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_________________

Annie Besant

(1847 -1933)

The Seven Principles of Man

Annie Besant

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Subtle Forms of The

Fourth and Fifth Principle

The student will already have fully realised that "an astral body" is a loose term that may cover a variety of different forms. It may be well at this stage to sum up the subtle types sometimes inaccurately called the astral that belong to the fourth and fifth principles.

During life a true astral body may be projected – formed, as its name implies, of astral matter – but, unlike the etheric double, dowered with intelligence, and able to travel to a considerable distance from the physical body to which it belongs. This is the desire-body, and it is, as we have seen, a vehicle of consciousness. It is projected by mediums and sensitives unconsciously, and by trained students consciously.

It can travel with the speed of thought to a distant place, can there gather impressions from surrounding objects, can bring back those impressions to the physical body. In the case of a medium it can convey them to others by means of the physical body still entranced, but as a rule when the sensitive comes out of trance, the brain does not retain the impressions thus made upon it, and no trace is left in the memory of the experiences thus acquired.

Sometimes, but this is rare, the desire-body is able sufficiently to affect the brain by the vibrations it set up, to leave a lasting impression thereon, and then the sensitive is able to recall the knowledge acquired during trance. The student learns to impress on his brain the knowledge gained in the desire-body, his will being active while that of the medium is passive.

This desire-body is the agent unconsciously used by clairvoyants when their vision is not merely the seeing in the astral light. This astral form does then really travel to distant places, and may appear there to persons who are sensitive or who chance for the time to be in an abnormal nervous condition.

Sometimes it appears to them – when very faintly informed by consciousness – as a vaguely outlined form, not noticing its surroundings. Such a body has appeared near the time of death at places distant from the dying person, to those who were closely united to the dying by ties of the blood, of affection, or of

hatred. More highly energised, it will show intelligence and emotion, as in some cases on record, in which dying mothers have visited their children residing at a distance, and have spoken in their last moments of what they had seen and done.

The desire-body is also set free in many cases of disease – as is the etheric double – as well as in sleep and in trance. Inactivity of the physical body is a condition of such astral voyagings. The desire-body seems also occasionally to appear in séance-rooms, giving rise to some of the more intellectual phenomena that takes place.

It must not be confounded with the "spook" already sufficiently familiar to the reader, the latter being always the kâmic or Kâma-Manasic remains of some dead person, whereas the body we are now dealing with is the projection of an astral double from a living person.

A higher form of subtle body, belonging to Manas, is that known as the Mâyâvi Rûpa, or "body of illusion." The Mâyâvi Rûpa is a subtle body formed by the consciously directed will of the Adept or disciple; it may, or may not, resemble the physical body, the form given to it being suitable to the purpose for which it is projected.

In this body the full consciousness dwells, for it is merely the mental body rearranged. The Adept or disciple can thus travel at will, without the burden of the physical body, in the full exercise of every faculty, in perfect self-consciousness. He makes the Mâyâvi Rûpa visible of invisible at will – on the physical plane – and the phrase often used by chelâs and others as to seeing an Adept "in his astral," means that he was visited by them in his Mâyâvi Rûpa.

If he so chose, he can make it, indistinguishable from a physical body, warm and firm to the touch as well as visible, able to carry on a conversation, at all points like a physical human being. But the power thus to form the true Mâyâvi Rûpa is confined to Adepts and chelâs; it cannot be done by the untrained student, however psychic he may naturally be, for it is a manasic and not a psychic creation, and it is only under the instruction of his Guru that the chelâ learns to form and use the "body of illusion."

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