Filename: "RC1009.TXT"
Source: "Blavatsky & the Secret Doctrine" by Max Heindel

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                            INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT:

   It  is  a  law  in  the  Desire World that  as  a  man  thinketh,  so  is
he--literally and without qualification.

   A dense body formed of the inert substance of the Chemical Region, quick-
ened  and vitalized by the vital body composed of the ethers of the  Etheric
Region, receives the incentive to action from the desire body, and incentive
which the animals follow absolutely,  but which in man is checked by another
factor--reason, which sometimes causes him to act contrary to desire.   Were
there no other realms in nature but the Physical World and the Desire World,
that factor would be non-existent.  We could have mineral, plant and animal,
but man, a thinking, reasoning being, would be an impossibility in Nature.

   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.
These  conclusions  are  ideas.  By  the  power  of  will we project an idea

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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.

   (a)  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.

   (b)   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

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through to the brain centers and hold its clothing of desire stuff while ma-
nipulating 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  over-
come by the force of Repulsion, and will be stored in the memory, as are all
other thought forms when they have expended their energy.

   We have in our body two nervous systems,  the VOLUNTARY and the  INVOLUN-
TARY.  The first named is operated directly by the DESIRE BODY, and controls
the movements of the body,  tends to break down and destroy,  only partially
restrained in its ruthless task by the mind.

   It is this war between the vital body and the desire body which  produces
consciousness in the Physical World,  but did not the mind act as a brake on
the desire body,  our waking hours would be very short.  So would our lives,
for  the vital body would soon be overridden in its beneficient  offices  by
the reckless desire body, as evidenced in the exhaustion which follows a fit
of temper.   Temper is a condition where the man has "lost control"  and the
desire body rules unchecked.

   Disease takes many forms;  one is insanity, and that also is of different
kinds.  Where the connection between the sense centers of the dense body and
the vital body is askew,  where sometimes the head of the vital body  towers
above the dense head instead of being concentric with it,  the vital body is
out of adjustment with both the higher vehicles and the dense body.  Then we
have the docile idiot.   Where the dense and vital bodies are in  adjustment
but  the  break  is  between  the  vital body and the desire body, a similar

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condition  obtains,  but when the break is between the desire body  and  the
mind we have the raving maniac, who is more ungovernable than a wild animal,
for that is checked by the Group Spirit.   In that case all the animal  pro-
pensities are followed blindly.

   The natural tendency of the desire body is to harden and consolidate  all
it comes into contact with.  Materialistic thought accentuates this tendency
to  such an extent that it very often results in succeeding lives,  in  that
dread disease, consumption, which is a hardening of the lungs.  These should
remain  soft and elastic.   It also sometimes happens that the  desire  body
crushes  the  vital body in the next life,  so that it fails  altogether  to
counteract  the hardening process,  and then we have quick consumption.   In
some cases materialism makes the desire body brittle,  as it were.   Then it
cannot perform its proper hardening work on the dense body,  and as a result
we have "rachitis,"  where the bones soften.  So we see what dangers we  run
by  entertaining  materialistic tendencies:   either hardening of  the  soft
parts of the body,  as in consumption, or softening of the hard bony  parts,
as in rachitis.  Of course not every case of consumption shows that the suf-
ferer  was materialistic in a former life, but it is the teaching of  occult
science that such a result often follows materialism.

   Our thoughts are of vastly more importance than our acts,  for if we will
only think right,  we shall always act right.   No man can think love to his
fellowmen,  can  scheme in his mind how to aid and help  them,  spiritually,
mentally, or physically, without also acting out these thoughts at some time
in his life, and if we will only cultivate such thoughts, we shall soon find
sunshine spreading around us.  We shall  find  that  people  will meet us in

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that same spirit that we send out,  and if we would realize that the  desire
body  (which  surrounds  each of us and extends about  sixteen  to  eighteen
inches  beyond the periphery of the physical body) contains all these  feel-
ings and emotions,  we would meet people differently.   Then we would under-
stand  that  everything  we see is viewed through  the  atmosphere  we  have
created around ourselves which colors all we behold in others.

   If the astronomer exercises his will and focuses the telescope as he  de-
sires,  telling it to attend to its business of transmitting the  rays  that
strike it,  leaving the results to him, the work will proceed well,  but  if
the  lens  has the stronger will and the mechanism of the  telescope  is  in
league with it,  the astronomer will be seriously hampered in having to con-
tend with a refractory instrument,  and the result will be blurred pictures,
of little or no value.

   Thus it is with the Ego.   it works with a threefold body,  which it con-
trols, or should control through the mind.  But, sad to say, this body has a
will of its own and is often aided and abetted by the mind, thus frustrating
the purposes of the Ego.

   This antagonistic "lower will" is an expression of the higher part of the
desire body.   When the division of the Sun, Moon, and Earth took place,  in
the  early  part  of  the  Lemurian Epoch,  the  more  advanced  portion  of
humanity-in-the-making  experienced  a division of the desire  body  into  a
higher  and a lower part.   The rest of humanity did likewise in  the  early
part of the Atlantean Epoch.

   This  higher  part of the desire body became a sort of animal  soul.   It
built the cerebro-spinal nervous system and the voluntary muscles,  by  that
means  controlling  the lower part of the threefold body until the  link  of
mind was given.  Then the mind "coalesced" with this animal  soul and became

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a co-regent.

   The mind is thus bound up in desire; is enmeshed in the selfish lower na-
ture,  making it difficult for the Spirit to control the body.  The focusing
mind,  which should be the ally of the higher nature, is alienated by and in
league with the lower nature--enslaved by desire.

   The law of the Race Religions was given to emancipate intellect from  de-
sire.   The  "fear of God"  was pitted against "the desires of  the  flesh."
This, however, was not enough to enable one to become master of the body and
secure its willing cooperation.   It became necessary for the Spirit to find
in  the body another point of vantage,  which was not under the sway of  the
desire  nature.   All  muscles  are expressions of the  desire  body  and  a
straight road to the capital,  where the traitorous mind is wedded to desire
and reigns supreme.

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                        RELATIONSHIP TO CONSCIOUSNESS:

   To understand the degree of consciousness which results from the  posses-
sion of the vehicles used by the life evolving in the four kingdoms, we turn
our attention to Diagram 4, which shows that man, the Ego, the Thinker,  has
descended into the Chemical Region of the Physical World.   Here he has mar-
shaled  all his vehicles,  thereby attaining the state of waking  conscious-
ness.   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 fine 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.   The desire body is 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

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consciousness in the Physical World.

   The student should particularly note that it is because of their  connec-
tion  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 body;  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  ve-
hicles."

   Strange as the statement may seem, it is nevertheless true that the great
majority  of mankind are partially asleep most of the time,  notwithstanding
the fact that their physical bodies may seem to be intensely occupied in ac-
tive  work.   Under ordinary conditions the desire body in the case  of  the
great majority is the most awake part of composite man, who lives almost en-
tirely in his feelings and emotions, but scarcely ever thinks of the problem
of existence beyond what is necessary to keep body and soul together.   Most
of this class have probably never given the great questions of life, "Whence
have we come,  why are we here, and whither are we going?"  any serious con-
sideration.  Their vital bodies are kept active repairing the ravages of the
desire  body upon the physical vehicle, and purveying the vitality which  is
later dissipated in gratifying the desires and emotions.

