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This volume contains three books -
1. Vital Body
2.Desire Body
3. Archetype or Concrete Mental Body
The above boos are written by Max Heindel, the founder, and messenger of The Rosicrucian Fellowship.
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Vital Body+Desire Body+Archetype
Esotericist BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 MunichChapter I
This eBook is a guide and serves as a first guide. In addition, please get expert advice.
Chapter I
During Periods and Revolutions.......................................... 11
Chapter II
Chapter II
During
Epochs.................................................................... 21
PART II - MAN’S VITAL BODY IN PRESENT
ARYAN EPOCH
Chapter I
Chapter I
General Nature and Function .............................................. 31
Chapter II
Chapter II
In Health and Sickness........................................................ 57
Chapter III
Chapter III
In Sleep and Dreams........................................................... 81
Chapter IV
Chapter IV
At Death and in Invisible Worlds........................................ 92
Chapter V
Chapter V
On the Way to Rebirth...................................................... 120
Chapter VI
Chapter VI
Of
Children ...................................................................... 124
PART III - VITAL BODY OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS
Chapter I
Chapter I
General Nature and Function ............................................ 133
PART IV - RELATION OF VITAL BODY TO
SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT
Chapter I
Chapter I
An Important Factor ......................................................... 144
Chapter II
Chapter II
Effect of Prayer, Rituals, and Exercises............................. 159
Chapter III
Chapter III
Ancient
Initiation.............................................................. 169
Chapter IV
Chapter IV
Positive and Negative Development.................................. 174
PART V - THE VITAL BODY OF JESUS
Chapter I
Chapter I
As a Vehicle for the Christ................................................ 190
Bibliography ........................................................................... 197
INTRODUCTION
HE Rosicrucian Philosophy teaches that man is a Tthreefold Spirit, possessing a mind by means of which he governs a threefold body, which he emanated from himself to gather experience. This threefold body he transmutes into a threefold soul, upon which he nourishes himself from impotence to omnipotence. The Divine Spirit emanates from itself the dense body, extracting as pabulum the Conscious Soul; the Life Spirit emanates from itself the vital body, extracting as pabulum the Intellectual Soul; the Human Spirit emanates from itself the desire body, extracting as pabulum the Emotional Soul. The vital body is made of ether and pervades the visible body as ether permeates all other forms, except that human beings specialize a greater amount of the universal ether than other forms. That ethereal body is our instrument for specializing the vital energy of the Sun.
It is also taught in the Rosicrucian Philosophy that our evolutionary scheme is carried through five of the seven Worlds or states of matter (Physical, Desire, Thought, World of Life Spirit, and the World of Divine Spirit) in seven great Periods of Manifestation (Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan Periods), during which the Virgin Spirit, or evolving life, becomes first, a man—
then, a God. We are now in the fourth, or Earth Period, which is divided into seven Revolutions, as well as the following seven Epochs: the Polarian, Hyperborean, Lemurian, Atlantean, and Aryan Epochs, and the New
Galilee and the Kingdom of God yet to come. (See TheRosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, pages 177-364.) At the commencement of the Saturn Period twelve great Creative Hierarchies were active in the work of evolution. Two of these Hierarchies did some work to help at the very beginning . . . . . and then withdrew from limited existence into liberation. Three more of the Creative Hierarchies followed them at the beginning of the Earth Period: the Lords of Flame, the Cherubim, and the Seraphim, leaving seven Hierarchies in active service when the Earth Period began: the Lords of Wisdom, the Lords of Individuality, the Lords of Form, the Lords of Mind, the Archangels, the Angels, and the Virgin Spirits.
PART I
PAST EVOLUTION OF MAN’S VITAL BODY
Chapter I
DURING PERIODS AND REVOLUTIONS
The evolution of the vital body and the Life Spirit ofwhich it is a counterpart was started in the second or SunPeriod of the Seven Great Days of Manifestation. It hassince been reconstructed and will reach perfection in theJupiter Period. In a future stage mankind will no longerneed this vehicle, but nevertheless, its quintessence will beretained.
The Life Spirit and the vital body started their evolution in the Sun Period and are consequently the particular charges of the Son.
They (the Lords of Flame) had previously given the germ of the dense body and, in the first half of the Saturn Revolution of the Sun Period, were concerned with certain improvements to be made upon it.
In the Sun Period the formation of the vital body was to be commenced, with all thereby implied of capability for assimilation, growth, propagation, glands, etc.
