My Library

This is, no doubt, a material method of expressing the reflection of the higher mind in the lower, but a very fairly accurate idea of what actually takes place will be obtained by adopting the hypothesis that the manasic principle sends down a portion of itself into the lower world of physical , life at each incarnation, and expects to be able to withdraw it again at the end of the life, enriched by all its varied experiences. The ordinary man, however, usually allows himself to be st> pitiably enslaved by all sorts of base desires that a certain portion of this lower mind becomes very 5i
closely interwoven with the desire-body, and when the separation takes place at the close of his astral life the mental principle has, as it were, to be torn apart, the degraded portion remaining within the disintegrating astral body.
This body then consists of the particles of astral matter from which the lower mind jias not been able to disengage itself, and which therefore retain it captive ; for when the man passes int6 the heaven-world these clinging fragments adhere a portion of his mind, and as it wSre wrench it> away. The proportion of the matter of each levil present in the decaying