   It  is this hard-fought battle between the vital and desire bodies  which
generates consciousness in the Physical World and makes men and women so in-
tensely  alert  that,  viewed  from the standpoint of the Physical World, it

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seems to give the lie to our assertion that they are partially asleep.  Nev-
ertheless,  upon examination of all the facts it will be found that this  is
the case,  and we may also say that this state of affairs has come about  by
the desire of the great Hierarchs who have our evolution in charge.

   The  particular stronghold of the desire body is in the muscles  and  the
cerebro-spinal nervous system.  The energy displayed by a person when labor-
ing  under great excitement or anger is an example of this.   At such  times
the  whole muscular system is tense and no hard labor is so exhausting as  a
"fit of temper."  It sometimes leaves the body prostrated for weeks.   There
can  be seen the necessity for improving the desire body by controlling  the
temper,  thus  sparing  the  dense body the  suffering  resulting  from  the
ungoverned action of the desire body.

   Looking at the matter from an occult standpoint, all consciousness in the
Physical World is the result of the constant war between the desire and  the
vital bodies.

   The tendency of the vital body is to soften and build.  Its chief expres-
sion is the blood and the glands, also the sympathetic nervous system,  hav-
ing  obtained ingress into the stronghold of the desire body  (the  muscular
and the voluntary nervous systems) when it began to develop the heart into a
voluntary muscle.

   The tendency of the desire body is to harden,  and it in turn has invaded
the realm of the vital body, gaining possession of the spleen and making the
white  blood  corpuscles,  which are not "the policement of the  system"  as
science now thinks,  but destroyers.   It uses the blood to carry these tiny
destroyers all over the body.  They  pass  through the walls of arteries and

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veins  whenever annoyance is felt,  and especially in times of great  anger.
Then  the  rush of forces in the desire body makes the  arteries  and  veins
swell  and opens the way for the passage of the white blood corpuscles  into
the  tissues of the body,  where they form bases for the early matter  which
kills the body.

   During  the waking state there is a constant war between the  vital  body
and the desire body.  The desires and impulses from the desire body are con-
stantly impinging upon the dense body, impelling it to action, regardless of
any damage resulting to the latter instrument, so that desire is gratified.

   It is the desire vehicle that urges the drunkard to fill his system  with
liquor,  so that the chemical combustion of spirit may raise the  vibrations
of  the dense body to such a pitch as to make it the willing tool  of  every
mad impulse, wasting its stored energy with reckless prodigality.

   The  desire body is the vehicle of our emotions,  feelings,  and  desires
which expends the energies in the dense body by the vital processes  through
control  of  the  cerebro-spinal or voluntary nervous system.   In  its  ac-
tivities this desire body is constantly destroying and breaking down  tissue
built  by the vital body and it is the war between these two vehicles  which
causes what we call consciousness in the Physical World.  The etheric forces
in the vital body act in such a manner that they convert as much of the food
as possible into the blood,  and this is the highest expression of the vital
body.

   The spleen is the gateway of the vital body.  There the solar force which
abounds in the surrounding atmosphere enters in a constant stream, to aid us
in the vital processes, and there also the  war  between the desire body and

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the vital body is waged most fiercely.

   Thoughts  of  worry,  fear,  and anger interfere with  the  processes  of
evaporation in the spleen.   A speck of plasm is the result,  and this is at
once  seized upon by a thought elemental which forms a nucleus and  embodies
itself therein.  Then it commences to live a life of destruction, coalescing
with other waste products and decaying elements wherever formed,  making the
body a charnel house instead of the temple of an indwelling living Spirit.

   This  destruction is constantly going on and it is not possible  to  keep
all the destroyers out,  nor is such the intention.   If the vital body  had
uninterrupted sway,  it would build and build, using all the energy for that
purpose.   There would be no consciousness and thought.   It is because  the
desire body checks and hardens the inner parts that consciousness develops.

   As  has  been previously explained,  the desire body  is  an  unorganized
ovoid, holding the dense body as a dark spot within its center, as the white
of  an egg surrounds the yolk.   There are a number of sense centers in  the
ovoid,  which have appeared since the beginning of the Earth Period.  In the
average  human being these centers appear merely as eddies in a current  and
are not awake,  hence his desire body is of no use to him as a SEPARATE  ve-
hicle  of consciousness;  but when the sense centers are awakened they  look
like whirling vortices.

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                                DURING 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 in
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 en-
ergy anew,  rebuilding the dense body, using particularly the chemical ether
as its medium in the process of restoration.

   It happens,  however,  that at times the desire body does not fully with-
draw,  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 scenes 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

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relation of one body to another.  The memory is also confused by this incon-
gruous 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.

   What is it that makes sleep a restorative state?   In the very term  "re-
storative"  there is implied an activity.   If a building is to be restored,
it  is necessary that the tenants move out,  and that wear and  tear  cease.
But that is not enough.  Workmen must be brought in to repair the damage in-
cident  to the use of the building.   Only when that work has been  done  is
restoration complete and the building ready for reoccupancy by the tenants.

   So also with the temple of the Ego,  our dense body,  when that has  been
exhausted.   It is then necessary that the Ego, mind, and desire body vacate
and give the vital body full sway, that it may restore the tone of the dense
body;  and thus,  when the dense body goes to sleep,  there is a separation.
The Ego and the mind,  clothed in the desire body,  draw out from the  vital
body  and  the dense body,  the two latter remaining on the bed,  while  the
higher vehicles hover above or near the sleeping body.

   The process of restoration now begins.   In a fight in the Physical World
the injuries are never all on one side;  the winner always has some lesions.
The fiercer the fight,  and the more evenly the combatants are matched,  the
more lesions go to each.  So with the combating vital and desire bodies, the
desire body wins every time,  yet its victory is always a defeat,  for it is
then forced to leave the battle field and the prize, the dense body,  in the
hands of the vanquished vital body, and withdraw to repair its own shattered
harmony.

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   When it withdraws from the sleeping body it enters that sea of force  and
harmony called the Desire World.   Here it lives over the scenes of the day,
but in REVERSE ORDER, from effects to causes,  straightening out the tangles
of  the day,  forming true pictures to replace the wrong impressions due  to
the limitations of the life in the dense body,  and as the harmonies of  the
Desire World pervade it, and wisdom and truth replace error,  it regains its
rhythm  and its tone,  the time required to restore it varying according  to
how illusive, impulsive, and strenuous had been the life of the day.

   Then,  and then only, does the work of restoring the vehicles left on the
bed commence,  and the restored desire body starts to revive the vital body,
pumping  rhythmic energy into it,  and that in turn starts to work upon  the
dense body,  eliminating the products of decay,  principally by means of the
sympathetic nervous system,  with the result that the dense body is restored
and overflowing with life when the desire body,  mind,  and Ego enter in the
morning and cause it to wake.

   It sometimes happens, however, that we have become so absorbed and inter-
ested in the affairs of our mundane existence that even after the vital body
has collapsed and rendered the dense body unconscious we cannot make up  our
minds to leave it and commence the work of restoration; the desire body will
cling  like  grim death,  is perhaps only half dragged out by the  Ego,  and
starts to ruminate over the happenings of the day in that position.