The Lords of Flame incorporated in the germ of the dense body only the capability of evolving sense organs.
At the time now under consideration it became necessary 11
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THE VITAL BODY
to change the germ in such a way as to allow for interpenetration by a vital body, also capability of evolving glands and an alimentary canal. This was done by the joint action of the Lords of Flame, who gave the original germ, and the Lords of Wisdom, who took charge of material evolution in the Sun Period.
When the Lords of Flame and the Lords of Wisdom had, in the Saturn Revolution of the Sun Period, jointly reconstructed the germinal dense body, the Lords of Wisdom, in the Second Revolution, started the proper work of the Sun Period by radiating from their own bodies the germ of the vital body, making it capable of interpenetrating the dense body and giving to the germ the capability of furthering growth and propagation and of exciting the sense centers of the dense body and causing it to move. In short, they gave, germinally, to the vital body all the faculties which it is now unfolding to become a perfect and pliable instrument for the use of the Spirit.
We also note that, as the first, or Saturn Revolution, of any period is concerned with work in the dense body (because that was started in a first Revolution), so the second, or Sun Revolution, of any period is concerned with improvements on the vital body, because it was started in a second Revolution.
It may be said that in the Sun Period man went through the plant existence. He had a dense body and a vital body, as plants have, and his consciousness, like theirs, was that
DURING PERIODS AND REVOLUTIONS
13
of dreamless sleep.
Thus there were two classes, or kingdoms in the Sun Period, i.e., the stragglers of the Saturn Period, who were still mineral, and the pioneers of the Saturn Period, who were capable of receiving the germ of a vital body and becoming plant-like.
In the middle of the seventh Revolution of the Sun Period, the Lords of Wisdom took charge of the germinal Life Spirit given by the Cherubim in the sixth Revolution of the Sun Period. They did this for the purpose of linking it to the Divine Spirit. Their greatest activity in this work was reached in the Cosmic Night intervening between the Sun and the Moon Periods. In the first dawn of the Moon Period, as the life wave started upon its new pilgrimage, the Lords of Wisdom reappeared, bearing with them the germinal vehicles of the evolving man. In the first or Saturn Revolution of the Moon Period, they cooperated with the "Lords of Individuality," who had special charge of the material evolution of the Moon Period. Together, they reconstructed the germ of the dense body, brought over from the Sun Period. This germ had unfolded embryonic sense organs, digestive organs, glands, etc., and was interpenetrated by a budding vital body which diffused a certain degree of life into the embryonic dense body. Of course, it was not solid and visible as it is now, yet in a crude sort of way it was somewhat organized and is perfectly distinguishable to the trained clairvoyant sight of the competent investigator who searches the memory of nature for scenes in that far-off past.
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THE VITAL BODY
In the second, or Sun Revolution of the Moon Period, the vital body was modified to render it capable of being interpenetrated by the desire body, also of accommodating itself to the nervous system, muscle, skeleton, etc. The Lords of Wisdom, who were the originators of the vital body, also helped the Lords of Individuality with this work.
In the Sixth Revolution of the Moon Period the Cherubim reappeared and vivified the Life Spirit of those who had been left behind in the Sun Period but had since reached the necessary stage of development, and also in those stragglers of the Sun Period who had now evolved a vital body during their plant existence in the Moon Period.
The pioneers of the new Life Wave had been going through a low stage of plant existence; nevertheless the majority of them had evolved the vital body sufficiently to allow for the awakening of the Life Spirit.
Thus, the three last named all possessed the same vehicles at the beginning of the Earth Period, although only the two first named belong to our life wave and have a chance of even yet overtaking us if they pass the critical point which will come in the next Revolution of the Earth Period. Those who cannot pass that point will be held over until some future evolution reaches a stage where they can drop in and proceed with their development in a new human period. They will be debarred from going forward with our humanity because it will be advanced so far
DURING PERIODS AND REVOLUTIONS
15
beyond their status that it would prove a serious clog to our progress to drag them along. They will not be destroyed, but simply held in waiting for another period of evolution.
At the end of the Moon Period these classes possessed the vehicles as they are classified in Diagram 10 ( see page230 of the Cosmo-Conception), and started with them in the beginning of the Earth Period. During the time which has elapsed since then, the human kingdom has been evolving the link of mind, and has thereby attained full waking consciousness. The animals have obtained a desire body; the plants a vital body; the stragglers of the life wave which entered evolution in the Moon Period have escaped the hard and fast conditions of rock formation and now their dense bodies compose our softer soils; while the life wave that entered evolution here in the Earth Period forms the hard rocks and stones.
