The Desire Body
by Max Heindel
(Part 1)
Foreword
Man, the indwelling Spirit, has at his present stage
of development four vehicles through which he functions: the dense body,
the vital body, the desire body, and the mind. Although these bodies are
closely interrelated and are affected by each other, it is helpful to the
student in understanding thoroughly their functions and possibilities to
study each one separately and intensively. To facilitate such study Max
Heindel's material concerning the desire body has been collected and published
in this one convenient volume.
The desire body of man is his vehicle of feelings,
desires, wishes, and emotions. It is responsible for all his actions,
reveling in unrestrained motion. If unbridled it makes the body do all
the unnecessary and undignified things which are so detrimental to soul
growth. However, that temper which is such a great menace when it takes
control, may be as effective for service under proper guidance. Hence the
temper of the desire body must be controlled but not by any means killed.
The Western Wisdom Teachings therefore emphasize the
transmuting of the lower desires into higher ones through service motivated
by devotion to high ideals. This generates the Emotional Soul, essential
nourishment for the evolving spirit.
Part I:
The Planetary
Desire World
Part II:
Origin and Development
of Man's Desire Body
Part III:
Man's Desire Body
In The Physical World
Part IV:
Man's Desire Body
In The Invisible World
Part V:
Spiritualization of
Man's Desire Body
Part I
The Planetary Desire World
I. Its Relationship to Mineral,
Plant, Animal, and Man
In the Rosicrucian teaching the universe is divided into seven different
Worlds, or states of matter, as follows:
1. World of God.
2. World of Virgin Spirits.
3. World of Divine Spirit.
4. World of Life Spirit.
5. World of Thought.
6. Desire World.
7. Physical World.
This division is not arbitrary but necessary, because the substance of
each of these Worlds is amenable to laws which are practically inoperative
in the others. For instance, in the Physical World, matter is subject to
gravity, contraction, and expansion. In the Desire World there is neither
heat nor cold, and forms levitate as easily as they gravitate. Distance and
time are also governing factors of existence in the Physical World, but are
almost non-existent in the Desire World.
The matter of these worlds also varies in density, the Physical World being
the densest of the seven.
Each World is subdivided into seven Regions or subdivisions of matter.
Desire stuff in the Desire World persists through its seven subdivisions
or regions as material for the embodiment of desire. As the Chemical Region
is the realm of form and as the Etheric Region is the home of the forces
carrying on life activities in these forms enabling them to live, move, and
propagate, so the forces in the Desire World, working in the quickened dense
body, impel it to move in this or that direction.
If there were only the activities of the Chemical and Etheric Regions of
the Physical World, there would be forms having life, able to move, but with no incentive for so doing. This incentive is supplied by the cosmic forces
active in the Desire World and without this activity playing through every
fiber of the vitalized body, urging action in this direction or that, there
would be no experience and no moral growth. The function of the different
ethers would take care of the growth of the form, for it is only in response
to the requirements of spiritual growth that forms evolve to higher states.
Thus we at once see the great importance of this realm of Nature.
Desires, wishes, passions, and feelings express themselves in the matter
of the different regions of the Desire World as form and feature express
themselves in the Chemical Region of the Physical World. They take forms
which last for a longer or shorter time, according to the intensity of the
desire, wish, or feeling embodied in them. In the Desire World the
distinction between the forces and the matter is not so definite and apparent
as in the Physical World. One might almost say that here the ideas of force
and matter are identical or interchangeable. it is not quite so, but we may
say that to a certain extent the Desire World consists of force-matter.
When speaking of the matter of the Desire World, it is true that it is
one degree less dense than the matter of the Physical World, but we
entertain an entirely wrong idea if we imagine it is finer physical matter.
Though the mountain and the daisy, the man, the horse, and a piece of
iron, are composed of one ultimate atomic substance, we do not say that the
daisy is a finer form of iron. Similarly it is impossible to explain in
words the change or difference in physical matter when it is broken into
desire stuff. If there were no difference it would be amenable to the laws of
the Physical World, which it is not.
The law of the Chemical Region is inertia — the tendency to remain in
statu quo. It takes a certain amount of force to overcome this inertia and
cause a body which is at rest to move, or to stop a body in motion. Not so
with the matter of the Desire World. That matter itself is almost living.
It is an unceasing motion, fluid, taking all imaginable and unimaginable
forms with inconceivable facility and rapidity, at the same time coruscating
and scintillating in a thousand ever-changing shades of color, incomparable
to anything we know in this physical state of consciousness. Something very
faintly resembling the action and appearance of this matter will be seen in
the play of colors on an abalone shell when held in the sunlight and moved
to and fro.
This is what the Desire World is — ever-changing light and color — in which
the forces of animal and man intermingle with the forces of innumerable
Hierarchies of spiritual beings which do not appear in our Physical World, but
which are as active in the Desire World as we are here.
The forces sent out by this vast and varied host of Beings mold the
everchanging matter of the Desire World into innumerable and differing forms
of more or less durability, according to the kinetic energy of the impulse
which gave them birth.
The three Worlds of our planet (World of Thought, Desire World, and
Physical World) are at present the field of evolution for a number of
different kingdoms of life, at various stages of development. Only four
of these need concern us at present, viz.: the mineral, plant, animal, and
human kingdoms.
These four kingdoms are related to the three Worlds in different ways,
according to the progress these groups of evolving life have made in the
school of experience.
To show feeling and emotion it is necessary to have a vehicle composed of
the materials of the Desire World.
It is necessary to have a separate vital body, desire body, etc., to
express the qualities of a particular realm, because the atoms of the World of
Desire, of the World of Thought, and even of the higher worlds
interpenetrate the mineral as well as the dense body. If the
interpenetration of the planetary ether, which is the ether that envelops
the atoms of the mineral, were enough to make it feel and propagate, its
interpenetration by the planetary World of Thought would also be sufficient to
make it think. This it cannot do, because it lacks a separate vehicle. It
is penetrated by the planetary ether only, and is therefore incapable of
individual growth. Only the lowest of the four states of ether — the
chemical — is active in the mineral. The chemical forces in minerals are
due to that fact.
Having noted the relations of the four kingdoms to the Etheric Region of
the Physical World, we will next turn our attention to their relation to the
Desire World.
Here we find that both minerals and plants lack the separate desire body.
They are permeated only by the planetary desire body, the Desire World.
Lacking the separate vehicle, they are incapable of feeling, desire, and
emotion, which are faculties pertaining to the Desire World. When a stone
is broken, it does not feel; but it would be wrong to infer that there is no
feeling connected with such an action. That is the materialistic view taken
by the uncomprehending multitude. The esoteric scientist knows that there is
no act, great or small, which is not felt throughout the universe, and even
thought the stone, because it has no separate desire body, cannot feel, the
Spirit of the Earth feels because it is the Earth's desire body that
permeates the stone. When a man cuts his finger, the finger, having no
separate desire body, does not feel pain, but the man does, because it is his
desire body which permeates the finger. If a plant is torn up by the roots,
it is felt by the Spirit of the Earth as a man would feel if a hair were torn
from his head. This Earth is a living, feeling body, and all the forms which
are without separate desire bodies through which their informing Spirits may
experience feeling, are included in the desire body of the Earth and that
desire body has feeling. The breaking of a stone and the breaking off of
flowers are productive of pleasure to the Earth, while the pulling out of
plants by the roots causes pain.
In the plant there is no separate desire body, hence it feels no passion.
It stretches its creative organ, the flower, chastely and unashamed toward
the Sun, a thing of beauty and a delight.
In man the individual desire body must necessarily cause passion and
desire unless subjugated by some ulterior means. Therefore man is the
inversion of the chaste plant, both figuratively and literally, for he is
passionate and turns his creative organ towards the Earth and is ashamed of
it. The plant takes its food by way of the root; man's nourishment enters
his body by way of the head. Man inhales life-giving oxygen and
exhales death-dealing carbon dioxide. This is taken by the plant, which
extracts the poison and returns the vitalizing principle to man.
The Planetary World pulsates through the dense and vital bodies of animal
and man in the same way that it penetrates the mineral and plant, but in
addition to this, animal and man have separate desire bodies, which enable
them to feel desire, emotion, and passion. There is a difference, however.
The desire body of the animal is built entirely of the material of the
denser regions of the Desire World, while in the case of the human being, a little of the matter of the higher regions enters into the composition of the desire body.
The desire body is rooted in the liver, as the vital body is in the
spleen.
In all warm-blooded creatures — which are the highest evolved and have
feelings, passions, and emotions; which reach outward into the world with
desire; which may be said really to live in the fuller meaning of the term
and not merely vegetate — the currents of the desire body flow outward from
the liver. The desire stuff is continually welling out in streams or
currents which travel in curved lines to every point of the periphery of
the ovoid and then return to the liver through a number of vortices, much
as boiling water is continually welling outward from the source of heat and
returning to it after completing its cycle.
The plants are devoid of this impelling, energizing principle, hence they
cannot show life and motion as can the more highly developed organisms.
Where there is vitality and motion, but no red blood, there is no
separate desire body. The creature is simply in the transition stage from
plant to animal and therefore it moves entirely in the strength of the Group
Spirit.
In the cold-blooded animals which have a liver and red blood, there is a
separate desire body and the Group Spirit directs the currents inward,
because in their case the separate spirit (of the individual fish or reptile,
for instance) is entirely outside the dense vehicle.