   It is evident that this is an abnormal condition.   The proper connection
between  the different vehicles is ruptured in the first place by  the  col-
lapse  of  the  vital  body, and further disarranged by the unusual relative

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positions of the higher vehicles, which has partially disconnected the sense
centers  of the former from the latter,  and the inevitable result is  those
confused  dreams where the sounds and sights of the Desire World  are  mixed
with the happenings of daily life in the most grotesque and impossible way.

   At times,  when something in daily life has particularly agitated the de-
sire body, it happens that when it has severed connection with the lower ve-
hicles and is engaged in the work of restoration by the above-mentioned  re-
view,  that when a trying incident of the day appears,  and the desire  body
sees the solution, it will rush back into the dense body in order to impress
the ideas on the brain, thereby causing the dense body to wake with a start.
It  is only in the fewest cases that it is able to bring back  the  solution
that was so clear in the Desire World.   Even if it does succeed in impress-
ing the solution on the brain, it is usually forgotten in the morning.

   There  are times of course when dreams are prophetic and come  true,  but
such dreams result only AFTER complete extraction of the desire body,  under
circumstances where the Spirit has seen some danger perhaps,  which may  be-
fall, and then impresses the fact upon the brain AT THE MOMENT OF AWAKENING.

   It also happens that the Spirit goes upon a soul flight and omits to per-
form its part of the work of restoration.  Then the body will not be fit  to
re-enter in the morning,  so it sleeps on.   The Spirit may thus roam afield
for  a number of days,  or even weeks,  before it again enters its  physical
body  and assumes the normal routine of alternating waking and sleep.   This
condition is called TRANCE, and the Spirit may remember upon its return what
it has seen and heard in the superphysical realm,  or it may have forgotten,
according to the stage  of  its  development  and  the  depth  of the trance

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condition.   When the trance is very light, the Spirit is usually present in
the room where its body lies all the time,  and upon its return to the  body
it will be able to recount to relatives all they said and did while its body
lay unconscious.  Where the trance is deeper, the returning Spirit will usu-
ally be unconscious of what happened around its body,  but may recount expe-
riences from the invisible world.

   In  ordinary  life  most people live to eat.   They  drink,  gratify  the
sex-passion in an unrestrained manner, and lose their tempers on the slight-
est provocation.   Though outwardly these people may be very  "respectable,"
they are, nearly every day of their lives, causing almost utter confusion in
their organization.   The entire period of sleep is spent by the desire  and
the  vital bodies in repairing the damage done in the day time,  leaving  no
time for outside work of any kind.  But as the individual begins to feel the
needs of the higher life, controls sex-force,  and temper,  and cultivates a
serene disposition,  there is less disturbance caused in the vehicles during
waking hours.  Consequently, less time is required to repair the damage dur-
ing sleep.   Thus it becomes possible to leave the dense body for long peri-
ods  during sleeping hours,  and function in the inner worlds in the  higher
vehicles.   As the desire body and the mind are not yet organized,  they are
of no use as separate vehicles of consciousness.  Neither can the vital body
leave the dense body,  as that would cause death,  so measures must be taken
to provide an organized vehicle which is fluidic and so constructed that  it
will meet the needs of the Ego in the inner worlds as does the dense body in
the Physical World.

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                  MAN'S DESIRE BODY IN THE INVISIBLE WORLDS:

                              AT TIME OF DEATH:

   The silver cord which has grown from the seed atom of the dense body (lo-
cated in the heart) since conception,  is welded to the part (located in the
liver),  that has sprouted from the central vortex of the desire  body,  and
when the silver cord is tied by the seed atom of the vital body (located  in
the solar plexus),  the Spirit DIES to life in the supersensible world,  and
quickens the body it is to use in its coming earth life.  This life on Earth
lasts  until  the course of events foreshadowed in the wheel  of  life,  the
horoscope,  has  been run;  and when the Spirit again reaches the  realm  of
Samael,  the Angel of Death,  the mystic eighth house,  the silver  cord  is
loosed, and the Spirit returns to God who gave it, until the dawn of another
life-day  in the School of Earth beckons it to a new birth that it  may  ac-
quire more skill in the arts and crafts of temple-building.

   The serpent said:   "Ye shall not surely die,  for the God doth know that
in the day ye eat thereof YOUR EYES SHALL BE OPENED,  and ye shall be as the
gods, knowing good AND EVIL."  The latter was then unknown to man.

   Acting upon this advice,  the woman secured the cooperation of man and by
the  power of will they freed their desire bodies.   That faculty  was  then
much  greater  than now,  for it is a law that each new  faculty  is  always
bought  at the cost of weakening some previous power, as when the faculty of

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thought was bought at the price of half the creative force.   Then the man's
will  power was such that the anxiety of the God "lest man eat also of  'the
tree of life' and become immortal" was well founded, for had he secured pos-
session of the secret of renewing the vital body as well as the dense  body,
he would have been ale to create a body and vitalize it forever.  Then there
would truly have been no death, but neither would there have been any evolu-
tion.   As man did not then,  and does not yet,  know how to build a perfect
body,  that would have been the greatest possible calamity.   Death is not a
curse,  but a friend when it comes naturally, for it releases us from an en-
vironment we have outgrown,  and from a body that ties us,  in order that we
may get a new chance in a new and better body to learn new lessons.

   When  the  moment  arrives  which marks the completion  of  life  in  the
Physical  World,  the usefulness of the dense body has ended,  and  the  Ego
withdraws from it by way of the head, taking with it the mind and the desire
body,  as it does every night during sleep,  but now the vital body is  use-
less,  so that,  too, is withdrawn, and when the "silver cord"  which united
the higher to the lower vehicles snaps, it can never be repaired.

   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.

   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.

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   During life and in the waking state of consciousness, the vehicles of the
Ego are all together and concentric,  but at death the Ego,  clothed in  the
mind and desire body, withdraws from the dense body.  As the vital functions
are at an end,  the vital body also is taken out of the dense body,  leaving
it  inanimate upon the bed.   One little atom in the heart is taken out  and
the rest of the body disintegrates in due course.  But at that time there is
an  extremely important process going on, and those who attend  the  passing
Spirit  in  the death chamber should be very careful that the  utmost  quiet
reigns  there and in the whole house.  The pictures of the whole  past  life
which  have been stored in the vital body are passing before the eye of  the
Spirit in a slow and orderly progression,  IN REVERSE ORDER--from death  and
back  to birth.   This panorama of the past life lasts from a few  hours  to
three and one-half days.  The time is dependent upon the strength of the vi-
tal  body,  which determines how long a man could keep awake under the  most
severe stress.  Some persons can work for fifty, sixty, or seventy hours be-
fore  they fall down exhausted,  while others are capable of  keeping  awake
only a few hours.  The reason why it is important that there should be quiet
in the house of death during the three and one-half days immediately follow-
ing death is this:   During that time the panorama of the past life is being
etched  upon the desire body which will be the man's vehicle while he  stays
in Purgatory and the First Heaven,  where he is reaping the good or ill that
he has sown, according to the deeds done in the body.

   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

[PAGE 282]

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 hap-
pens,  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  some-
thing is different, but they are not able to understand what it is.

   A  cleavage takes place in the vital body (after death) similar  to  that
made by the process of initiation.  So much of this vehicle as can be termed
"soul," coalesces with the higher vehicles and is the basis of consciousness
in the invisible worlds after death.

   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.