Thus we see that at the close of the Moon Period man possessed a threefold body in varying stages of development; and also the germ of the threefold Spirit. He had dense, vital, and desire bodies, and divine, life and human Spirit. All he lacked was the link to connect them.
Another creative Hierarchy had special care of the three germs of the dense, vital, and desire bodies as they were evolving. They were the ones who, under the direction of the higher orders, actually did the principal work on these bodies, using the evolving life as a kind of instrument. This Hierarchy is called the "Lords of Form."
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THE VITAL BODY
They were now evolved so far that they were given charge of the third aspect of the Spirit in man—the Human Spirit—in the coming Earth Period.
Let us, therefore, analyze the matter and see what we have the right to expect from one who lays claim to being a teacher. To do this we may first ask ourselves, What is the purpose of existence in the material universe? And we may answer that question by saying that it is evolution of consciousness. During the Saturn Period, when we were mineral-like in our constitution, our consciousness was like that of the medium expelled from her body by Spirit controls at a materializing seance, where a large part of the ethers composing the vital body has been removed. The physical body is then in a very deep trance. In the Sun Period, when our constitution was plant-like, our consciousness was like that of dreamless sleep, where the desire body, mind, and Spirit are outside, leaving the physical and vital bodies upon the bed. In the Moon Period, we had a picture consciousness like that which we have in dreams, where the desire body is only partially removed from the dense vehicle and the vital body. Here in the Earth Period our consciousness has been enlarged to cover objects outside ourselves by placing all our vehicles in a concentric position, as is the case when we are awake.
The Earth Period is preeminently the Period of Form, for here the form or matter side of evolution reaches its greatest and most pronounced state. Here Spirit is more helpless and suppressed and Form is the most dominant
DURING PERIODS AND REVOLUTIONS
17
factor—hence the prominence of the Lords of Form.
During this Revolution (the second or Sun Revolution of the Earth Period) the vital body was reconstructed to accommodate the germinal mind. The vital body was fashioned more in the likeness of the dense body, so that it could become fitted for use as the densest vehicle during the Jupiter Period, when the dense body will have become spiritualized.
The Angels, the humanity of the Moon Period, were aided by the Lords of Form in reconstruction. The organization of the vital body is now next in efficiency to the dense body. Some writers on this subject call the former a link, and contend that it is simply a mold of the dense body, and not a separate vehicle.
While not desiring to criticize, and admitting that this contention is justified by the fact that man, at his present stage of evolution, cannot ordinarily use the vital body as a separate vehicle—because it always remains with the dense body and to extract it in toto would cause the death of the dense body—yet there was a time when it was not so firmly incorporated with the latter, as we shall presently see.
During those epochs of our Earth’s history which have already been mentioned as the Lemurian and the Atlantean, man was involuntarily clairvoyant, and it was precisely this looseness of connection between the dense and the vital bodies that made him so. (The Initiators of that time helped the candidate to loosen the connection still further, as in the voluntary clairvoyant.)
Since then the vital body has become much more
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THE VITAL BODY
firmly interwoven with the dense body in the majority of people, but in all sensitives it is loose. It is that looseness which constitutes the difference between the psychic and the ordinary person who is unconscious of all but the vibrations contacted by means of the five senses. All human beings have to pass through this period of close connection of the vehicles and experience the consequent limitation of consciousness. There are, therefore, two classes of sensitives, those who have not become firmly enmeshed in matter, such as the majority of the Hindus, the Indians, etc., who possess a certain low grade of clairvoyance, or are sensitive to the sounds of nature, and those who are in the vanguard of evolution. The latter are emerging from the acme of materiality, and are again divisible into two kinds, one of which develops in a passive, weak-willed manner. By the help of others they re-awaken the solar plexus or other organs in connection with the involuntary nervous system. These are therefore involuntary clairvoyants, mediums who have no control of their faculty. They have retrograded. The other kind is made up of those who by their own wills, unfold the vibratory powers of organs now connected with the voluntary nervous system and thus become trained occultists, controlling their own bodies and exercising the clairvoyant faculty as they will to do. They are called voluntary or trained clairvoyants.
In the Jupiter Period the man will function in his vital body as he now does in his dense body; and as no development in nature is sudden, the process of separating
DURING PERIODS AND REVOLUTIONS
19
the two bodies has already commenced. The vital body will then attain a much higher degree of efficiency than the dense body of today. As it is a much more pliable vehicle, the Spirit will then be able to use it in a manner impossible of realization in the case of the present dense vehicle.
