nscious or unconscious
relation, according to its degree of development, with the two
corresponding planes, lives there generally for a short time, and is
directed to a mother's womb, in which is created the visible body of
flesh within the centre of its astral body.

This force of atomic attraction has its centre in the causal body, a
kind of sensitive plate on which are registered all those vibrations
which disturb or affect human vehicles during incarnation. This body is,
in effect, the present abode of the soul, it represents the terminal
point of human consciousness,[67] the real centre of man.[68] It
receives all the impressions of the plane on which it finds itself, as
well as those which come to it from the lower planes, and responds to
them the more readily as it has now attained a fuller development. It
possesses the power to attract and to repel; a microcosm, it has its
outbreathing and inbreathing, as has the Macrocosm; like Brahma, it
creates its bodies and destroys them, although in the vast majority of
mankind it exercises this power more or less unconsciously and under the
irresistible impulsion of the force of evolution--the divine Will. When
it attracts, it causes to recur within itself the vibrations it has
received and registered--like a phonographic roll--during the past
incarnations; these vibrations reverberate in the outer world, and
certain of them attract from this world[69]--in this case the mental
world--the atoms capable of responding to them. When they have created
the mental body, other vibrations can be transmitted through this body
to the astral world and attract atoms which will form the body bearing
the same name--the astral--and finally other vibrations, making use of
these two bodies as a means of transmission, will affect the physical
plane and attract atoms which will assist in the building up of the
denser body.

Everywhere the formative power of vibration is guided by cosmic
intelligence, but it is effected far more easily in the reconstruction
of the higher bodies, that precedes incarnation properly so-called,
than in the creation of the now physical body. Indeed, in the astral
and mental bodies, nothing is produced but an atomic mass, the many
elements of which will be aggregated into complete organisms only
during incarnation properly so-called, whilst the construction of the
visible body admits of a mass of extremely delicate and important
details. It is for this reason tha