Selfishness below shows in it as absence of ...

No doubt there is an exact counterpart in astral matter of the rods and cones which make up the retina of the physical eye; but the particles which at one moment are occupying that particular position in an astral body may, a second or two later, be moving through the hand or the foot. One does not, therefore, see upon the astral plane by means of the astral counterpart of the physical eyes, nor does one hear with the astral counterpart of the physical ears; indeed, it is perhaps not exactly correct to apply the terms “seeing” and “hearing” to astral methods of cognizance, since these terms are commonly held to imply specialized sense-organs, whereas the fact is that every particle in the astral body is capable of receiving and transmitting vibrations from one of its own type, but its own type only. Thus when one obtains a glimpse of astral consciousness, one is surprised to find oneself able to see on all sides simultaneously, instead of only in front as one does on the physical plane. The exact correspondence of the astral body to the physical therefore is merely a matter of external form, and does not at all involve any similarity of function in the various organs.

But the attraction continued all through life sets up a kind of habit or momentum in the astral matter, which causes it to retain the same form even while it is withdrawn temporarily from the attraction of the physical body at night and permanently after death; so that even through the long astral life the lineaments of the physical body which was put aside at death will still be preserved almost unchanged. Almost — because we must not forget that thought has a powerful influence upon astral matter and can readily mould it, so that a man who habitually thinks of ...

A questioner asks, “If the arm of a man, the branch of a tree, or the leg of a chair were cut off, would in each case the astral counterpart also be removed, and can we, by breaking an astral counterpart, produce a fracture in a physical object? That is to say, if with the hand of my astral body I break the astral counterpart of a chair, will the physical chair also be broke?”

The three cases given are not quite analogous. Both the tree and the man have the life within them which makes the astral body in each case a coherent whole. It is strongly attracted by the particles of the physical body, and therefore adapts itself to its shape, but if part of that physical body be removed, the coherence of the living astral matter is stronger than the attraction towards that severed portion of the physical. Consequently the astral counterpart of the arm or branch will not be carried away with the severed physical fragment. Since it has acquired the habit of keeping that particular form, it will continue for a short time to retain the original shape, but will soon withdraw within the limits of the maimed form.

In the case of an inanimate body, such as a chair or a basin, there would not be the same kind of individual life to maintain cohesion. Consequently when the physical object was broken the astral counterpart would also be divided; but it would not be possible to break an astral counterpart, and in that way to affect the physical object. In other words the act of fraction must begin on the physical plane.

One could of course move a purely astral object by means of an astral hand if one wished, but not the astral counterpart of a physical object. In order to perform this latter feat it would be necessary to materialize a hand and move the physical object, when the astral counterpart would of course accompany it. The astral counterpart is there because the physical object is there, just as the scent of a rose fills the room because the rose is there. To suggest that by moving the astral counterpart one could also move the physical object is like suggesting that by moving the smell one could move the physical rose which causes the smell.

The astral body changes its particles as does the physical, but fortunately the clumsy and tiresome process of cooking, eating and digesting food is not a necessity on the astral plane. The ...

So far as we are at present aware the astral body does not appear to be susceptible to fatigue. The ordinary man while possessing a physical body naturally never has the opportunity of working for any length of time consecutively upon the astral plane, for his nights of astral work alternate with days of physical work. I knew, however, of one case of a man who, having the right to take a rapid reincarnation, had to wait upon the astral plane twenty-five years for the special conditions which he required. He spent the whole of this time in working for the help of others, without any intermission except the occasional attendance at classes held by pupils of our Masters; and he assured me that he had never felt the slightest sense of fatigue — that in fact he had forgotten what it meant to be tired.

We all know that excessive or long-continued emotion tires us very quickly in ordinary life, and since emotion is an expression of the astral, that may perhaps lead some to suppose that fatigue of the astral body is possible. I think, however, that it will be found that what is subject to fatigue is merely the physical organism through which everything in us which manifests on this plane must pass. What we call mental fatigue is a parallel case. There is no such thing as fatigue in the mind; what we call by that name is only fatigue of the physical brain through which that mind has to express itself.

A spectator who has not been able to raise his sight above the astral level will of course see only astral matter when he looks at the aura of his fellow-men. He will see that this astral matter not only surrounds the physical body but also interpenetrates it, and that within the periphery of that body it is much more densely aggregated than in that part of the aura which lies outside. This is due to the attraction of the large amount of dense astral matter which is gathered together there as the counterpart of the cells of the physical body.

When during sleep the astral body is drawn from the physical this arrangement still persists, and then any one looking at the astral body with clairvoyant vision would still see, just as before, a form resembling the physical body surrounded by an aura. That form would now be composed only of astral matter, but still the great difference in density between it and its surrounding mist would be quite sufficient to make it clearly distinguishable, even though it is itself only a form of denser mist.

There is a considerable difference in appearance between the evolved and the unevolved man. Even in the case of the latter the features and shape of the inner form are recognizable always, though blurred and indistinct; but the surrounding egg scarcely deserves the name for it is in fact a mere shapeless wreath of mist, having neither regularity nor permanence of outline.

In the more developed man the change is very marked, both in the aura and the form within it. This latter is much more distinct and definite — a closer reproduction of the man's physical appearance; while instead of the floating mist-wreath we see a sharply defined ovoid form preserving its shape unaffected amidst all the varied currents which arc always swirling round it on the astral plane. Though the arrangement of the astral body is largely changed after death by the action of the desire elemental, such alteration does not in any way affect the recognizability of the form within the egg, though the natural changes which take place tend on the whole to make the form grow somewhat fainter and more spiritual in appearance as time passes on.



Colors in the Astral Body



Any comparatively permanent color in the astral body means a persistent vibration, which in the course of time produces its effect upon the mental body, and also upon the causal body, so that the higher qualities developed by the life on the lower planes are gradually built into the permanent causal body, and so become qualities of the soul itself. The colors may be mingled to any extent; for example, affection (rose) mingled with religious devotion (blue) will give a lovely violet. It is only the good thought or feeling which can produce an effect in the causal body, and so be permanently stored up as part of the man. Other kinds of thought and feeling remain in the lower vehicles and are comparatively impermanent. The size a thought-form shows the strength of the emotion.