The vital body was started in the Second Revolution of the Sun Period, was reconstructed in the Moon and Earth Periods, and will reach perfection in the Jupiter Period, which is its fourth stage, as the Earth Period is the fourth stage for the dense body.
Nothing in Nature is wasted. In the Jupiter Period the forces of the dense body will be superimposed upon the completed vital body. That vehicle will then possess the powers of the dense body in addition to its own faculties, and will therefore be a much more valuable instrument for the expression of the threefold Spirit than if built from its own forces alone.
Similarly, Globe D of the Venus Period is located in the Desire World, hence neither a dense nor a vital body could be used as an instrument of consciousness. Therefore the essences of the perfected dense and vital bodies are incorporated in the completed desire body, the latter thus becoming a vehicle of transcendent qualities, marvelously adaptable and so responsive to the slightest wish of the indwelling Spirit that in our present limitations it is beyond our utmost conception.
Yet the efficiency of even this splendid vehicle will be
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THE VITAL BODY
transcended when in the Vulcan Period its essence, together with the essences of the dense and vital bodies, are added to the mind body, which becomes the highest of man’s vehicles, containing within itself the quintessence of all that was best in all the vehicles. The vehicle of the Venus Period being beyond our present power of conception, how much more so is that which will be at the service of the divine beings of the Vulcan Period!
Chapter II
DURING EPOCHS
The Polarian, Hyperborean, Lemurian, and AtlanteanEpochs were recapitulations of the stages through whichthe Virgin Spirits had passed. Consequently, the vital bodyunderwent changes during those epochs.
When man first came upon this earth the dense body was built in the Polarian Epoch, and was vitalized by the interpenetration of a vital body in the Hyperborean Epoch.
At that time man was like the Angels, male-female, a complete creative unit, able to create from himself, by projecting his whole creative force—which is love.
When the earth came out of chaos, it was at first in the dark red stage known as the Polarian Epoch. There humanity first evolved a dense body, not at all like our present vehicle, of course. When the condition of the earth became fiery, as in the Hyperborean Epoch, the vital body was added and man became plant-like, that is to say, he had the same vehicles as our plants have today, and also a similar consciousness, or rather, unconsciousness, to that which we have in dreamless sleep when the dense and vital bodies are left upon the bed.
21
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THE VITAL BODY
The Lords of Form appeared (in the Hyperborean Epoch) with the Angels (humanity of the Moon Period), and clothed man’s dense form with a vital body.
As the Polarian Epoch was really a recapitulation of the Saturn Period, it may be said that during that time man passed through the mineral state; he had the same vehicle—the dense body—and a consciousness similar to the trance state. For analogous reasons, the plant state was passed through in the Hyperborean Epoch, as man had a dense and a vital body and a dreamless-sleep consciousness.
By absorbing the crystalloids prepared by plants he evolved a vital body during the Hyperborean Epoch and became plant-like both in constitution and by nature, for he lived without exertion and as unconsciously as the plants.
In the second, or Hyperborean Epoch, a vital body made of ether was added, and man-in-the-making had then a body constituted as are those of the present plants; he was not a plant but was plantlike. Cain, the man of that time, is described as an agriculturist; his food was derived solely from vegetation, for plants contain more ether than any other structure.
Cain is described as an agriculturist. He symbolizes the man of the Second Epoch. He had a vital body like the plants which sustained him.
DURING EPOCHS
23
In the second or Hyperborean Epoch, God said: "Let there be Light," the hot gas became a luminous firemist as it was in the Sun Period, and man’s dense body was clothed with a vital body and it floated hither and thither above the fiery Earth as a large, baggy thing. Man was then plant-like because of having the same vehicles as the plant has now and the Angels were his helpers in organizing his vital body, and remain so to the present day.
This may seem an anomaly, as the Angels are the humanity of the Moon Period, where man got his desire body. But it is not, for only in the Moon Period did the evolving Earth condense into ether, such as now forms the substance of our vital body, and there the humanity (the present Angels), learned to build their densest bodies from etheric materials, as we are learning to build ours from the solids, liquids, and gases of the Chemical Region. They became experts at it, as we will be at building a dense body by the time the Earth Period is ended.
