The Astral Body And Other Astral Phenomena

Size of Astral Body

• In an average moral and intellectual man the astral body is considerably larger, extending about 18 inches on each side of the body.

Astral Aura

• That portion of the astral body which extends beyond the limits of the physical body is usually termed the astral "aura."
• Intense feeling means a large aura. The aura of the Buddha is said to have been three miles in radius.

Functions of astral body

• To make sensation possible.
• To serve as a bridge between mind and physical matter.
• To act as an independent vehicle of consciousness and action.

Astral body can be used as an independent vehicle of consciousness.

1. During ordinary waking consciousness
2. During sleep
3. To develop the powers of the astral body that a man may consciously and deliberately, at any time that he chooses, leave the physical body and pass with unbroken consciousness into the astral body.
4. After physical death the consciousness withdraws itself into the astral body.

Invisible Helpers

• An immense amount of work is also done for the living by putting good thoughts into the minds of those, who are ready to receive them.
• Qualifications needed by one who aspires to be a helper:

1. Single-mindedness,
2. Self-Control.
3. Calmness.
4. Knowledge.
5. Love.

Thought-Forms

• A pure heart and mind are the best protection against inimical assaults of feeling and thought.
• Meditation upon a Master makes a link with Him, which shows itself to clairvoyant vision as a kind of line of light. The Master always subconsciously feels the impinging of such a line, and sends out along it in response a steady stream of magnetism which continues to play long after the meditation is over. Regularity in such meditation is a very important factor
• An Indian teacher not only may prescribe for his pupil special kinds of exercises or study, in order to purify, strengthen and develop the astral body, but also by keeping the pupil in his neighbourhood physically seeks by this close association to harmonise and attune the pupil's vehicles to his own.
• The power of the united thought of a number of people is always far more than the sum of their separate thoughts: it would be more nearly represented by their product.
• Accuracy in thought is essential, but it should be attained not by hurry or fuss but by perfect calmness.

Physical Life

• Foods which tend to growth, such as grain and fruits, are sâtvic, or rhythmic, being the most highly vitalised and suitable for building up a body sensitive and at the same time strong.
• Ocean, mountain, forest, waterfall, each has its own special type of life, astral and etheric as well as visible, and therefore its own set of influences. Many of these unseen entities are pouring out vitality, and in any case their effect on etheric, astral and mental bodies is likely to be healthy and desirable in the long run, though a change may be somewhat tiring at the time. Hence an occasional change from town to country is beneficial on the ground of emotional as well as physical health.
• Gums chosen for incense give out radiations favourable to spiritual and devotional thought, and do not harmonise with any form of disturbance or worry. 
• The astral body slowly but constantly wears away, precisely as does the physical, the particles which fall away are replaced by others from the surrounding atmosphere.

Emotional Life

• As finer matter is more easily moved than coarse, it follows that a given amount of force spent in good thought or feeling produces perhaps a hundred times as much result as the same amount of force sent out into coarser matter.
• The effect of 10% of force directed to good ends enormously outweighs that of 90% devoted to selfish purposes, and so on the whole such a man makes an appreciable advance from life to life.
• The consciousness of man can be focused in only one vehicle at a time, though he may be simultaneously conscious through the others in a vague way.

Sleep Life

• Every one should determine each night to do something useful on the astral plane: 

1. to comfort some one in trouble: 
2. to use the will to pour strength into a friend who is weak or ill:
3. to calm some one who is excited or hysterical: 
4. or to perform some similar service.

• Occasionally, but rarely, the astral body is able to make a lasting impression on the brain, so that the medium is able to recollect the knowledge acquired during trance.
• One day, the man will find himself slipping out of the physical body while he is wide awake, and without any break in consciousness he discovers himself to be free.
• A man who has thus acquired complete mastery over the astral body may, of course, leave the physical body, not only during sleep, but at any time he chooses, and go to a distant place, etc

After-Death Life 

• His desires and emotions still persist, and consequently, owing to the readiness with which astral matter obeys his desires and thoughts, the forms surrounding him will be very largely the expression of his own feelings, the nature of which mainly determines whether his life is one of happiness or of discomfort.