It is part of the Divine Life, just as you are; but its interests are diametrically opposed to yours. It wants to evolve downwards; you want to evolve upwards. It desires to preserve its separate life, and it feels that it can do so only by means of its connection with you. It is conscious of a something which is your lower mind, and realizes that if it can englobe, as it were, this mind, and persuade you that its and yours interests are one, you will increasingly supply it with the sensations it desires. When it gets the matter sufficiently entangled to suit its purpose, you cannot withdraw it, the result being that some of this matter of the lower mind is then lost to you altogether in the life after death.

So, you see, here is the desire-elemental seeking its own ends; not knowing that it is injuring you by trying to entangle your lower mind. The more it can do this the better for it, for the more mental matter it can entangle the longer will be its astral life — that life still enduring even after you have passed into the heaven-world. In Theosophical phraseology it has been known as the shade. Your business is not to allow yourself to be deceived; it understands nothing of your evolution, and is not responsible for it; it simply tries to turn you to its own purpose. You ought to understand the situation, and refuse to be drawn. Do let us realize this: that this elemental is not ourselves. It is never you who desire these lower things, but this creature.

It is not so much that we have to make a great fight against it, but we should shake ourselves free, saying: “This is not I; I do not want this lower thing.” Somebody wants it. Yes, it is this elemental; and you are responsible for its likes and wants, for in your last life you made it what it is. Not that this particular collection of astral matter and elemental essence existed then; it did not, for it was newly gathered together at your birth this time. But it is an exact reproduction of the matter in your astral body at the end of your last astral life. Nevertheless it is not you; and you must ever bear this in mind all through life, and even more during the life after death, for then it has still greater power to deceive you.

After the death of the physical body the ordinary man, who has never heard all this, finds himself when he wakes up on the other side in a totally unexpected condition of affairs, and is generally more or less disturbed thereby. Finally, he accepts these conditions which he does not understand, thinking them necessary and inevitable. Some no doubt are, but some are not, and with knowledge the latter could be transcended.

The elemental is afraid, because it knows that the death of the physical body means that the term of its separated life is limited; it knows that the man's astral death will more or less quickly follow, and with it the loss to it of vivid and intense sensations. Consequently it adopts the best plan it can think of for the preservation of the man's astral body. It evidently knows enough of astral physics to realize that the coarsest matter can hold together longest, and best stand friction. So it arranges the matter in rings, the coarsest on the outside. And in so doing it is right, from its point of view. The rearrangement which the desire-elemental produces after death is over the surface of the counterpart of the physical body, not over the surface of the egg which surrounds it. During physical life the astral body is like swirling, boiling water, but after death it arranges the matter in a series of graduated sheaths, so that full circulation is impossible.

Now there are no sense organs in the astral body. There are in it organs corresponding to the physical sense-organs, but you do not see, hear and smell with them. You hear and see all over the surface of the body. Each sub-plane has its own matter; and it is by means of the matter of that sub-plane in your body that you can respond to its vibrations. Whatever matter is on the outside (or surface) of your body responds to these vibrations, and you see or hear by it alone. Consequently, what has happened is this: the elemental has, by this arrangement of the matter of your body, shut you up, as it were, in a box of astral matter, which enables you to see and hear things of the lowest and coarsest plane only*. If you object to being shut up in this way, it endeavors to make you believe that unless you do thus firmly root yourself into the lower matter you will float off, and lose yourself in a nebulous vagueness. the lemental tries to inspire a feelig of terror in the man who is jolting him out of this arrangement, in order to deter him from doing so.

But if, on the other hand, you were to set your will to oppose it, then at once there would be a difference. The particles of the ...





* See section "Locaization of States" for further discussion of this. Editor.

The final struggle with it takes place at the conclusion of the astral life, for then the ego endeavors to draw back into himself all that he put down into incarnation at the beginning of the life which has just closed — to recover as it were the principal which he has invested, plus the interest of the experience which has been gained and the qualities which have been developed during that life. But when he attempts to do this he is met with determined opposition from this desire-elemental, which he himself has created and fed.

Though it can hardly be described as intelligent, it has a strong instinct of self-preservation, which leads it to resist with all the force at its command the extinction which threatens it. In the case of all ordinary mortals it attains a certain measure of success in its efforts, for much of the mental faculty has during life been governed by the lower desires and prostituted to their service, or in other words the lower mind has been so seriously entangled by desire that it is impossible for it to be entirely freed. The result of the struggle is therefore that some portion of the mental matter and even of causal matter is retained in the astral body after the ego has completely broken away from it. When a man has during life completely conquered his lower desires and succeeded in absolutely freeing the lower mind from desire, there is practically no struggle, and the ego reclaims in full both principal and interest; but there is unfortunately an opposite extreme when he is able to reclaim neither.

So our business, both during life and after death, is to control this desire-elemental, and not let it control us. Realize that you are a god in the making. All the power and force of the universe are on your side. The result is certain. Range yourself on the side of the Law, and all will be simplified.

Absolute control of passions is eminently desirable, but is obtained by few. You have to keep your temper on the astral plane. You see many dreadful things, and if you have not all feelings thoroughly under control you may easily do something for which you will be sorry. Down here people often commit casual brutality and think nothing of it; a callous schoolmaster, for example, beats a child without realizing his wickedness; but on the astral plane the heinousness of such a crime is at once obvious, and even the awful horrors of the karma which it ...

It is an unspeakable relief to be set free by the commonsense of Theosophical teaching from the awful nightmare of the doctrine of eternal damnation which is still held by the more ignorant among the Christians, who do not understand the real meaning of certain phrases attributed in their gospels to their Founder. But some of our students, filled with glad enthusiasm by the glorious discovery that every unit must finally attain perfection, find their joy somewhat damped by gruesome hints that, after all, there are conditions under which a soul may be lost, and they begin to wonder whether the reign of divine law is really universal, or whether there is not some method by which man contrive to escape from the dominion of the Logos and destroy himself. Let such doubters take comfort; the Will of the Logos is infinitely stronger than any human will, and not even the utmost exertion of perverse ingenuity can possibly prevail against Him.

It is true that He allows man to use his free-will, but only within certain well-defined limits; if the man uses that will well, those limits are quickly widened, and more and more power over his own destiny is given to him; but if he uses that will for evil, he thereby increases his limitations, so that while his power for good is practically unbounded, because it has in it the potentiality of infinite growth, his power for evil is rigidly restricted. And this not because of any inequality in the incidence of the law, but because in the one case he exerts his will in the same direction as that of the Logos, and so is swimming with the evolutionary tide, while in the other he is struggling against it.

