The Vital (Etheric) Body
by Max Heindel
(Part 2)
But it is with great thankfulness that he records his conviction that we
need have no fear on that score. Only when people are premeditatively
malicious and vindictive, and persistently harbor a desire and a purpose to
get even with some one, only when such feelings are hugged, nursed, and
entertained do they harden the vital body and cause the interlocking grip
of these vehicles. We know from the records of the great war that the rank
and file have no such sentiments against one another, but that enemies meet
as friends whenever chance brings them into such relationship that they
may converse one with another. So, though war is responsible for the awful
mortality now and will cause deplorable infant mortality in a future age,
it will be blameless with regard to the dreadful diseases engendered by
obsession and the crimes suggested by these demoniacal sin bodies.
Though mental disabilities, when congenital, are generally traceable to
abuse of the creative function in a past life, there is at least one notable
exception to this rule, namely, cases such as mentioned in The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception and elsewhere in our literature, and described as follows:
Where a Spirit, who has a particularly hard life before, it, comes down to
rebirth and feels upon entering the womb that the panorama of the coming
life then shown it marks an existence too hard for it to undergo, it
sometimes tries to run away from the school of life. At that time the
Recording Angels or their agents have already made the connection between
the vital body and the sense centers of the brain in the forming fetus;
therefore the effort of the Spirit to escape from the mother's womb is
frustrated, but the wrench that is given by the Ego deranges the connection
between the etheric and physical sense centers, so that the vital body is
not concentric with the physical, causing the etheric head to extend above
the physical cranium. Thus it is impossible for the Spirit to use the dense
vehicle; it is tied to a mindless body which it cannot use, and the
embodiment is practically wasted.
We also find cases where a great shock later if life causes the Spirit to
endeavor to run away with the invisible vehicles. As a result a similar
wrench is given to the etheric sense centers in the brain, and the shock
deranges the mental expression. Everybody has probably felt a similar
sensation on receiving a fright: a surging as of something endeavoring to get
out of the dense body; that is the desire and vital bodies, which are so
swift in their motion that an express train is as a snail by comparison. They
see and feel the danger and are frightened before the scare is transmitted
to the inert and slow physical body in which they are anchored, and which
prevents their escape under ordinary strain.
Insanity is always caused by a break in the chain of vehicles between the
Ego an the physical body. This break may occur between the brain centers an
the vital body, or it may be between the vital and the desire body, between
the desire body and the mind, or between the mind and the Ego. The rupture
may be complete or only partial.
When the break is between the brain centers and the vital body, or
between that and the desire body, we have the mentally disabled. When the break is
between the desire body and the mind, the violent and impulsive desire body
rules and we have the raving maniac. When the break is between the Ego and
the mind, the mind is the ruler over the other vehicles and we have the
cunning maniac, who may deceive his keeper into believing that he is
perfectly harmless until he has hatched some diabolical, cunning scheme.
Then he may suddenly show his deranged mentality and cause a dreadful
catastrophe.
There is one cause of insanity that it may be well to explain, as it is
sometimes possible to avoid it. When the Ego is returning from the
invisible world toward re-embodiment, it is shown the various incarnations
available. It sees the coming life in its great and general events, much as
a moving picture passing before its vision. Then it is given the choice,
usually, of several lives. It sees at that time the lessons it has to
learn, the fate it has generated for itself in past lives, and what part of
that fate it will have to liquidate in each of the embodiments offered. Then
it makes its choice and is guided by the agent of the Recording Angeles to
the country and family where it is to live its coming life.
This panoramic view is seen in the Third Heaven where the Ego is naked
and feels spiritually above sordid material considerations. It is much
wiser then than it appears here on earth, where it is blinded by the flesh
to an inconceivable extent. Later, when conception has taken place and the
Ego draws into the womb of its mother, on about the eighteenth day after
that event, it comes in contact with the etheric mold of its new physical
body which has been made by the Recording Angels to give the brain formation
that will impress upon the Ego the tendencies necessary to work out its
destiny.
There the Ego sees again the pictures of the coming life, as the drowning
man perceives the pictures of his past life — in a flash. At that time the
Ego is already partially blind to its spiritual nature, so that is the coming
life seems to be a hard one, it will oftentimes shrink from entering the womb
and making the proper brain connections. It may endeavor to draw itself out
quickly and then, instead of being concentric as the vital and the dense
bodies should be, the vital body formed of ether may be drawn partially
above the head of the dense body. It that case the connection between the
sense centers of the vital body an the dense body are disrupted and the
result is congenital idiocy, epilepsy, St. Vitus dance, and similar nervous
disorders.
Insanity is a rupture in the vehicles between the Ego and the physical
body, and this derangement may occur between the Ego and the mind, between
the mind and the desire body, or between the desire body and the vital body,
and also between the latter and the dense body. If the break is between the
dense and the vital body or between that and the desire body, the Ego will
be perfectly sane in the Desire World immediately after death, because it
has then discarded the two vehicles which were afflicted.
Where the break occurs between the desire body and the mind, the desire
body is, as a matter of course, still rampant, and often causes the Ego much
trouble during its existence in the Desire 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.
We have seen that in the waking state the dense body and the vital body
are surrounded and interpenetrated by an egg-shaped cloud comprising the
desire body and the mind. These vehicles are all concentric, and form so many
links in a chain. It is the interpolation of one into the other, so that
the sense centers in one are in proper alignment with the sense centers of
the other, which enables the Ego to manipulate the complex organism and
perform in an ordered manner the life processes which we call reason,
speech, and action. If there is a maladjustment anywhere the Ego
will be correspondingly hampered anywhere the Ego will be correspondingly
hampered in its expression. This perfect balance is health, the opposite is
disease.
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
condition obtains, but when the break is between the desire body and the
mind we have the raving maniac, who is more ungovernable that a wild animal,
for that is checked by the Group Spirit. In that case all the animal
propensities are followed blindly.
While there are very few who will defend the abuse of the generative
function, many people who follow spiritual precepts in other things still
have the feeling that frequent indulgence of the desire for sexual pleasure
works no harm; some even have the idea that it is as necessary as the
exercise of any other organic function. This is wrong for two reasons:
First, each creative act requires a certain amount of force which burns up
tissue that must be replenished b an extra amount of food. This strengthens
and augments the chemical ether. Secondly, as the propagative force
works through the life ether, this constituent of the vital body is also
augmented with each indulgence. Thus we strengthen the two lower ethers of
the vital ody by sending the creative force downwards for gratification of our
desire for pleasure; and their interlocking grip upon the two higher ethers
which form the soul body becomes tighter and more powerful as time goes on.
As the evolution of our soul powers and the faculty of traveling in our
finer vehicles depends upon the cleavage between the lower ethers and the
soul body, it is evident that we frustrate the object we have in view and
retard development by indulgence of the lower nature.
As soon as the vital body has been placed the returning Ego, clothed in
its bell-shaped covering, hovers constantly near the future mother. She
alone does the work upon the new dense body in the first eighteen to
twenty-one days after fertilization, then the Ego enters the mother's body,
drawing the bell-shaped covering down over the fetus. The opening at the
bottom closes, and the Ego is once more incarcerated in the prison house of
the dense body.
The moment of entrance into the womb is one of great importance in life,
for when the incoming Ego first contacts the before-mentioned matrix vital
body it sees there again the panorama of the coming life which has been
impressed upon the matrix by the Recording Angels in order to give it the
tendencies required to work out the ripe causation due to be liquidated in
the coming life.
At this time, the Ego is already so much blinded by the veil of matter
that it does not recognize the good end in vie in the same unbiased manner
as when making its choice in the Region of Abstract Thought, and when a
particularly hard life reveals itself to the vision of the returning Ego at
the moment of entering the womb, it sometimes happens that the Ego is
so startled and frightened that its seeks to rush out again. The
connection cannot be severed, however, but may be strained, so that instead
of the vital body being concentric with the dense body, the head of the
vital body may be above the head of the dense body. Then we have a
congenital idiot.
As a vampire sucks the ether from the vital body of its victim and feeds
upon it, so perpetual thoughts of regret and remorse concerning certain
things become a desire-elemental which acts as a vampire and draws the very
life from the poor soul who has shaped it, and by the attraction of like for
like, it fosters continuance of this morbid habit of regret.
If we indulge in regrets and remorse during every waking hour as some do,
we are outdoing Purgatory, for though the time there is spent in eradication
of evil, the consciousness turns from each picture when it has been torn out
by the force of repulsion. Here, because of the interlocking of the desire
and vital bodies, we are enabled to revivify a picture in memory as oft as
we please, and while the desire body is gradually dissolved in Purgatory by
the expurgation of the panorama of life, a certain small amount is added
while we are living in the Physical World, to take the place of that which
is ejected by remorse. Thus, remorse and regret when continually indulged
in have the same effect on the desire body as excessive bathing has on the
vital body. Both vehicles are depleted of strength by excessive cleansing,
and for that reason it is as dangerous to the moral and spiritual health to
indulge indiscriminately in feelings of regret and remorse as its is fatal
to physical well being to bathe too much. Discrimination should govern in
both cases.
