Charles Webster Leadbeater

“ The compulsory force is not an inherent quality in the matter, which is in truth identical and composed of precisely the same chemical elements, but it is the divine life pressing forward to ensoul this matter, and moulding it for itself into the form which is suited for it at that particular stage of its development. As soon as the entity becomes individualized, and therefore commences to make individual karma, this additional factor of the moulding thought-form of the karmic deities comes into play, and takes possession of the growing germ, even before its own ego can grasp it. ”

“ We must remember that while the higher vehicles, the mental and the astral body, are expressions of the man at his present stage of evolution (as far as that can be expressed in the matter of their respective planes) , the physical body is a vehicle or a limitation imposed upon him from without, and is therefore pre-eminently the instrument of karma. The evolutionary force comes into play in the selection of its materials, but even in this it is at every turn limited and hampered by the karma of the past. ”

“ When the foetus has grown to the size of the mould, that much of its task is successfully achieved, and it sheds that outer husk of itself and unfolds the form of the next stage at which it has to aim-- the size, shape and condition of the body as it ought to be (taking only the elemental's work into account) at the time when it proposes to leave it. All further growth of the body after the elemental has retired is under the control of the ego himself. ”

“ Nevertheless it does sometimes happen that there is not at a given time any ego able to take advantage of a particular opportunity, and in that case, though the body may be formed to a certain extent by the thought of the mother, as there is no ego to occupy it, it is never really alive.
In building the form the elemental takes the etheric matter which it needs from that which it finds ready within the body of the mother. That is one reason for the necessity of the greatest care on the part of that mother during the time the child's body is being formed. ”

“ Now since our astral bodies are built of the very matter of their astral bodies, it is obvious that no one of these planetary LOGOI can change astrally in any way without thereby affecting the astral body of every man in the world, though of course more especially those in whom there is a preponderance of the matter expressing that particular LOGOS; and if it be remembered that we are taking the astral plane merely as an example, and that exactly the same thing is true on all the other planes, we shall then begin to have an idea how important to us the motions of these planetary Spirits are. ”

“ The awakening of consciousness, which enables an ego thus to come into touch with the Devarajas and to co-operate willingly with them so far as their work with himself is concerned, may commence at any time; so that an ego who was not in touch with them during the working of the elemental which built his physical body may yet, by stupendous efforts along the line of self-development and usefulness, attract their attention later in life and evoke from them a definite response. ”

“ However wearisome it may be to pass through childhood, at least in that way a man grows a body for himself, which is as nearly as may be an expression of him, and agrees with all his little peculiarities; but one who takes an adult body finds it already full of peculiarities of its own, which have worn in it deep grooves of habit that cannot readily be changed. ”

“ He declared that, do what he would, he could not make that baby body sleep more than twenty hours out of the day, and the rest of the time he actually had to wait near it and watch it squirming about, and listen to its plaintive ululations, and endure to be fed through it with tasteless and nauseous varieties of pap! Sometimes a really advanced person decides to avoid all this by asking someone else to give him an adult body, a sacrifice which any of his disciples would always be delighted to make for him. ”

“ Since the death of his last physical body he has been drawing steadily inwards, first into his astral and then into his mental vehicle, and at the end of the heaven-life he has cast off even the latter. He then rests for a certain period on his own plane — a period which varies, according to the stage of his development, from two or three days of unconsciousness in the case of an ordinary undeveloped man to a long period of years of conscious and glorious life in that of exceptionally advanced people. ”

“ An ego coming into incarnation has always to adapt himself to a new set of conditions, but when he comes to birth in the ordinary way this can at least be done gradually, as the child grows up; but one who takes an adult body has instantly to adapt himself to all these fresh surroundings, which is often a very difficult business. ”

“ The mere outer form is a minor consideration, though also an important one, but this too is part of the work of the elemental. If the man has deserved the limitation of deformity in his physical body or of weakness in some of its organs — the heart, the lungs, the stomach — it is through the elemental that his karma is adjusted. Its instructions (if we may use such a term) are to build a body of a certain kind and degree of strength, and with certain characteristics brought into prominence. ”