The term “lost souls” is not well chosen, for it is almost certain to be misunderstood, and taken to imply much more than it really means. In everyday parlance, the word “soul” is used with exasperating vagueness, but on the whole it is generally supposed to denote the subtler and more permanent part of man, so that to the man in the street to lose one’s soul means to lose oneself, to be lost altogether. That is precisely what can never happen; therefore ...

1. Those who will drop out of this evolution in the middle of the fifth round. This dropping out is precisely the aeonian (not eternal) condemnation of which the Christ spoke as a very real danger for some of His unawakened hearers — the condemnation meaning merely the decision that they are incapable as yet of the higher progress, but not implying blame except in cases where opportunities have been neglected. Theosophy teaches us that men are all brothers, but not that they are all equal. There are immense differences between them; they have entered the human evolution at various periods, so that some are much older souls than others, and they stand at very different levels on the ladder of development. The older souls naturally learn much more rapidly than the younger, and so the distance between them steadily increases, and eventually a point is reached where the conditions necessary for the one type are entirely unsuitable for the other.

We may obtain a useful working analogy by thinking of the children in a class at school. The teacher of the class has a year' s work before him, to prepare his boys for a certain examination. He parcels out the work — so much for the first month, so much for the second, and so on, beginning of course with what is easiest and leading gradually up to what is more difficult. But the boys are of various ages and capacities; some learn rapidly and are in advance of the average, while some lag behind. New boys, too, are constantly coming into his class, some of them barely up to its level. When half the year has run its course, he resolutely closes the list for admissions, and declines to receive any more new boys.

That took place for us at the middle point of this fourth round, after which the door was shut for passage from the animal kingdom into the human, save for a few exceptional cases, which belong, as it were, to the future; just as you have a few men attaining adeptship, who are not belated remnants of the moon's adepts, but people in advance of the rest of humanity. In the same way there are a few animals at the stage of individualization, which the generality are expected to reach at the end of the seventh round. On the next planet an arrangement will be made by which these exceptions will have the opportunity of taking primitive human bodies.

A little later the teacher can already clearly foresee that some of his boys will certainly pass the examination, that the chance of others is doubtful, and that there are yet others who are sure to fail. It would be quite reasonable if he should say to these last:

We have now reached a stage when the further work of this class is useless for you. You cannot possibly by any effort attain the necessary standard in time for the examination; the more advanced teaching which must now be given to the others would be entirely unsuited for you, and as you could not understand it you would be not only wasting your own time but would be a hindrance to the rest of the class. It will therefore be better for you at once to transfer yourselves to the next class below this, perfect yourselves there in the preliminary lessons which you have not thoroughly learned, and come back to this level with next year’ s class, when you will be sure to pass with credit.

Most of these people fail because they are too young for the class, although they were too old to be put in the first place into the class below. They have had the advantage of going through the first half of the year's work, and they will therefore take it up again next time readily and easily, and will be able to help their more backward fellow-pupils who have not had their advantages. For those who are too young for the work there is no blame in failure.

But there is another large class who might succeed by determined effort, but fail for want of that effort. These exactly correspond to the boy who drops behind his class not because he is too young, but because he is too lazy to do his work. His fate is the same as that of the others, but it is obvious that while they were ...

2. Cases in which the personality has been so much emphasized that the ego is almost shut out from it. Of these are two varieties — those who live only in their passions, and those who live only in their minds; and as both types are by no means uncommon it is worth while to try to understand exactly what happens to them.

We often speak of the ego as putting himself down into the matter of the lower planes, yet many students fail to realize that this is not a mere figure of speech, but has a very definite and very material side to it. The ego dwells in a causal body, and when he takes upon himself in addition a mental and an astral body, the operation involves the actual entangling of a portion of the matter of his causal body with matter of those lower astral and mental types. We may regard this “putting down” as kind of investment made by the ego. As in all investments, so in this; he hopes to get back more than he puts out, but there is a risk of disappointment — a possibility that he may lose something of what he invests, or under very exceptional circumstances there may even be a total loss which leaves him, not indeed absolutely bankrupt, but without available capital.

Let us consider the elaboration of this analogy. The ego possesses in his causal body matter of three levels — the first, second and third sub-planes of the mental; but for the enormous majority of mankind there is as yet no activity beyond the lowest of these three types, and even that is usually very partial. It is therefore only some of this lowest type of causal matter that can be put down to lower levels, and only a small fraction even of that part can be entangled with mental and astral matter.

The ego’s control over what is put down is very weak and imperfect, because he is still half asleep. But as his physical body grows up his astral and mental bodies are also developed, and the causal matter entangled with them is awakened by the vigorous vibrations which reach it through them. This fraction of a fraction which is fully entangled gives life and vigor and a sense of individuality to these vehicles, and they in turn react strongly upon it and arouse it to a keen realization of life. This keen realization of life is exactly what it needs, the very object for which it is put down; and it is the longing for this keen realization which ...

But just because this small fraction has had these experiences, and is therefore so much more awake the rest of the ego, it may often be so far intensified as to think itself the whole, and forget for the time its relation to “its Father which is in heaven.” It may temporarily identify itself with the matter through which it should be working, and may resist the influence of that other portion which has been put down, but is not entangled — that which forms the link with the great mass of the ego on his own plane.

In order to understand this matter fully we must think of that portion of the ego which is awakened on the third sub-plane of the mental (remembering always how small a fraction even that is of the whole) as itself divided into three parts: (a) that which remains on its own plane; (b) that which is put down, but remains unentangled in lower matter; and (c) that which is thoroughly entangled with lower matter and receives vibrations from it. These are arranged in a descending scale, for just as (a) is a very small part of the real ego, so (b) is but a small part of (a), and (c) in turn a small part of (b). The second acts as a link between the first and third; we may symbolize (a) as the body, (b) as the arm stretched out, and (c) as the hand which grasps, or perhaps rather the tips of the fingers which are dipped into matter.

