[Footnote 64: The mental body, which is, as it were, an ephemeral flower of the causal, is born and developed in each incarnation, disintegrating after the _devachanic_ (heavenly) life.] [Footnote 65: It moves more or less freely on the astral plane, according to the development of the astral body. In men of low development, this body cannot be separated from the physical, under penalty of a nightmare which brings about a waking condition.] [Footnote 66: The atoms interpenetrate in consequence of their differences of tenuity.] [Footnote 67: Later on, the centre of consciousness passes from the human to the superhuman state and ascends unceasingly until it reaches the centre of the Divinity incarnate in the world.] [Footnote 68: When this centre is fixed in one of the higher bodies, the buddhic for instance, the man has passed into the superhuman stage.] [Footnote 69: As sand, placed on a plate in a state of vibration, assumes varying forms.] [Footnote 70: The soul acting in the mental, the astral, and more especially--in the average man--the physical body. The Individuality is the soul acting in the causal body.] [Footnote 71: See the diagram in the chapter on the Atom in _The Ancient Wisdom_, by A. Besant.] [Footnote 72: We have seen that the organs formed by these tissues are the special work of a particular being controlled by lofty Intelligences.] [Footnote 73: As the building of the body is reaching completion, the Ego (the Soul) begins to make use of the new instrument. It is at about the age of seven years that the development of the nerve centres becomes sufficiently advanced to allow of the brain receiving the vibrations of the soul; up to this point, the real man has scarcely had any influence upon the body, although the mental projection (the mental body) which he has formed can express itself to a certain extent much earlier, from the seventh month of foetal life; up to this time, the instinctive energies of the astral body alone affect the embryo.] [Footnote 74: In Kamaloka (Purgatory). The desires, in purgatory, cannot be satisfied, because there is no physical body to express them, and this causes a state of suffering which has been compared to a burning fire. This fire burns up the passions and leaves behind only the "germs," which the causal body takes up and bequeaths to the future astral body. But for this providential burning away, the passions would exist from early childhood in the future incarnation, _i.e._, at a time when the Ego has no hold whatever upon the new personality, and when the latter would be terribly affected by this influx of the forces of evil.] [Footnote 75: Souls are of different ages: the savage is not so old as the civilised man, while the latter is the younger brother of those strong and wise Souls who compose the vanguard of humanity.]