In the Polarian Epoch man had only a poorly organized dense body, hence he was as unconscious and immobile as the minerals, which are now so constituted. In the Hyperborean Epoch his dense body was clothed with a vital body, and the Spirit hovered outside. What the effect of such a nature is we may see by examining the plant, which is similarly constituted now.
There we see constant repetition, a building upward of stem and leaf in alternating succession, that would go on ad infinitum if there were no other influence. But as the plant has no separate desire body, the desire body of the
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THE VITAL BODY
Earth, the Desire World, hardens the plant and checks this intense upward growth in a measure. The creative force that cannot find its expression by making one particular plant grow taller, seeks another channel: it builds the flower and embeds itself in the seed, so that it may grow upward anew in another plant.
In the Hyperborean Epoch, where man was similarly situated, his vital body caused him to grow to an enormous size. Acted upon by the Desire World, he threw off spore-like seed which were either appropriated by another human Ego or used by the nature spirits to build bodies for the animals who were then beginning to emerge from Chaos.
(The highest life wave starts first at the opening of a period and returns last to Chaos; the succeeding life waves—
animal, plant, and mineral—emerge later and leave earlier.)
Thus, in the Hyperborean Epoch, when man was similar to the plants in constitution, his vital body built vertebrae upon vertebrae, and would have gone on if the individual desire body had not been given him in the Lemurian Epoch. That commenced to harden the structure and checked the tendency to grow taller, and as a result the cranium, the flower upon the stem of the spinal column, was incipiently formed.
Thwarted in its effort to build the one form taller, it became necessary for the creative force in the vital body to seek a new channel whereby it might continue its upward growth in another human being. Then man became hermaphrodite, capable of generating a new body from himself.
DURING EPOCHS
25
Then we come to the second, the Hyperborean Epoch, where man has a dense and a vital body; that was the plant stage. His food was the plants, and we hear of Cain as an agriculturist. Next comes the Lemurian Epoch, and man gets the desire body. He has three vehicles, like the animals.
Then we have that stage where he is to have food of a nature that will feed all three bodies. This he gets from living animals, as when Abel was a shepherd.
When we obtained our vital bodies in Hyperborea, the Sun, Moon, and Earth were still united, and the solar-lunar forces permeated each being in even measure so that all were able to perpetuate their kind by buds and spores as do certain plants of today. The efforts of the vital body to soften the dense vehicle and keep it alive were not then interfered with, and these primal, plantlike bodies lived for ages. But man was then unconscious and stationary like a plant; he made no effort or exertion. The addition of a desire body furnished incentive and desire, and consciousness resulted from the war between the vital body, which builds, and the desire body, which destroys the dense body.
Thus dissolution became only a question of time, particularly as the constructive energy of the vital body was also necessarily divided, one part or pole being used in the vital functions of the body, the other to replace a vehicle lost by death. But as the two poles of a magnet or dynamo are requisite to manifestation, so also two single-sexed beings became necessary for generation; thus
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THE VITAL BODY
marriage and birth were necessarily inaugurated to offset the effect of death. Death, then, is the price we pay for consciousness in the present world; marriage and repeated births are our weapons against the king of terrors until our constitution shall change and we become as angels.
The higher vehicles of the early Atlanteans were not drawn into a concentric position in relation to the dense body, as are ours. The Spirit was not quite an indwelling Spirit; it was partially outside, therefore could not control its vehicles with as great facility as though it dwelt entirely inside. The head of the vital body was outside of and held a position far above the physical head. There is a point between the eyebrows and about a half inch below the surface of the skin, which has a corresponding point in the vital body. This point is not the pituitary body, which lies much deeper in the head of the dense body. It might be called "the root of the nose." When these two points in the dense and the vital bodies come into correspondence, as they do in man today, the trained clairvoyant sees them as a black spot, or rather as a vacant space, like the invisible core of a gas flame. This is the seat of the indwelling Spirit in the man—the Holy of Holies in the temple of the human body, barred to all but that indwelling human Ego whose home it is. The trained clairvoyant can see with more or less distinctness, according to his capacity and training, all the different bodies which form the aura of man. This spot alone is hidden from him. This is the "Isis" whose veil none may lift. Not even the highest evolved being on earth is capable of unveiling the Ego of the humblest and least
DURING EPOCHS
27
developed creature. That, and that alone upon earth, is so sacred that it is absolutely safe from intrusion.
These two points just spoken of—the one in the dense body and its counterpart in the vital body—were far apart in the men of the early Atlantean days, as they are in the animals of our day. The head of the horse’s vital body is far outside the head of its dense body. The two points are closer together in the dog than in any other animal except, perhaps, the elephant. When they come into correspondence we have an animal prodigy, able to count, spell, etc.
