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there are these definite limits to the range of its activities in the lower worlds, the ego’s inherent capacity for self-expression, and his sense of abounding power, are in no way diminished by them. During the period when the ego is out of incarnation, he is quite powerless in the three worlds. During the process of descent into incarnation he builds the bodies in each of them, which are his only means of contact with, and eventual mastery of, those lower worlds. Into each of these bodies he allows a portion of his life to flow, his consciousness to play, and his power to manifest. The measure of himself which he thus puts down consists of a certain definite aspect of himself—not so much a division as an aspect. It might be described as a group of qualities, a particular set of capacities gathered in former lives, when he turns his attention towards a plane, he temporarily becomes conscious of the limitations which that particular plane imposes upon him. Whilst, on the one hand, incarnation is a limitation, on the other it is an expansion, because it is an opening into a field of manifestation beyond that which is normal to him at his own level. The impacts and experiences which reach him as a result definitely enrich his consciousness.In the early stages of evolution, as that of the savage, for example the development of the vehicles in the lower worlds is so elementary that the amount of the enrichment received from one incarnation is exceedingly small. It follows, therefore, that he develops a tendency to ignore the experiences of that aspect of himself which is in incarnation so far as he is able. He cannot entirely ignore it, however, as he is constantly in receipt of vibrations from it, and is also conscious of the passage of the life-force from higher planes through him into his lower vehicles. This state of affairs continues through hundreds of incarnations, until a point in evolution is reached at which the personal vehicles begin to offer him a less limited field of activity and rich rewards for whatever force he puts down into them. Such rewards consist of added capacity at his own level, increasing mastery over his personality, and growing powers of self-expression through each of his vehicles. On reaching that stage, the division between the abstract and the concrete mind begins to disappear. An increasing tendency towards abstract thought appears in the personal consciousness. A capacity to rise above the limitations of concrete analytical thought is developed, and an ability to express the characteristics of egoic consciousness is gradually attained.