We have here a very delicately balanced arrangement, which may be affected in various ways. The intention is that the hand (c) should grasp firmly and guide the matter with which it is entangled, being fully directed all the time by the body (a) through the arm (b). Under favorable circumstances additional strength, and even additional matter, may be poured from (a) through (b) into (c), so that the control may become more and more perfect. (c) may grow in size as well as strength, and the more it does so the better, so long as the communication through (b) is kept open freely and (a) retains control. For the very entanglement of the causal matter which constitutes (c) awakens it to a keen activity and an accuracy of response to fine shades of vibration which it could gain in no other way, and this, when transmitted through (b) to (a), means the development of the ego.

Unfortunately the course of events does not always follow the ideal plan of working above indicated. When the control of (a) is ...

If the matter in which he is so fatally entangled be astral, he will be (on the physical plane) one who thinks only of his own gratification, who is absolutely ruthless when in pursuit of some object which he strongly desires, a man utterly unprincipled and of brutal selfishness. Such a man lives in his passions, just as the man immeshed in mental matter lives in his mind. Cases such as these have been spoken of in our literature as “lost souls,” though not irretrievably lost. Madame Blavatsky says of them:

It may well be thought incredible that such men as I have described could in any case escape serious loss; but, fortunately for our possibilities of progress, the laws under which we live are such that to achieve a really serious loss is no easy matter. The reason for that may perhaps be made clear by the following considerations.

All the activities that we call evil, whether they are working as selfish thoughts on the mental plane or as selfish emotions on the astral plane, invariably show themselves as vibrations of the coarser matter of those planes, belonging to their lower levels. On the other hand, every good and unselfish thought or emotion sets in vibration some of the higher types of matter on its plane; and because that finer matter is far more easily moved; any given amount of force spent in good thought or feeling produces perhaps a hundred times as much result as precisely the same amount of force sent out into the coarser matter. If this were not so, it is obvious that the ordinary man could never make any progress at all.

We shall probably do the quite undeveloped man of the world no injustice if we assume that ninety per cent of his thought and feeling is self-centered, even if not actually selfish; if ten per cent of it is spiritual and unselfish, he must already be rising somewhat above the average. Clearly if these proportions produced corresponding results, the vast majority of humanity would take nine steps backwards for every one forwards, and we should have a retrogression so rapid that a few incarnations would deposit us in the animal kingdom out of which we evolved. Happily for us the effect of ten per cent of force directed to good ends enormously outweighs that of ninety per cent devoted to selfish purposes, and so on the whole such a man makes an appreciable advance from life to life. A man who has even one per cent of good to show makes a slight advance, so it will be readily understood that a man whose account balances exactly, so that there is neither advance nor retrogression, must have been living a distinctly evil life; while to obtain an actual descent in evolution a person must be an unusually consistent villain.

Thanks to this beneficent law the world is steadily but slowly evolving, even though we see round us all the while so much that is undesirable; and even such men as I have described may not after all fall very far. What they have lost is rather time and opportunity than actual position in evolution; but to lose time and opportunity means always additional suffering.

To see what they have lost and what they have failed to do, let us revert for a moment to the analogy of investment. The ego expects to recover that which he puts out to interest in lower matter — the block that we have called (c) — and he expects it to be improved both in quality and quantity. Its quality is better because it has become much more awake, and capable of instant and accurate response to a far more varied gamut of vibrations than before — a capacity which (c) when reabsorbed necessarily communicates to (a), though of course the store of energy which made such a powerful wave in (c) creates only a ripple when distributed throughout the substance of (a). (It should be noted here that although the vehicles, containing as they do the grosser as well as the finer types of the matter of their respective planes, can respond to and express evil thoughts and emotions, and although their excitement under such vibrations can produce perturbation in the entangled causal matter (c), it is quite impossible for that matter (c) to reproduce those vibrations or to communicate them to (a) or (b), simply because matter of the three higher mental levels can no more vibrate at the rate of the lowest plane than the string of a violin turned to a certain pitch can be made to produce a note lower than that pitch.)

(C) should also be increased in quantity, because the causal body, like all other vehicles, is constantly changing its matter, and when special exercise is given to a certain part of it, that part grows in size and becomes stronger, precisely as a physical muscle does when it is used. Every earth-life is an opportunity carefully calculated for such development in quality and quantity as is most needed by the ego; a failure to use that opportunity means the trouble and delay of another similar incarnation, its sufferings probably aggravated by the additional bad karma incurred.

Against the increment which the ego has a right to expect from each incarnation we must offset a certain amount of loss which in the earlier stages is scarcely avoidable. In order to be effective the entanglement with lower matter must be very intimate, and it is ...

We must not allow the analogy of the arm and hand to mislead us in thinking of (b) and (c) as permanent appanages of the ego. During a life-period they may be considered as separate, but at the end of each life-period they withdraw into (a), and the result of their experience is distributed, as it were, through the whole of its substance; so that when the time comes for the ego to put part of himself out into incarnation once more, he does not stretch out again the old (b) and (c), for they have been absorbed in him and become part of him, just as a cupful of water emptied into a bucket becomes part of the water in the bucket and cannot be separated from it.

Any coloring matter which was present in the cup is distributed (though in paler tint) through the whole bucketful of water; and that coloring matter may be taken as symbolizing the qualities developed by experience. Just as it would be impossible to take out again from the bucket exactly the same cupful of water, so the ego cannot again put out the same (b) and (c). The plan is one to which he was accustomed before he became a separate ego at all, for it is identical with that pursued by the group-soul, except that the latter puts down many tentacles simultaneously, while the ego puts forth only one at a time. Therefore the personality in each new incarnation is a different one, though the ego behind it remains the same.

3. Cases in which the personality captures the part of the ego which is put down, and actually breaks away are happily excessively rare, but they have happened, and they represent the most ...

Now that the central point of our immersion in matter is passed, the whole force of the universe is pressing upwards towards unity, and the man who is willing to make all his life an intelligent co-operation with nature gains as part of his reward an ever-increasing perception of the reality of this unity. But on the other hand it is obvious that men may set themselves in opposition to nature and, instead of working unselfishly for the good of all, may debase every faculty they possess for purely selfish ends; and of them also, as of the others, the old saying is true, “Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.” They spend their lives in striving for separateness, and for a long time they attain it, and it is said that that sensation of being utterly alone in space is the most awful fate that can ever befall the sons of men.

This extraordinary development of selfishness is the characteristic of the black magician, and it is among their ranks only that men can be found who are in danger of this terrible fate. Many and loathsome are their varieties, but they may all be classed in one or other of two great divisions. They both use such occult arts as they possess for purely selfish purposes, but these purposes differ.