On account of the distance between these two points, the Atlantean’s power of perception or vision was much keener in the inner worlds than in the dense Physical World, obscured by its atmosphere of thick, heavy fog. In the fullness of time, however, the atmosphere slowly became clearer; at the same time, the point spoken of in the vital body came closer and closer to the corresponding point in the dense body. As the two approached each other, man gradually lost touch with the inner worlds. They became dimmer as the dense Physical World became clearer in outline. Finally, in the last third of the Atlantean Epoch, the point in the vital body was united to the corresponding point in the dense body. Not until then did man become fully awake in the Physical World; but at the same time that full sight and perception in the Physical World were gained, the capability of perceiving the inner worlds was gradually lost to most of the people.
During the existence of this Race (the Original
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Semites) the atmosphere of Atlantis commenced to clear definitely, and the previously mentioned point in the vital body came into correspondence with its companion point in the dense body. This combination of events gave man the ability to see objects clearly with sharp well-defined contours; but it also resulted in loss of the sight pertaining to the inner worlds.
In the ages that have passed since the Lemurian Epoch humanity has been gradually building the cerebrospinal nervous system, which is under control of the will. In the latter part of the Atlantean Epoch, this was so far evolved that it became possible for the Ego to take full possession of the dense body. That was the time (previously described) when the point in the vital body came in correspondence with the point at the root of the nose in the dense body and the indwelling Spirit became awake in the Physical World but, so far as the greater part of humanity was concerned, lost consciousness of the inner worlds.
PART II
MAN’S VITAL BODY IN
PRESENT ARYAN EPOCH
Chapter I
GENERAL NATURE AND FUNCTION
Mankind is now evolving in the Aryan Epoch. His vitalbody has functions, color, form, atomic structure, andpolarity. Its existence can be proved.
We have seen that man is a very complex organism, consisting of:
(1) The dense body, which is his tool in action.
(2) The vital body, a medium of "vitality" which makes action possible.
(3) The desire body, whence comes desire and which compels action.
(4) The mind, a brake on impulse, giving purpose to action.
(5) The Ego, which acts and gathers experience from action.
The purpose of life is to transform the powers latent in the Ego into dynamic energy, whereby it may perfectly control its different vehicles and act as it pleases. We know that it does not have full sway now, or there would be no warfare in our breasts, as we say, between the Spirit and the flesh, but in reality, as we should say, between the Spirit and the desire body. It is this warfare that develops the spiritual muscle, as wrestling builds the physical 31
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muscle. It is easy to bid others do this and that, but to enforce obedience from oneself is the hardest task in the world, and it has been truly said that "the man who conquers himself is greater than he who takes a city."
Goethe, the great initiate poet, gives us the reason why in the lines:
From every pow’r that holds the world in chains, Man frees himself when self-control he gains.
In addition to the visible body of man which we see with our physical eyes, there are other and finer vehicles that are unseen by the great majority of mankind.
Nevertheless they are not superfluous appendages to the physical body, but are indeed much more important from the fact that they are the springs of all action. Without these finer vehicles the physical body would be inert, senseless, and dead.
The first of these vehicles we call the vital body because it is the avenue of vitality which leavens the dead lump of the mortal coil in the years of life, and gives us the power to move.
When our present visible body first germinated in the Spirit, it was a thought-form, but gradually it has become denser and more concrete until it is now a chemical crystallization. The vital body was next emanated by the Spirit as a thought-form and is in the third stage of concretion which is etheric.
Besides the dense body which is visible to all of us,
GENERAL NATURE AND FUNCTION
33
there are finer vehicles which interpenetrate this organism and which are the springs to its activities. One is the vital body, composed of ether and concerned in building the dense body by the food which we take into the system. It controls all the vital functions, such as respiration, digestion, assimilation, etc., and works through the sympathetic nervous system. Another, still finer vehicle, is called the desire body. This is the vehicle of our emotions, feelings, and desires which expends the energies stored in the dense body by the vital processes through control of the cerebrospinal or voluntary nervous system. In its activities this desire body is constantly destroying and breaking down tissue built up by the vital body and it is the war between these two vehicles which causes what we call consciousness in the Physical World. The etheric forces in the vital body act in such a manner that they convert as much of the food as possible into blood, and this is the highest expression of the vital body.
Propagation is a faculty of the vital body which is the shadow of the Life Spirit, the second aspect of the threefold Spirit in man.