[PAGE 283]

                         CAUSES OF INFANT MORTALITY:

   It is often asked why children die.  There are many causes.  One is death
under the dreadful strain of accident,  by fire, or on the battle field in a
previous  life,  for under such circumstances the departing  Ego  could  not
properly concentrate upon the panoramic view of its past life.  This is also
the  case  where loud lamentations of relatives hinder.   The result  is  of
course a weak imprint of the life-experiences upon the desire body,  with an
insipid purgatorial and First Heaven life.

   In  such cases the Ego does not reap what it has sown,  and so  it  might
commit the same follies or sins life after life.   To prevent such a contin-
gency  the new desire body which the Ego gathers before its next birth  must
be impressed with the needed lesson.   The Ego is always unconscious on  its
way  to rebirth,  blinded by the matter it draws around itself,  as  we  are
blinded  when we enter a house on a sunny day.   Only after birth  does  the
consciousness return in a measure.   Then,  when by death it passes into the
First  Heaven  it  is taught objectively in a different way  the  lesson  it
should  have learned on its outward passage in the former life.   When  that
lesson has been mastered and impressed upon the still unborn desire body the
Ego is reborn on Earth and goes on in the ordinary manner.

   Children who died before the seventh year  have  been born only so far as

[PAGE 284]

the dense and vital bodies are concerned and are not responsible to the  Law
of Consequence.   Even up to twelve or fourteen years the desire body is  in
process of gestation,  and as that which has not been quickened cannot  die,
the dense and vital bodies alone go to decay when a child dies.   It retains
its  desire  body and mind to the next birth.   Therefore,  it does  not  go
around  the whole path which the Ego usually traverses in a life cycle,  but
only ascends to the First Heaven to learn needed lessons,  and after a  wait
of  from  one to twenty years it is reborn,  often in the same family  as  a
younger child.

   Now, when the three and a half days immediately following death are spent
by  the man under conditions of peace and quiet,  he is able to  concentrate
much more upon the etching of his past life, and the imprint upon his desire
body  will be deeper than if he is disturbed by the hysterical  lamentations
of  his  relatives or from other causes.   He will then  experience  a  much
keener feeling for either good or bad in Purgatory and in the First  Heaven,
and in after lives that keen feeling will speak to him with no  unmistakable
voice;  but where the lamentations of relatives take away his attention,  or
where  a  man passes out by an accident--perhaps in a crowded street,  in  a
train  wreck,  theater fire,  or under other harrowing  circumstances--there
will  of course be no opportunity for him to concentrate properly.   Neither
can he concentrate upon a battle field if he is slain there.   Yet it  would
not  be just that he should lose the experiences of his life on  account  of
passing out in such an untoward manner,  so the Law of Cause and Effect pro-
vides a compensation.

   We usually think that when a child is born it is born and that is the end
of it.  However as during the period of gestation the dense body is shielded

[PAGE 285]

from  the impact of the outside world by being placed within the  protecting
womb  of the mother until it has arrived at sufficient maturity to meet  the
outside conditions,  so also are the vital body, desire body,  and mind in a
state  of gestation and are born at later periods because they have not  had
as  long an evolution behind them as the dense body.   Therefore it takes  a
longer  time for them to arrive at a sufficient state of maturity to  become
individualized.  The vital body is born at the seventh year, when the period
of excessive growth marks its advent.   The desire body is born at the  time
of puberty,  the fourteenth year,  and the mind is born at twenty-one,  when
the child is said to have become a man or woman--to have reached majority.

   That which has not been quickened cannot die, so when a child dies before
the  birth of the desire body it passes out into the invisible world in  the
First  Heaven.   It cannot ascend into the Second and Third Heavens  because
the mind and desire body are not born and cannot die.   The Ego simply waits
in the First Heaven until a new opportunity for embodiment offers, and where
it  has died in its previous life under the before-mentioned harrowing  cir-
cumstances (by accident or upon the battle field,  or where the lamentations
of relatives rendered it impossible for it to gain as deep an impression  of
the evil committed and the good accomplished as would have been the case had
it died in peace),  it is instructed when it has died in the next life as  a
child  in the effects of passions and desires so that it learns the  lessons
then  which it should have learned in the purgatorial life had  it  remained
undisturbed.  It is then reborn with the proper development of conscience so
that it may continue its evolution.

[PAGE 286]

   As in the past man has been exceedingly warlike and not at all careful of
the  relatives who passed out at death,  because of his  ignorance,  holding
wakes over those who had died in bed (which were few,  perhaps,  compared to
those who died on the battle field),  there must necessarily be an  enormous
amount of infant mortality.  But as humanity arrives at a better understand-
ing  and realizes that we are never so much our brother's keeper as when  he
is  passing out of this life,  and that we can help him enormously by  being
quiet and prayerful,  so also will infant mortality cease to exist on such a
large scale as at present.

   This is readily apparent as soon as we consider the gentle action of  the
vital body and contrast it with that of the desire body in a fit of  temper,
where it is said that a man has "lost control" of himself.   Under such con-
ditions the muscles become tense,  and nervous energy is expended at a  sui-
cidal rate,  so that after such an outbreak the body may sometimes be  pros-
trated  for  weeks.   The hardest labor brings no such fatigue as a  fit  of
temper;  likewise a child conceived in passion under the crystallizing  ten-
dencies of the desire nature is naturally short-lived.

   The desire body becomes the arbiter of man's destiny in Purgatory and the
First Heaven.  The pains caused by expurgation of evil and the joy caused by
the  contemplation of the good in life are carried over to the next life  as
conscience to deter man from perpetuating the mistakes of past lives and  to
entice  him  to do more abundantly that which caused him joy in  the  former
life.

   When  those  next of kin to a dying person who are present in  the  death
chamber  burst  into hysterical lamentations at the time the  Spirit  passes
out, and keep that up for the next few days,  the  Spirit  which  is at that

[PAGE 287]

time  in exceedingly close touch with the Physical World will be much  moved
by the grief of the dear ones,  and will not be able to focus its  attention
closely upon the contemplation of its past life.   Thus the etching made  in
the  desire body will not be as deep as it would if the passing Spirit  were
left  in  peace and undisturbed.  Consequently the sufferings  in  Purgatory
will  not be as keen nor will the pleasures in the First Heaven be as  great
as otherwise.   Therefore, when the Ego returns to Earth life,  it will have
lost  a certain part of the experience from the previous life.   That is  to
say,  the voice of conscience will not speak with the same emphasis as would
have been the case had the Ego been left undisturbed by lamentations.

   In order to compensate for this lack, the Ego is then usually brought  to
birth among the same friends who lamented over it, and it is then taken away
from  them while yet in the years of childhood.   Then it enters the  Desire
World,  but since a little child has not committed any sins that need to  be
expurgated  its desire body and mind remain intact.   It then goes  directly
into the First Heaven to wait until a new embodiment offers,  but this wait-
ing  time is used to school it directly in the effect of the different  emo-
tions,  both  good  and evil.   Often a relative meets it and  takes  it  in
charge,  having the task of teaching it that which it had lost  through  the
lamentation that person indulged in, or else it is taught by others.  At any
rate,  the loss is more than made up, so that when the child returns to  the
second birth it will have as full a moral growth as it would have had  under
ordinary  circumstances  had there been no lamentation at the time  when  it
passed out.