In the commoner and less formidable type the object pursued is the gratification of sensual desire of some sort, and naturally the result of a life devoted to nothing but that is to center the man's energy in the desire body; so that if the man who works on these lines has succeeded in killing out from himself every unselfish or affectionate feeling, every spark of higher impulse, naturally ...

By his carelessness in permitting this he has for the time cut himself off from the current of evolution, from the mighty wave of the life of the Logos, and so, until he can return to incarnation, he stands (what appears to him to be) outside that life in the condition of avichi, the waveless. Even when he does return to incarnation it cannot be among those whom he has known before, for he has not enough available capital left to provide ensoulment for a mind and body at his previous level. He must now be content to occupy vehicles of a far less evolved type, belonging to some earlier race; so that he has thrown himself far back in evolution and must climb over again many rungs of the ladder. It has been said that he may even throw himself so far back that he may be unable to find upon the world in its present condition any type of human body low enough for the manifestation which he now requires, so that he may even be incapacitated from taking any further part in this scheme of evolution, and may therefore have to wait in a kind of condition of suspended animation for the commencement of another.

Meanwhile what of the amputated personality? It is no longer a permanent evolving entity, but it remains full of vigorous and wholly evil life, entirely without remorse or responsibility. As the fate before it is disintegration amidst the unpleasant surroundings of what is called the “eighth sphere,” it naturally tries to maintain some sort of existence on the physical plane as long as possible. Vampirism of some kind is its sole means of prolonging its baneful existence, and when that fails it has been known to seize upon any available body, driving out the lawful owner. The body chosen might very probably be that of a child, both because it might be expected to last longer and because an ego which had not yet really taken hold could be more easily dispossessed. In spite of its frenzied efforts its power seems soon to fail, and I believe there is no instance on record of its successfully stealing a second body after its first theft is worn out. The creature is a demon of the most terrible type — a monster for which there is no permanent place in the scheme of evolution to which we belong.

Its natural tendency therefore is to drift out of this evolution, and to be drawn by the irresistible force of law into that astral cesspool which in earlier Theosophical writings was called the eighth sphere, because what passes into it stands outside the ring of seven worlds, and cannot return into their evolution. There, surrounded by loathsome relics of all of the concentrated vileness of the ages that are past, burning ever with desire, yet without possibility of satisfaction, this monstrosity slowly decays, its mental and causal matter being thus at last set free — never indeed to rejoin the ego from which it has torn itself, but to be distributed among the other matter of the plane to enter gradually into fresh combinations, and so put to better uses. It is consoling to know that such entities are so rare as to be practically unknown, and that they have the power to seize only those who have in their nature pronounced defects of kindred type.

But there is another type of the black magician, in outward appearance more respectable, yet really even more dangerous, because more powerful. This is the man who instead of giving himself up altogether to sensuality of one kind or another, sets before himself the goal of a more refined but not less unscrupulous selfishness. His object is the acquisition of an occult power higher and wider indeed, but to be used always for his own gratification and advancement, to further his own ambition or satisfy his own revenge.

In order to gain this he adopts the most rigid asceticism as regards mere fleshly desires, and starves out the grosser particles of his astral body as perseveringly as does the pupil of the Great White Brotherhood. But though it is only a less material kind of desire with which he will allow his mind to become entangled, the center of his energy is none the less entirely in his personality, and when at the end of the astral life the time of the separation comes, the ego is able to recover no whit of his investment. For the man therefore the result is much the same as in the former case, except that he will remain in touch with the personality much longer, and will to some extent share its experiences so far as it is possible for an ego to share them.

The fate of that personality, however, is very different. The comparatively tenuous astral integument is not strong enough to hold it for any length of time on the astral plane, and yet it has entirely lost touch with the heaven-world which should have been its habitat. For the whole effort of the man’s life has been to kill out such thoughts as naturally find their result at that level. His ...

We see therefore that in this rarer case the lost personality practically shares the fate of the ego from which it is in process of detaching itself. But in the case of the ego such an experience is only temporary, although it may last for what we should call a very long time, and the end of it for him will be reincarnation and a fresh opportunity. For the personality however the end of it is disintegration — the invariable end of that which has cut itself off from its source; but through what stages of horror the lost personality passes before that is reached, who shall say? Yet be it remember that neither of these states is eternal — that neither of them can in any case be reached except by deliberate life-long persistence in evil.

I have heard from our President of yet another even more remote possibility, of which I have never myself seen an instance. It is stated that, just as (c) may absorb (b) and revolt against (a), set up on its own account and break away, it is (or at any rate has been in the past) just within the limits of practicability that the deadly disease of separateness and selfishness may infest (a) also, that it too may be absorbed into the monstrous growth of evil, and may be torn away from the undeveloped portion of the ego, so that the causal body itself may be hardened and carried away, instead of only the personality.

If this be so, it constitutes yet a fourth group, and would correspond not to an amputation, but to an entire destruction of the body. Such an ego could not reincarnate in the human race; ego though it be, it will fall into the depths of animal life, and would need at least a whole chain-period to regain the status which it had lost. But this, though theoretically possible, is practically scarcely conceivable. Yet it will be noted that even then the undeveloped part of the ego remains as the vehicle of the monad.

We learn then that millions of backward egos, unable as yet to bear the strain of the higher evolution, will fall out in the middle of the fifth round and come along on the crest of the following wave; that those who live selfishly, whether in the intellect or the passions, do so at their own proper peril, and at the serious risk of much sorrow and loss; that those who are so foolish as to dabble in black magic may bring upon themselves horrors before which ...

Precisely in the same way if a man who has developed astral and mental consciousness focuses himself in the physical brain as in ordinary life, he will see perfectly the physical bodies of his friends, and will at the same time see their astral and mental bodies, but only somewhat dimly. In far less than a moment he can change that focus so that he will see the astral quite fully and perfectly. In that case he will still see the mental and physical bodies, but not in full detail. The same thing is true of the mental sight and of the sight of higher planes.

The centers which are usually employed in occult development are seven, and they are situated in the following parts of the body: (1) the base of the spine; (2) the navel; (3) the spleen; (4) the heart; (5) the throat; (6) the space between the eyebrows; and (7) the top of the head. There are other force-centers in the body besides these, but they are not employed by students of the white magic. It may be remembered that Madame Blavatsky speaks of three others which she calls the lower centers: there are schools which use these, but the dangers connected with them are so serious that we should consider their awakening as the greatest of misfortunes.