Cherubim are described as having been put on guard with a flaming sword when man was driven out from Eden, lest he eat of the Tree of Life and become immortal, for they are the great creative Hierarchy which had charge over the Earth in the Sun Period, when the vital body germinated and the Life Spirit was awakened.
In our Bible there is a description of the first people
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THE VITAL BODY
upon earth. They are called Adam and Eve; but properly interpreted this means the human race, which gradually arrogated to itself the power of procreation and thereby became free agents. Humanity was thus given its freedom and made responsible to the Law of Consequence, for it had arrogated to itself the power to create new bodies, and was then separated from the Tree of Life and the state which we are now cognizant of as etheric. When we learn that we have a vital body made of ether, and that it is the tree of life to everyone of us and furnishes us the vitality whereby we are enabled to make the movements of the body, we may understand why the power to recreate and regenerate ourselves was taken away from us lest we learn how to vitalize the imperfect dense body; and we also see why, as stated in the Bible, there were placed at the gate of the Garden of Eden Cherubim with flaming swords to guard that region.
It was for a good purpose that this power was taken away. It was not through malice in order that man should suffer in sorrow and pain, but because it was only by repeated existences in an inferior body that we could learn to build for ourselves such a vehicle as would be fit to immortalize. Man gradually came down from the etheric state to the present solid condition. He could dwell in the etheric state as easily then as he can today dwell in the present three elements of the Physical World. In the past etheric state he contacted internally the life currents that we now contact unconsciously. He was then able to center the energy of the Sun in his body and draw it in a manner
GENERAL NATURE AND FUNCTION
35
different from that used at present. This power was gradually taken away from him as he entered the more solid state of the present.
That body of ours which is composed of ether is called the vital body in Western Mystery Schools, for, as we have already seen, ether is the avenue of ingress for vital force from the Sun and the field of agencies in nature which promote such vital activities as assimilation, growth, and propagation.
This vehicle is an exact counterpart of our visible body, molecule for molecule, and organ for organ, with one exception, which we shall note later. But it is slightly larger, extending about one and one-half inches beyond the periphery of our dense vehicle.
The spleen is the entrance gate of forces which vitalize the body. In the etheric counterpart of that organ solar energy is transmuted to vital fluid of a pale rose color.
From thence it spreads all over the nervous system, and after having been used in the body it radiates in streams, much as bristles protrude from a porcupine.
During the daytime the vital body specializes the colorless solar fluid which is all about us, through the organ we call the spleen. The vitality permeates the whole body and is seen by the clairvoyant as a fluid of a pale rose color, having been transmuted upon entering the physical body. It flows along every nerve, and when it is sent out by the brain centers in particularly large quantities it moves the muscles to which the nerves lead.
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During the waking state there is a constant war between the vital body and the desire body. The desires and impulses from the desire body are constantly impinging upon the dense body, impelling it to action, regardless of any damage resulting to the latter instrument, so that desire is gratified. It is the desire vehicle that urges the drunkard to fill his system with liquor, so that the chemical combustion of spirit may raise the vibrations of the dense body to such a pitch as to make it the willing tool of every mad impulse, wasting its stored energy with reckless prodigality. The vital body, on the other hand, has no other interest than the preservation of the dense vehicle.
By way of the spleen it specializes the colorless solar energy which pervades space, and by some strange chemical process transforms it into a vital fluid of a beautiful pale rose color, sending it along every nerve and fiber of the body. The vital body ever aims to husband the energy it has stored in the dense body. It is constantly concerned in rebuilding the tissues when they are broken down and destroyed by the powerful onslaughts of the rampant desire body.
Four of these colors are quite indescribable, but the fifth—the middle one of the five—is similar to the tint of a new blown peach blossom. It is in fact the color of the vital body.
Man’s dense and vital bodies have straightened, but his higher vehicles still retain their ovoid form.
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It has been determined by physical science that the atoms in our dense body are constantly changing so that all the material which composes our present vehicle at this moment will have disappeared in a few years, but it is common knowledge that scars and other blemishes perpetuate themselves from childhood to old age. The reason for this is that the prismatic ether atoms which compose our vital body remain unchanged from the cradle to the grave. They are always in the same relative position—that is to say, the prismatic ether atoms which vibrate the physical atoms in the toes or in the fingers do not get to the hands, legs, or any other part of the body, but remain in exactly the same place where they were placed in the beginning. A lesion of the physical atoms involves a similar impression on the prismatic ether atoms. The new physical matter molded over them continues to take on shape and texture similar to those which originally obtained.
