ossible for us to tell
at this stage what we shall find ourselves able to do when, after many
lives of patient striving, we have earned the right to choose our own
future; and indeed, even those who "yield to the temptation to become
gods," have a sufficiently glorious career before them, as will
presently be seen. To avoid possible misunderstanding it may be
mentioned _par parenthese_ that there is another and entirely evil
sense sometimes attached in the books to this phrase of "becoming a
god," but in that form it certainly could never be any kind of
"temptation" to the developed man, and in any case it is altogether
foreign to our present subject.

In oriental literature this word "Deva" is frequently used vaguely to
mean almost any kind of non-human entity, so that it would often
include DHYAN CHOHANS on the one hand and nature-spirits and
artificial elementals on the other. Here, however, its use will be
restricted to the magnificent evolution which we are now considering.
Though connected with this earth, the Devas are by no means confined
to it, for the whole of our present chain of seven worlds is as one
world to them, their evolution being through a grand system of seven
chains. Their hosts have hitherto been recruited chiefly from other
humanities in the solar system, some lower and some higher than ours,
since but a very small portion of our own has as yet reached the level
at which for us it is possible to join them; but it seems certain that
some of their very numerous classes have not passed in their upward
progress through any humanity at all comparable to ours. It is not
possible for us at present to understand very much about them, but it
is clear that what may be described as the aim of their evolution is
considerably higher than ours; that is to say, while the object of our
human evolution is to raise the successful portion of humanity to a
certain degree of occult development by the end of the seventh round,
the object of the Deva evolution is to raise their foremost rank to a
very much higher level in the corresponding period. For them, as for
us, a steeper but shorter path to still more sublime heights lies open
to earnest endeavour; but what those heights may be in their case we
can only conjecture.

It is of course only the lower fringe of this august body that need be
mentioned in connection with our subject of the astral plane. Their
three lower great divisions (beginning from the bottom) ar