These seven are often described as corresponding to the seven colors and to the notes of the musical scale; and in the Indian books certain letters of the alphabet and certain forms of vitality are mentioned as attached to each of them. They are also poetically described as resembling flowers, and to each of them a certain number of petals is assigned.

It must be remembered that they are vortices of etheric matter, and that they are all in rapid rotation. Into each of these open mouths, at right angles to the plane of the whirling disc or saucer, rushes a force from the astral world (which we will call the primary force) — one of the forces of the Logos. That force is seven-fold in its nature, and all its forms operate in all the centers, though in each of them one of the forms is always greatly predominant.

This inrush of force brings the divine life into the physical body, and without it that body could not exist. These centers through which the force can enter are therefore actually necessary to the existence of the vehicle, and so are in operation in every one, but they may be whirling with very different degrees of activity. Their particles may be in comparatively sluggish motion, just forming the necessary vortex for the force and no more, or they may be glowing and pulsating with living light so that an enormously greater amount of force passes through them, with the result that various additional faculties and possibilities are opened to the ego as he functions on that plane.

Now those forces which rush into the center from without set up at right angles to themselves (that is to say, in the surface of the etheric double) secondary forces in undulatory circular motion, just as a bar-magnet thrust into an induction coil produces a current of electricity which flows round the coil at right angles to the axis or direction of the magnet. The primary force itself having entered the vortex, radiates from it again at right angles, but in straight lines, as though the center of the vortex were the hub of a wheel, and the radiations of the primary force its spokes. The number of these “spokes” differs in the different force-centers, and determines the number of “petals” which each of them exhibits.

Each of these secondary forces, which sweep round the saucer-like depression, has its own characteristic wave-length, just as has light of a certain color; but instead of moving in a straight line as light does, it moves along in certain relatively large undulations of various sizes, each of which is some multiple of the smaller wave-lengths within it, though the exact proportions have not as yet been calculated. The number of undulations is determined by the number of spokes in the wheel, and the secondary force weaves itself under and over the radiating currents of the primary just as basket-work might be woven round the spokes of a carriage-wheel. The wave-lengths are infinitesimal, and probably some thousands of them are included within one of the undulations. As the forces rush round in the vortex, these undulations of different sizes, crossing one another in this basket-work pattern, produce an appearance which is not inaptly described in the Hindu books as resembling the petals of a flower; or it is still more like certain saucers or shallow vases of wavy iridescent glass which I ...

In the ordinary men, in whom these centers are just active enough to be channels for sufficient force to keep his body alive, these colors glow with a comparatively dull light; but in those in whom the centers have been aroused and are in full activity they are of blinding brilliancy, and the centers themselves, which have gradually grown from a diameter of about two inches to the size of an ordinary saucer, are blazing and coruscating like miniature suns.

The first center, at the base of the spine, has a primary force which radiates out in four spokes, and therefore arranges its undulations so as to give the effect of its being divided into quadrants, with hollows between them. This makes it seem as though marked with the sign of the cross, and for that reason the cross is often used to symbolize this center, and sometimes a flaming cross is taken to indicate the serpent-fire which resides in it. When aroused into full activity this center is fiery orange-red in color, corresponding closely with the type of vitality which is sent down to it from the splenic center. Indeed, it will be noticed that in the case of every one of these centers a similar correspondence with the color of its vitality may be seen.

The second center, at the navel or solar plexus, receives a primary force with ten radiations, so it vibrates in such a manner as to divide itself into ten undulations or petals. It is very closely associated with feelings and emotions of various kinds. Its predominant color is a curious blending of various shades of red, though there is also a great deal of green in it.

The third center, at the spleen, is devoted to the specialization, subdivision and dispersion of the vitality which comes to us from the sun. That vitality is poured out again from it in six horizontal streams, the seventh variety being drawn into the hub of the wheel. This center therefore has six petals or undulations, and is specially radiant, glowing and sun-like.

The fourth center, at the heart, is also of a glowing golden color, and each of its quadrants is divided into three parts, which gives it twelve undulations, because its primary force makes for it twelve spokes.

The fifth center, at the throat, has sixteen spokes, and therefore sixteen apparent divisions. There is a good deal of blue in it, ...

The sixth center, between the eyebrows, has the appearance of being divided into halves, the one predominantly rose-colored, though with a great deal of yellow about it, and the other predominantly a kind of purplish-blue, again closely agreeing with the colors of the special types of vitality that vivify it. Perhaps it is for this reason that this center is mentioned in Indian books as having only two petals, though if we are to count undulations of the same character as those of the previous centers we shall find that each half is subdivided into forty-eight of these, making ninety-six in all, because its primary force has that number of radiations.

The seventh, the center at the top of the head, is when stirred into full activity perhaps the most resplendent of all, full of indescribable chromatic effects and vibrating with almost inconceivable rapidity. It is described in Indian books as thousand-petalled, and really this is not very far from the truth, the number of the radiations of its primary force in the outer circle being nine hundred and sixty. In addition to this it has a feature which is possessed by none of the other centers — a sort of subsidiary whirlpool of gleaming white flushed with gold in its heart — a minor activity which has twelve undulations of its own.

I have heard it suggested that each of the different petals of these force-centers represents a moral quality, and that the development of that quality brings the center into activity. I have not yet met with any facts which confirm this, nor am I able to see exactly how it can be, because the appearance is produced by certain quite definite and easily recognizable forces, and the petals in any particular center are either active or not active according as these forces have or have not been aroused, and their development seems to me to have no more connection with morality than has the development of the biceps. I have certainly met with persons in whom some of the centers were in full activity, though the moral development was by no means exceptionally high, whereas in other persons of high spirituality and the noblest possible morality the centers were not yet vitalized at all, so that there does not seem to me to be any connection between the two developments.

Besides the keeping alive of the physical vehicle, these force-centers have another function, which comes into play only when they are awakened into full activity. Each of these etheric centers ...

The function of each of these etheric centers when fully aroused is to bring down into physical consciousness whatever may be the quality inherent in the astral center which corresponds to it; so, before cataloguing the results to be obtained by arousing the etheric centers into activity, it may be well to consider what is done by each of the astral centers, although these latter are already in full activity in all cultured people of the later races. What effect, then, has the quickening of each of these astral centers produced in the astral body?

