. The primitive man lives almost
exclusively in the physical world, spending only a few years in the astral
at the end of each of his physical lives. As he develops, the astral life
becomes longer, and as intellect: unfolds in him, and he becomes able to
think, he begins to spend a little time in the mental world as well. The
ordinary man of civilized races remains longer in the mental world than in
the physical and astral; indeed, the more a man evolves the longer becomes
his mental, life and the shorter his life in the astral world.

The astral life is the result of all feelings which have in them the
element of self. If they have been directly selfish, they bring him into
conditions of great unpleasantness in the astral world; if, though tinged
with thoughts of self, they have been good and kindly, they bring him a
comparatively pleasant though still limited astral life. Such of his
thoughts and feelings as have been entirely unselfish produce their results
in his life in the mental world; therefore that life in the mental, world
cannot be other than blissful. The astral life, which the man has made for
himself either miserable or comparatively joyous, corresponds to what
Christians call purgatory; the lower mental life, which is always entirely
happy, is what is called heaven.

Man makes for himself his own purgatory and heaven, and these are not
planes, but states of consciousness. Hell does not exist; it is only a
figment of the theological imagination; but a man who lives foolishly may
make for himself a very unpleasant and long enduring purgatory. Neither
purgatory nor heaven can ever be eternal, for a finite cause cannot produce
an infinite result. The variations in individual cases are so wide that to
give actual figures is somewhat misleading. If we take the average man of
what is called the lower middle class, the typical specimen of which would
be a small shopkeeper or shop-assistant, his average life in the astral
world would be perhaps about forty years, and the life in the mental world
about two hundred. The man of spirituality and culture, on the other hand,
may have perhaps twenty years of life in the astral world and a thousand in
the heaven life. One who is specially developed may reduce the astral life
to a few days or hours and spend fifteen hundred years in heaven.

Not only does the length of these periods vary greatly, but the conditions
in both worlds also differ widely. The matter of which all