When the organism has evolved so far that the separate spirit can
commence to draw into its vehicles then it (the individual Spirit) commences
to direct the currents outward, and we see the beginning of passionate
existence and warm blood. It is the warm red blood in the liver of the
organism sufficiently evolved to have an indwelling Spirit which energizes the
outgoing currents of desire stuff that cause the animal or the man to
display desire and passion. In the case of the animal the spirit is not as
yet entirely indwelling. The present mammalia, which have in their animal
stage attained to the possession of warm, red blood, are capable of
experiencing desire and emotion to some extent.
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 individual 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.
All forms are impelled into motion by desire: — the bird and the animal
roam land and air in their desire to secure food and shelter, or for the
purpose of breeding; man is also moved by these desires, but has in addition
other and higher incentives to spur him to effort, among them is desire for
rapidity of motion which led him to construct the steam engine and other
devices that move in obedience to his desire.
If there were no iron in the mountains man could not build machines. If
there were no clay in the soil, the bony structure of the skeleton would be
an impossibility, and if there were no Physical World at all, with its
solids, liquids and gases, this dense body of ours could never have come
into existence. Reasoning along similar lines it must be at once apparent
that if there were no Desire World composed of desire stuff, we should have
no way of forming feelings, emotions, and desires. A planet composed of
the materials we perceive with our physical eyes and of no other
substance, might be the home of plants which grow unconsciously, but have no
desires to cause them to grow. The human and animal kingdoms, however, would be impossibilities.
Both animals and man have a desire body and are swayed by the twin
feelings and the twin forces. A tigress in the jungle will pass a loaf of
bread with indifference but she will feel interested in the owner. Her
interest will rouse the force of attraction, yet she will endeavor to kill
him. The destructive act is not the end and the aim, however, but only a
necessary step toward assimilation. If she spies another beast of prey having
designs on what she considers her booty, that also will cause her to feel
interest. But in that case the feeling of interest will arouse the force
of repulsion, and if a fight ensues, destruction of her adversary will be an
end in itself. In the above case and in cases where the animal desires of
man are factors, the twin forces and twin feelings operate alike, but there
is a difference in the composition of the desire body of man and animal.
The desire body of an animal is composed solely of matter from the four
lower regions of the Desire World. Hence it is incapable of feeling any but
the animal desires for food, shelter, and the like. A saint would feel the
keenest remorse if he had inadvertently spoken a hasty word; the tigress
remains undisturbed by any sense of wrong, though she kill daily. The reason
is that man's desire body is composed of the matter of all the seven regions
of the Desire World so that he is capable of feeling in a higher sense than
the animal.
Part II
Origin and Development of
Man's Desire Body
I. Through the
Septenary Periods
The evolutionary scheme is carried through five Worlds in seven great
Periods of Manifestation, during which the Virgin Spirit, or evolving life,
becomes first man — then, a God.
In the Rosicrucian terminology, the names of the seven Periods are as
follows:
- The Saturn Period
- The Sun Period
- The Moon Period
- The Earth Period
- The Jupiter Period
- The Venus Period
- The Vulcan Period
The three first mentioned periods (the Saturn, Sun, and Moon Periods)
have been passed through. We are now in the fourth, or Earth Period. When
this Earth Period of our Globe has been completed, we and it shall pass in
turn through the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan conditions before the great
septenary Day of Manifestation comes to an end, when all that now is will
once more be merged in the Absolute for a period of rest and assimilation of
the fruits of our evolution, to re-emerge for further and higher development
of another Great Day.
The three and one-half Periods already behind us have been spent in gaining
our present vehicles and consciousness. The remaining three and one-
half Periods will be devoted to perfecting these different vehicles and
expanding our consciousness into something akin to omniscience.
We have seen that man is a very complex organism, consisting of:
- The Dense Body, which is his tool in action.
- The Vital Body, a medium of "vitality" which makes action possible.
- The Desire Body, whence comes Desire and compels action.
- The Mind, a brake on impulse, giving purpose to action.
- The Ego, which acts and gathers experience from action.
The Human Spirit and the desire body commenced to evolve in the Moon
Period and are therefore the special wards of the Holy Spirit.
From the Study of The Cosmo-Conception we learn that our desire body was
generated in the Moon Period. If you wish to obtain a mental picture of the
way things looked then, take an illustration of the fetus as shown in any
book on anatomy. There are three principle parts: the placenta, which is
filled with the maternal blood, the umbilical cord, which carries this vital
stream, and the fetus, which is nourished from embryo to maturity thereby.
Fancy now, in that far-off time, the firmament as one immense placenta from
which there depended billions of umbilical cords, each with its fetal
appendage. Through the whole human family, then in the making, circulated the
one universal essence of desire and emotion, generating in all the impulses
to action which are now manifest in every phase of the world's work. These
umbilical cords and fetal appendages were molded from the moist desire
stuff by the emotions of the lunar Angels, while the fiery desire currents
which were endeavoring to stir the latent life in mankind, then in the
making, were generated by the fiery martial Lucifer Spirits. The color of
that first slow vibration which they set in motion in that emotional desire
stuff was red.
In the Moon Period it was necessary to reconstruct the dense body to make
it capable of being interpenetrated by a desire body, and also capable of
evolving a nervous system, muscle, cartilage, and a rudimentary skeleton.
This reconstruction was the work of the Saturn Revolution of the Moon
Period.
In the second, or Sun Revolution, the vital body was also modified to
render it capable of being interpenetrated by a desire body, also of
accommodating itself to the nervous system, muscle, skeleton, etc. The Lords
of Wisdom, who were the originators of the vital body, also helped the lords
of Individuality with this work.
From this moist substance (in the Moon Period) the densest body of these
"Water-men" was built. The thought form for the dense body had consolidated
to a moist gas, the thought form for our present vital body had descended
into the Desire World. It was formed of desire matter. To this twofold
body the thought form for our present desire body was added in the Moon
Period and the Seraphim awakened the third aspect of the Virgin-Spirit: "the
Human Spirit." The Virgin Spirit became an "Ego," so that at the close of
the Moon Period man-in-the-making possessed a threefold Spirit and a three-
fold body.
Thus we see at the close of the Moon Period man possessed a threefold
body in varying stages of development; and also the germ of the threefold
Spirit. He had dense, vital, and desire bodies, and Divine, Life, and Human
Spirit. All he lacked was the link to connect them.
At the end of the Moon Period these classes started with these vehicles in the beginning of
the Earth period. During the time which has elapsed since then, the human
kingdom has been evolving the link of mind, and has thereby attained full
waking consciousness. The animals have obtained a desire body; the plants a
vital body; the stragglers of the life wave which entered evolution in the
Moon Period have escaped the hard and fast conditions of rock formation and
now their dense bodies compose our softer soils; while the life wave that
entered evolution here in the Earth period forms the hard rocks and stones.
All of those whose desire bodies could be divided into two parts were fitted to become human vehicles and were therefore advanced into the human group.
We must carefully remember that in the above paragraphs we are dealing
with Form, not with the Life which dwells in the Form. The instrument is
graded to suit the life that is to dwell in it. Those, in whose
vehicles the above-mentioned division could be made were raised to the human
kingdom, but were given the indwelling Spirit at a point in time later than the others.
Those whose desire bodies were incapable of division are our present anthropoids. These may yet overtake our evolution if they reach a sufficient degree of advancement before the critical point already mentioned, which will come in the middle of the Fifth Revolution. If they do not overtake us by that time, they will have lost touch with our evolution.
It was said that man had built his threefold body by the help of others
higher than he, but in the previous period there was no coordinating power;
the threefold Spirit, the Ego, was separate and apart from its vehicles.
Now the time had come to unite the Spirit and the body.
Where the desire body separated, the higher part became somewhat master
over the lower part and over the dense and vital bodies. It formed a sort
of animal-soul with which the Spirit could unite by means of the link of
mind. Where there was no division of the desire body, the vehicle was given
over to desires and passions without any check, and could therefore not be
used as a vehicle within which the Spirit could dwell. So it was put under
the control of a Group Spirit which ruled it from without. It became an
animal body, and that kind has now degenerated into the body of the
anthropoid.
Where there was a division of the desire body, the dense body gradually
assumed a vertical position, thus taking the spine out of the horizontal
currents of the Desire World in which the Group Spirit acts upon the animal
through the horizontal spine. The Ego could then enter, work in, and
express itself through the vertical spine and build the vertical larynx and
brain for its adequate expression in the dense body. A horizontal larynx is
also under the domination of the Group Spirit. While it is true that some
animals, as the starling, raven, parrot, etc., previously mentioned, are
able, because of the possession of a vertical larynx, to utter words, they
cannot use them understandingly. The use of words to express thought is the highest human privilege and can be exercised only by a reasoning, thinking entity like man.
In the Polarian Epoch man acquired the dense body as an instrument of
action. In the Hyperborean Epoch the vital body was added to give power of
motion necessary to action. In the Lemurian Epoch the desire body furnished
incentive to action.
In the third, or Lemurian Epoch, man cultivated a desire body, a vehicle
of passions and emotions, and was then constituted as the animal. Then
milk, a product of living animals, was added to his diet, for this substance
is most easily worked upon by the emotions. Abel, the man of that time, is described as a shepherd. It is nowhere stated that he killed an animal for food.