The development of the sixth, that corresponding to the center between the eyebrows, in a similar manner produced astral sight — the power to perceive definitely the shape and nature of astral objects, instead of vaguely sensing their presence.

The arousing of the seventh, that corresponding to the top of the head, rounded off and completed for him the astral life, and endowed him with the perfection of its faculties.

With regard to this center a certain difference seems to exist according to the type to which men belong. For many of us the astral vortices corresponding to the sixth and seventh of these centers both converge upon the pituitary body, and for those people the pituitary body is practically the only direct link between the physical and the higher planes. Another type of people, however, while still attaching the sixth center to the pituitary body, bend or slant the seventh until its vortex coincides with the atrophied organ called the pineal gland, which is by people of that type vivified and made into a line of communication directly passing through the intermediate astral plane in the ordinary way. It was for this type that Madame Blavatsky was writing when she laid such emphasis upon the awakening of that organ.

Thus these centers to some extent take the place of sense-organs for the astral body, and yet without proper qualification that expression would be decidedly a misleading one, for it must never be forgotten that though, in order to make ourselves intelligible, we constantly have to speak of astral seeing or astral hearing, all that we really mean by those expressions is the faculty of responding to such vibrations as convey to the man's consciousness, when he is functioning in his astral body, information of the same character as that conveyed to him by his eyes and ears while he is in the physical body.

But in the entirely different astral conditions specialized organs are not necessary for the attainment of this result. There is matter in every part of the astral body which is capable of such response, and consequently the man functioning in that vehicle sees equally well the objects behind him, above him, and beneath him, without needing to turn his head. The centers, therefore, cannot be described as organs in the ordinary sense of the word, since it is not through them that the man sees or hears, as he does here through the eyes and ears. Yet it is upon their vivification ...

As all the particles of the astral body are constantly flowing and swirling about like those of boiling water, all of them in turn pass through each of the centers or vortices, so that each center in its turn evokes in all the particles of the body the power of receptivity to a certain set of vibrations, and so all the astral senses are equally active in all parts of the body. But even when these astral senses are fully awakened it by no means follows that the man will be able to bring through his physical body any consciousness of their action.

While all this astral awakening was taking place, then, the man in his physical consciousness knew nothing whatever of it. The only way in which the dense body can be brought to share all these advantages is by repeating that process of awakening with the etheric centers. That is to be achieved precisely in the same way as it was done upon the astral plane — that is to say, by the arousing of the serpent-fire, which exists clothed in etheric matter on the physical plane, and sleeps in the corresponding etheric center, that at the base of the spine.

In this case the arousing is done by a determined and long-continued effort of the will, and to bring that first center into full activity is precisely to awaken the serpent-fire. When once that is aroused, it is by its tremendous force that the other centers are vivified. Its effect on the other etheric centers is to bring into the physical consciousness the powers which were aroused by the development of their corresponding astral centers.

When the second of the etheric centers, that at the navel, comes into activity the man begins in the physical body to be conscious of all kinds of astral influences, vaguely feeling that some of them are friendly and others hostile, or that some places are pleasant and others unpleasant, without in the least knowing why.

When the third center, that at the spleen, is awakened, the man is enabled to remember his vague astral journeys, though sometimes only very partially. The effect of a slight and accidental stimulation of this center is often to produce half-remembrance of a blissful sensation of flying through the air.

Stimulation of the fourth, that at the heart, makes the man instinctively aware of the joys and sorrows of others, and sometimes even causes him to reproduce in himself by sympathy their physical aches and pains.

The arousing of the fifth, that at the throat, enables him to hear voices, which sometimes make all kinds of suggestions to him. Also sometimes he hears music, or other less pleasant sounds. When it is fully working it makes the man clairaudient as far as the etheric and astral planes are concerned.

When the sixth, between the eye-brows, becomes vivified, the man begins to see things, to have various sorts of waking visions, sometimes of places, sometimes of people. In its earlier development, when it is only just beginning to be awakened, it often means nothing more than half-seeing landscapes and clouds of color. The full arousing of this brings about clairvoyance.

The center between the eyebrows is connected with sight in yet another way. It is through it that the power of magnification of minute physical objects is exercised. A tiny flexible tube of etheric matter is projected from the center of it, resembling a microscopic snake with an eye at the end of it. This is the special organ used in that form of clairvoyance, and the eye at the end of it can be expanded or contracted, the effect being to change the power of magnification according to the size of the object which is being examined. This is what is meant in ancient books when mention is made of the capacity to make oneself large or small at will. To examine an atom one develops an organ of vision commensurate in size with the atom. This little snake projecting from the center of the forehead was symbolized upon the head-dress of the Pharaoh of Egypt, who as the chief priest of his country was supposed to possess this among many other occult powers.

When the seventh center is awakened the man is able by passing through it to leave his body in full consciousness and also to return to it without the usual break, so that his consciousness will be continuous through night and day. When the fire has been passed through all these centers in a certain order (which varies for different types of people) the consciousness becomes continuous up to the entry into the heaven-world at the end of the life on the astral plane, no difference being made by either the temporary separation from the physical body during sleep or the permanent division at death.

Before this is done, however, the man may have many glimpses of the astral world, for especially strong vibrations may at any time galvanize one or other of the centers into temporary activity, without arousing the serpent-fire at all; or it may happen that the fire may be partially roused, and in this way also partial clairvoyance ...

This serpent-fire may be taken as the lower end of another of His streams, the physical-plane manifestation of another of the manifold aspects of His power. Like vitality, it exists on all planes of which we know anything; but it is the expression of it in etheric matter with which we have to do. It is not convertible into either vitality or electricity, and does not seem to be affected in any way by either. I have seen as much as a million and a quarter volts of electricity put into a human body, so that when the man held out his arms towards the wall huge flames rushed out from his fingers, yet he felt nothing unusual, nor was he in the least burnt unless he accidentally touched some external object; but even this enormous display of power had no effect whatever upon the serpent-fire.