The Fourth Dimension

• It seems certain that the astral world is four-dimensional, the mental five-dimensional, and the buddhic six dimensional.
• Astral phenomena as they appear to us living in the physical or three-dimensional world. Thus: 

1. Objects, by being lifted through the third dimension, could be made to appear in or disappear from the two-dimensional world at will.
2. An object completely surrounded by a line could be lifted out of the enclosed space through the third dimension.
3. By bending a two-dimensional world, represented by a sheet of paper, two distant points could be brought together, or even made to coincide, thus destroying the two-dimensional conception of distance.
4. A right-handed object could be turned over through the third dimension and made to re-appear as a left-handed object. 
5. By looking down, from the third dimension, on to a two-dimensional object, every point of the latter could be seen at once, and free from the distortion of perspective.

• Time is not in reality the fourth dimension at all
• Levitation, a method of neutralising or even reversing the force of gravity, was used in raising some of the air-ships of ancient India and Atlantis, and it is not improbable that a similar method was employed in constructing the Pyramids and Stonehenge.

Spiritualism

• No teaching from a self-appointed preceptor on the astral plane should be blindly accepted: all communications and advice which comes thence should be received precisely as one would receive similar advice on the physical plane. Teaching should be taken for what it is worth, after examination by conscience and intellect.
• What the average person can do on the astral plane after death he can do in physical life: communications may be as readily obtained by writing, in trance, or by utilising the developed and trained powers of the astral body, from embodied as from disembodied persons. In this manner knowledge may be safely accumulated and evolution accelerated.

Astral Death

• The exit from the astral body and the astral plane is thus a second death, the man leaving behind him an astral corpse which, in its turn, disintegrates, its materials being restored to the astral world, just as the materials of the physical body are returned to the physical world.

Re-Birth

• Each incarnation is inevitably, automatically, and justly linked with the preceding lives, so that the whole series forms a continuous, unbroken chain.
• It is only the clairvoyant who knows how enormously and how rapidly child characters would improve if only adult characters were better.

Mastery of Emotions

• All manifested existence may be analysed into the Self, the Not-Self, and the Relationship between these two.
• That Relationship may be divided into 

1. Cognition (Gnyânam): 
2. Desire (Ichchâ):  
3. Action (Kriyâ). To know, to desire, and to endeavour or act — those three comprise the whole of conscious life.

• High, pure and unselfish affection can never be transcended, since it is a characteristic of the Logos Himself, and is a necessary qualification for progress upon the Path which leads to the Masters and to Initiation. 

Development of Astral Powers

• Both the physical and the astral body must first be purified, by breaking the bonds of evil habits in eating, drinking, giving way to hate emotions of all kinds, etc.
• The attainment of astral powers as an end in itself inevitably leads to what is called in the East the laukika method of development: the powers obtained are only for the present personality and, there being no safeguards, the student is extremely likely to misuse them. 
• To this class belong the practices of Hatha Yoga, prânayama or breath-control, invocation of elementals, and all systems which involve deadening the physical senses in some way, actively by drugs (e.g., bhang, haschish, etc.), by self-hypnotisation, or, as among the dervishes, by whirling in a mad dance of religious fervour until vertigo and insensibility supervene: or passively by being mesmerised — so that the astral senses may come to the surface. 
• Other methods are crystal-gazing (which leads to nothing but the lowest type of clairvoyance), the repetition of invocations, or the use of charms or ceremonies.
• Medium, abdicates control over his own bodies in favour of another entity. Mediumship is thus not a power but a condition.
• Some people only once in their whole lives become sensitive enough to experience the presence of an astral entity or some astral phenomenon. Others find themselves with increasing frequency seeing and hearing things to which others are blind and deaf : others again begin to recollect their sleep-experiences.
• By means of meditation extreme sensitiveness can be developed, and at the same time perfect balance, sanity and health.

Clairvoyance in Space and Time

• Clairvoyance enables the seer to perceive events that have happened in the past. 
• There are many degrees of this power, from the trained man who can consult the Akâshic Records for himself at will, down to the person who gets occasional glimpses only.

Discipleship

• This pupil is taken into his Master's consciousness to so great an extent that whatever the pupil feels or thinks is within the astral and mental bodies of his Master.
• When the pupil sends a thought of devotion to his Master, it is as though a valve were opened: there is a tremendous downflow of love and power from the Master, the Master's power flowing ever outwards and in all directions like the sunlight.

- The Astral Body And Other Astral Phenomena

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