The third, or Lemurian Epoch, presents conditions analogous to the Moon
Period, but denser. The fiery core of the Earth is in the center, the
boiling, seething water next, and the steamy atmosphere or "fire-fog"
outside, for thus "God had divided the land from the waters," as Genesis
says; the dense moisture from the steam, and there man lived on islands of
the forming solid crust scattered in the sea of fire or boiling water. His
form was then quite firm and solid, it had a trunk, limbs, and the head was
beginning to form. The desire body was added, and man brought under the
dominion of the Archangels.
In the far past, when man was in touch with the "inner" worlds, these
organs (pituitary body and pineal gland) were his means of ingress thereto,
and they will again serve that purpose at a later stage. They were
connected with the involuntary or sympathetic nervous system. Man then saw
the inner worlds, as in the Moon Period and the latter part of the Lemurian
and early Atlantean Epochs. Pictures presented themselves quite independent
of his will. The sense centers of his desire body were spinning
around counter-clockwise (following negatively the motion of the Earth, which
revolves on its axis in that direction) as the sense centers of "mediums" do
to this day. In most people these sense centers are inactive, but true
development will set them spinning clockwise.
The mind was given to man in the Atlantean Epoch to give purpose to
action, but as the Ego was exceedingly weak and the desire nature strong, the
nascent mind coalesced with the desire body; the faculty of Cunning resulted
and was the cause of all the wickedness of the middle third of the Atlantean
Epoch.
In a far distant future man's desire body will become as definitely
organized as are the vital and dense bodies. When that stage is reached
we shall all have the power to function in the desire body as we now do in
the dense body, which is the oldest and best organized of these bodies
of man — the desire body being the youngest.
In the Hyperborean Epoch, before man possessed a desire body, there was
but one universal mode of communication and when the desire body has become
sufficiently purified, all men will again be able to understand one another,
for then the separative Race differentiation will have passed away.
The desire body was started in the Moon Period, reconstructed in the
Earth Period, will be further modified in the Jupiter Period, reaching
perfection in the Venus Period.
Globe D of the Venus Period is located in the Desire World (see Diagram 8
in the Cosmo-Conception), hence neither a dense nor a vital body could be
used as an instrument of consciousness, therefore the essences of the
perfected dense and vital bodies are incorporated in the completed desire
body, the latter thus becoming a vehicle of transcendent qualities,
marvelously adaptable and so responsive to the slightest wish of the
indwelling Spirit that in our present limitations, it is beyond our utmost
conception.
Yet the efficiency of even this splendid vehicle will be transcended when
in the Vulcan Period its essence, together with the essences of the dense
and vital bodies, are added to the mind body, which becomes the highest of
man's vehicles, containing within itself the quintessence of all that was
best in all the vehicles.
Part III
Man's Desire Body
In The Physical World
I. From Infancy
To Puberty
The vehicles of the new-born do not at once become active. The dense body is helpless for a long time after birth.
It is the same with the forces working in the desire body. The passive
feeling of physical pain is present, while the feeling of emotion is almost
entirely absent. The child will, of course, show emotion on the slightest
provocation, but the duration of that emotion is but momentary. It is all
on the surface.
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 on in that way indefinitely, but the macrocosmic desire body steps 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 this period the attraction
towards 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 then still unborn.
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. Then the period of rapid growth commences. The desire
body is a still later addition of composite man, and is not brought to birth
until the fourteenth year when the desire nature expresses itself most
strongly during so-called "hot" youth, and the mind, which makes man man,
does not come to birth until the twenty-first year. In law that age is
recognize as the earliest time he is fitted to exercise a franchise.
At the age of fourteen we have the birth of the desire body, which marks
the commencement of self-assertion. In earlier years the child regards
itself more as belonging to a family and subordinate to the wishes of its
parents than after the fourteenth year. The reason is this: in the throat
of the fetus and the young child there is a gland called the thymus
gland, which is largest before birth, then gradually diminishes through the
years of childhood and finally disappears at ages which vary according to
the characteristics of the child. Anatomists have been puzzled as to the
function of this organ and have not yet come to any settled conclusion, but
it has been suggested that before development of the red marrow bones,
the child is not able to manufacture its own blood, and that therefore the
thymus gland contains an essence, supplied by the parents, upon which the
child may draw during infancy and childhood, till able to manufacture its
own blood. That theory is approximately true, and as the family blood flows
in the child, it looks upon itself as part of the family and not as an
Ego. But the moment it commences to manufacture its own blood, the Ego
asserts itself, it is no longer papa's girl or mamma's boy. It has an "I"-
dentity of its own. Then comes the critical age when parents reap what they
have sown. The mind has not yet born born, nothing holds the desire nature
in check, and much, very much, depends upon how the child has been taught
in earlier years and what example the parents have set. At this point in
life self-assertion, the feeling "I am myself," is stronger than at any
other time and therefore authority should give place to advice. The parent
should practice the utmost tolerance, for at no time in life is a human
being as much in need of sympathy as during the seven years from
fourteen to twenty-one when the desire nature is rampant and unchecked.
The desire body requires protection from the onslaughts of the Desire
World until at about the fourteenth year it is born at the time we call
puberty; and the mind is not sufficiently ripe to be released from its
protective cover until the man reaches his majority at about twenty-one.
These periods are only approximately correct, for each person differs from
all others in regard to exact time periods, but those given are near enough.
We saw that when the Ego had finished its day in the school of life the
centrifugal force of 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.
This centripetal force of Attraction also governs when the Ego is coming
to rebirth. We know that we can throw a stone farther than we can throw a
feather. Therefore, the coarsest matter was thrown outwards after death by
the force of Repulsion, and for the same reason the coarsest material
wherein the returning Ego embodies the tendencies to evil is whirled inwards
to the center by the centripetal force of Attraction, with the result that
when a child is born all that is best and purest appears on the outside.
The latent evil does not usually manifest until after the desire body is
born at about the age of fourteen, and the currents in that vehicle commence
to well outwards from the liver. At that time the Ego commences to "live"
its individual life and show what is within.
The desire body is born about the 14th year, at the time of puberty.
That is the time the feelings and passions are beginning to exercise their
power upon the young man or woman, as the womb of desire-stuff which
formerly protected the nascent desire body is removed. This is in most cases
a trying time, and it is well for the youth who has learned to reverently look
to parents or teachers, for they will be to him an anchor of strength
against the inrush of the feelings. If he has been accustomed to take the
statements of his elders on trust, and they have given him wise teaching, he
will by now have developed an inherent sense of truth that will be a sure
guide but just in the measure that he has failed to do so will he be liable
to go adrift.
When a person dies in childhood in one life, he or she not infrequently
remembers that life in the next body, because children under fourteen years
do not journey around the entire life cycle, which necessitates the building
of a complete set of new vehicles. They simply pass into the upper regions
of the Desire World and there wait for a new embodiment, which usually takes
place in from one to twenty years after death. When the return to birth,
they bring with them the old mind and desire body.
II. Its Appearance
and Functions
In addition to the visible body and the vital body we also have a body
made of desire stuff from which we form our feelings and emotions. This
vehicle also impels us to seek sense gratification. But while the two
instruments of which we have already spoken, are well organized, the desire
body appears to spiritual sight as an ovoid cloud extending from sixteen
to twenty inches beyond the physical body. It is above the head and below
the feet so that our dense body sits in the center of this egg-shaped cloud
as the yolk is in the center of an egg.
The reason for the rudimentary state of this vehicle is that is has been
added to the human constitution more recently than the bodies previously
mentioned. Evolution of form may be likened to the manner in which the
juices in the snail first condense into flesh and later become a hard shell.
When our present visible body first germinated in the Spirit, it was a
thought form, but gradually it has become denser and more concrete until it
is now a chemical crystallization. The vital body was next emanated by the
Spirit as a thought form and is in the third stage of concretion, which is
etheric. The desire body is a still later acquisition. That also was a
thought form at its inception, but has now condensed to desire stuff. The
mind, only recently received, is still but a mere cloudy thought form.
Arms and limbs, ears and eyes are not necessary to use the desire body,
for it can glide through space more swiftly than wind without such means of
locomotion as we require in this visible world.
When viewed by spiritual sight, it appears that there are in this desire
body a number of whirling vortices. It is a characteristic of desire stuff
to be in constant motion, and from the main vortex in the region of the
liver there is a constant outwelling flow which radiates towards the periphery
of this egg-shaped body and returns to the center through a number of other
vortices. The desire body exhibits all the colors and shades which we know
and a vast number of others which are indescribable in earthly language.
Those colors vary in every person according to his characteristics and
temperament and they also vary from moment to moment as passing moods,
fancies, or emotions are experienced by him. There is, however, in each one a
certain basic color dependent upon the ruling star at the moment of his
birth. The man in whose horoscope Mars is peculiarly strong usually has a
crimson tint in his aura. Where Jupiter is the strongest planet the
prevailing tint seems to be a bluish tone, and so on with the other planets.
