to have a large area of the blue
permanently existing in his astral body.
When the rush of devotional _feeling_ comes over him, it is usually
accompanied by _thoughts_ of devotion. Although primarily formed in the
mental body, these draw round themselves a large amount of astral matter as
well, so that their action is in both worlds. In both worlds also is the
radiation which was previously described, so that the devotional man is a
centre of devotion, and will influence other people to share both his
thoughts and his feelings. The same is true in the case of affection,
anger, depression--and, indeed, of all other feelings.
The flood of emotion does not itself greatly affect the mental body,
although for a time it may render it almost impossible for any activity
from that mental body to come through into the physical brain. That is not
because that body itself is affected, but because the astral body, which
acts as a bridge between it and the physical brain, is vibrating so
entirely at one rate as to be incapable of conveying any undulation which
is not in harmony with that.
The permanent colours of the astral body react upon, the mental. They
produce in it their correspondences, several octaves higher, in the same
manner as a musical note produces overtones. The mental body in its turn
reacts upon the causal in the same way, and thus all the good qualities
expressed in the lower vehicles by degrees establish themselves permanently
in the ego. The evil qualities cannot do so, as the rates of vibrations
which express them are impossible for the higher mental matter of which the
causal body is constructed.
So far, we have described vehicles which are the expression of the ego in
their respective worlds--vehicles, which he provides for himself; in the
physical world we come to a vehicle which is provided for him by Nature
under laws which will be later explained--which though also in some sense
an expression of him, is by no means a perfect manifestation. In ordinary
life we see only a small part of this physical body--only that which is
built of the solid and liquid subdivisions of physical matter. The body
contains matter of all the seven subdivisions, and all of them play their
part in its life and are of equal importance, to it.
We usually speak of the invisible part of the physical body as the etheric
double; "double" because it exactly reproduces the size and shape of the
part of the body that we can see, an
|