As the force latent in gunpowder and kindred explosive substances may be
used to further the greatest objects of civilization or to outdo the most
savage acts of barbarism, so also, this emotion of remorse may be misused in
such a manner that it becomes a detriment and a hindrance to the Ego
instead of a help. When we indulge in remorse daily and hourly, we are
actually wasting a great power which might be used for the most noble ends
of life, for the constant indulgence of regret affects the desire body in a
manner similar to that which follows excessive bathing of the physical body. Water has a great affinity for ether and absorbs it most greedily. When we take a bath under normal conditions it removes a great deal of
poisonous miasmatic ether from our vital bodies, providing we stay in the
water a reasonable length of time. After a bath the vital body becomes
somewhat attenuated and consequently gives us a feeling of weakness, but if
we are in our usual good health and have not stayed in the bath too long,
the deficiency is soon made good by the stream of force which flows into the
body through the spleen. When this influx of fresh ether has replaced the
poisoned substance carried off in the water, we feel renewed vigor which we
rightly attribute to the bath, though usually without realizing the full
facts as here stated.
But when a person who is not in perfect health makes a habit of bathing
every day, perhaps even twice or three times, an excess of ether is taken
from the vital body. The supply entering by way of the spleen is also
diminished on account of the loss of tone of the seed atom located in the
solar plexus and the attenuated condition of the vital body. Thus it is
impossible for such people to recuperate between such oft repeated depletions,
and as a consequence the health of the dense body suffers; they lose
strength continually and are apt to become confirmed invalids.
The vital body is active in sleep as well as in the waking state and may be acted upon by the power of suggestion. Sleep may be induced by hypnosis.
We have in our body two nervous systems, the voluntary and the
involuntary. 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. The involuntary system
has its particular vantage ground in the vital body; it governs the
digestive and respiratory organs, which rebuild and restore the dense body.
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, and so would our
lives, for the vital body would soon be overridden in its beneficent offices
by the reckless desire body, as evidenced in the exhaustion which follows a
fit of temper, for temper is a condition where the man has "lost control"
and the desire body rules unchecked.
In spite of all its efforts, however, the vital body slowly loses ground
as the day goes along, the poisons of decaying tissue accumulate and impede
the flow of the vital fluid, its motion become more and more sluggish. In
consequence the visible body shows signs of exhaustion. At last the vital
body, so to say, collapses, the vital fluid ceases to flow along the nerves
in sufficient quantity to maintain the poise of the dense body, and that
renders it unconscious and therefore unfit for the use of the Spirit. That
is sleep.
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 the 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 beings. 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.
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,
jumping 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, the Ego enter in the
morning and cause it to wake.
It sometimes happens, however, that we have become so absorbed and
interested in the affairs of our mundane existence that even after the vial
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 dragged perhaps only half out by the Ego,
and starts to ruminate over the happenings of the day in that position.
During the waking state, when the Ego is functioning consciously in the
Physical World, its various vehicles are concentric — they occupy the same
space — but at night, when the body is laid down to sleep, a separation takes
place. the Ego, clothed in the mind and desire body, extricates itself from
the dense body and the vital body, which are left upon the bed. The higher
vehicles hover above or near. They are connected to the denser vehicles by
the silver cord, a thin, glistening thread which take the shape of two figure
sixes, one end being attached to the seed atom in the heart and the other
to the center vortex of the desire body.
During sleep the Ego also withdraws from the dense body, but the vital
body remains with the dense body and the silver cord is left intact.
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
energy anew, rebuilding the dense body, using particularly the chemical ether
as its medium in the process of restoration.
In the waking state, the different vehicles of the Ego, the mind, desire
body, vital body, and dense body are all concentric. They occupy the same
space, and the Ego functions outwardly in the Physical World. But at night,
during the dreamless sleep, the Ego, clothed in the desire body and the
mind, withdraws, leaving the physical and the vital body upon the bed, there
being no connection between the higher and lower vehicles, save a thin,
glistening thread, called the silver cord. It happens, however, that at
times the Ego has been working so interestedly in the Physical World and the
desire body has become so stirred up that it refuses to leave the lower
vehicles and is only half withdrawn. Then the connection between the sense
centers of the desire body and the sense centers of the physical brain are
partly ruptured. The Ego sees the sights and scenes of the Desire World
which, in themselves, are extremely fantastic and illusory, and they are
transmitted to the brain centers without being connected by reason. From
this condition come all the foolish and fantastic dreams which we have.
It happens, however, that at times the desire body does not fully
withdraw, so that part of its remains connected with the vital body, the
vehicle of 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 relation of one body to another. The memory is also confused by this
incongruous relation of the vehicles and as a result of the loss of the
restoring force, dream-filled sleep is restless and the body feels tired on
awakening.
The vital body may be said to be built of points which stick out in all
directions, inward, outward, upward, and downward, all through the body, and
each little point goes through the center of one of the chemical atoms,
causing it to vibrate at a higher rate than its natural speed. This vital
body interpenetrates the dense body from birth to death under all conditions
except when, for instance, the blood circulation stops in a certain part, as
when we rest a hand upon the edge of a table for some time and it "goes to
sleep," as we say. Then, if clairvoyant, we may see the etheric hand of the
vital body hanging down below the visible hand as a glove, and the chemical
atoms of the hand relapse into their natural slow rate of vibration. When
we slap the hand to cause it to "wake up," as we say, the peculiar prickling
sensation we feel is caused by the points of the vital body which then
re-enter the sleeping atoms of the hand and start them into renewed
vibration.
The vital body leaves the dense body in a similar manner when a person is
dying. Drowning persons who have been resuscitated experience an intense
agony caused by the entrance of these points, which they feel as a prickling
sensation.
During the daytime, when the solar fluid is being absorbed by the man in
great quantities, these points of the vital body are blown out or distended,
as it were, by the vital fluid, but as the day advances and poisons of decay
clog the physical body more and more, the vital fluid flows less rapidly; in
the evening there comes a time when the points in the vital body do not get a
full supply of the life-giving fluid; they drivel up and the atoms of the
body move more sluggishly in consequence. Thus the Ego feels the body to be
heavy, dull, and tired. at last there comes a time when, as it were, the
vital body collapses and the vibrations of the dense atoms become so slow
that the Ego can no longer move the body. It is forced to withdraw in order
that its vehicle may recuperate. Then we say the body has gone to sleep.
Sleep is not an inactive state, however; if it were there would be no
difference in feeling in the morning and no restorative power in sleep. The very word restoration implies activity.
When a building has become dilapidated from constant wear and tear and
it is necessary to renovate and restore it, the tenants must move out to
give the workmen full play. For similar reasons the Ego moves out of its
tenement at night. As the workmen work upon the building, to make it fit
for re-occupancy, so the Ego must work upon its building before it will be
fit to re-enter. And such a work is done by us during the nighttime,
although we are not conscious of it in our waking state. It is this activity
which removes the poisons from the system, and as a result the body is fresh
and vigorous in the morning when the Ego enters at the time of waking.
It depends upon the manner in which we have used our dense bodies in the
daytime as to how long the desire body requires to perform the work of
restoration of rhythm to the vital body and the dense body. If we have
used our bodies strenuously during the previous day, in harmonies will,
of course, be correspondingly prominent, and it will take the desire body
most of the night to restore harmony and rhythm. Thus the man will be tied
to his body day and night. But when he learns skill in action, controls
his energy in the daytime, and ceases to waste his strength on unnecessary
words and actions, when he commences to govern his temper and to stop in
harmony due to incorrect observation, th desire body will not occupied
during the entire time of sleep in restoring the dense body. A part of the
night may be used for work outside. If the sense centers of the desire body
are sufficiently evolved, as they are with most of the intelligent class,
the man may and does then slip the cable and soar into the Desire World. He
takes in the sights and scenes there, though he does not usually remember them
until he has effected a cleavage between the higher and lower parts of the
vital body, as previously explained.
In the natural sleep the Ego, clothed in the mind and desire body, draws
outside the physical body and usually hovers over the body, or at any rate
remains close to it, connected by the silver cord, while the vital body and
the dense body are resting upon the bed.
It is then possible to influence the person by instilling into his brain
the thoughts and ideas we wish to communicate. Nevertheless, we cannot then
get him to do anything or to entertain any idea except that which is in line
with his natural proclivities. It is impossible to command him to do
anything and to enforce obedience, the same as it is when he has been
driven out by the passes of the hypnotist, for it is the brain which moves
the muscles, and during the natural sleep his brain is interpenetrated by
his own vital body and he is in perfect control of himself, while during
the hypnotic sleep the passes of the hypnotist have driven the ether of
which its vital body is composed out of the brain, down to the shoulders of
the victim, where it lies around his neck and resembles the collar of a
sweater. The dense brain is then open to the ether from the hypnotist's vital
body, which displaces that of the proper owner. Thus in the hypnotic sleep the victim has no choice whatever as to the ideas he entertains ot the movements he makes with his body, but in the ordinary sleep he is still a free agent. In fact, this method of suggestion during sleep is something which mothers will find extremely beneficial in treating refractory children,
for if the mother will sit by the bed of the sleeping child, hold its hand,
speak to it as she would speak when it is awake, instill into his brain ideas
of such a nature as she would wish it to entertain, she will find that in
the waking state many of these ideas will have taken root. Also in dealing
with a person who is sick or is addicted to drink, if the mother, nurse, or
others use this method, they will find it possible to instill hope and
healing, materially furthering recovery or aiding self-mastery.