There was a time in the Earth's past history when incrustation was not
yet complete, and human beings of that time lived upon islands here and
there, amid boiling seas. They had not yet evolved eyes or ears, but a
little organ: the pineal gland, which anatomists have called the Third Eye,
protruded through the back of the head and was a localized organ of feeling,
which warned the man when he came too near a volcanic crater and thus
enabled him to escape destruction. Since then the cerebral hemispheres have
covered the pineal gland, and instead of a single organ of feeling, the
whole body inside and out is sensitive to impacts, which of course is a much
higher state of development.
In the desire body every particle is sensitive to vibrations similar to
those we call sight, sound, and feeling, and every particle is in incessant
motion, rapidly swirling about so that in the same instant it may be at the
top and bottom of the desire body and impart at all points to all the other
particles a sensation of that which it has experienced. Thus every particle
of desire stuff in this vehicle of ours will instantly feel any sensation
experienced by any single particle. Therefore, the desire body is of an
exceedingly sensitive nature, capable of most intense feelings and emotions.
The desire body is the vehicle of feelings and emotions which are always
changing from moment to moment. Though it has been said that the ether
which forms our soul body is in constant motion and mingles with the blood
stream, that motion is relatively slow compared to the rapidity of the
current of the desire body.
Desire stuff moves with inconceivable rapidity comparable only with
light.
The impulses of the desire body drive the blood through the system at
varying rates of speed according to the strength of the emotions.
At present the materials of both the lower and the higher regions enter
into the composition of the desire bodies of the great majority of mankind.
None are so bad but that they have some good trait. This is expressed in
the materials of the higher regions which we find in their desire bodies.
But, on the other hand, very, very few are so good that they do not use some
of the materials of the lower regions.
In the same way that the planetary vital and desire bodies interpenetrate
the dense material of the Earth, as we saw in the illustration of the
sponge, the sand, and the water, so the vital and desire bodies
interpenetrate the dense body of plant, animal, and man. But during the life
of man his desire body is not shaped like his dense and vital bodies. After
death it assumes that shape. During life it has the appearance of a
luminous ovoid which, in waking hours, completely surrounds the dense body,
as the albumen does the yolk of an egg. It extends from twelve to sixteen
inches beyond the dense body. In this desire body there are a number of sense
centers, but, in the great majority of people, they are latent. It is
the awakening of these centers of perception that corresponds to the opening
of the blind man's eyes in our former illustration. The matter in the
human desire body is in incessant motion of inconceivable rapidity. There is
in it no settled place for any particle, as in the dense body. The matter
that is at the head one moment may be at the feet in the next and back
again. There are no organs in the desire body, as in the dense and vital
bodies, but there are centers of perception, which, when active, appear as
vortices, always remaining in the same relative position to the dense body,
most of them about the head. In the majority of people they are mere eddies
and are of no use as centers of perception. They may be awakened in all,
however but different methods produce different results.
In the involuntary clairvoyant developed along improper, negative lines,
these vortices turn from right to left, or in the opposite direction to the
hands of a clock — counter-clockwise.
In the desire body of the properly trained voluntary clairvoyant, they
turn in the same direction as the hands of a clock — clockwise, glowing with
exceeding splendor, far surpassing the brilliant luminosity of the ordinary
desire body. These centers furnish him with means for the perception of
things in the Desire World and he sees, and investigates as he wills, while
the person whose centers turn counter-clockwise is like a mirror, which
reflects what passes before it. Such a person is incapable of reaching out
for information. The above is one of the fundamental differences between a
medium and a properly trained clairvoyant. It is impossible for most people
to distinguish between the two; yet there is one infallible rule that can be
followed by anyone: No genuinely developed seer will ever exercise this faculty for money or its equivalent; nor will he use it to gratify curiosity, but only to help humanity.
III. Effect of Emotions
on Contour and Color
Christ said, "Let your light shine." To the spiritual vision each human
being appears as a flame of light, variously colored according to
temperament, and of greater or less brilliancy in proportion to purity of
character. Science has discovered that all matter is in a state of flux,
that the particles which compose our bodies continually decay and are
eliminated from the system, to be replaced by others which remain for a short
time until they also decompose. Likewise our moods, emotions, and desires
change with every passing moment, the old giving place to the new in an
interminable succession. Therefore, they also must be composed of matter and
subject to laws similar to those which govern visible physical substances.
Let us now see how the desire body changes under the varying feelings,
desires, passions, and emotions, so that we may learn to build wisely and
well the mystic temple wherein we dwell.
When we study one of the so-called physical sciences, such as anatomy or
architecture, which deals with tangible things, our task is facilitated by
the fact that we have words which describe the things whereof we treat, but
even then the mental picture conceived by a word differs with each
individual. When we speak of a "bridge," one may make a mental picture of a
million-dollar iron structure, another may think of a plank across a
streamlet. The difficulty which we experience in conveying accurate
impressions of our meaning increases apace when we attempt to convey ideas
concerning Nature's intangible forces, such as electricity. We measure
the strength of the current in volts, the volume in amperes, and the
resistance of the conductor in ohms, but, as a matter of fact, such terms are
only inventions to cover up our ignorance of the matter. We all know what a
pound of coffee is, but the world's greatest scientist has no more accurate
conception of what the volts, amperes and ohms are of which he so
learnedly discourses than the schoolboy who hears these terms for the first
time.
What wonder then that superphysical subjects are described in vague and
often misleading terms, for we have no words in any physical language which
will accurately describe these subjects, and one is almost helpless and
utterly at a loss for descriptive terms wherewith to express oneself regarding
them. If it were possible to throw colored moving pictures of the desire
body upon the screen and there show how this restless vehicle changes
contour and color according to the emotions, even then it would not give an
adequate understanding to anyone who was not capable of seeing these things
himself, for the vehicles of every single human being differ from the
vehicles of all others in the way they respond to certain emotions. That
which causes one to feel intense love, hate, anger, fear, or any other
emotion may leave another entirely untouched.
The writer has a number of times watched crowds for the purpose of
comparison in this respect, and has always found something startingly new
and different from what had hitherto been observed. On one occasion a
demagogue was endeavoring to incite a labor union to strike; he was very much
excited himself, and though the basic color of deep orange was perceivable,
it was for the time being almost obliterated by a scarlet color of the
brightest hue; the contour of his desire body was like the body of a
porcupine with its quills sticking out. There was a strong element of
opposition in the place, and as he talked one could clearly distinguish the
two factions by the colors of their respective auras. One set of men
showed the scarlet of anger but in the other set this color was intermingled
with a grey, the color of fear.
It was also remarkable that, although the grey men were in the majority,
the others carried the day, for each timid one believed himself alone or at
least with a very few supporters, and was therefore afraid to vote for or
express his opinion. If one who was able to see this condition had been
present and had gone to each one who manifested in his aura the signs of
dissension, and had given him the assurance that he was one of a majority,
the tide would have turned in the opposite direction. It is often so in human
affairs, for at the present time the majority are unable to see beneath the
surface of the physical body and thus to perceive the true state of the
thoughts and feelings of others.
On another occasion a revival meeting was visited where many thousands
were present to hear a speaker of national repute. At the beginning of the
meeting it was evident from the state of the auras of the people that the
great majority had come there with no other purpose than to have a good time
and see some fun. The thoughts feelings, and emotions connection with the
ordinary life of each were plainly visible, but in a number a certain darkish
blue color showed an attitude of worry; it seemed that they had had some
disappointment in life and were very uneasy. When the speaker appeared, a
curious phenomenon took place. Desire bodies are usually in a state of
restless motion, but at that moment it seemed as if the whole vast audience
must have held its breath in an attitude of expectancy, for the varied
color-play in the individual desire bodies ceased and the basic orange hue
was plainly perceptible for an instant. Presently each commenced his
emotional activities as before, while the prelude was being played. Then
commenced the singing of hymns, and this showed the value and effect of
music, for as all united in singing identical words to the same tune, the
same rhythmic vibrations which surged through all these desire bodies seemed
to blend them and make them, for the time being, almost one. Quite a
number were sitting in the scoffer's seat, so to speak, refusing to sing and
unite with the others. To the spiritual sight they appeared as men of
steel, clothed in an armor of that color, and from each one, without exception
went out a vibration which said so much plainer than mere words could ever
have done, "Leave me alone, you shall not touch me." Something from within
had drawn them there, but they were mortally afraid of giving way, and
therefore their whole aura expressed this steel color of fear which is an
armor of the soul against outside interference.
When the first song was ended, the unity of color and vibration lapsed
almost immediately, each one taking anew his customary thought atmosphere;
and had nothing more been done, each would have lapsed into his habitual
inner life. But the evangelist, thought not able to see this, knew from
past experience that his audience was not yet ripe, and a succession of
songs were therefore sung the accompaniment of clapping hands, beating
drums, and gesticulations from the leader, aided by a trained chorus. This
brought the scattered souls again into a bond of harmony; gradually people
were overwhelmed with religious fervor, and the unity necessary for the next
effort was established. From the music, the leader's hand-clapping, and the
stirring appeal of the songs, that vast audience had become as one, for the
men of steel, the gray-tinted scoffers who thought themselves too wise to be
fooled (when their emotion was really fear), were a negligible part in that
vast congregation. All were then attuned as the many strings upon one great
instrument, and the evangelist who appeared before them was a master artist
at playing upon their emotions. He moved them from laughter to tears, from
sorrow to shame; great waves of the corresponding colors seemed to go over
the whole audience, as bewildering as they were magnificent. Then there
were the customary calls to "stand up for Jesus"; the invitation to the
"mourner's bench," etc., and each brought forth from all over the audience a
certain emotional response which was plainly shown in colors, golden and
blue. Then there were more songs, more clappings and gesticulations which,
for the time, furthered the unity and gave this audience an experience
resembling the feeling of universal brotherhood and the reality of the
Fatherhood of God. The only ones upon whom the music had no effect were the
men clad in the steel-blue armor of fear. This color seems to be
almost impervious to any other emotion; and even thought the feelings
experienced by the great majority were relatively impermanent, the people
benefited in a measure by the revival, with the exception of these men of
steel.
