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  1. Phase Two:  The "rejection" (as it is sometimes called) of the mental-emotional vehicles. These form, in reality, only one body; to it the early theosophists gave the name of the "kama-manasic body" or the vehicle of desire-mind. I have said elsewhere that there is no such thing as the Astral plane or the Astral body. Just as the physical body is made up of matter which is not regarded as a principle, so the Astral body—as far as the mind nature is concerned—is in the same category. This is a difficult matter for you to grasp because desire and emotion are so real and so Devastatingly important. But— speaking literally—from the angle of the Mental plane, the Astral body is "a figment of the imagination"; it is not a principle. The massed use of the imagination in the service of desire has nevertheless constructed an illusory glamorous world, the world of the Astral plane. During physical incarnation, and when a man is not upon the Path of Discipleship, the Astral plane is very real, with a vitality and a life all its own. After the first death (the death of the physical body) it still remains equally real. But its potency slowly dies out: the mental man comes to realize his own true state of consciousness (whether developed or undeveloped), and the second death becomes possible and takes place. This phase covers the Process of Elimination.

When these two phases of the Art of Dying are over, the discarnate Soul stands free from the control of matter; it is purified (temporarily by the phases of Restitution and Elimination) from all contamination by substance. This is achieved, not through any activity of the Soul in form, the human Soul, but as a result of the activity of the Soul on its own plane abstracting the fraction of itself which we call the human Soul. It is primarily the work of the overshadowing Soul which effects this; it is not carried forward by the Soul in the personality.

The human Soul, during this stage, is only responsive to the pull or the attractive force of the Spiritual Soul as it—with deliberate intent—extracts the human Soul from its imprisoning sheaths. Later on, as the evolutionary processes proceed and the Soul increasingly controls the personality, it will be the Soul within the imprisoning sheaths which will bring about— consciously and with intention—the phases of dying. In the earlier stages, this release will be brought about with the aid of the overshadowing Spiritual Soul. Later on, when the man is living upon the Physical plane as the Soul, he will himself—with full continuity of consciousness—carry out the processes if abstraction, and will then (with directed purpose) "ascend to the place from whence he came." This is the reflection in the three worlds of the divine ascension of the perfected Son of God.

EXCERPTS ON DEATH FROM OTHER WRITINGS

The process of death is occultly as follows:

  1.  The first stage is the withdrawal of the life force in the Etheric vehicle from the dense physical body and the consequent "falling into corruption" and becoming "scattered to the elements." Objective man fades out and is no more seen by the physical eye, though still in his Etheric body. When Etheric vision is developed, the thought of death will assume very different proportions. When a man can be seen functioning in his Etheric physical body by a majority of the race, the dropping of the dense body will be considered just as a release.

  1.  The second stage is the withdrawal of the life force from the Etheric body, and its devitalisation.

  1.  The third stage is the withdrawal of the life force from the Astral or emotional form so that it disintegrates in a similar manner and the life is centralised elsewhere. It has gained an increase of vitality through Physical plane existence and added colour through emotional experience.

  1.  The final stage for the human being is its withdrawal from the mental vehicle. The life forces after this fourfold abstraction are centralised entirely in the Soul.

The Law of Attraction breaks up the forms and draws back to primal sources the material of those forms, prior to rebuilding them anew. On the path of evolution the effects of this law are well-known, not only in the destruction of discarded vehicles, but in the breaking up of the forms in which great ideals are embodied. All eventually break under the working of this law.

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