This method may of course be used for evil, but we cannot refrain from
publishing it, as we believe that the good which can be done in this way
will much more than offset the few cases where some misguided person may use
it for the wrong purpose.
Looked at from the standpoint of one life, such methods as for instance
those employed by the healers of the Immanuel movement, are undoubtedly
productive of an immense amount of good. The patient is seated in a chair,
put into a sleep, and there he is given certain so-called "suggestions."
He rises and is cured of his bad habit; from being a drunkard he becomes a
respectable citizen who cares for his wife and family, and upon the face of it
the good seems to be undeniable.
But looking at it from the deeper standpoint of the esotericist, who views
this life as only one in many, and looking at it from the effect it has upon
the invisible vehicles of man, the case is vastly different. When a man is
put into a hypnotic sleep, the hypnotist makes passes over him which have
the effect of expelling th ether from the head of his dense body and
substituting the ether of the hypnotist. the man is then under the
perfect domination of another; he has no free will, and, therefore, the so-
called "suggestions" are in reality commands which the victim has no choice
but to obey. Besides, when the hypnotist withdraws his ether and wakens the
victim he is unable to remove all the ether he put into him. To use a simile,
as a small part of the magnetism infused into an electric dynamo before it can
be started for the first time is left behind and remains as residual
magnetism to excite the fields of the dynamo every time it is started up,
so also there remains a small part of the ether of the hypnotist's vital body
in the medulla oblongata of the victim, which is a club the hypnotist holds
over him all his life, and it is due to this fact that suggestions to be
carried out at a period subsequent to the awakening of the victim are
invariably followed.
IV. At Death And
In Invisible Worlds
At death, there is a cleavage of the vital body and the higher parts enter the invisible worlds. Its seed atom is retained by the Ego when passing through the heaven worlds to be used as a nucleus for the vital body of a future embodiment.
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 acquire more skill in the arts and crafts of
temple-building.
By the fact of death if has been possible for the Angels to teach humanity
between death and a new birth how to build a gradually improving body. Had
man learned in that far past how to renew his vital body, as he was taught
to generate a dense vehicle at his own pleasure, then death would indeed have
been an impossibility and man would have become as immortal as the gods. But
he would then have immortalized his imperfections and made progress an
impossibility. It is the renewal of this vital body which is expressed in
the Bible as "eating of the Tree of Life." At the time of his enlightenment
concerning generation man was a spiritual being whose eyes were not yet
blinded by the material world, and he might have learned the secret of
vitalizing his body at will, thus frustrating evolution. Thus we see that
death, when it comes naturally, is not a curse but our greatest and best
friend, for it frees us from an instrument from which we can learn no more;
it takes us out of an environment which we have outgrown, that we may learn
to build a better body in an environment of wider scope in which we can make
more progress toward the goal of perfection.
During life the collapse of the vital body at night terminates our view
of the world about us, and causes us to lose ourselves in the
unconsciousness of sleep. When the vital body collapses just subsequent to
death, and the panorama of life is terminated, we also lose consciousness
for a time which varies according to the individual. A darkness seems to
fall upon the Spirit. Then after a while it wakes up and begins dimly to
perceive the light of the other world, but is only gradually accustomed to
the altered conditions. It is an experience similar to that which we have
when coming out of a darkened room into sunlight, which blinds us by its
brilliancy, until the pupils of our eyes have contracted so that they admit a
quantity of light bearable to our organism.
When the man passes out a death, he takes with him the mind, desire body
and vital body, the latter being the storehouse of the pictures of his past
life. And during the three and one-half days following death these pictures
are etched into the desire body to form the basis of the man's life in
Purgatory and the First Heaven where evil is expurgated and the good
assimilated. The experience of the life itself is forgotten, as we have
forgotten the process of learning to write, but have retained the faculty.
So the cumulative extract of all his experiences in Purgatory and the
various heavens, are retained by the man and form his stock in trade in the
next birth. The pains he has sustained speak to him as the voice of
conscience, the good he has done gives him a more and more altruistic
character.
No matter how long we may keep the Spirit from passing out, however, at
last there will come a time then no stimulant can hold it and the last
breath is drawn. Then the silver cord, of which the Bible speaks, and which
holds the higher and the lower vehicles together, snaps the heart and causes
that organ to stop. That rupture releases the vital body, and that, with
the desire body and mind, floats above the visible body for from one to
three and one-half days while the Spirit is engaged in reviewing the past
life, an exceedingly important part of its post-mortem experience. Upon
what review depends its whole existence from death to a new birth.
All ancient people, whether in the East or in the West, know much about
birth and death which has been forgotten in modern times, because second
sight was more prevalent then. To this day, for instance, many peasants in
Norway assert ability to see the Spirit passing out of the body at death, as a
long narrow while cloud, which is, of course, the vital body; and the
Rosicrucian teaching — that the deceased hover around their earthly abode for
some time after death, that they assume a luminous body and are sorely
afflicted by the grief of dear ones — was common knowledge among the ancient
Northmen. When the deceased King Helfe of Denmark materialized to assuage
the grief of his widow, and she exclaimed in anguish, "The dew of death has
bathed his warrior body," he answered:
'Tis thou, Sigruna
Art cause alone,
That Helge is bathed
With dew of sorrow
Thou wilt not cease thy grief,
Nor dry the bitter tears.
Each bloody tear
Falls on my breast,
Icy cold. They will not let me rest.
When she (the author of The Ministry of Angels) was about eighteen years
of age, a girl friend called Maggie was suddenly taken very ill and died in
her arms. Immediately after her heart had ceased to beat, she says, "I
distinctly saw ascend from her body something in appearance like smoke or
steam as it rises from a kettle in which water is boiling. The emanation
rose only a little distance and there resolved itself into a form like that of
my friend who had just died. This form, shadowy at first, gradually
changed until it become well defined and clad in a pearly white, cloud-like
robe, beneath which the outlines of the figure were distinctly visible. The
face was that of my friend, but glorified with no trace upon it of the spasm
of pain which had seized her just before she died."
This is just as we have taught: at the moment of death, when the silver
cord has been ruptured in the heart, the vital body rises out through the
sutures in the skull and hovers a few feet above the body.
When a Spirit is passing out of the body, it takes with it the desire
body, the mind, and the vital body, and the vital body is at that time the
storehouse for the pictures of the past life. These are then etched into
the desire body during the three and one-half days immediately following
death. Then 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 that which caused him joy in the former
life more abundantly.
At the moment of death when the seed atom in the heart is ruptured which
contains all the experience of the past life in a panoramic picture, the
Spirit leaves its physical body, taking with it the finer bodies. It then
hovers over the dense body which is now dead, as we call if, for a time
varying from a number of hours to three and one-half days. The determining
factor as to the time is the strength of the vital body, the vehicle which
constitutes the soul body spoken of in the Bible. There is then a pictorial
reproduction of the life, a panorama in reverse order from death to birth,
and the pictures are etched upon the desire body through the medium of
reflecting ether in this vital body. During this time the consciousness of
the Spirit is concentrated in the vital body, or at least it should be, and
it has therefore no feeling about this matter. The picture that is
impressed upon the vehicle of feeling and emotion, the desire body, is the
basis of subsequent suffering in the life in Purgatory for evil deeds, and of
enjoyment in the First Heaven on account of the good done in the past life.
These were the main facts which the writer was able personally to observe
about death at the time when the Teachings were first given to him and when
he was introduced by the help of the Teacher to the panoramic reproductions
of life when persons were going through the gate of death, but the
investigations of later years have revealed the additional fact that there is
another process going on during these important days following death.
A cleavage takes place in the vital body 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. The lower part, which is discarded,
returns to the physical body and hovers over the grave in the great majority
of the cases, as stated in The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception. This cleavage of the vital body is not the same in all persons but depends upon the nature
of the life lived and the character of the person that is passing out. In
extreme cases this division varies very much from normal. This important
point was brought out in many cases of supposed Spirit obsession which have
been investigated from Headquarters; in fact it was these cases which
developed the far-reaching and astounding discoveries brought out by our most
recent researches into the nature of the obsession from which the people who
appealed to us were suffering. As might be expected, of course, the
division in these cases showed a preponderance of evil, and efforts were
them made to find out if there was not also another class of people where a
different division with a preponderance of good takes place. It is a pleasure
to record that this was found to be the case, and after weighing the facts
discovered, balancing one with another, the following seems to be a correct
description of the conditions and their reasons:
The vital body aims to build the physical, whereas our desires and
emotions tear down. It is the struggle between the vital body and the
desire body which produces consciousness in the Physical World, and which
hardens the tissues so that the soft body of the child gradually becomes
tough and shrunken in old age, followed by death. The morality or
immorality of our desires and emotions acts in a similar manner on the vital
body. Where devotion to high ideals is the mainspring of action, where the
devotional nature has been allowed for years to express itself freely and
frequently, and particularly where this has been accompanied by the
scientific exercises given to students of The Rosicrucian Teachings,
the quantity of the chemical and life ethers gradually diminishes as
the animal appetites vanish, and an increased amount of the light and
reflecting ethers takes their place. As a consequence, physical health is
not as robust among people who follow the higher path as among people whose
indulgence of the lower nature attracts the chemical and life ethers, in
proportion to the extend and nature of their vice, to the partial or total
exclusion of the two higher ethers.
