Charles Webster Leadbeater

“ To suggest that by moving the astral counterpart one could also move the physical object is like suggesting that by moving the smell one could move the physical rose which causes the smell.
The astral body changes its particles as does the physical, but fortunately the clumsy and tiresome process of cooking, eating and digesting food is not a necessity on the astral plane. The particles which fall away are replaced by others from the surrounding atmosphere. The purely physical cravings of hunger and thirst no longer exist there ”

“ As the physical body grows, the astral matter follows every change, and thus we find man presenting the spectacle of an astral body, ninety-nine percent of which is compressed within the periphery of his physical body, only about the remaining one percent filling the rest of the ovoid form. ”

“ The ordinary man while possessing a physical body naturally never has the opportunity of working for any length of time consecutively upon the astral plane, for his nights of astral work alternate with days of physical work. ”

“ But we must further realize that although we may speak of the lowest sub-plane of the astral as corresponding to solid physical matter, it is yet very different in texture, for all astral matter bears to its corresponding physical matter something the same sort of relation that the liquid bears to the solid. Therefore the particles of the astral body, whether in the finest or coarsest parts of it, are constantly in motion among themselves, just as are particles of flowing water ”

“ I think, however, that it will be found that what is subject to fatigue is merely the physical organism through which everything in us which manifests on this plane must pass. What we call mental fatigue is a parallel case. There is no such thing as fatigue in the mind; what we call by that name is only fatigue of the physical brain through which that mind has to express itself. ”

“ In the more developed man the change is very marked, both in the aura and the form within it. This latter is much more distinct and definite — a closer reproduction of the man's physical appearance; while instead of the floating mist-wreath we see a sharply defined ovoid form preserving its shape unaffected amidst all the varied currents which arc always swirling round it on the astral plane. ”

“ When the ego descends into incarnation, he draws round himself a mass of astral matter, not yet formed into a definite astral body; this takes, in the first place, the shape of that ovoid which is the nearest expression that we can realize of the true shape of the causal body. ”

“ We all know that excessive or long-continued emotion tires us very quickly in ordinary life, and since emotion is an expression of the astral, that may perhaps lead some to suppose that fatigue of the astral body is possible. ”

“ Almost — because we must not forget that thought has a powerful influence upon astral matter and can readily mould it, so that a man who habitually thinks of himself after death as younger than he actually was at the time of that death will gradually come to present a somewhat younger appearance. ”

“ Though the arrangement of the astral body is largely changed after death by the action of the desire elemental, such alteration does not in any way affect the recognizability of the form within the egg, though the natural changes which take place tend on the whole to make the form grow somewhat fainter and more spiritual in appearance as time passes on. ”