[PAGE 288]

   When a person passes out under untoward circumstances,  such as a fire or
a railroad accident, or suddenly as by a fall from a building or a mountain,
or on a battle field,  or when lamentations of relatives around the  bedside
of  the  newly  dead  make it impossible for him  to  concentrate  upon  the
life-panorama,  then the etching in the two higher ethers, the light and re-
flecting ethers,  and their amalgamation with the desire body does not  take
place.   Man does not then lose consciousness, and because there is no etch-
ing on the finer vehicles such as is normally the case,  he has no  purgato-
rial existence; that is to say, he does not reap what he has sown,  there is
no suffering in consequence of his wrong-doings and no feeling of joy on ac-
count of the good he has done.  The fruitage of the life has been lost.

   To offset this great disaster the Spirit on entering its next Earth  life
is caused to die in childhood so far as the physical body is concerned,  but
the vital body,  the desire body, and mind,  which do not ordinarily come to
birth until the dense body is seven, fourteen, and twenty-one years old, re-
spectively,  remain  with  the passing Spirit, as that which  has  not  been
quickened cannot die.  Then in the First Heaven the Spirit stays from one to
twenty years,  receiving such instructions and object lessons as will  teach
it  that which it would otherwise have learned by the accident which  termi-
nated it.   So it is reborn,  ready to take its proper place on the path  of
evolution.

   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  indel-
ibly imprinted upon the child's sensitive and emotional desire body, and re-
main 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

[PAGE 289]

is born,  the Compassionate Ones (the invisible Leaders who guide our evolu-
tion) 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 par-
ticularly 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 in early life,
the loss is made up 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 con-
sequence in a child's vital body.

[PAGE 290]

                                  PURGATORY:

   The  Ego  after  death gradually ascends through  the  various  spiritual
realms to the Third Heaven, and at the time of rebirth it gradually descends
through the Region of Concrete Thought,  the Desire World,  and the ether to
the physical plane....The writer.....feels certain that none of his acquain-
tances have ever mounted to the higher parts of the Desire World or the  Re-
gion  of  Concrete Thought without first passing through the ether  and  the
lower Desire World strata, namely the purgatorial region.

   Purgatory  occupies  the three lower regions of the  Desire  World.   The
First Heaven is in the three upper regions.  The central Region is a sort of
borderland--neither heaven nor hell.

   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.

   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 correc-
tion  of  the  weaknesses and vices which hinder his progress, by making him

[PAGE 291]

suffer  in the manner best adapted to that purpose.   If he has 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 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 the 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  back-
wards,  as before;  but now 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

[PAGE 292]

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 won-
derfully just and true.

   There is another characteristic peculiar to this phase of post-mortem ex-
istence which is 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 impres-
sions 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 feel-
ing 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

[PAGE 293]

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 a 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  di-
verted 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  dis-
tinct panoramic impression than if the process were short.

   It  is possible for the so-called dead to form by their thoughts any  ar-
ticle  of clothing they desire.   They usually think of themselves as  being
clothed in the conventional garb of the country in which they lived prior to
their  passing into the Desire World, and therefore they appear  so  clothed
without  any particular effort of thought.  But when they desire  to  obtain
something new or an unusual article of clothing,  naturally they have to use
their will power to bring that thing into existence;  and such an article of
clothing will last as long as the person thinks of himself as being clad  in
that apparel.

   But  this amenability of desire stuff to the molding power of thought  is
also used in other directions.  Generally speaking, when a person leaves the
present world in consequence of an accident,  he thinks of himself as  being
disfigured by that accident in a certain manner,  perhaps minus a leg or arm
or with a hole in the head.  This does not inconvenience him at all;  he can
move about there of course just as easily without arms or legs as with them;

[PAGE 294]

but it shows the tendency of thought to shape the desire body.   At the  be-
ginning of the war (World War I) when great numbers of soldiers passed  over
into  the Desire World with lesions of the most horrible nature,  the  Elder
Brothers  and  their  pupils taught these men that  by  merely  holding  the
thought that they were sound of limb and body,  they would at once be healed
of their disfiguring wounds.  This they immediately did.  Now all newcomers,
when they are able to understand matters over there,  are at once healed  of
their wounds and amputations in this manner, so that to look at them  nobody
would  think  they  had passed over in consequence of  an  accident  in  the
Physical World.

   As  a  result this knowledge has become so general that many  people  who
have  passed over since have availed themselves of this property  of  desire
stuff  and  have molded it by thought in case they wanted  to  change  their
bodily  appearance.   Sometimes those who are very corpulent want to  appear
more slim and vice versa,  those who are very thin want to appear as if they
had more flesh.   This change or transformation is not permanently  success-
ful,  however,  on account of the archetype.  The extra flesh put on a  thin
person  or the quantity taken off one who is corpulent does not stay  on  or
off permanently,  but after a while the man who was originally thin  returns
to his original stature,  while the person who tries to take off flesh finds
himself putting it back on by degrees,  and then has to go through the  pro-
cess anew.  It is similar with people who attempt to mold their features and
change them to an appearance that suits them better than their original one.
However,  changes affecting the features are less permanent because the  fa-
cial  expression there as here is an indication of the nature of  the  soul;
therefore, whatever is sham  is  quickly  dispersed  by the habitual thought

[PAGE 295]

of the person.

   During physical life the desire body is shaped more or less like an ovoid
cloud  surrounding  the dense body.   But as soon as the person  gains  con-
sciousness in the Desire World and begins to think of himself as having  the
shape  of the dense body,  then the desire body begins to assume that  form.
This transformation is facilitated by the fact that the soul body,  composes
of the two higher ethers, the light and reflecting ethers, is still with the
man, the Ego.  To put it more clearly and bring in a helpful comparison,  we
may remember that at the time when the Ego is coming down to rebirth the two
lower ethers gathered around the seed atom of the vital body are molded into
a  matrix  by the Lords of Destiny--the Recording Angels and  their  agents.
This  matrix is placed in the womb of the mother,  where the  physical  par-
ticles are embedded in it so that they gradually form the body of the child,
which  is  then born.   At that time the child has no soul  body.   Whatever
there may be of the two higher ethers is not assimilated until later in life
and is built upon by deeds that are good and true.   When the soul body  has
reached a certain density,  it is possible for the person to function in  it
as  an Invisible Helper,  and during his soul flights the desire body  molds
itself  readily into this prepared matrix.  When he returns to the  physical
body,  the effort of will whereby he enters it automatically  dissolves  the
intimate  connection  between the desire body and the soul body.   Later  on
when  the  life in the Physical World has been finished and  the  two  lower
ethers discarded with the dense body, the luminous soul body of "Golden Wed-
ding Garment"  still remains with the higher vehicles,  and into this matrix

[PAGE 296]

the desire body is molded at its birth into the invisible world.   So as the
body  of  the child was made in conformity to the matrix of  the  two  lower
ethers before coming to physical birth, similarly the birth into the  invis-
ible world which follows death in the physical region is attended by an  im-
pregnation with desire stuff of the matrix formed of the two higher  ethers,
to form the vehicle that will be used in that world.