Several very important consequences connected with death follow this
fact. As it is the chemical ether which cements the molecules of the body
in their places and keeps them there during life, when only a minimum of
material is present, disintegration of the physical vehicle after death must
be very rapid.
At death a separation takes place; the seed atom is withdrawn from the
apex of the heart along the saturnine pneumogastric nerve, through the
ventricles and out the skull (Golgotha); all the atoms of the vital body
are liberated from the cross of the dense body by the same spiral motion,
which unscrews each prismatic atom of ether from its physical envelope.
This process is attended with more or less violence according to the
cause of death. An aged person whose vitality has been slowly ebbing may
fall asleep and wake up on the other side of the veil without the slightest
consciousness of how the change took place; a devout and religious person
who has been prepared by prayer and meditation on the beyond would also be
able to make an easy egress; people who freeze to death meet with what the
writer believes to be the easiest of accidental deaths, drowning being next.
But when a person is young and healthy, especially if of an irreligious
or atheistic turn of mind, the prismatic ether atom is so tightly entwined
by the physical atom that a considerable wrench is required to separate the
vital body. When the separation of the physical body from the higher
vehicles has been accomplished and the person is dead, as we say, the light
and reflecting ethers are separated from the prismatic atom. It is this
stuff, as described in the Cosmo-Conception, which is molded into pictures of the past life and etched into the desire body, which them begins to feel
whatever there was of pain or pleasure in the life. The part of the vital
body composed of the prismatic chemical and life ethers then returns to the
physical body, hovering above the grave and disintegrating synchronously
with it.
The higher vehicles — vital body, desire body and mind — are seen to leave
the desire body with a spiral movement, taking with them the soul of one
dense atom. Not the atom itself, but the forces that played through it.
The results of the experiences passed through in the desire body during the
life just ended have been impressed upon this particular atom. While all
other atoms of the desire body have been renewed from time to time, this
permanent atom has remained. It has remained stable, not only through one
life, but it has been a part of every desire body ever used by a particular
Ego. It is withdrawn at death only to reawaken at the dawn of another
physical life, to serve again as the nucleus around which is built the new
desire body to be used by the same Ego. It is therefore called the seed atom. During life the seed atom is situated in the left ventricle of the
heart, near the apex. At death it rises to the brain by way of the
pneumogastric nerve, leaving the desire body, together with the higher
vehicles, by way of the sutures between the parietal and occipital bones.
When the higher vehicles have left the desire body they are still
connected with it by a slender, glistening, silvery cord shaped much like
two figure sixes reversed, one upright and one horizontally placed, the two
connected at the extremities of the hooks.
One end is fastened to the heart by means of the seed atom, and it is the
rupture of the seed atom which causes the heart to stop. The cord itself is
not snapped until the panorama of the past life, contained in the vital
body, has been reviewed.
Care should be taken, however, not to cremate or embalm the body until at
least three days after death, for while the vital body is with the higher
vehicles, and they are still connected with the desire body by means of the
silver cord, any post-mortem examination or other injury to the dense body
will be felt, in a measure, by the man. Cremation should be particularly
avoided in the first three days after death, because it tends to
disintegrate the vital body, which should be kept intact until the panorama
of the past life has been etched into the desire body.
The silver cord snaps at the point where the sixes unite, half remaining
with the desire body and the other half with the higher vehicles. From the
time the cord snaps the desire body is quite dead.
In the beginning of 1906 Dr. McDougall made a series of experiments in
the Massachusetts General Hospital, to determine, if possible, whether
anything not ordinarily visible left the body at death. For this purpose
he constructed a pair of scales capable of registering differences of one-
tenth of an ounce.
The dying person and his bed were placed on one of the platforms of the
scale, which was then balanced by weights placed on the opposite platform.
In every instance it was noted that at the precise moment when the dying
person drew the last breath, the platform containing the weights dropped
with a startling suddenness, lifting the bed and the body, thus showing that
something invisible, but having weight, had left the body. Thereupon the
newspapers all over the country announced in glaring headlines that Dr.
McDougall had "weighed the soul."
Esotericism hails with joy the discoveries of modern science, as they
invariably corroborate what esoteric science has long taught. The experiments
of Dr. McDougall showed conclusively that something invisible to ordinary
sight left the body at death, as trained clairvoyants had seen, and as had
been stated in lectures and literature for many years previous to Dr.
McDougall's discovery.
But this invisible "something: is not the soul. There is a great
difference. The reporters jump at conclusions when they state that the
scientist have "weighed the soul." The soul belongs to higher realms and can
never be weighed on physical scales, even though they registered
variations of one-millionth part of a grain instead of one-tenth of an ounce.
It was the vital body which the scientists weighted. It is formed of the
four ethers and they belong to the Physical World.
As we have seen, a certain amount of this ether is "superimposed" upon
the ether which envelopes the particles of the human body and is confined
there during physical life, adding in a slight degree to the weight of the
desire body of plant, animal, and man. In death it escapes; hence the
diminution in weight noticed by Dr. McDougall when the persons with whom he
experimented expired.
This feature of life after death is similar to that which takes place
when one is drowning or falling from a height. In such cases the vital body
also leaves the desire body and the man sees his life in a flash, because he
loses consciousness at once. Of course the silver cord is not broken, or
there could be no resuscitation.
When the endurance of the vital body has reached its limit, collapses in
the way described when we were considering the phenomenon of sleep. During
physical life, when the Ego controls its vehicles, this collapse terminates
the waking hours; after death the collapse of the vital body terminates the
panorama and forces man to withdraw into the Desire World. The silver cord
breaks at the point where the sixes unite, and the same division is made as
during sleep, but with this important difference, that though the vital body
returns to the desire body, it no longer interpenetrates it, but simply hovers
over it. It remains floating over the grave, decaying synchronously with
the dense vehicle. Hence, to the trained clairvoyant, a graveyard is a
nauseating sight and if only more people could see it as he does, little
argument would be necessary to induce them to change from the present
unsanitary method of disposing of the dead to the more rational method of
cremation, which restores the elements to other primordial condition without
the objectionable features incident to the process of slow decay.
In leaving the vital body the process is much the same as when the desire
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.
When a man dies, he at once seems to swell out in his vital body; he
appears to himself to grow into immense proportions. This feeling is due to
the fact, not that the body really grows, but that the perceptive faculties
receive so many impressions from various sources, all seeming to be close at
hand.
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 to use. It is now transformed from an ovoid to a figure
resembling the desire body which has been abandoned. We can easily
understand that there must be an interval of unconscious resembling sleep
and them the man awakes in the Desire World. If not infrequently happens,
however, that such people are, for a long time, unaware of what has happened
to them. They do not realize that they have died. They know that they
are able to move and think. It is sometimes even a very hard matter to get
them to believe that they are really "dead." They realize that something is
different, but they are not able to understand what it is.
When the moment arrives which marks the completion of life in the
Physical World, the usefulness of the desire 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
useless, so that too is withdrawn, and when the "silver cord" which united
the higher to the lower vehicles snaps, it can never be repaired.
We remember that the vital body is composed of ether, superimposed upon
the dense bodies of plant, animal, and man during life. Ether is physical
matter, and therefore has weight. The only reason why the scientists cannot
weight it is because they are unable to gather a quantity and put it upon a
scale. But when it leaves the dense body at death a diminution in weight
will take place in every instance, showing that something having weight, yet
invisible, leaves the dense body at that time.
The "silver cord" which units the higher and lower vehicles terminates at
the seed-atom in the heart. When material life comes to an end in the
natural manner the forces in the seed-atom disengage themselves, pass
outward along the pneumogastric nerve, the back of the head and along the
silver cord, together with the higher vehicles. It is this rupture in
the heart which marks physical death, but the connecting silver cord is
not broken at once, in some cases not for several days.
