re astral vision.

It will save the student much trouble if he learns at once to regard
these auras not as mere emanations, but as the actual manifestation of
the Ego on their respective planes--if he understands that it is the
auric egg which is the real man, not the physical body which on this
plane crystallizes in the middle of it. So long as the reincarnating
Ego remains upon the plane which is his true home in the arupa levels
of Devachan, the body which he inhabits is the Karana Sharira, but
when he descends into the rupa levels he must, in order to be able to
function upon them, clothe himself in their matter; and the matter
that he thus attracts to himself furnishes his devachanic or
mind-body. Similarly, descending into the astral plane he forms his
astral or kamic body out of its matter, though of course still
retaining all the other bodies, and on his still further descent to
this lowest plane of all the physical body is formed in the midst of
the auric egg, which thus contains the entire man. Fuller accounts of
these auras will be found in _Transaction_ No. 18 of the London Lodge,
and in a recent article of mine in _The Theosophist_, but enough has
been said here to show that as they all occupy the same space (which
by the way they share also with the physical health-aura), the finer
interpenetrating the grosser, it needs careful study and much
practice to enable the neophyte to distinguish clearly at a glance the
one from the other. Nevertheless the human aura, or more usually some
one part of it only, is not infrequently one of the first purely
astral objects seen by the untrained, though in such a case its
indications are naturally very likely to be misunderstood.

Though the kamic aura from the brilliancy of its flashes of colour may
often be more conspicuous, the nerve-ether and the etheric double are
really of a much denser order of matter, being strictly speaking
within the limits of the physical plane, though invisible to ordinary
sight. It has been the custom in Theosophical literature to describe
the Linga Sharira as the astral counterpart of the human body, the
word "astral" having been usually applied to everything beyond the
cognition of our physical senses. As closer investigation enables us
to be more precise in the use of our terms, however, we find ourselves
compelled to admit much of this invisible matter as purely physical,
and therefore to define the Linga Sharira no longer as the astral