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The names usually given to these planes, taking them in order of materiality, risiug from the denser to the finer, are the physical, the astral, the mental or devachanic, the buddhic, and the nirvanic. Higher than this last are two others, but they are so far above our present power of conception* that for the moment they may be left out of consideration. It should be understood that the matter of * *ach of these planes differs from that of the one below it in the same way as, though to a much greater degree than, vapour differs from solid matter; in fact, the states of matter which we call solid, liquid, and gaseous are merely the three lowest subdivisions of the matter belonging to this one physical plane. The astral region which 1 am to attempt to describe is the second of these great planes of nature—the next above (or within) that physical world with which we are all familiar. It