In Lecture No. 3 we say that the vital body is the storehouse of both the
conscious and subconscious memory; upon the vital body is branded indelibly
every act and experience of the past life, as the scenery upon an exposed
photographic plate. When the Ego has withdrawn it from the dense body, the
whole life, as registered by the subconscious memory, is laid open to the
eye of mind. It is the partial loosening of the vital body which causes a
drowning person to see his whole past life, but then it is only like a
flash, preceding unconscious; the silver cord remains intact, or there could
be no resuscitation. In the case of a Spirit passing out at death, the
movement is slower; the man stands as a spectator while the pictures succeed
one another in the order from death to birth, so that he sees first the
happenings just prior to death, the the years of manhood or womanhood
unroll themselves; youth, childhood, and infancy follow, until it
terminates at birth. The man, however, has no feeling about them at that
time. The object is merely to etch the panorama into the desire body, which
is the seat of feeling, and from that impress the feeling will be realized
when the Ego enters the Desire World, but we may note here that the intensity
of feeling realized depends upon the length of time consumed in the process of
etching, and the attention given thereto by the man. If he was undisturbed
for a long period by noise and hysteria, a deep, clear-cut impress will be
made upon the desire body. He will feel the wrong he did more keenly
in Purgatory and be more abundantly strengthened in his good qualities
in Heaven, and though the experience will be lost in a future life, the
feelings will remain, as the "still, small voice." Where the feelings have
been strongly indented upon the desire body of an Ego, this voice will speak
in no vague and uncertain terms. It will impel him beyond gainsaying,
forcing him to desist from that which caused pain in the life before, and
compel him to yield to that which is good. Therefore the panorama passed
backward, so that the Ego sees first the effects, and then the underlying
causes.
As to what determines the length of the panorama, we remember that it was
the collapse of the vital body which forced the higher vehicles to withdraw,
so after death, when the vital body collapses, the Ego has to withdraw, and
thus the panorama comes to an end. The duration of the panaroma depends,
therefore, upon the time the person could remain awake only a few hours,
others can endure for a few days, depending on the strength of their vital
body.
When the Ego has left the vital body, the latter gravitates back to the
dense body, remaining hovering above the grave, decaying as the dense body
does, and it is indeed a noisome sight to the clairvoyant to pass through a
cemetary and behold all those vital bodies whose state of decay clearly
indicates the state of decomposition of the remains in the grave. If there
were more clairvoyants, incineration would soon be adopted as a measure of
protection to our feelings, if not for sanitary reasons.
Our latest investigations indicate that where a man spiritualizes his
vehicles, the constitution of the vital body, made of ether, is most
materially changed. In the ordinary man there is always a preponderance of
the two lower ethers — the chemical and life ethers — which have to do with
the upbuilding and propagation of the physical body, and a minimum of light
and reflecting ethers, which are concerned with sense perception and the
higher spiritual qualities. After death the body of the ordinary man is
laid in the grave and the vital body hovers about two feet above the
mound, gradually disintegrating. The dense body disintegrates
simultaneously. However, when we say it decays, we really mean that it
becomes much more alive than it was while man inhabited it, for each
little molecule is now taken charge of by a separate, individual life. It
begins to associate with its neighbors; the unity of an individual life is
superseded by a community of many lives.
Therefore we speak of such decaying corpses as alive with worms. The
denser and the more gross this vehicle is, the longer time it will require
for disintegration, because the vital body hovering above the tenacious
magnetic hold that keeps the dense molecules in check. The two higher
ethers vibrate at a much more rapid rate than the lower, and where a
man by spiritual thoughts has massed around him a great volume of this ether,
which then composes his vital body, the vibrations of the dense body also
become more intense. Consequently, when the man leaves his body at death
there is little or nothing of the vital body left behind to keep the
components of the physical body in check. The disintegration is therefore
very rapid. This we cannot easily prove because very few people are
sufficiently spiritual to make the difference noticeable, but you will recall
that in the Bible it is said of certain characters that they were translated.
Also, the the body of Moses was so vibrant that it shone, and this body was
not found, etc.
These were cases where the body was rapidly returned to the elements, and
when the Christ's body was laid in the grave its disintegration took place
almost instantaneously.
However, so long as the archetype of the physical body persists, it
endeavors to draw to itself physical materials which it then shapes according
to the form of the vital body. Thus it is difficult for the Invisible
Helper who passes out of his body to refrain from materializing. The moment
his will to keep away from himself all physical impediments is relaxed,
materials from the surrounding atmosphere attach themselves to him as iron
filings are drawn to a magnet, and he becomes visible and tangible to
whatever extent he desires. Thus he is enabled to do actual physical work
wherever it is necessary, no matter if he be thousands of miles away from
his body. Therefore the Spirits who pass away from this earth life are
unable to materialize save through a medium where they extract her living
vital body, drape themselves therewith and thus attract the physical
substances necessary to make themselves visible to the sitters.
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, and 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, for 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 back to birth. This panorama of the past life lasts from a few
hours to three and one-half days immediately following death is this: During
that time the panorama of the past life is being etched upon the desire
body which will be 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.
Now, where the life has been full of events and the man's vital body is
strong, a longer time will be given to this etching than under conditions
where the vital body is weak, but during all that time the dense body is connected with the higher vehicles by the silver cord and any hurt to the dense body is felt in a measure by the Spirit, so that embalming, post
mortem examinations and cremation are all felt. Therefore, these should be
avoided during the first three and one-half days after the time of death,
for when the panorama has been fully etched into the desire body, then the
silver cord is broken, the vital body gravitates back to the dense body and
there is no more connection with the Spirit, which is then free to go on
with its higher life.
When the body is buried, the vital body disintegrates slowly at the same
time as the dense body, so that when, for instance, an arm has decayed in
the grave, the etheric arm of the vital body which hovers over the grave
also disappears, and so on until the last vestige of the body is gone. But
where cremation is performed the vital body disintegrates at once, an as
that is the storehouse of the pictures of past life, which being etched upon
the desire body to form the basis of life in Purgatory and the First Heaven,
this would be a great calamity where cremation is performed before the three
and one-half days are past. Unless help were given, the passing of the work
that is done by the Invisible Helpers for humanity. Sometimes they are
assisted by nature spirits and others detailed by the Creative Hierarchies or
leaders of humanity. There is also a loss where one is cremated before
the silver cord has broken naturally, the imprint upon the desire body is
never as deep as it would otherwise have been, and this has an effect upon
future lives, for the deeper the imprint of the past life upon the desire
body, the keener the sufferings in Purgatory for the ill committed and the
keener also the pleasure in the First Heaven which results from the good
deeds of the past life. It is these pains and pleasures of our past lives
that create what we call conscience, so that where we have lost in suffering
we lose also the realization of wrong which is to deter us in future lives
from committing the same mistakes over and over again. Therefore, the
effects of the premature cremation are very far reaching.
A phenomenon similar to the panorama of life usually takes place when a
person is drowning. People who have been resuscitated speak of having seen
their whole life in a flash. That is because under such conditions the vital
body also leaves the dense body. Of course there is no rupture of the
silver cord, or life could not be restored. Unconsciousness following
quickly in drowning, while in the usual post-mortem review the consciousness
continues until the vital body collapses in the same manner that it does
when we go to sleep. Then consciousness ceases for a while and the panorama
is terminated. Therefore also the time occupied by the panorama varies with
different persons, according to whether the vital body was strong and
healthy, or had become thin and emaciated by protracted illness. The longer
the time spent in review, and the more quiet and peaceful the surroundings,
the deeper will be the etching which is made in the desire body. As already
said, that has been a most important and far-reaching effect, for then the
sufferings which the Spirit will realize in Purgatory on account of bad habits
and misdeeds will be much more keen that if there is only a slight
impression, and in future life the still small voice of conscience will warn
so much more insistently against mistakes which caused sufferings in the
past.
Never since the world was has there been such universal sorrow as there
is at the present time (1914). But besides this, we must not forget we are
now laying up for ourselves a great deal of future suffering; for, as has
been explained in the Rosicrucian literature, it is impossible for these
people who are now so ruthlessly and suddenly torn away from their bodies to
review their past life, and thus the etching of the life panorama does not
take place as it should. Therefore these Egos will not reap the fruit of
their present existence as they should in Purgatory and the First Heaven.
They will come back minus this experience at some future time; and it will
be necessary, in order that they may regain what they have lost, to let then
die in childhood so that they may have the new desire body and vital body
imprinted with the essence of their present life.
We saw that when the Ego had finished its day in the school of life the
centrifugal force at Repulsion caused it to throw off its dense vehicle at
death, then the vital body, which is the next coarsest. Next in Purgatory
the coarsest desire stuff accumulated by the Ego as embodiment for its
lowest desires was purged by this centrifugal force. In the higher realms
only the force of Attraction holds sway and keeps the good by centripetal
action, which tends to draw everything from the periphery to the center.
In the Second Heaven as much of the vital body as the Life Spirit had
worked upon, transformed, spiritualized, and thus saved from the decay to
which the rest of the vital body is subject, will be amalgamated with the
Life Spirit to insure a better vital body and temperament in the succeeding
lives.
When we left the Ego in its pilgrimage through the invisible worlds, we
had reached the point where it entered the Third Heaven after discarding the
dense body at death, the vital body shortly afterwards, the desire body upon
leaving Purgatory and the First Heaven, and finally before leaving the Second
Heaven it also left the sheath of mind behind, and then entered the third
Heaven absolutely free of encumbrance. All the discarded vehicles decay,
only the Spirit persists, laving for a while in the great spiritual
reservoir of force which we call the Third Heaven, in order to fortify
itself for the next rebirth into Earth-life.