The foregoing remarks apply only to the prismatic ether atoms which correspond to solids and liquids in the Physical World, because they assume a certain definite shape which they preserve. But in addition each human being at this stage of evolution has a certain amount of the light and reflecting ethers, which are the vehicles of sense perception and memory, intermingled in his vital body. We may say that the light ether corresponds to the gases in our Physical World; perhaps the best description that can be given of the reflecting ether is to call it hyper-etheric. It is a vacuous substance of a bluish color resembling in
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THE VITAL BODY
appearance the blue core of a gas flame. It appears transparent and seems to reveal everything that is within it, but nevertheless it hides all the secrets of nature and humanity. In it is found one record of the Memory of Nature.
The light and reflecting ethers are of an exactly opposite nature to that of the stationary prismatic ethers atoms. They are volatile and migratory. However much or little a man possesses of this material, it is an accretion, a fruitage, derived from his experiences in life. Inside the body it mingles with the blood stream and when it has grown by service and sacrifice in life’s school so that it can no longer be contained within the body, it is seen on the outside as a soul body of gold and blue. Blue shows the highest type of spirituality, therefore it is smallest in volume and may be compared to the blue core of the gas flame, while the golden hue forms the larger part and corresponds to the yellow light which surrounds the core in the gas ring. The blue color does not appear outside the dense body save in the very greatest of saints—only yellow is usually observable there. At death this part of the vital body is etched into the desire body with the life panorama which it contains. The quintessence of all our life experience is then eventually impressed upon the seed atom as conscience or virtue which urges us to avoid evil and to do good in a coming life.
When we analyze the human being, we find that in him all four ethers are dynamically active in the highly
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organized vital body. By means of the activities of the chemical ether he is able to assimilate food and to grow; the forces at work in the life ether enable him to propagate his species; the forces in the light ether supply the dense body with heat, work on the nervous system and the muscles, thus opening the doors of communication with the outside world by way of the senses; and the reflecting ether enables the Spirit to control its vehicles by means of thought. This ether also stores past experience as memory.
The vital body of plant, animal, and man, extends beyond the periphery of the dense body as the Etheric Region, which is the vital body of the planet, extends beyond its dense part, showing again the truth of the Hermetic axiom "as above, so below." The distance of this extension of the vital body of man is about an inch and a half. The part which is outside the dense body is very luminous and about the color of a new-blown peach blossom. It is often seen by persons having very slight involuntary clairvoyance. The writer has found, when speaking with such persons, that they frequently are not aware that they see anything unusual and do not know what they see.
The dense body is built into the matrix of this vital body during antenatal life, and with one exception, it is an exact copy, molecule for molecule, of the vital body. As the lines of force in freezing water are the avenues of formation for ice crystals, so the lines of force in the vital body determine the shape of the dense body. All through life the vital body is the builder and restorer of the dense form. Were it not for the etheric heart the dense heart
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THE VITAL BODY
would break quickly under the constant strain we put upon it. All the abuses to which we subject the dense body are counteracted, so far as lies in its power, by the vital body, which is continually fighting against the death of the dense body.
The exception mentioned above is that the vital body of a man is female or negative, while that of a woman is male or positive. In that fact we have the key to numerous puzzling problems of life. That woman gives way to her emotions is due to the polarity noted, for her positive vital body generates an excess of blood and causes her to labor under an enormous internal pressure that would break the physical casement were not a safety valve provided in the periodical flow, and another in the tears which relieve the pressure on special occasions—for tears are "white bleeding."
Man may have and has as strong emotions as woman, but he is usually able to suppress them without tears, because his negative vital body does not generate more blood than he can comfortably control.
Unlike the higher vehicles of humanity, the vital body does not ordinarily leave the dense body until the death of the latter. Then the chemical forces of the dense body are no longer held in check by the evolving life. They proceed to restore the matter to its primordial condition by disintegration so that it may be available for the formation of other forms in the economy of nature. Disintegration is thus due to the activity of the planetary forces in the chemical ether.
In texture the vital body may be crudely compared to
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one of those picture frames made of hundreds of little pieces of wood which interlock and present innumerable points to the observer. The vital body presents millions of points to the observer. These points enter into the hollow centers of the dense atoms, imbuing them with vital force that sets them vibrating at a rate higher than that of the mineral of the earth which is not thus accelerated and ensouled.