So far as the writer has been able to learn, the inner fear of yielding
to emotion — fear being saturnine in effect and twin sister to worry — seems
to require a shock that will take the person so affected out of his
environment and set him down in a new place among new conditions before the
old conditions can be overcome.
Worry is a condition where the desire currents do not sweep in long
curved lines in any part of the desire body, but where the vehicle is full
of eddies — nothing but eddies in extreme cases. The person so affected does
not endeavor to take action in any line; he sees calamities where there are
none, and instead of generating currents which lead to action that may
prevent the thing he fears, each thought of worry causes an eddy in the
desire body, and he does nothing in consequence. This condition of worry in
the desire body may be likened to water which is about to congeal under a
lowering temperature; fear which expresses itself as skepticism, cynicism,
and pessimism may be likened to that same water when it has frozen, for the
desire bodies of such people are almost motionless, and nothing one can say or
do seems to have the power to alter the condition. They have, to use a common
expression which fits the condition excellently, "drawn into a shell," and
that saturnine shell must be broken before it is possible to get at the man
and help him out of his pitiable state.
These saturnine emotions of fear and worry are usually caused by the
sufferer's apprehension of economic or social difficulties. "perhaps this
investment which I have made may depreciate or become a total loss. I may
lose my position and find myself starving upon the street; everything I
undertake seems to go wrong; my neighbors are slandering me and trying to
undermine my social position; my husband (or wife) does not care for me any
more; my children are neglecting me"; and a thousand and one kindred
suggestions present themselves to the mind. He should remember that every
time one of these thoughts is indulged in, it helps to congeal the currents
in the desire body and build a steel-blue shell in which the person who
habitually fosters fear and worry will some time find himself shut off from
the love, sympathy, and help of all the world. Therefore, we ought to
strive to be cheerful, even under adverse circumstances or we may find
ourselves in a serious condition here and hereafter.
In the beginning of the Great War the emotions of Europe ran riot in a
most horrible manner, first among the so-called "living," and then among the
killed — when they awoke. This awakening took a long time because of the
large guns used — but more of that later. The whole atmosphere of the
countries involved was seething with currents of anger and hate; like a cloud
of dark crimson it hung around every human being and over the land. Then
there were dark, tinted streaks like a funeral pall, which seems always to be
generated in crises of sudden disaster when reason is at a standstill and
despair grips the heart. This was undoubtedly caused the fact that the
peoples involved realized that a catastrophe of a magnitude which they were
unable to comprehend was happening. The desire bodies of the majority
whirled at high speed in long waves of rhythmic pulsation which said more
plainly than words, "Just kill, kill, kill."
When two or three or a crowd met and commenced to discuss the war, the
rhythmic pulsations indicating the settled purpose to do and dare ceased,
and the thoughts and feelings of excitement generated by the discussion or
speech took shape as conical projections which rapidly grew to a height of
about six or eight inches, then they burst and emitted a tongue of flame.
Some people generated a number of these volcanic structures at one time, in
others there were only one or two at the same time. When one of these
bubbles had burst in one place, another appeared somewhere else on the
desire body while the discussion lasted, and it was the flames from them that
colored the cloud over the land scarlet. When a crowd disbanded or friends
parted after such a discussion, the bubbling and eruptions grew smaller and
less frequent, finally ceasing and giving place again to the long rhythmic
pulsations first mentioned.
These conditions are now (1916) seldom if ever seen; the explosive anger
at the enemy thus indicated is a thing of the past so far as the great
majority are concerned. The basic orange color of the western people's aura
is again visible, and both officers and men seem to have settled down to war
as to a game; each is anxious to outdo and outwit the other. The war is now
mainly a channel for their ingenuity; but a number of the lay brothers of
the Rosicrucian Order believe that the condition of anger will return in a
modified form when active hostilities cease and peace negotiations commence.
This form of emotion we may call abstract anger, and it differs widely
from what is observed in the case of two persons who become angry with each
other in private life, whether they start to fight physically or not. Seen
from the hidden side of Nature, there are hostilities before blows are
struck. Jagged, dagger-like desire forms project themselves from one to the
other like spears until the fury which generated them has expended itself.
In the patriotic anger there is no personal enemy, therefore the desire
forms are more blunt and explode without leaving the person who generated
them.
The "steel men" so common in private life where worry over the thousand
and one things that never happen crystallizes an armor around the person who
allows old Saturn thus to grip him, were and are conspicuous by their
absence. The writer accounts for it on the hypothesis that the tension in
their environment forced them to enlist and the shock broke the shell; then
familiarity with danger bred contempt for it. It is certain that these
people have benefited greatly by the war, for there is no state more hampering
to soul growth than constant fear and worry.
It is also a remarkable fact that thought the men engaged in war suffer
awful privations, the mass of them are cultivating a tinge of soft sky-blue
which stands for hope, optimism, and a dawning religious feeling, giving an
altruistic touch to the character. It is an indication that that universal
fellow-feeling which knows no distinctions of creed, color, or country is
growing in the human heart.
The red cloud of hate if 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.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.
It is a law in the Desire World that as a man thinketh, so is
he — literally and without qualification.
A dense body formed of the inert substance of the Chemical Region,
quickened and vitalized by the vital body composed of the ethers of the
Etheric Region, receives the incentive to action from the desire body, and
incentive which the animals follow absolutely, but which in man is checked by
another factor — reason, which sometimes causes him to act contrary to desire.
Were there no other realms in nature but the Physical World and the Desire
World, that factor would be non-existent. We could have mineral, plant and
animal, but man, a thinking, reasoning being, would be an impossibility in
Nature.
We, ourselves, as Egos, function directly in the subtle substance of the
Region of Abstract Thought, which we have specialized within the periphery
of our individual aura. Thence we view the impressions made by the outer
world upon the vital body through the senses, together with the feelings and
emotions generated by them in the desire body, and mirrored in the mind.
From these mental images we form our conclusions, in the substance of the
Region of Abstract Thought, concerning the subjects with which they deal.
These conclusions are ideas. By the power of will we project an idea
through the mind, where it takes concrete shape as a thought form by drawing
mind stuff around itself from the Region of Concrete Thought.
The mind is like the projecting lens of a stereopticon. It projects the
image in one of three directions, according to the will of the thinker,
which ensouls the thought form.
(1) It may be projected against the desire body in an endeavor to arouse
feeling which will lead to immediate action.
(a) If the thought awakens Interest, one of the twin forces, Attraction
or Repulsion, will be stirred up.
If Attraction, the centripetal force, is aroused it seizes the thought,
whirls it into the desire body, endows the image with added life and clothes
it with desire stuff. Then the thought is able to act on the etheric brain,
and propel the vital force through the appropriate brain centers and nerves
to the voluntary muscles which perform the necessary action. Thus the force
in the thought is expended and the image remains in the ether of the vital
body as memory of the act and the feeling that caused it.
(b) Repulsion is the centrifugal force and if that is aroused by the
thought there will be a struggle between the spiritual force (the will of
the man) within the thought form, and the desire body. This is the battle
between conscience and desire, the higher and the lower nature. The
spiritual force, in spite of resistance, will seek to clothe the thought
form in the desire stuff needed to manipulate the brain and muscles. The
force of Repulsion will endeavor to scatter the appropriated material and
oust the thought. If the spiritual energy is strong it may force its way
through to the brain centers and hold its clothing of desire stuff while
manipulating the vital force, thus compelling action, and will then leave upon
the memory a vivid impression of the struggle and the victory. If the
spiritual energy is exhausted before action has resulted, it will be
overcome by the force of Repulsion, and will be stored in the memory, as are
all other thought forms when they have expended their energy.
We have in our body two nervous systems, the voluntary and the
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.
It is this war between the vital body and the desire body which produces
consciousness in the Physical World, but did not the mind act as a brake on
the desire body, our waking hours would be very short. So would our lives,
for the vital body would soon be overridden in its beneficent offices by
the reckless desire body, as evidenced in the exhaustion which follows a fit
of temper. Temper is a condition where the man has "lost control" and the
desire body rules unchecked.
Disease takes many forms; one is insanity, and that also is of different
kinds. Where the connection between the sense centers of the dense body and
the vital body is askew, where sometimes the head of the vital body towers
above the dense head instead of being concentric with it, the vital body is
out of adjustment with both the higher vehicles and the dense body. Then we
have the docile mentally disabled individual. 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 than a wild animal,
for that is checked by the Group Spirit. In that case all the animal
propensities are followed blindly.