The vital body is composed of four ethers. The two lower ethers are
particular avenues of growth and propagation. In the vital body of a
person whose chief concern is with the physical life, who lives as it were,
entirely for the sensual enjoyment, these two ethers predominate, whereas in a
person who is rather indifferent to the material enjoyment of life, but who
seeks to advance spiritually, the two higher ethers form the bulk of the vital
body. They are then what Paul calls the soma psuchicon, or soul body, which
remains with man during his experiences in Purgatory and the First Heaven
where the essence of the life lived is extracted. This extract is the soul,
whose two chief qualities are conscience and virtue. The feeling of
conscience is the fruit of mistakes in past earth lives, which will in
future guide the Spirit aright and teach it how to avoid similar missteps.
Virtue is the essence of all that was good in former lives, and acts as an
encouragement to keep the Spirit ardently striving upon the path of
aspiration. In the Third Heaven this amalgamates thoroughly with the Spirit
and becomes a part thereof. Thus in the course of his lives man becomes
more soulful, and the soul qualities of conscience and virtue become
more strongly operative as guiding principles of conduct.
But there are some people who are of such an evil nature that they enjoy life spent in vice and degenerate practices, a brutal life, and who delight
in giving pain. Sometimes they even cultivate the esoteric arts for evil
purposes so that they may have a greater power over their victims. Then
their fiendish, immoral practices result in hardening their vital body.
In such extreme cases where the animal nature has been paramount, where
there has been no soul expression in the preceding earth life, the division
in the vital body spoken of before cannot take place at death, for there is
no dividing line. In such a case, if the vital body should gravitate back
to the dense body and there gradually disintegrate, the effect of a very
evil life would not be so far-reaching, but unfortunately there is in such
cases an interlocking grip of the vital and desire bodies which prevents
separation. We have seen that where a man lives mostly in the higher
nature, his spiritual vehicles are nourished to the detriment of the lower.
Conversely, where his consciousness us centered in the lower vehicles, he
strengthens them immeasurably. It should be understood that the life of the
desire body is not terminated by the departure of the Spirit; it has a
residual life and consciousness. The vital body is also able to sense things
in a slight measure for a few days after death in ordinary cases (hence the
suffering causes by embalming, post-mortem examinations, etc., immediately
after death), but where a low life has hardened and endued it with great
strength it has a tenacious hold on life and an ability to feed on odors
and liquors. Sometimes, as a parasite, it even vampirizes people with whom
it comes in contact.
Such beings are therefore one of the greatest menaces to society
imaginable. They have sent countless victims to prison, broken up homes,
and causes an unbelievable amount of unhappiness. They always leave their
victims to prison, broken up homes, and causes an unbelievable amount of
unhappiness. They always leave their victims when the latter have come into
the clutches of the law. They gloat over their victims' sorrow and
distress, this being a part of their fiendish scheme. There are other
classes which delight in posing as "angels" in spiritualistic seances.
They also find victims there and teach them immoral practices. The so-called
"Poltergeist" which enjoys breaking dishes, upsetting tables, knocking hats
over the heads of the delighted audience, and similar horseplay, is also in
this class. The strength and density of the vital body of such beings make it
easier for them to give physical manifestations than for those who have
passed beyond into the Desire World, in fact, the vital bodies of this
class of Spirits are so dense that they are nearly physical, and it has been
a mystery to the writer that some of the people who are taken in by such
entities cannot see them. Were they once discovered, one look at their
evil, sneering faces would very soon dispel the delusion that they are
angels.
Wherever a person dies who has fostered malice and hatred in his heart,
these interlock the desire and vital bodies and make him a more serious menace
to the community than anyone can imagine who has not investigated this
subject.
Earthbound Spirits, such as previously mentioned, gravitate to the lower
regions of the Desire World which interpenetrate the ether, and are in
constant and close touch with those people on earth most favorably situated
for aiding them in their evil designs. They usually stay in this
earthbound condition for fifty, sixty, or seventy-five years, but extreme
cases have been found in which such people so remain for centuries. So far
as the writer has been able to discover up to the present time, there seems
to be no limit to what they may do or how soon they will let go. But all
the while they are piling up for themselves an awful load of sin, nor can
they escape suffering therefore, for the vital body reflects and etches
deeply into the desire body a record of their misdeeds, and when at last
they do let go and enter the purgatorial existence, they meet the retribution
which they well deserve. This suffering is naturally lengthy in proportion to
the time they have continued their nefarious practices after the death of
the dense body — another proof that "Though the mills of God grind slowly,
yet they grind exceeding small."
The red cloud of hate is lifting, the black veil of despair is gone,
there are no volcanic outbursts of passion in either the living or the dead,
but so far as the writer is able to read the signs of the times in the aura
of the nations, there is a settled purpose to play the game to the end.
Even in homes bereaved of many members, this seems to hold good. There is
an intense longing for the friends beyond, but no hatred for the earthly
foe. This longing is shared by the friends in the unseen and many are
piercing the veil, for the intensity of their longing is awakening in the
"dead" the power to manifest by attracting a quantity of ether and gas which
often is taken from the vital body of a "sensitive" friend, as materializing
Spirits use the vital body of an entranced medium. Thus the eyes blinded by
tears are often opened by a yearning heart so that loved ones now in the
spirit world are met again face to face, heart to heart. This is Nature's
method of cultivating the sixth sense which will eventually enable all to
know that man is an immortal Spirit and continuity of life a fact in nature.
At every death the tears that are shed serve to dissolve the veil that
hides, the invisible world from our longing gaze. The deep-felt yearning
and the sorrow at the parting of loved and loving ones on both sides of the
veil are tearing this apart, and at some not far distant day the accumulated
effect of all this will reveal the fact that there is no death, but that
those who have passed beyond are as much alive as we. The potency of these
tears, this sorrow, this yearning is not equal in all cases, however, and
the effects differ widely according to whether the vital body has been
awakened in any given person by acts of unselfishness and service according
to the esoteric maxim that all development along spiritual lines begins with
the vital body. This is the basis, and no superstructure can be built until
the foundation has been laid.
When an Ego is on its way to rebirth the seed atom of the vital body gathers new material. The polarity of this material determines its sex during the coming life.
The seed atom of the vital body is next aroused into activity, but here
the process of formation is not so simple as in the case of the mind and the
desire body, for it must be remembered that those vehicles were
comparatively unorganized, while the vital body and the dense body are more
organized and very complicated. The material, of a given quantity and
quality, is attracted in the same manner and under the operation of the same
law as in the case of the higher bodies, but the building of the new body
and the placement in the proper environment is done by four great Beings of
immeasurable wisdom, which are the Recording Angels, the "Lords of
Destiny." They impress the reflecting ether of the vital in such a way that
the pictures of the coming life are reflected in it. It (the vital body) is
built by the inhabitants of the heaven world and the elemental spirits in
such a manner as to form a particular type of brain. But mark this, the
returning Ego itself incorporates therein the quintessence of its former vital
bodies vital bodies and in addition to this also does a little original work.
This is done that in the coming life there may be some room for original and
individual expression, not predetermined by past action.
The vital body, having been molded by the Lords of Destiny, will give
form to the dense body, organ for organ. This matrix or mold is then placed
in the womb of the future mother. The seed atom for the dense body is in
the triangular head of one of the spermatozoa in the semen of the father.
This alone makes fertilization possible and here is the explanation of the
fact that so many times sex-unions are unfruitful. The chemical
constituents of the seminal fluid and the ova are the same at all times
and were these the only requirements, the explanation of the phenomenon
of infertility, if sought in the material, visible world alone, would not
be found. It becomes plain, however, when we understand that as the
molecules of water freeze only along the lines of force in the water and
manifest as ice crystals instead of freezing into a homogeneous mass, as
would be the case if there can be no dense body built until there is a vital
body into which to build the material; also there must be a seed atom for
the dense body, to act as gauge of the quality and quantity of the matter
which is to be built into that dense body. Although at the present stage of
development there is never full harmony in the materials of the body, because
that would be a perfect body, yet the discord must not be so great as to be
disruptive of the organism.
When the impregnation of the ovum has taken place, the desire body of the
mother works upon it for a period of from eighteen to twenty-one days, the
Ego remaining outside in its desire body and mind sheath, yet always in
close touch with the mother. Upon the expiration of that time the Ego
enters the mother's body. The bell-shaped vehicles draw themselves down over
the head of the vital body and the bell closes at the bottom. From this
time the Ego broods over its coming instrument until the birth of the child
and the new earth life of the returning Ego commences.
It is stated in The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception that the vital body of a
woman is positive and the vital body of a man is negative. When the agents
of the Recording Angles are assisting an Ego to come to birth, the matter of
sex has already been determined, either by the law of alternation or a
modification of that law by specific circumstances in the individual life of
the Spirit, and the Ego is then helped to draw to itself as sufficient
amount of the different kinds of ether as required by its development.
These materials are all of certain polarity, either positive or negative.
