This study of our subtle body is based on the works of Theosophical authors and noted clairvoyants, including H. P. Blavatsky, C. W. Leadbeater, and Annie Besant. The astral body is the vehicle of feelings and emotions seen by clairvoyants as an aura of flashing colors.
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Page 79
The nature of these faculties, and their connection with the various Chakrams in the astral body, we have already described in Chapter V. By means of the powers of astral matter itself, developed through the agency of the Chakrams, a man is enabled not only to receive vibrations from etheric matter, transmitted through the astral body to his mind, but also to receive impressions direct from the surrounding matter of the astral world, these, of course, being also similarly transmitted through the mental body to the real man within.
But in order to receive impressions in this manner direct from the astral world, the man must learn to focus his consciousness in his astral body, instead of, as is usually the case, in his physical brain.
In the lower types of men, Kâma, or desire, is still emphatically the most prominent feature, though the mental development has also proceeded to some extent. The consciousness of such men is centered in the lower part of the astral body, their life being governed by sensations connected with the physical plane. That is the reason why the astral body forms the most prominent part of the aura in the undeveloped man.
An ordinary man of our own race is also still living almost entirely in his sensations, although the higher astral is coming into play: but still, for him, the prominent question which guides his conduct is not what is right or reasonable to do, but simply what he himself desires to do. The more cultured and developed are beginning to govern desire by reason: that is to say, the centre of consciousness is gradually transferring itself from the higher astral to the lower mental. Slowly as the man progresses it moves up further still, and the man begins to be dominated by principle rather than by interest and desire.
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1926
Comb-bound, 8.5 x 11, 288 pages