The natural tendency of the desire body is to harden and consolidate all
it comes into contact with. Materialistic thought accentuates this tendency
to such an extent that it very often results in succeeding lives, in that
dread disease, consumption [tuberculosis], which is a hardening of the lungs. These should remain soft and elastic. It also sometimes happens that the desire body
crushes the vital body in the next life, so that it fails altogether to
counteract the hardening process, and then we have quick consumption. In
some cases materialism makes the desire body brittle, as it were. Then it
cannot perform its proper hardening work on the dense body, and as a result
we have "rachitis," where the bones soften. So we see what dangers we run
by entertaining materialistic tendencies: either hardening of the soft
parts of the body, as in consumption, or softening of the hard bony parts,
as in rachitis. Of course not every case of consumption shows that the
sufferer was materialistic in a former life, but it is the teaching of
esoteric science that such a result often follows materialism.
Our thoughts are of vastly more importance than our acts, for if we will
only think right, we shall always act right. No man can think love to his
fellowmen, can scheme in his mind how to aid and help them, spiritually,
mentally, or physically, without also acting out these thoughts at some time
in his life, and if we will only cultivate such thoughts, we shall soon find
sunshine spreading around us. We shall find that people will meet us in
that same spirit that we send out, and if we would realize that the desire
body (which surrounds each of us and extends about sixteen to eighteen
inches beyond the periphery of the physical body) contains all these
feelings and emotions, we would meet people differently. Then we would
understand that everything we see is viewed through the atmosphere we
have created around ourselves which colors all we behold in others.
If the astronomer exercises his will and focuses the telescope as he
desires, telling it to attend to its business of transmitting the rays that
strike it, leaving the results to him, the work will proceed well, but if
the lens has the stronger will and the mechanism of the telescope is in
league with it, the astronomer will be seriously hampered in having to
contend with a refractory instrument, and the result will be blurred
pictures, of little or no value.
Thus it is with the Ego. it works with a threefold body, which it
controls, or should control through the mind. But, sad to say, this body has
a will of its own and is often aided and abetted by the mind, thus frustrating
the purposes of the Ego.
This antagonistic "lower will" is an expression of the higher part of the
desire body. When the division of the Sun, Moon, and Earth took place, in
the early part of the Lemurian Epoch, the more advanced portion of
humanity-in-the-making experienced a division of the desire body into a
higher and a lower part. The rest of humanity did likewise in the early
part of the Atlantean Epoch.
This higher part of the desire body became a sort of animal soul. It
built the cerebro-spinal nervous system and the voluntary muscles, by that
means controlling the lower part of the threefold body until the link of
mind was given. Then the mind "coalesced" with this animal soul and became a
co-regent.
The mind is thus bound up in desire; is enmeshed in the selfish lower
nature, making it difficult for the Spirit to control the body. The focusing
mind, which should be the ally of the higher nature, is alienated by and in
league with the lower nature — enslaved by desire.
The law of the Race Religions was given to emancipate intellect from
desire. The "fear of God" was pitted against "the desires of the flesh."
This, however, was not enough to enable one to become master of the body and
secure its willing cooperation. It became necessary for the Spirit to find
in the body another point of vantage, which was not under the sway of the
desire nature. All muscles are expressions of the desire body and a
straight road to the capital, where the traitorous mind is wedded to desire
and reigns supreme.
V. Relationship to
Consciousness
To understand the degree of consciousness which results from the
possession of the vehicles used by the life evolving in the four kingdoms, we
turn our attention to Diagram 4, which shows that man, the Ego, the Thinker,
has descended into the Chemical Region of the Physical World. Here he has
marshaled all his vehicles, thereby attaining the state of waking
consciousness. He is learning to control his vehicles. The organs of
neither the desire body nor the mind are yet evolved. The latter is not
yet even a body. At present it is simply a link, a sheath for the use of
the Ego as a focusing point. It is the last of the vehicles that have been
built. The Spirit works gradually from finer into coarser substance, the
vehicles also being built in fine substance first, then in coarser and coarser
substance. The dense body was built first and has now come into its fourth
stage of density; the vital body is in its third stage. The desire body is
in its second, hence it is still cloud-like, and the sheath of mind is
filmier still. As those vehicles have not, as yet, evolved any organs, it is
clear that they alone would be useless as vehicles of consciousness. The
Ego, however, enters into the dense body and connects these organless
vehicles with the physical sense centers and thus attains the waking
state of consciousness in the Physical World.
The student should particularly note that it is because of their
connection with the splendidly organized mechanism of the dense body that
these higher vehicles become of value at present. He will thus avoid a
mistake frequently made by people who, when they come into the knowledge that
there are higher bodies, grow to despise the dense body; to speak of it as
"low" and "vile" — turning their eyes to heaven and wishing that they might
soon be able to leave this earthly lump of clay and fly about in their
"higher vehicles."
Strange as the statement may seem, it is nevertheless true that the great
majority of mankind are partially asleep most of the time, notwithstanding
the fact that their physical bodies may seem to be intensely occupied in
active work. Under ordinary conditions the desire body in the case of the
great majority is the most awake part of composite man, who lives almost
entirely in his feelings and emotions, but scarcely ever thinks of the problem
of existence beyond what is necessary to keep body and soul together. Most
of this class have probably never given the great questions of life, "Whence
have we come, why are we here, and whither are we going?" any serious
consideration. Their vital bodies are kept active repairing the ravages of
the desire body upon the physical vehicle, and purveying the vitality which
is later dissipated in gratifying the desires and emotions.
It is this hard-fought battle between the vital and desire bodies which
generates consciousness in the Physical World and makes men and women so
intensely alert that, viewed from the standpoint of the Physical World, it
seems to give the lie to our assertion that they are partially asleep.
Nevertheless, upon examination of all the facts it will be found that this
is the case, and we may also say that this state of affairs has come about
by the desire of the great Hierarchs who have our evolution in charge.
The particular stronghold of the desire body is in the muscles and the
cerebro-spinal nervous system. The energy displayed by a person when laboring
under great excitement or anger is an example of this. At such times the
whole muscular system is tense and no hard labor is so exhausting as a "fit
of temper." It sometimes leaves the body prostrated for weeks. There can
be seen the necessity for improving the desire body by controlling the
temper, thus sparing the dense body the suffering resulting from the
ungoverned action of the desire body.
Looking at the matter from an esoteric standpoint, all consciousness in the
Physical World is the result of the constant war between the desire and the
vital bodies.
The tendency of the vital body is to soften and build. Its chief
expression is the blood and the glands, also the sympathetic nervous system,
having obtained ingress into the stronghold of the desire body (the
muscular and the voluntary nervous systems) when it began to develop the heart
into a voluntary muscle.
The tendency of the desire body is to harden, and it in turn has invaded
the realm of the vital body, gaining possession of the spleen and making the
white blood corpuscles, which are not "the policemen of the system" as
science now thinks, but destroyers. It uses the blood to carry these tiny
destroyers all over the body. They pass through the walls of arteries and
veins whenever annoyance is felt, and especially in times of great anger.
Then the rush of forces in the desire body makes the arteries and veins
swell and opens the way for the passage of the white blood corpuscles into
the tissues of the body, where they form bases for the early matter which
kills the body.
During the waking state there is a constant war between the vital body
and the desire body. The desires and impulses from the desire body are
constantly impinging upon the dense body, impelling it to action, regardless
of any damage resulting to the latter instrument, so that desire is gratified.
It is the desire vehicle that urges the drunkard to fill his system with
liquor, so that the chemical combustion of spirit may raise the vibrations
of the dense body to such a pitch as to make it the willing tool of every
mad impulse, wasting its stored energy with reckless prodigality.
The desire body is the vehicle of our emotions, feelings, and desires
which expends the energies in the dense body by the vital processes through
control of the cerebro-spinal or voluntary nervous system. In its
activities this desire body is constantly destroying and breaking down tissue
built by the vital body and it is the war between these two vehicles which
causes what we call consciousness in the Physical World. The etheric forces
in the vital body act in such a manner that they convert as much of the food
as possible into the blood, and this is the highest expression of the vital
body.
The spleen is the gateway of the vital body. There the solar force which
abounds in the surrounding atmosphere enters in a constant stream, to aid us
in the vital processes, and there also the war between the desire body and
the vital body is waged most fiercely.
Thoughts of worry, fear, and anger interfere with the processes of
evaporation in the spleen. A speck of plasm is the result, and this is at
once seized upon by a thought elemental which forms a nucleus and embodies
itself therein. Then it commences to live a life of destruction, coalescing
with other waste products and decaying elements wherever formed, making the
body a charnel house instead of the temple of an indwelling living Spirit.
This destruction is constantly going on and it is not possible to keep
all the destroyers out, nor is such the intention. If the vital body had
uninterrupted sway, it would build and build, using all the energy for that
purpose. There would be no consciousness and thought. It is because the
desire body checks and hardens the inner parts that consciousness develops.
As has been previously explained, the desire body is an unorganized
ovoid, holding the dense body as a dark spot within its center, as the white
of an egg surrounds the yolk. There are a number of sense centers in the
ovoid, which have appeared since the beginning of the Earth Period. In the
average human being these centers appear merely as eddies in a current and
are not awake, hence his desire body is of no use to him as a separate
vehicle of consciousness; but when the sense centers are awakened they look
like whirling vortices.
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.