“ We have no particle which is exclusively our own. In every astral body there are particles belonging to each one of the seven planetary LOGOI, but the proportions vary infinitely. The bodies of those Monads which originally came forth through a planetary LOGOS will continue all through their evolution to have more of the particles of that LOGOS than of any other, and in this way people may be distinguished as primarily belonging to one or other of these seven great Powers. ”

“ When he turns his attention once more to the mental plane, the mental unit immediately resumes its activity, and because of that it at once gathers round it such matter as is required to express that activity. Precisely the same thing happens when he turns his attention to the astral atom, and puts his will into that. It attracts to itself material capable of providing him with an astral body of exactly the same type as that which he had at the end of his last astral life. ”

“ The whole of our solar system is a manifestation of its LOGOS, and every particle in it is definitely part of His vehicles. All the physical matter of the solar system taken as a totality constitutes His physical body; all the astral matter within it constitutes His astral body ”

“ Sometimes the characteristics which the elemental is directed to impose are but few in number, and consequently it is able to retire at a comparatively early age, and to leave the ego in full control of the body. In other cases, where the limitations are of such a character that a good deal of time is necessary for their development, it may retain its position until the body is seven years old. ”

“ Equally, if it happens that she is constantly thinking with devoted affection or admiration of some third person, the child is likely to resemble that person — always supposing that the elemental has no definite instructions in this matter. ”

“ The germ which is to expand into the physical body of the man has within itself two constituents, with two sets of potentialities. (The student must be careful not to confound this physical germ which comes from the parents with the physical permanent atom which the ego brings with him) . ”

“ The parents have been chosen because they are fitted to give such a body as will be suitable for the development of the ego committed to them, but with every pair of parents there are manifold possibilities. ”

“ If she supplies nothing but the best and purest materials, the elemental will find itself compelled to choose from those. Another factor which has an exceedingly powerful influence is the thought of the mother during this period, for that also moulds the shape which is slowly growing within her. ”

“ In that parent, and in many preceding generations, the faculty to express that quality may have slept entirely without effect, but when there comes into the line an ego which possesses the quality, the faculty to express it leaps out from the dormant into the active condition, and we have a case of what is called reversion to a remote type. ”

“ It is a well-known fact to students of embryology that in their earlier stages the germs of a fish, a dog and a man are practically indistinguishable. They all grow in the same manner, but the difference between them is that one of them stops at one stage of that growth, while the others go on further. ”

“ Each of their represents a long line of ancestry, and often a particular parent may be chosen, not for anything that he is or has in himself, but because of some quality which appeared to an unusual degree in one of his ancestors — because he possesses a power which he has not used, though it is latent in his physical body because it is physically descended from that ancestor. ”

“ The Devarajas make a thought-form, the building elemental mentioned above, which is charged exclusively with the production of the most suitable physical body that can be arranged for the man. For his evolution he requires a body which has within it certain possibilities ”

“ It is necessary to have this fact clearly in mind, that what he thus acquires as he descends is not a ready-made astral body, but simply the material out of which he is to build an astral body in the course of the life which is to follow. ”

“ They have to postulate that matter coming from a particular source, although in every way identical in appearance with matter coming from a totally different source, nevertheless possesses within it some inherent qualities which compel it to reproduce the form from which it came. ”

“ In the case of lower-class monads with unusually strong astral bodies, who reincarnate after a very short interval, it sometimes happens that the shade or shell left over from the last astral life still persists, and in that case it is likely to be attracted to the new personality. ”

“ Egos differ greatly in the interest which they take in their physical vehicles, for some hover over them anxiously from the first and take a good deal of trouble about them, while others are almost entirely careless with regard to the whole matter. ”

“ These two sets of possibilities are wide, as may easily be seen if we reflect upon the number of ancestors which any one of us must have had, say a thousand years ago. But wide though they be, they have their limitations. ”