hic--is always built up by consciousness
working in the plane next above it; the next plane, or world, is a
world very much more "next" than you are next each other sitting
here--not far away beyond the stars, removed by great spaces. It is
interpenetrating you in every portion of your being. It is only "next"
in the sense that the solids, liquids, and gases of your bodies are
next each other in the body--not far away, but here. So that the
working is of the closest and most intimate kind. Some of you who are
students of Theosophical literature will remember that H.P.B. has
spoken of all of us as working in the astral consciousness. You will
see that you are not working with a physical consciousness in the
literal sense of the term, if you think for a moment. How much do you
know of the consciousness working in the various cells and tissues of
your physical body? Practically nothing, except when you are ill. Only
when the body is disorganised do you become conscious of that working.
Normally, the motion of your blood, the building up by assimilation
of your muscles and nerves, the life of your cells, the protective
action of some of the living cells in your body--the "devourers," as
they are called--go on without your knowledge, without your thought,
without your giving one moment's conscious attention to them. In the
Perfect Man, the consciousness of all this is ever present, but in us,
imperfect, it is not; we are not yet sufficiently vitalised and
unfolded to carry on the whole of our consciousness, with full
awareness of all its activities. We are only able to manage a very
small part of it, and so have let go the consciousness that keeps at
work the physical body, to concentrate ourselves in a higher world,
and utilise the nervous mechanism as the apparatus of our thinking.
That law obtains, then, all through. If you want to organise and build
up your astral body, you can only do it from the mental plane. You
must raise your thought to a higher power by concentration, by regular
meditation, by deliberately working on the consciousness, before you
can raise it to that power from which it shall be able to organise
your astral body, as it has already organised your physical body. That
is the reason why meditation is necessary in all these things; because
without the creative power of thought we cannot organise the body in
the world which is nearest to the physical.

Now, supposing that we recognise that our consciousn