ur visible
earth. It is therefore his vehicle of consciousness in the lowest of the
super-physical worlds, which is also the first world into which men pass
at death.

The fourth portion is the Mental Body, so called because man's
intellectual nature, so far as it deals with the concrete, functions in
this. It is his vehicle of consciousness in the second of the
super-physical worlds, which is also the second, or lower heavenly
world, into which men pass after death, when freed from the world
alluded to in the preceding paragraph.

These four portions of his encircling form, made up of the dual physical
body, the desire body, and the mental body, form the natural body of
which S. Paul speaks.

This scientific analysis has fallen out of the ordinary Christian
teaching, which is vague and confused on this matter. It is not that the
churches have never possessed it; on the contrary, this knowledge of the
constitution of man formed part of the teachings in the Lesser
Mysteries; the simple division into Spirit, Soul, and Body was exoteric,
the first rough and ready division given as a foundation. The
subdivision as regards the "Body" was made in the course of later
instruction, as a preliminary to the training by which the instructor
enabled his pupil to separate one vehicle from another, and to use each
as a vehicle of consciousness in its appropriate region.

This conception should be readily enough grasped. If a man wants to
travel on the solid earth, he uses as his vehicle a carriage or a train.
If he wants to travel on the liquid seas, he changes his vehicle, and
takes a ship. If he wants to travel in the air, he changes his vehicle
again and uses a balloon. He is the same man throughout, but he is using
three different vehicles, according to the kind of matter he wants to
travel in. The analogy is rough and inadequate, but it is not
misleading. When a man is busy in the physical world, his vehicle is the
physical body, and his consciousness works in and through that body.
When he passes into the world beyond the physical, in sleep and at
death, his vehicle is the desire body, and he may learn to use this
consciously, as he uses the physical consciously. He already uses it
unconsciously every day of his life when he is feeling and desiring, as
well as every night of his life. When he goes on into the heavenly world
after death, his vehicle is the mental body, and this also he is daily
using, when he is thinking, an