   But  the so-called dead are not the only ones who have the power thus  to
mold desire stuff into any shape they please.   This power is shared by  all
the other denizens of the Desire World even down to the elementals, and they
very  often  use this faculty of transformation to frighten or  mislead  the
newcomer,  as  many a neophyte has found out to his  consternation  when  he
first  entered that realm.   For these little imps are quick to know when  a
person is a stranger and not conversant with the nature of things there, and
they  seem to take a special delight in annoying newcomers  by  transforming
themselves into the most grotesque and terrifying monsters.   Then they  may
feign atrocious attacks upon him,  and it seems to give them the keenest de-
light  if they are able to chase him into a corner and make him cringe  with
fear  while they stand gnashing their teeth as if ready to devour him.   But
the  moment  the neophyte learns that in reality there is nothing  that  can
hurt him,  that in his finer vehicles he is immune from all danger of  being
torn to pieces or devoured, and that a quiet laugh at the harmless creatures
and  a stern command to take themselves off is all that is needed  to  cause
them to turn their attention elsewhere,  they soon learn to leave him alone.
Thus he learns to force them to do his will, for in that world all creatures
which have not been individualized are compelled to do the bidding of higher

[PAGE 297]

intelligences, and man is among the latter.

   It is a curious fact that subhuman elementals sometimes attach themselves
to certain persons, to a family, or even to a religious society; but in such
cases it was always found that their vehicle did not consist of the hardened
sin body composes of an interlocking desire and vital body, but that the ve-
hicle  had been obtained through mediumship practiced by a person  of  ordi-
narily good character,  and that the ether of this vehicle was in a state of
disintegration.  To offset this and to prolong their hold on such a vehicle,
they  demand  of those whom they serve,  regular offerings of food  and  the
burning  of incense.   Though they cannot of course assimilate the  physical
food,  they can and do live upon the ether fumes and odors which arise  from
it, also upon the fumes of incense.

   When the Ego has freed itself from the vital body,  its last tie with the
Physical World is broken, and it enters the Desire World.  The ovoid form of
the desire body now changes its form, assuming the likeness of the discarded
dense body.   There is, however, a peculiar arrangement of the materials out
of which it is formed,  that has great significance in regard to the kind of
life the departed will lead there.

   The  desire body of man is composed of matter from all the seven  regions
of the Desire World,  as a dense body is built of the solids,  liquids,  and
gases of this world.  But the quantity of matter from each region in the de-
sire  body  of a man depends upon the nature of the desires which  he  cher-
ishes.  Coarse desires are built of the coarsest desire stuff, which belongs
to the lowest region of the Desire World.  If a man has such, he is building

[PAGE 298]

a coarse desire body where the matter from the lowest regions  predominates.
If he persistently puts coarse desires away from himself,  yielding only  to
the  pure and the good,  his desire body will be formed of the materials  of
the higher regions.

   At present no man is wholly evil,  and none wholly good;  we are all mix-
tures of both; but there may be and is a difference in our make-up.   In the
desire  bodies of some there is a preponderance of coarse and in  others  of
fine  desire stuff.   That makes all the difference in the  environment  and
status of the man when he enters the Desire World after death,  for then the
matter  of his desire body,  while taking on the likeness of  the  discarded
dense  body,  at the same time arranges itself so that the  subtlest  matter
which belongs to the higher regions of the Desire World forms the center  of
the  vehicle,  and the matter from the three densest regions is on the  out-
side.   When  the Ego's earth life is ended it exerts centrifugal  force  to
free  itself from its vehicles.   Following out the same law which causes  a
planet to throw that part of itself which is most dense and crystallized out
into  space,  it first discards its dense body.   When it enters the  Desire
World this centrifugal force also acts so as to throw the coarsest matter in
the  desire body outwards,  and thus man is forced to stay in the lower  re-
gions until he has been purged of the coarser desires which were embodied in
the densest desire matter.   The coarsest desire matter is therefore  always
on the outside of his desire body while he is passing through Purgatory, and
is  gradually eliminated by the purging centrifugal force--the force of  Re-
pulsion, which tears the evil out of man and then allows him to pass upwards
into the First Heaven in the upper part of the Desire World, where the force

[PAGE 299]

of  Attraction holds sway and builds the good of the past life into the  Ego
as  soul power.   The discarded part of the desire body is left as an  empty
"shell."

   When the Ego has left its dense body, that dies QUICKLY.  Physical matter
becomes inert the moment it is deprived of the quickening,  life-giving  en-
ergy;  it dissolves as a form.   Not so with the matter of the Desire World;
once  life has been communicated to it, that energy will subsist for a  con-
siderable  time  after  the influx of life has ceased,  varying  as  to  the
strength  of the impulse.   The result is that after the Ego has  left  them
these "shells"  subsist for a longer or a shorter time.   They live an inde-
pendent life,  and if that Ego to which they belonged was very much given to
worldly desires,  perhaps cut off in the prime of life,  with strong and un-
satisfied ambitions, this soul-less shell will often make the most desperate
efforts  to  get back to the Physical World,  and much of the  phenomena  of
spiritualistic seances is due to the actions of these shells.  The fact that
the communications received from many of these so-called "Spirits"  are  ut-
terly devoid of sense is easily accounted for when we realize that they  are
not Spirits at all, but only a soul-less part of the garment of the departed
Spirit,  and therefore without intelligence.  They have a memory of the past
life,  owing to the panorama which was etched after death,  which often  en-
ables  them to impose upon relatives by stating incidents now known to  oth-
ers, but the fact remains that they are but the cast-off garment of the Ego,
endowed with an independent life for the time being.

   It is not always, however, that these shells remain soul-less,  for there
are  different  classes  of  beings in the  Desire  World,  whose  evolution
naturally belongs there.  They  are  good  and  bad,  as  are  human beings.

[PAGE 300]

Generally they are classed under one heading as "elementals,"  although dif-
fering vastly in appearance,  intelligence,  and characteristics.   We  will
deal with them only so far as their influence touches the post-mortem  state
of man.

   It sometimes happens, especially where a man has been in the habit of in-
voking Spirits, that these beings take possession of his dense body in earth
life and make him an irresponsible medium.  They generally lure him at first
with seemingly high teachings, but by degrees lead to gross immorality, and,
worst of all,  they may take possession of his desire body after he has left
it and ascended into heaven.   As the impulses contained in the desire  body
are  the basis of the life in heaven,  and also the springs of action  which
cause man to reincarnate for renewed growth,  this is indeed a very  serious
matter, for the whole evolution of a man may be stopped for ages, before the
elemental releases his desire body.

   When  both  the good and evil of a life have been extracted,  the  Spirit
discards its desire body and ascends to the Second Heaven.   The desire body
then commences to disintegrate as the physical body and the vital body  have
done,  but it is a peculiarity of desire stuff, that once it has been formed
and  inspired with life,  it persists for a considerable time.   Even  after
that life has fled it lives a semi-conscious,  independent life.   Sometimes
it is drawn by magnetic attraction to relatives of the Spirit whose clothing
it was, and at spiritualistic seances these SHELLS generally impersonate the
departed Spirit and deceive its relatives.  As the panorama of the past life
is etched into the shells they have a memory of incidents in connection with
these relatives, which facilitates the deception.  But as  the  intelligence

[PAGE 301]

has fled,  they are of course unable to give any true counsel,  and that ac-
counts  for the inane,  goody-goody nonsense of which these  things  deliver
themselves.