When a matrix made solely from positive etheric atoms is placed in the womb
of the prospective mother, these atoms will unerringly drawn to themselves
negative physical atoms, and the resultant child body becomes female in
consequence. If, on the other hand, the matrix which is placed in the
mother's womb is composed of negative etheric atoms, it will attract the
positive dense atoms with the result that the male sex organ is most
developed and the sex therefore masculine. Life, like electricity, requires
both positive and negative expression, otherwise it cannot manifest.
When the Ego is on its way to rebirth through the Region of Concrete
Thought, the Desire World, and the Etheric Region, it gathers a certain
amount of material from each. The quality of this material is determined by
the seed atom, on the principle that like attracts like. The quantity
depends upon the amount of matter required by the archetype built by ourselves
in the Second Heaven. From the quantity of prismatic ether atoms that are
appropriated by a certain Spirit, the Recording Angels and their agents
build an etheric form which is then placed in the mother's womb and
gradually clothed with physical matter which then forms the visible body of
the new-born child.
The silver cord which has grown from the seed atom of the desire body
(located in the heart) since conception, is welded to the part that has
sprouted from the central vortex of the desire body, (located in the liver),
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.
A child's vital body at birth is unorganized. Up until the age of seven, when the individual vital body is born, it draws from the macrocosmic vital body.
In the period immediately following birth the different vehicles
interpenetrate one another, as, in our previous illustration, the sand
penetrates the sponge and the water both sand and sponge. But, though they
are all present, as in adult life, they are merely present. None of their
positive faculties are active. The vital body cannot use the forces which
operate along the positive pole of ethers. Assimilation, which works
along the positive pole of the chemical ether, is very dainty during
childhood and what there is of it is due to the macrocosmic vital body,
the ethers of which act as a womb for the child's vital body until the
seventh year, gradually ripening it during that period. The propagative
faculty, which works along the positive pole of the life ether, is also
latent. The heating of the body — which is carried on along the positive
pole of the light ether — and the circulation of the blood are due to the
macrocosmic vital body, the ethers acting on the child and slowly developing
it to the point where it can control these functions itself. The forces
working along the negative pole of ethers are so much the more active. The
excretion of solids, carried on along the negative pole of the chemical ether
(corresponding to the solid subdivision of the Chemical Region), is too
unrestrained, as is also the excretion of fluid, which is carried on along
the negative pole of the life ether (corresponding to the second or fluid
subdivision of the Chemical Region). The passive sense perception,
which is due to the negative forces of the light ether, is also
exceedingly prominent. The child is very impressionable and it is "all eyes
and ears."
Although the vital body of an infant is still comparatively unorganized
at the time of birth, the ether which is to be used for its completion is
within the aura, ready to be assimilated, and if anyone in its surroundings
happens to be weak and anemic, and unconscious vampire, he or she draws from
the unassimilated store of ether of the infant much more easily than from
that of an adult whole vital body is fully organized. Naturally the weak
person draws more easily ether that is negatively polarized, as in the body
of a boy baby, than the positive ether of the girl baby. Massage of the
spleen and stimulation of the splanchic nerves, carefully and conservatively practiced will aid the etheric counterpart of that organ in its activity of
specializing the solar energy upon which the vital processes are as
dependent as the lungs are on air.
We usually think that when a child is born it is born and that is the end
of it; but as during the period of gestation the dense body is shielded 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 are also 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 then as the dense body and, 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.
Only a small portion of the ether appropriated by a certain Ego is thus
used, and the remainder of the child's vital body, or rather the material
from which that vehicle will eventually be made, is thus outside the dense
body. For that reason the vital body of a child protrudes much farther
beyond the periphery of the dense body than does that of the adult. During
the period of growth this store of ether atoms is drawn upon to vitalize the
accretions within the body until, at the time when the adult age is reached,
the vital body protrudes only from one to one and a half inches beyond the
periphery of the dense body.
From the first to the seventh year the vital body grows and slowly
matures within the womb of the macrocosmic vital body and because of the
greater wisdom of this vehicle of the macrocosm, the child's body is more
rounded and well-built in later life.
While the macrocosmic vital body guides the growth of the child's body it
is guarded from the dangers which later threaten it when the unwise
individual vital body takes unchecked charge. This happens in the seventh
year, when the period of excessive, dangerous growth begins, and continues
through the next seven years. During this time the macrocosmic desire body
performs the function of a womb for the individual desire body.
Were the vital body to have continual and unrestrained sway in the human
kingdom, as it has in the plant, man would grow to an enormous size. There
was a time in the far distant past when man was constituted like a plant,
having only a dense body and a vital body. The traditions of mythology and
folk lore all over the world, concerning giants in olden times are
absolutely true, because then men grew as tall as trees, and for the same
reason.
The vital body of the plant builds leaf after leaf, carrying the stem
higher and higher. Were it not for the macrocosmic desire body it would
keep in in that way indefinitely, but the macrocosmic desire body stops in
at a certain point and checks further growth. The force that is not needed
for further growth is then available for other purposes and is used to build
the flower and the seed. In like manner the human vital body, when the
dense body comes under its sway, after the seventh year, makes the latter
grow very rapidly, but about the fourteenth year the individual desire body
is born from the womb of the macrocosmic desire body and is then free to
work on its dense body. The excessive growth is then checked and the force
theretofore used for that purpose becomes available for propagation, that
the human plant may flower and bring forth. Therefore the birth of the
personal desire body marks the period of puberty. From the period that
attraction toward the opposite sex is felt, being especially active and
unrestrained in the third septenary period of life — from the fourteenth to
the twenty-first year, because the restraining mind is still unborn.
It will be remembered that assimilation and growth depend upon the forces
working along the positive pole of the vital body's chemical ether. This is
set free at the seventh year, together with the balance of the vital body.
Only the chemical ether is fully ripe at that time; the other parts need
more ripening. At the fourteenth year the life ether of the vital body,
which has to do with propagation, is fully ripe. In the period from seven
to fourteen years of age the excessive assimilation has stored up an amount
of force which goes to the sex organs and is ready at the time the desire
body is set free.
By the seventh year the vital body of the child has reached a perfection
sufficient to allow it to receive impacts from the outside world. It sheds
its protective covering of ether, and commences its free life. And now the
time begins in which the educator may work on the vital body and help it is
in the formation of memory, conscience, good habits, and a harmonious
temperament. Authority and discipleship are the watchwords of this epoch, when the child is to learn the meaning of things. In the first epoch it
learns that things are, but must not be bothered about their meaning, except
what it picks up of its own accord, but in the second epoch from seven
to fourteen years, it is essential that the child should learn the meaning
of them, but should learn to take things on the authority of parents and
teachers, memorizing their explanations, rather than reasoning for itself,
for reason belongs to a later development, and though he may do so of his
own accord, with profit, it is harmful at this period to force him to think.
It must not be imagined, however, that when the little body of a child
has been born, the process of birth is completed. The dense physical body
has had the longest evolution, and as a shoemaker who has worked at his
trade for a number of years is more expert than an apprentice and can make
better shoes, and quicker, so also the Spirit which has built many physical bodies produces them quickly, but the vital body is a later acquisition of the human being. Therefore we are not so expert in building that vehicle.
Consequently it takes longer to construct that from the materials not used
up in making the lining of the archetype, and the vital body is not born
until the seventh year.
When the vital body is born at the age of seven a period of growth begins
and a new motto, or relation rather, is established between parent and
child. This may be expressed in the two words authority and discipleship.
In this period the child is taught certain lessons which it takes upon faith
in the authority of its teachers, whether at home or at school, and as
memory is a faculty of the vital body it can now memorize what is learned.
It is therefore eminently teachable; particularly because it is unbiased by
preconceived opinions which prevent most of us from accepting new views. At
the end of this second period, from about twelve to fourteen, the vital body
has been so far developed that puberty is reached.
Children who die before the seventh year have been born only so far as
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, as will be more fully explained in the next lecture,
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.
Part III
Vital Body of
Animals and Plants
I. General Nature
and Function
Animals and plants have a vital body, too. Although this vehicle is lacking in the mineral, the disintegration of hard rock, etc., affects the vital body of the Earth.
When we consider plant, animal, and man in relation to the Etheric Region
we note that each has a separate vital body in addition to being penetrated
by the planetary ether which forms the Etheric Region. There is a
difference, however, between the vital bodies of the plants and the vital
bodies of animal and man. In the vital body of the plant only the chemical
and the life ethers are fully active. Hence the plant can grow by the action
of the chemical ether and propagate its species through the activity of the
life ether of the separate vital body which it possesses. The light ether
is present, but is partially latent or dormant and the reflecting ether
is lacking. Therefore it is evident that the faculties of sense-perception
and memory, which are the qualities of these ethers, cannot be expressed by
the plant kingdom.
Turning our attention to the vital body of the animal we find that in it
the chemical, life, and light ethers are dynamically active. Hence the
animal has the faculties of assimulation and growth, caused by activities of
the chemical ether and the faculty of propagation by means of the life
ether — these being the same as in plants. But in addition, consequent upon
the action of the third or light ether, it has the faculties of generating
internal heat and of sense-perception. The fourth ether, however, is
inactive in the animal, hence it has no thought nor memory. That which
appears as such will be shown later to be of a different nature.