It happens, however, that at times the desire body does not fully
withdraw, so that part of it remains connected with the vital body, the
vehicle for sense perception and memory. The result is that restoration is
only partly accomplished and that the scenes and actions of the Desire World
are brought into the physical consciousness as dreams. Of course most
dreams are confused as the axis of perception is askew, because of the
improper 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.
What is it that makes sleep a restorative state? In the very term
"restorative" there is implied an activity. If a building is to be
restored, it is necessary that the tenants move out, and that wear and tear
cease. But that is not enough. Workmen must be brought in to repair the
damage incident to the use of the building. Only when that work has been
done is restoration complete and the building ready for re-occupancy by the
tenants.
So also with the temple of the Ego, our dense body, when that has been
exhausted. It is then necessary that the Ego, mind, and desire body vacate
and give the vital body full sway, that it may restore the tone of the dense
body; and thus, when the dense body goes to sleep, there is a separation.
The Ego and the mind, clothed in the desire body, draw out from the vital
body and the dense body, the two latter remaining on the bed, while the
higher vehicles hover above or near the sleeping body.
The process of restoration now begins. In a fight in the Physical World
the injuries are never all on one side; the winner always has some lesions.
The fiercer the fight, and the more evenly the combatants are matched, the
more lesions go to each. So with the combating vital and desire bodies, the
desire body wins every time, yet its victory is always a defeat, for it is
then forced to leave the battle field and the prize, the dense body, in the
hands of the vanquished vital body, and withdraw to repair its own shattered
harmony.
When it withdraws from the sleeping body it enters that sea of force and
harmony called the Desire World. Here it lives over the scenes of the day,
but in reverse order, from effects to causes, straightening out the tangles
of the day, forming true pictures to replace the wrong impressions due to
the limitations of the life in the dense body, and as the harmonies of the
Desire World pervade it, and wisdom and truth replace error, it regains its
rhythm and its tone, the time required to restore it varying according to
how illusive, impulsive, and strenuous had been the life of the day.
Then, and then only, does the work of restoring the vehicles left on the
bed commence, and the restored desire body starts to revive the vital body,
pumping rhythmic energy into it, and that in turn starts to work upon the
dense body, eliminating the products of decay, principally by means of the
sympathetic nervous system, with the result that the dense body is restored
and overflowing with life when the desire body, mind, and Ego enter in the
morning and cause it to wake.
It sometimes happens, however, that we have become so absorbed and
interested in the affairs of our mundane existence that even after the vital
body has collapsed and rendered the dense body unconscious we cannot make up
our minds to leave it and commence the work of restoration; the desire body
will cling like grim death, is perhaps only half dragged out by the Ego,
and starts to ruminate over the happenings of the day in that position.
It is evident that this is an abnormal condition. The proper connection
between the different vehicles is ruptured in the first place by the
collapse of the vital body, and further disarranged by the unusual
relative positions of the higher vehicles, which has partially disconnected
the sense centers of the former from the latter, and the inevitable result
is those confused dreams where the sounds and sights of the Desire World
are mixed with the happenings of daily life in the most grotesque and
impossible way.
At times, when something in daily life has particularly agitated the
desire body, it happens that when it has severed connection with the lower
vehicles and is engaged in the work of restoration by the above-mentioned
review, that when a trying incident of the day appears, and the desire body
sees the solution, it will rush back into the dense body in order to impress
the ideas on the brain, thereby causing the dense body to wake with a start.
It is only in the fewest cases that it is able to bring back the solution
that was so clear in the Desire World. Even if it does succeed in impressing
the solution on the brain, it is usually forgotten in the morning.
There are times of course when dreams are prophetic and come true, but
such dreams result only after complete extraction of the desire body, under
circumstances where the Spirit has seen some danger perhaps, which may
befall, and then impresses the fact upon the brain at the moment of awakening.
It also happens that the Spirit goes upon a soul flight and omits to
perform its part of the work of restoration. Then the body will not be fit
to re-enter in the morning, so it sleeps on. The Spirit may thus roam
afield for a number of days, or even weeks, before it again enters its
physical body and assumes the normal routine of alternating waking and sleep.
This condition is called trance, and the Spirit may remember upon its return
what it has seen and heard in the superphysical realm, or it may have
forgotten, according to the stage of its development and the depth of
the trance condition. When the trance is very light, the Spirit is usually
present in the room where its body lies all the time, and upon its return to
the body it will be able to recount to relatives all they said and did while
its body lay unconscious. Where the trance is deeper, the returning Spirit
will usually be unconscious of what happened around its body, but may recount
experiences from the invisible world.
In ordinary life most people live to eat. They drink, gratify the
sex-passion in an unrestrained manner, and lose their tempers on the slightest
provocation. Though outwardly these people may be very "respectable," they
are, nearly every day of their lives, causing almost utter confusion in their
organization. The entire period of sleep is spent by the desire and the
vital bodies in repairing the damage done in the day time, leaving no time
for outside work of any kind. But as the individual begins to feel the needs
of the higher life, controls sex-force, and temper, and cultivates a serene
disposition, there is less disturbance caused in the vehicles during waking
hours. Consequently, less time is required to repair the damage during sleep.
Thus it becomes possible to leave the dense body for long periods during
sleeping hours, and function in the inner worlds in the higher vehicles.
As the desire body and the mind are not yet organized, they are of no use as
separate vehicles of consciousness. Neither can the vital body leave the
dense body, as that would cause death, so measures must be taken to provide
an organized vehicle which is fluidic and so constructed that it will meet
the needs of the Ego in the inner worlds as does the dense body in the
Physical World.
Part IV
Man's Desire Body In
The Invisible Worlds
The silver cord which has grown from the seed atom of the dense body
(located in the heart) since conception, is welded to the part (located in
the liver), that has sprouted from the central vortex of the desire body,
and when the silver cord is tied by the seed atom of the vital body (located
in the solar plexus), the Spirit dies to life in the supersensible world,
and quickens the body it is to use in its coming earth life. This life on
Earth lasts until the course of events foreshadowed in the wheel of life,
the horoscope, has been run; and when the Spirit again reaches the realm
of Samael, the Angel of Death, the mystic eighth house, the silver cord
is loosed, and the Spirit returns to God who gave it, until the dawn of
another life-day in the School of Earth beckons it to a new birth that it
may acquire more skill in the arts and crafts of temple-building.
The serpent said: "Ye shall not surely die, for the God doth know that
in the day ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as the
gods, knowing good and evil." The latter was then unknown to man.
Acting upon this advice, the woman secured the cooperation of man and by
the power of will they freed their desire bodies. That faculty was then
much greater than now, for it is a law that each new faculty is always
bought at the cost of weakening some previous power, as when the faculty of
thought was bought at the price of half the creative force. Then the man's
will power was such that the anxiety of the God "lest man eat also of 'the
tree of life' and become immortal" was well founded, for had he secured
possession of the secret of renewing the vital body as well as the dense
body, he would have been ale to create a body and vitalize it forever. Then
there would truly have been no death, but neither would there have been any
evolution. As man did not then, and does not yet, know how to build a
perfect body, that would have been the greatest possible calamity. Death is
not a curse, but a friend when it comes naturally, for it releases us from an
environment we have outgrown, and from a body that ties us, in order that we
may get a new chance in a new and better body to learn new lessons.
When the moment arrives which marks the completion of life in the
Physical World, the usefulness of the dense body has ended, and the Ego
withdraws from it by way of the head, taking with it the mind and the desire
body, as it does every night during sleep, but now the vital body is
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.
The higher vehicles — vital body, desire body, and mind — are seen to leave
the dense body with a spiral movement, taking with them the soul of one
dense atom — not the atom itself, but the forces that played through it.
Cremation should be particularly avoided in the first three days after
death, because it tends to disintegrate the vital body, which should be kept
intact until the panorama of the past life has been etched into the desire
body.
During life and in the waking state of consciousness, the vehicles of the
Ego are all together and concentric, but at death the Ego, clothed in the
mind and desire body, withdraws from the dense body. As the vital functions
are at an end, the vital body also is taken out of the dense body, leaving
it inanimate upon the bed. One little atom in the heart is taken out and
the rest of the body disintegrates in due course. But at that time there is
an extremely important process going on, and those who attend the passing
Spirit in the death chamber should be very careful that the utmost quiet
reigns there and in the whole house. The pictures of the whole past life
which have been stored in the vital body are passing before the eye of the
Spirit in a slow and orderly progression, in reverse order — from death and
back to birth. This panorama of the past life lasts from a few hours to
three and one-half days. The time is dependent upon the strength of the vital
body, which determines how long a man could keep awake under the most severe
stress. Some persons can work for fifty, sixty, or seventy hours before they
fall down exhausted, while others are capable of keeping awake only a few
hours. The reason why it is important that there should be quiet in the house
of death during the three and one-half days immediately following death is
this: During that time the panorama of the past life is being etched upon
the desire body which will be the man's vehicle while he stays in Purgatory
and the First Heaven, where he is reaping the good or ill that he has sown,
according to the deeds done in the body.
When the man dies and loses his dense and vital bodies there is the same
condition as when one falls asleep. The desire body, as has been explained,
has no organs ready for use. It is now transformed from an ovoid to a
figure resembling the dense body which has been abandoned. We can easily
understand that there must be an interval of unconsciousness resembling
sleep and then the man awakes in the Desire World. It not infrequently
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.