In the body of man its home, as we have said, is at the base of the spine, and for the ordinary person it lies there unawakened, and its very presence unsuspected, during the whole of his life; and it is indeed far better to allow it thus to remain dormant until the man has made definite moral development, until his will is strong enough to control it and his thoughts pure enough to enable him to face its awakening without injury. No one should experiment with it without definite instruction from a teacher who thoroughly understands the subject, for the dangers connected with it are very real and terribly serious. Some of them are purely physical. Its uncontrolled movement often produces intense physical pain, and it may readily tear tissues and even destroy physical life. This, however, is the least of the evils of which it is capable, for it may do permanent injury to vehicles higher than the physical.

One very common effect of rousing it prematurely is that it rushes downwards in the body instead of upwards, and thus excites the most undesirable passions — excites them and intensifies their effects to such a degree that it becomes absolutely impossible for the man to resist them, because a force has been brought into play in whose presence he is as helpless as a swimmer before the jaws of a shark. Such men become satyrs monsters of depravity, because they are in the grasp of a force which is out of all proportion to the ordinary human power of resistance. They may probably gain certain supernormal powers, but these will be such as will bring them into touch with a lower order of evolution with which humanity is intended to hold no commerce and to escape from its awful thraldom may take them more than one incarnation. I am not in any way exaggerating the horror of this thing, as a person to whom it was all a matter of hearsay might unwittingly do. I have myself been consulted by people upon whom this awful fate has already come, and I have seen with my own eyes what happened to them. There is a school of black magic which purposely uses this power in this way, in order that through it may be vivified those lower force-centers which are never used by the followers of the Good Law.

Even apart from this greatest of its dangers, its premature unfoldment has many other unpleasant possibilities. It intensifies everything in man’s nature, and it reaches the lower and evil qualities more readily than the good. In the mental body, for example, ambition is very readily aroused, and soon swells to an ...

It may be noticed that I have specially and intentionally refrained from explaining how this arousing is to be done, or mentioning the order in which the force (when aroused) should be passed through these various centers, for that should by no means be attempted except at the express suggestion of a Master, who will watch over his pupil during the various stages of the experiment.

I most solemnly warn all students against making any effort whatever in the direction of awakening these tremendous forces, except under such qualified tuition, for I have myself seen many cases of the terrible effects which follow from ignorant and ill-advised meddling with these very serious matters. The force is a tremendous reality, one of the great basic facts of nature, and most emphatically it is not a thing to be played with, or to be lightly taken in hand, for to experiment with it without understanding it is far more dangerous than it would be for a child to play with nitroglycerine. As is very truly said in the Hathayogapradipika: “It gives liberation to yogis and bondage to fools.” (iii. 107.)

In matters such as these, students so often seem to think that some special exception to the laws of nature will be made in their case, that some special intervention of providence will save them from the consequences of their folly. Assuredly nothing of that sort will happen, and the man who wantonly provokes an explosion is quite likely to become its first victim. It would save much trouble and disappointment if students could be induced to understand that in all matters connected with occultism we mean just exactly and literally what we say, and that it is applicable in every case without exception. For there is no such thing as favoritism in the working of the great laws of the universe.

Everybody wants to try all possible experiments; everybody is convinced that he is quite ready for the highest possible teaching and for any sort of development, and no one is willing to work ...

There are some cases in which the fire wakes spontaneously, so that a dull glow is felt; it may even begin to move of itself, though this is rare. In this latter case it would be likely to cause great pain, as, since the passages are not prepared for it, it would have to clear its way by actually burning up a great deal of etheric dross — a process that cannot but engender suffering. When it thus awakes of itself or is accidentally aroused, it usually tries to rush up the interior of the spine, instead of following the spiral course into which the occultist is trained to guide it. If it be possible, the will should be set in motion to arrest its onward rush, but if that proves to be impossible (as is most likely) no alarm need be felt. It will probably rush out through the head and escape into the surrounding atmosphere, and it is likely that no harm will result beyond a slight weakening. Nothing worse than a temporary loss of consciousness need be apprehended. The really appalling dangers are connected not with its upward rush, but with the possibility of its turning downwards and inwards.

It may be of use if I mention my own experience in this matter. In the earlier part of my residence in India twenty-five years ago I made no effort to rouse the fire — not indeed knowing very much about it, and having the opinion that, in order to do anything with it, it was necessary to be born with a specially psychic body, which I did not possess. But one day one of the Masters made a suggestion to me with regard to a certain kind of meditation which would evoke this force. Naturally I at once put the suggestion into practice and in course of time was successful. I have no doubt, however, that He watched the experiment, and would have checked me if it had become dangerous. I am told that there are Indian ascetics who teach this to their pupils, of course keeping them under careful supervision during the process. But I do not myself know of any such, nor should I have confidence in them unless they were specially recommended by some one whom I knew to be possessed of real knowledge.

People often ask me what I advise them to do with regard to the arousing of this force. I advise them to do exactly what I myself did. I recommend them to throw themselves into Theosophical work and wait until they receive a definite command from some Master who will undertake to superintend their psychic development, continuing in the meantime all the ordinary exercises of meditation that are known to them. They should not care in the least whether such development comes in this incarnation or in the next, but should regard the matter from the point of view of the ego and not of the personality, feeling absolutely certain that the Masters are always watching for those whom They can help, that it is entirely impossible for any one to be overlooked, and that They will unquestionably give Their directions when They think that the right time has come.

I have never heard that there is any sort of age limit with regard to the development, and I do not see that age should make any ...

The force when aroused must be very strictly controlled, and it must be moved through the centers in an order which differs for people of different types. The movement also, to be effective, must be made in a particular way, which the Master will explain when the time comes.

I have said that the astral and etheric centers are in very close correspondence; but between them, and interpenetrating them in a manner not readily describable, is a sheath composed of a single layer of physical atoms much compressed and permeated by a special form of vital force. The divine life which normally descends from the astral body to the physical is so attuned as to pass through this with perfect ease, but it is an absolute barrier to all other forces — all which cannot use the atomic matter of both the planes. This web is the natural protection provided by nature to prevent a premature opening up of communication between the planes — a development which could lead to nothing but injury.

It is this which under normal conditions prevents clear recollection of what has happened during sleep, and it is this also which causes the momentary unconsciousness which always occurs at death. But for this merciful provision the ordinary man, who knows nothing about all these things and is entirely unprepared to meet them, could at any moment be brought by any astral entity under the influences of forces to cope with which would be entirely beyond his strength. He would be liable to constant obsession by any being on the astral plane who desired to seize upon his vehicles.

It will therefore be readily understood that any injury to this web is a serious disaster. There are several ways in which injury m