The separate Ego is definitely segregated within the Universal Spirit in
the Region of Abstract Thought. It shows that only man possesses the
complete chain of vehicles correlating him to all divisions of the
three worlds. The animal lacks one link of the chain — the mind; the plant
lacks two links — the mind and the desire body; and the mineral lacks three
links in the chain of vehicles necessary to function in a self-conscious
manner in the Physical World — the mind, the desire, and the vital bodies.
When an animal is to be born, the Group Spirit, helped by nature spirits
and Angels, fashion the vital body of the coming animal, which is then
deposited in the womb of the mother and the seed atoms are deposited in the
semen of the male; then gestation takes place and an animal is born. Without
the presence of the seed atom and the matrix vital body no dense animal body
can be formed. Similar conditions govern fecundation in the case of an egg,
or a plant seed. They are like the female ova — they are so many
opportunities. If an egg is put into an incubator or under a hen, the Group
Spirit sends forth the requisite life, accepting the opportunity for
embodiment. If a seed is dropped in the soil, that also is fertilized when
the proper conditions have been made for its development, but not before.
When an egg is crushed, cooked, or in other ways disqualified for its primal
designation, or where a seed is stored for years perhaps, there is no life,
and consequently we do no wrong when we use these products for food. It is
even beneficial to plants when the ripe fruits are removed, because then
they cease to take sap from the tree unnecessarily.
The animal has no "individual" Spirit yet, but has a so-called Group
Spirit, which informs all the members of a species. The separate animals
have three bodies — a dense, a vital, and a desire body — but lack one link in
the chain: mind. Hence animals do not ordinarily think, but as we "Induce"
electricity in a wire by bringing it close to another which is charged, so
in a similar way by contact with man a semblance of thought has been
"induced" in the higher domestic animals, such as the dog, horse, and
elephant. The other animals obey the prompting (which we call instinct) of the
animal Group Spirit. They do not see objects in such clear outlines as does
man; in the lower species in the animal consciousness resolves itself more
and more into an internal "picture-consciousness," resembling man's dream
state, except that their pictures are not confused, but convey perfectly to
the animal the promptings of Group Spirit.
The animal Spirit has in its descent reached only the Desire World. It
has not yet evolved to the point where it can "enter" a dense body.
Therefore the animal has no individualized indwelling Spirit, but a Group
Spirit, which directs it from without. The animal has the dense body, the
vital body, and the desire body, but the Group Spirit which directs it is
outside. The vital body and the desire body of an animal are not entirely
within the dense body, especially where the head is concerned. For
instance, the etheric head of a horse projects far beyond and above the dense
physical head. When, as in rare cases it happens, the etheric head of a
horse draws into the head of the dense body, that horse can learn to read,
count, and work examples in elementary arithmetic. To this peculiarity is
also due the fact that horses, dogs, cats, and other domestic animals sense
the Desire World, though not always realizing the difference between it and
the Physical World. A horse will shy at the sight of a figure invisible to
the driver; a cat will go through the motions of rubbing itself against
invisible legs. The cats sees the ghost, however, without realizing that it
has no dense legs available for frictional purposes. The dog, wiser than
cat or horse, will often sense that there is something he does not
understand about the appearance of a dead master whose hands it cannot lick.
It will howl mournfully and slink into a corner with its tails between
its legs.
Dr. McDougall also tried his scales in weighing dying animals. No
diminution was found here, though one of the animals was a large St. Bernard
dog. That was taken to indicate that animals have no souls. A little
later, however, Professor La V. Twining, head of the Science Department of
the Los Angeles Polytechnic School, experimented with mice and kittens,
which he enclosed in hermetically sealed glass flasks. His scales were the
most sensitive procurable and were enclosed in a glass case from which all
moisture had been removed. It was found that all the animals observed lost
weight at death. A good sized mouse, weighing 12.886 grams, suddenly lost
3.1 milligrams at death.
A kitten used in another experiment lost one hundred milligrams while dying
and at its last gasp it suddenly lost an additional sixty milligrams. After
that it lost weight slowly, due to evaporation.
Thus the teaching of esoteric science in regard to the possession of vital
bodies by animals was also vindicated when sufficiently fine scales were
used, and the case where the rather insensitive scales did not show
diminution in the weight of the St. Bernard dog shows that the vital bodies
of animals are proportionately lighter than in man.
The Angels are particularly active in the vital bodies of the plants, for
the stream of life ensouling that kingdom started its evolution in the Moon
Period, when the Angels were human, and they worked with the plants as we
are now working with our minerals. There is therefore a particular affinity
between Angels and plant Group Spirit. Thus we can account for the enormous
assimilation, growth, and fecundity of the plants. Man also grew to an
enormous size in the second or Hyperborean Epoch, where the Angeles had
principal charge. So does the child in its second septenary epoch of life,
because then the Angels have full sway, and at the end of that epoch, at
fourteen, the child has reached puberty and is able to reproduce its kind;
also due to the work of the Angels.
They were the molds which drew to themselves the dense material forming
the plant-bodies of the present day and also of the plant-forms of the past,
which are embedded in the geological strata of our Earth globe.
These ethereal plant forms were aided in their formation when the heat
came from the outside, after the separation of the Earth from the Sun and
Moon. That heat gave them the vital force to draw to themselves the denser
substance.
The vital body is the most important principle of the plant, it is that
which makes the plant grow stem and long in alternating succession, so that
the plant grows taller and taller; but there is no variety, the plant goes
on repeating all the time. Stem, leaf, and branch — ever the same.
The plants have only a dense body and a vital body; hence they can
neither feel nor think. They lack desire body and mind, and therefore
a greater gap exists between the plant and its Group Spirit than between the
animal and its Group Spirit; hence the consciousness of the plants is
correspondingly dimmer, resembling our state of dreamless sleep.
The mineral has only a dense body. It lacks three links to connect it
with its Group Spirit. It therefore is inert and its unconscious resembles
that of the dense human body in the "trance" state when the human spirit,
the Ego, has passed correspondingly beyond it.
In conclusion, let us note that the three worlds in which we live are not
separated by space. They are all about us, as light and color, imbedded in
the physical matter; as lines of cleavage in the mineral. If we let a dish
of water freeze, and examine it under a microscope, we shall see the ice
crystals divided off from one another by lines. These were present though
unseen in the water as lines of force, invisible until the proper condition
brought them out. So one world lies embedded in the next above, unseen to
us until we provide the proper conditions; but when we have fitted
ourselves, Nature, who is ever ready to unfold to us her wonders, expresses
ardent joy over every one who has a helper in evolution thus attains to
citizenship in the invisible realms.
As we saw in Lecture No. 3, the plants have a dense and a vital body,
which enables them to do this work; their consciousness we also saw, was as a
deep, dreamless sleep. Thus it is easy for the Ego to overpower the
vegetable cells and keep then in subjection for a long time, hence the
great sustaining power of the vegetables.
To function in any world, and express the qualities peculiar to it, we
must first possess a vehicle made of its material. In order to function in
the dense Physical World, it is necessary to have a dense body, adapted to
our environment. Otherwise we should be ghosts, as they are commonly
called, and be invisible to most physical beings. So we must have a vital
body before we can express life, grow, or externalize the other qualities
peculiar to the Etheric Region.
When we examine the four kingdoms in relation to the Etheric Region, we
find that the mineral does not possess a separate vital body, and at once we
see the reason why it cannot grow, propagate, or show sentient life.
As an hypothesis necessary to account for other known facts, material
science holds that in the densest solid, as in the rarest and most
attenuated gas, no two atoms touch each other; that there is an envelope of
ether around each atom; that the atoms in the universe float in an ocean of
ether.
As sensation in animals and men is due to their separate vital bodies, so
the feeling of the Earth is particularly active in this sixth stratum, which
corresponds to the World of Life Spirit. To understand the pleasure felt
when mining operations are disintegrating the hard rock, and the pain when
deposits gather, we must remember that the Earth is the dense body of a
Great Spirit, and to furnish us with an environment in which we could live
and gather experience, it had to crystallize this body into its present
solid condition.
The vital body of the plant is composed only of the two densest
ethers — the chemical ether and the life ether — which enable the plant to
grow and propagate, but it lacks the two higher ethers — the light ether and
reflecting ether. Hence it has no sensation or memory of what passes around
it. Therefore, amputation of a limb will not be felt by the plant, and in
the case of the cliff which is blasted, only the chemical ether is present,
so that the crystals will have no feelings at all. Still, it would be wrong
to infer that there is no feeling in either of these cases, for though the
plants and the minerals have no individual means of feeling, they are
enveloped and interpenetrated by the ethers and the Desire World of the
planet, and the Planetary Spirit feels everything, on the same principle
that our finer, having no individual desire body, cannot feel, but we, the
indwelling Spirits inhabiting the body, feel any hurt done to the finger.
Reference: The Vital (Etheric) Body, by Max Heindel (1865-1919)
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