   When a man wakes up in the Desire World he is with one exception the very
same  man in every respect as before death.   Anyone seeing him there  would
know him if he had known him here.  There is no transforming power in death;
the  man's character has not changed,  the vicious man and the drunkard  are
vicious and dissipated still,  the miser is a miser still,  the thief is  as
dishonest  as  ever,  but there is one great and important  change  in  them
all--they have all lost their dense body,  and THAT MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE
IN REGARD TO THE GRATIFICATION OF THEIR VARIOUS DESIRES.

   The drunkard cannot drink;  he lacks the stomach,  and thought he may and
at  first often does,  get into the whiskey casks of the saloons,  it is  no
satisfaction to him,  since whiskey in a cask does not give out fumes as  it
does during chemical combustion in the alimentary canal.   He then tries the
effect  of getting into the dense body of drunkards on Earth.   He  succeeds
easily for the desire body is so constituted that it is no inconvenience  to
occupy the same space with another person.  "Dead" people, at first, are of-
ten annoyed when their friends sit down in the chair they are occupying, but
after a while they learn that it is not necessary to hurry out of their seat
because a friend yet in earth life is approaching to sit down.   It does not
hurt the desire body "to be sat on";  both persons can occupy the same chair
without inconveniencing each other's movements.  So the drunkard enters into
the body of people who are drinking, but even there he receives no real sat-
isfaction, and in consequence he suffers the tortures of Tantalus,  until at

[PAGE 302]

last the desire burns itself out for want of gratification,  as all  desires
do, even in physical life.

   While  our EVIL HABITS are dealt with in this general way,  our  SPECIFIC
EVIL ACTIONS in the past life are dealt with in the same automatic manner by
means of the life panorama which was etched into the desire body.  That pan-
orama begins to unfold BACKWARDS from death to birth, upon our entrance into
the Desire World.  It unfolds backwards at the rate of about three times the
speed  of the physical life,  so that a man who was 60 years of age  at  the
time of death would live over his past life in the Desire World in about  20
years.

   We  remember that when viewing this panorama just after death he  had  no
feeling at all about it,  standing there merely AS A SPECTATOR,  looking  at
the pictures as they unrolled.  Not so when they appear in his consciousness
in Purgatory.   There the good makes no impression,  but all the evil reacts
upon  him in such a way that in the scenes where he had made another  suffer
he  himself feels as the injured one.  He suffers all the pain  and  anguish
his victim felt in life, and as the speed of the life is tripled,  so is the
suffering.   It is even more acute,  for while the dense body is so slow  of
vibration that it dulls even suffering,  in the Desire World,  where we  are
minus physical vehicles,  suffering is more acute.   THE MORE CLEAR-CUT  THE
PANORAMIC IMPRESSION OF THE PAST LIFE WAS ETCHED INTO THE DESIRE BODY AT THE
TIME OF DEATH THE MORE THE MAN SUFFERS AND THE MORE CLEARLY HE WILL FEEL  IN
AFTER LIVES THAT TRANSGRESSION IS TO BE AVOIDED.

   The Desire World,  the ethers,  and the Physical World interpenetrate one
another  so  that the miser is right here among us just the same as  he  was
when  he  had  a  physical  body  to  wear.  It is not generally understood,

[PAGE 303]

however, that the densest desire stuff of which the lower regions of the De-
sire World are composed,  and the Chemical Ether which is the lowest of  the
four ethers,  and even the physical gases,  are exceedingly closely knit and
form the outside layer of all Spirits which have just been released from the
physical body.   They are therefore living in the lower region of the Desire
World in such close touch with the physical that it is amazing to the writer
than people cannot see them.

   Thus  the miser and all others who have just left the physical  body  see
the  people in this world much more clearly than they see the things of  the
Desire  World where they are;  for as the man who goes out in  the  sunshine
must  first  accustom himself to see things by adjusting the  focus  of  his
eyes,  so  also the Spirits which have just entered the Desire  World  after
death require a little time for this readjustment.  And the densest material
in their being,  which is thrown out toward the periphery by the centrifugal
force of Repulsion, keeps them earthbound for a longer or a shorter time un-
til they have shed this coarsest material and are able to contact the  finer
vibrations of the higher regions.  For that reason the miser,  the drunkard,
the sensualist,  and similar people whose desires are naturally low and  vi-
cious,  remain in these nether regions, which may well be called hell, for a
much longer time than people with high ideals and spiritual aspirations  who
have  endeavored  during life to eradicate their vices and to  subdue  their
lower nature.  Their desire bodies contain comparatively little coarse mate-
rial  and  that  is  soon worn away, leaving them free  to  soar  to  higher
spheres.

   There are no specialized sense organs  in the finer vehicles, but just as

[PAGE 304]

we feel with the whole surface of our body, so the Spirits see and hear, not
only with the surface,  but with every single atom of their spiritual  body,
inside and out.   What they perceive is not really the physical things which
we  see with our physical eyes,  but every chair,  desk,  or other  physical
implement  is  interpenetrated by both ethers and desire stuff--it  is  this
that they perceive, and that to them is as real and tangible as the physical
forms are to our senses.

   It is true that the atmosphere of the Earth revolves with it, and so does
the desire stuff which constitutes the Desire World of our planet.  However,
those who have shed the mortal coil and are in the Desire World see  through
the Earth just as easily as we see through a pane of glass.

   The victim of murder escapes this suffering in Purgatory because he is in
a  comatose state as a rule,  until the time when natural death should  have
occurred,  and  is  taken  care of in that  respect,  like  the  victims  of
so-called accidents,  but the latter are always conscious at once or shortly
after death.  If the murderer is executed between the time of the murder and
the time when his victim would naturally have died, the comatose desire body
of  the  latter floats to its slayer by magnetic attraction,  following  him
wherever he goes,  without a moment's respite.  The picture of the murder is
always before him,  causing him to feel the suffering and anguish which must
inevitably accompany this incessant reenactment of his crime in all its hor-
rible details.   This goes on for a time corresponding to the period of life
of which he deprived his victim.   If the murderer escaped hanging,  so that
his victim has passed beyond Purgatory before he dies,  the "shell"  of  his
victim remains to act the part of Nemesis in the drama of reenactment of the

[PAGE 305]

crime.

   The  sufferings of Purgatory are the results of moral  delinquencies  and
the resentment of those who are injured thereby.   A surgeon who performs  a
constructive operation is doing a service which merits the gratitude of  the
person operated upon,  and the picture of such an operation in the  panorama
of  life will react upon him in the First Heaven with the gratitude  of  the
person he helped.  It will make him more ambitious to serve his fellow men.

   On  the other hand,  those unscrupulous surgeons who persuade  people  to
have operations performed for the love of experimentation,  or who take them
out  of  charitable institutions for that purpose will certainly be  as  se-
verely dealt with as they deserve.   As for the vivisectionist's  Purgatory,
we have seen some cases compared with which the orthodox hell with its devil
and  pitchfork  is a place of mild amusement.   Yet there  are  no  exterior
agents  of  outraged Nature to punish such an one--only the agonies  of  the
tortured animal contained in his life panorama reacting upon him with three-
fold intensity (because the purgatorial existence is only one-third the  du-
ration  of the physical life).   Those people do not realize what  they  are
storing up for themselves, or the torture chambers would soon be emptied and
there would be one horror less in the world.