A cleavage takes place in the vital body (after death) similar to that
made by the process of initiation. So much of this vehicle as can be termed
"soul," coalesces with the higher vehicles and is the basis of consciousness
in the invisible worlds after death.
In leaving the vital body the process is much the same as when the dense
body is discarded. The life forces of one atom are taken, to be used as a
nucleus for the vital body of a future embodiment. Thus, upon his entrance
into the Desire World the man has the seed atoms of the dense and the vital
bodies, in addition to the desire body and the mind.
II. Causes of
Infant Mortality
It is often asked why children die. There are many causes. One is death
under the dreadful strain of accident, by fire, or on the battle field in a
previous life, for under such circumstances the departing Ego could not
properly concentrate upon the panoramic view of its past life. This is also
the case where loud lamentations of relatives hinder. The result is of
course a weak imprint of the life-experiences upon the desire body, with an
insipid purgatorial and First Heaven life.
In such cases the Ego does not reap what it has sown, and so it might
commit the same follies or sins life after life. To prevent such a
contingency the new desire body which the Ego gathers before its next birth
must be impressed with the needed lesson. The Ego is always unconscious on
its way to rebirth, blinded by the matter it draws around itself, as we
are blinded when we enter a house on a sunny day. Only after birth does
the consciousness return in a measure. Then, when by death it passes into
the First Heaven it is taught objectively in a different way the lesson
it should have learned on its outward passage in the former life. When
that lesson has been mastered and impressed upon the still unborn desire body
the Ego is reborn on Earth and goes on in the ordinary manner.
Children who died before the seventh year have been born only so far as
the dense and vital bodies are concerned and are not responsible to the Law
of Consequence. Even up to twelve or fourteen years the desire body is in
process of gestation, and as that which has not been quickened cannot die,
the dense and vital bodies alone go to decay when a child dies. It retains
its desire body and mind to the next birth. Therefore, it does not go
around the whole path which the Ego usually traverses in a life cycle, but
only ascends to the First Heaven to learn needed lessons, and after a wait
of from one to twenty years it is reborn, often in the same family as a
younger child.
Now, when the three and a half days immediately following death are spent
by the man under conditions of peace and quiet, he is able to concentrate
much more upon the etching of his past life, and the imprint upon his desire
body will be deeper than if he is disturbed by the hysterical lamentations
of his relatives or from other causes. He will then experience a much
keener feeling for either good or bad in Purgatory and in the First Heaven,
and in after lives that keen feeling will speak to him with no unmistakable
voice; but where the lamentations of relatives take away his attention, or
where a man passes out by an accident — perhaps in a crowded street, in a
train wreck, theater fire, or under other harrowing circumstances — there
will of course be no opportunity for him to concentrate properly. Neither
can he concentrate upon a battle field if he is slain there. Yet it would
not be just that he should lose the experiences of his life on account of
passing out in such an untoward manner, so the Law of Cause and Effect
provides a compensation.
We usually think that when a child is born it is born and that is the end
of it. However as during the period of gestation the dense body is shielded
from the impact of the outside world by being placed within the protecting
womb of the mother until it has arrived at sufficient maturity to meet the
outside conditions, so also are the vital body, desire body, and mind in a
state of gestation and are born at later periods because they have not had
as long an evolution behind them as the dense body. Therefore it takes a
longer time for them to arrive at a sufficient state of maturity to become
individualized. The vital body is born at the seventh year, when the period
of excessive growth marks its advent. The desire body is born at the time
of puberty, the fourteenth year, and the mind is born at twenty-one, when
the child is said to have become a man or woman — to have reached majority.
That which has not been quickened cannot die, so when a child dies before
the birth of the desire body it passes out into the invisible world in the
First Heaven. It cannot ascend into the Second and Third Heavens because
the mind and desire body are not born and cannot die. The Ego simply waits
in the First Heaven until a new opportunity for embodiment offers, and where
it has died in its previous life under the before-mentioned harrowing
circumstances (by accident or upon the battle field, or where the
lamentations of relatives rendered it impossible for it to gain as deep an
impression of the evil committed and the good accomplished as would have been
the case had it died in peace), it is instructed when it has died in the next
life as a child in the effects of passions and desires so that it learns the
lessons then which it should have learned in the purgatorial life had it
remained undisturbed. It is then reborn with the proper development of
conscience so that it may continue its evolution.
As in the past man has been exceedingly warlike and not at all careful of
the relatives who passed out at death, because of his ignorance, holding
wakes over those who had died in bed (which were few, perhaps, compared to
those who died on the battle field), there must necessarily be an enormous
amount of infant mortality. But as humanity arrives at a better understanding
and realizes that we are never so much our brother's keeper as when he is
passing out of this life, and that we can help him enormously by being quiet
and prayerful, so also will infant mortality cease to exist on such a large
scale as at present.
This is readily apparent as soon as we consider the gentle action of the
vital body and contrast it with that of the desire body in a fit of temper,
where it is said that a man has "lost control" of himself. Under such
conditions the muscles become tense, and nervous energy is expended at a
suicidal rate, so that after such an outbreak the body may sometimes be
prostrated for weeks. The hardest labor brings no such fatigue as a fit
of temper; likewise a child conceived in passion under the crystallizing
tendencies of the desire nature is naturally short-lived.
The desire body becomes the arbiter of man's destiny in Purgatory and the
First Heaven. The pains caused by expurgation of evil and the joy caused by
the contemplation of the good in life are carried over to the next life as
conscience to deter man from perpetuating the mistakes of past lives and to
entice him to do more abundantly that which caused him joy in the former
life.
When those next of kin to a dying person who are present in the death
chamber burst into hysterical lamentations at the time the Spirit passes
out, and keep that up for the next few days, the Spirit which is at that
time in exceedingly close touch with the Physical World will be much moved
by the grief of the dear ones, and will not be able to focus its attention
closely upon the contemplation of its past life. Thus the etching made in
the desire body will not be as deep as it would if the passing Spirit were
left in peace and undisturbed. Consequently the sufferings in Purgatory
will not be as keen nor will the pleasures in the First Heaven be as great
as otherwise. Therefore, when the Ego returns to Earth life, it will have
lost a certain part of the experience from the previous life. That is to
say, the voice of conscience will not speak with the same emphasis as would
have been the case had the Ego been left undisturbed by lamentations.
In order to compensate for this lack, the Ego is then usually brought to
birth among the same friends who lamented over it, and it is then taken away
from them while yet in the years of childhood. Then it enters the Desire
World, but since a little child has not committed any sins that need to be
expurgated its desire body and mind remain intact. It then goes directly
into the First Heaven to wait until a new embodiment offers, but this waiting
time is used to school it directly in the effect of the different emotions,
both good and evil. Often a relative meets it and takes it in charge,
having the task of teaching it that which it had lost through the
lamentation that person indulged in, or else it is taught by others. At any
rate, the loss is more than made up, so that when the child returns to the
second birth it will have as full a moral growth as it would have had under
ordinary circumstances had there been no lamentation at the time when it
passed out.
When a person passes out under untoward circumstances, such as a fire or a
railroad accident, or suddenly as by a fall from a building or a mountain, or
on a battle field, or when lamentations of relatives around the bedside of
the newly dead make it impossible for him to concentrate upon the life-
panorama, then the etching in the two higher ethers, the light and reflecting
ethers, and their amalgamation with the desire body does not take place.
Man does not then lose consciousness, and because there is no etching on the
finer vehicles such as is normally the case, he has no purgatorial
existence; that is to say, he does not reap what he has sown, there is no
suffering in consequence of his wrong-doings and no feeling of joy on account
of the good he has done. The fruitage of the life has been lost.
To offset this great disaster the Spirit on entering its next Earth life
is caused to die in childhood so far as the physical body is concerned, but
the vital body, the desire body, and mind, which do not ordinarily come to
birth until the dense body is seven, fourteen, and twenty-one years old,
respectively, remain with the passing Spirit, as that which has not been
quickened cannot die. Then in the First Heaven the Spirit stays from one to
twenty years, receiving such instructions and object lessons as will teach
it that which it would otherwise have learned by the accident which
terminated it. So it is reborn, ready to take its proper place on the path
of evolution.
In the Desire World it is easy to give object-lessons in the influence of
good and evil passions on conduct and happiness. These lessons are
indelibly imprinted upon the child's sensitive and emotional desire body, and
remain with it after rebirth, so that many a one living a noble life owes much
of it to the fact that he was given this training. Often when a weak Spirit
is born, the Compassionate Ones (the invisible Leaders who guide our
evolution) cause it to die in early life that it may have this extra training
to fit it for what may be perhaps a hard life. This seems to be the case
particularly where the etching on the desire body was weak in consequence of
a dying person having been disturbed by the lamentations of his relatives, or
because he met death by accident or on the battle field. He did not under
those circumstances experience the appropriate intensity of feeling in his
post-mortem existence. Therefore, when he is born and dies in early life,
the loss is made up as above. Often the duty of caring for such a child in
the heaven life falls to those who were the cause of the anomaly. They are
thus afforded a chance to make up for the fault and to learn better. Or
perhaps they become the parents of the one they harmed and care for it
during the few years it lives. It does not matter then if they do lament
hysterically over its death, because there would be no pictures of any
consequence in a child's vital body.
Reference: The Desire Body, by Max Heindel (1865-1919)
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