he result of its experiences; and at its end, when the physical body is
worn out, he reverses the process of descent and lays aside one by one the
temporary vehicles which he has assumed. The first to go is the physical
body, and when that is dropped, his life is centred in the astral world and
he lives in his astral body.

The length of his stay in that world depends upon the amount of passion and
emotion which he has developed within himself in his physical life. If
there is much of these, the astral body is strongly vitalized, and will
persist for a long time; if there is but little, the astral body has less
vitality, and he will soon be able to cast that vehicle aside in turn. When
that is done he finds himself living in his mental body. The strength of
that depends upon the nature of the thoughts to which he has habituated
himself, and usually his stay at this level is a long one. At last it comes
to an end, and he casts aside the mental body in turn, and is once more the
ego in his own world.

Owing to lack of development, he is as yet but partially conscious in that
world; the vibrations of its matter are too rapid to make any impression
upon him, just as the ultra-violet rays are too rapid to make any
impression upon our eyes. After a rest there, he feels the desire to
descend to a level where the undulations are perceptible to him, in order
that he may feel himself to be fully alive; so he repeats the process of
descent into denser matter, and assumes once more a mental, an astral and a
physical body. As his previous bodies have all disintegrated, each in its
tarn, these new vehicles are entirely distinct from them, and thus it
happens that in his physical life he has no recollection whatever of other
similar lives which have preceded it.

When functioning in this physical world he remembers by means of his mental
body; but since that is a new one, assumed only for this birth, it
naturally cannot contain the memory of previous births in which it had no
part. The man himself, the ego, does remember them all when in his own
world, and occasionally some partial recollection of them or influence from
them filters through into his lower vehicles. He does not usually, in his
physical life, remember the experiences of earlier lives, but he does
manifest in physical life the qualities which those experiences have
developed in him. Each man is therefore exactly what he has made himself
during those past lives; if he ha