   When  a person (man or woman) has been very hard and harsh in life,  when
he has thought nothing of the feelings of others, when he has inflicted pain
here,  and everywhere on whatever occasion offered,  we shall find that  his
suffering  in Purgatory will be very severe,  intensified of course  by  the
fact  that  the purgatorial experience is shorter than the life  lived  upon
Earth; but the pain is intensified  in  proportion.  Now,  therefore,  it is

[PAGE 306]

evident  that if his experience were continuous,  if the pain engendered  by
one  act were followed immediately by the next,  much of the effect  of  the
suffering would be lost upon the soul because it would not feel its full in-
tensity.   Therefore,  the experiences,  as it were,  come to it in waves so
that  there is a period of respite after each period of suffering  in  order
that the full intensity of the next may be felt.

   God never seeks to revenge or avenge any wrong,  but only to teach  those
who  permit  themselves  to do wrong not to repeat the act,  by  giving  the
wrongdoer exactly pain for pain.   The tendency in a future life is to cause
him  to respect the feelings of others and so be merciful to all the  world.
Thus the very highest intensity in pain is necessary for the conservation of
energy,  and to make him good and pure sooner than would be the case if  the
pain were continuous and the suffering correspondingly lessened.

   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

[PAGE 307]

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,  en-
gaged in numerous ways in the activities of physical life,  held by the ties
of wife, family, relatives, friends, and 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, be-
cause  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 the 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 desires.   How
this is done is best seen by taking some radical instances.

[PAGE 308]

   This 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
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 af-
ter 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  sensa-
tion  of pleasure resulting from the increased vibration.   That desire  re-
mains after the death of the dense body,  but the drunkard has in his desire
body neither mouth to drink nor stomach to contain physical liquor.   He may
and does get into saloons, where he interpolates his body into the bodies of

[PAGE 309]

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 con-
cerned, to leave this state of "Purgatory" and ascend into the heaven world.

   The  drunkards  in the Desire World usually attempt  to  manufacture  the
drink  for which they crave when they have once learned that it is  possible
so to mold desire stuff that it becomes whatever you want it to be; but they
all  declare  unanimously  that the strong drink or  the  drugs  which  they
manufacture in that manner give no satisfaction.  They can imitate the taste
perfectly,  but the drink thus manufactured has no power to make them drunk.
The nearest they can get to the satisfaction of a real drunk is to insinuate
their  bodies into those of drunkards who are still in the  Physical  World.
Therefore,  they are continually haunting bar-rooms and endeavoring  to  get
the frequenters of these places to take an excess dose of intoxicants.

   They also say that they get considerable satisfaction from the fumes car-
ried by the breath of drunkards in the physical body and the  more heavy and

[PAGE 310]

pungent the atmosphere is in the bar-rooms,  the nearer they come to finding
the  satisfaction  for which they are seeking.   If only the  weaklings  who
visit such places could see and understand the disgusting tactics of the in-
visible reprobates hanging about such places, surely it would be an  awaken-
ing  which  would probably help those who are not too far  gone  to  retrace
their steps to the path of decency and honest living.  But,  thank God (both
for the visible and the invisible drunkards),  it is impossible for them  to
create  a  den of vice in the desire stuff because the  force  of  Repulsion
tends to destroy it as fast as they can bring it into existence.

   Let  us take as an illustration a drunkard who makes a beast  of  himself
and at the same time abuses his children,  depriving them of the necessities
of life and the education which they ought to have, who beats his wife, set-
ting the children an example they may follow,  and generally lowering  their
moral standards.

   After  death that man will feel in Purgatory,  first,  the tortures of  a
craving for drink, which he is not able to satisfy, and second, he will feel
all the suffering which he inflicted upon his family.   He has then paid for
his  wrong-doing,  and it is true that he comes back to rebirth with a  per-
fectly  clean slate so far as the actual suffering which he caused  them  is
concerned.   But he took a vow to love and cherish the woman who became  his
wife,  and by the performance of the creative act and furnishing the nucleus
for a body he assumed the responsibilities of fatherhood toward the children
which came to him for help and a suitable environment.  The parental respon-
sibilities  he  also  neglected to fulfill,  and there is consequently a tie

[PAGE 311]

between  him and the members of his family.   He still owes them a  debt  of
love and service which must be rendered at some future time and therefore in
a  later life these Egos will be brought together and so placed that he  may
have  an opportunity for doing good toward them.   If he does not then  take
the opportunity,  he may in a still later life render an adequate service to
someone else.   It is for his sake that service must be rendered so that the
love  nature may be evolved and expanded to become universal and all  inclu-
sive.

   The same rule holds good in all other cases and as the extreme conditions
make the best illustrations,  we may take as another instance the  relation-
ship between a murderer and his victim.   After death he suffered in  Purga-
tory and the actual debt is there wiped out.  But a tie has been established
between  these two Egos,  and in a future life they will again meet so  that
the murderer may have the opportunity of serving his erstwhile victim,  that
they may become reconciled as friends.   Fellow feeling must become  univer-
sal, since it is the basic principle in the Kingdom of God.

   When  the break occurs between the desire body and the mind,  the  desire
body (of an insane person who dies) is,  as a matter of course,  still  ram-
pant,  and often causes the Ego much trouble during its existence in the De-
sire World;  for the Ego,  of course is at no time insane.   What appears as
insanity arises from the fact that the Ego has no control over its vehicles;
the worst of all, obviously is where the mind itself has become affected and
the Ego is tied to the personality for a long time until these vehicles  are
worn away.

[PAGE 312]

   In  the beginning of the war the desire bodies of the combatants  whirled
at an awful rate, and it was noted that while people passing over from sick-
ness,  old age,  or ordinary accidents regain consciousness in a short time,
varying  from  a few minutes to a few days,  those killed in war were  in  a
great  many cases unconscious for several weeks,  and strange to say,  those
who were almost torn to pieces seemed to wake up much quicker than thousands
that  had only insignificant wounds.   This puzzle was not solved  for  many
months.   Before  we study the causes underlying this  phenomenon,  we  must
first record that when the people who had thus died in intense anger  during
the first part of the war awoke in the invisible world, they usually started
to fight their enemies anew, and until the great educational work started by
the Elder Brothers and their Invisible Helpers bore fruit, these people went
about  with  maimed bodies and in great anguish because of their  dear  ones
left behind.  Now such occurrences are extremely rare and soon settled,  for
all have been taught that thought will create a new arm, limb, or face;  the
patriotic hatred is gone,  and "enemies" able to speak each other's language
often fraternize with benefit to both.

   Purgatory is far from being a place of PUNISHMENT, it is perhaps the most
beneficent  realm in Nature,  for BECAUSE OF PURGATION WE ARE BORN  INNOCENT
life after life.   The tendencies to commit the same evil for which we  suf-
fered  remain  with  us and temptations to commit the same  wrongs  will  be
placed in our path until we have consciously overcome the evil here; tempta-
tion is not sin, however, the sin is in yielding.

   Thus we see that it is not an avenging Deity that makes Purgatory or hell

[PAGE 313]

for us,  but our own individual evil habits and acts.   According to the in-
tensity  of our desires will be the time of our 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 pain to have been  de-
prived of intoxicants.   It is safe to say that he would not have cared  had
there  not been 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.

   To  sum up then we may say that all our debts are paid in  Purgatory,  so
far as the commission of wrong is concerned; our debts of love,  friendship,
and service remain for liquidation in later lives.

Continued with file "RC1010.TXT"

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