In considering the conditions of a man's astral life, there are two prominent factors to be taken into account: (1) The length of time which he spends on any particular sub-plane: (2) The amount of his consciousness upon it.

The length of time depends upon the amount of matter belonging to that sub-plane which he has built into his astral body during physical life. He will necessarily remain upon that sub-plane until the matter corresponding to it has dropped out of his astral body.

During physical life, as we have already seen, the quality of the astral body which he builds for himself is directly determined by his passions, desires and emotions, and indirectly by his thoughts, as well as by his physical habits - food, drink, cleanliness, continence, etc.. A coarse and gross astral body, resulting from a coarse and gross life, will cause the man to be responsive only to lower astral vibrations, so that after death he will find himself bound to the astral plane during the long and slow process of the disintegration of the astral body.

On the other hand, a refined astral body, created by a pure and refined life, will make the man unresponsive to the low and coarse vibrations of the astral world, and responsive only to its higher influences: consequently he will experience much less trouble in his post-mortem life, and his evolution will proceed rapidly and easily.

The amount of consciousness depends upon the degree to which he has vivified and used the matter of the particular sub-plane in his physical life. [Page 121]

If during earth-life the animal nature was indulged and allowed to run riot, if the intellectual and spiritual parts were neglected or stifled, then the astral or desire body will persist for a long time after physical death.

If, on the other hand, desire has been conquered and bridled during earth life, if it has been purified and trained into subservience to the higher nature, then there will be little to energise the astral body, and will quickly disintegrate and dissolve away.

The average man, however, has by no means freed himself from all lower desires before death, and consequently it takes a long period of more or less fully conscious life on the various sub-planes of the astral plane to allow the forces which he has generated to work themselves out, and thus release the higher ego.

The general principle is that when the astral body has exhausted its attractions to one level, the greater part of its grosser particles fall away, and it finds itself in affinity with a somewhat higher state of existence. Its specific gravity, as it were, is constantly decreasing, and so it steadily rises from the dense to the lighter strata, pausing only when it is exactly balanced for a time.

To be upon any given sub-plane in the astral world is to have developed sensitiveness of those particles in the astral body which belong to that sub-plane. To have perfect vision on the astral plane means to have developed sensitiveness in all particles of the astral body, so that all the sub-planes are simultaneously visible.

A man who has led a good and pure life, whose strongest feelings and aspirations have been unselfish and spiritual, will have no attractions to the astral plane, and will, if entirely left alone, find little to keep him upon it, or to awaken him into activity even during the comparatively short period of his stay. His earthly passions have been subdued during physical life, and the force of his will having been directed into higher channels, there is but little energy [Page 122] of lower desire to be worked out on the astral plane. Consequently his stay there will be very short, and most probably he will have little more than a dreamy half-consciousness, until he sinks into the sleep during which his higher principles finally free themselves from the astral body, and enter upon the blissful life of the heaven-world.

Expressed more technically, during physical life Manas has purified Kâma with which it was inter-woven, so that after death all that is left of Kâma is a mere residuum, easily shaken off by the withdrawing ego. Such a man therefore would have little consciousness on the astral plane.

It is quite possible that a man might, as a result of is previous incarnations, possess a good deal of coarse astral matter in his astral body. Even if he has been so brought up, and has so conducted his life, that he has not vivified that coarse matter, and although much of it may have dropped out and been replaced by finer materials, yet there may be quite a good deal left. Consequently the man would have to remain on a low level of the astral plane for some time, until in fact the coarse matter had all dropped out. But, as the coarse matter would not be vivified, he would have little consciousness and would practically sleep through the period of his sojourn there.

There is a point known as the critical point between every pair of sub-states of matter: ice may be raised to a point at which the least increment of heat will change it into liquid: water may be raised to a point at which the least increment of heat will change it into vapour. And so each sub-state of astral matter may be carried to a point of fineness at which any additional refinement would transform it into the next higher sub-state. If a man has done this for every sub-state of matter in his astral body, so it is purified to the last possible degree of delicacy, then the first touch of disintegrating force shatters its cohesion and resolves it into its original condition, leaving him free at once to pass on to the next [Page 123] sub-plane. His passage through the astral plane will thus be of inconceivable rapidity, and he will flash through the plane practically instantaneously to the higher state of the heaven-world.

Every person after death has to pass through all the sub-planes of the astral plane, on his way to the heaven-world. But whether or not he is conscious on any or all of them, and to what extent, will depend upon the factors enumerated.

For these reasons, it is clear that the amount of consciousness a man may possess on the astral plane, and the time he may spend there in his passage to the heaven-world, may vary within very wide limits. There are some who pass only a few hours or days on the astral plane: others remain there for many years, or even centuries.

For an ordinary person 20 or 30 years on the astral plane after death is a fair average. An exceptional case is that of Queen Elizabeth, who had so intense a love for her country that she has only quite recently passed into the heaven-world,having spent the time since her death in endeavouring, until recently almost without success, to impress upon her successors her ideas of what ought to be done for England.

Another notable example was that of Queen Victoria,who passed very rapidly through the astral plane and into the heaven-world, her swift passage being undoubtedly due to the millions of loving and grateful thought-forms which were sent to her, as well as to her inherent goodness.

The general question of the interval between earth-lives is complicated. It is possible here to touch briefly only on the astral portion of those intervals. For further details the student is referred to The Inner Life, Volume 2, pages 458-474.

Three principal factors have to be taken into account:-

(1) The class of ego
(2) The mode of individualisation.
(3) The length and nature of the last earth-life. [Page 124]

The following table gives a general average of the length of the astral life, as determined by the class of ego.

A certain difference is produced by the mode of individualisation , but this difference is much less in proportion in the lower classes. Those individualised through intellect tend to take an interval between lives rather longer than that taken by those who individualised in other ways. [Page 125]

Generally speaking, a man who dies young will have a shorter interval than one who dies in old age, but is likely to have a proportionately longer astral life, because most of the strong emotions which work themselves out in astral life are generated in the earlier part of the physical life.

It must be recollected that in the astral world or ordinary methods of time-measurement scarcely apply: even in physical life anxiety or pain will stretch a few hours almost indefinitely, and on the astral plane this characteristic is exaggerated a hundred-fold.

A man on the astral plane can measure time only by his sensations. For a distortion of this fact has come the false idea of eternal damnation.

We have thus seen that both (1) the time spent, and (2) the amount of consciousness experienced, on each level of the astral plane depend very largely upon the kind of life the man has led in the physical world. Another factor of great importance is the man's attitude of mind after physical death.

The astral life may be directed by the will, just as the physical life may be. A man with little will-power or initiative is, in the astral as in the physical world, very much the creature of the surroundings which he has made for himself. A determined man, on the other hand, can always make the best of his conditions and live his own life in spite of them.

A man, therefore, does not rid himself of evil tendencies in the astral world, unless he definitely works to that end. Unless he makes definite efforts, he will necessarily suffer from his inability to satisfy such cravings as can be gratified only by means of a physical body. In process of time the desires will wear themselves out and die down simply because of the impossibility of their fulfilment.

The process, however, may be greatly expedited as soon as the man realises the necessity of ridding himself of the evil desires which detain him, and makes the requisite effort. A man who is ignorant of the true state of affairs usually broods over his desires, thus [Page 126] lengthening their life,and clings desperately to the gross particles of astral matter as long as he can, because the sensations connected with them seem nearest to the physical life for which he still craves. The proper procedure for him, of course, is to kill out earthly desires and to withdraw into himself as quickly as possible.

Even a merely intellectual knowledge of the conditions of astral life, and, in fact, of Theosophical truths in general, is of inestimable value to a man in the after-death life.

It is of the utmost importance that after physical death a man should recognise quite clearly that he is withdrawing steadily towards the ego, and that consequently he should disengage his thoughts as far as may be from things physical and fix his attention upon spiritual matters which will occupy him when, in due time he passes from the astral plane into the mental or heaven-world.

By adopting this attitude he will greatly facilitate the natural disintegration of the astral body instead of unnecessarily and uselessly delaying himself upon the lower levels of the astral plane.

Many people, unfortunately, refuse to turn their thoughts upwards, but cling to earthly matters with desperate tenacity. As time passes on, they gradually, in the normal course of evolution, lose touch with the lower worlds: but by fighting every step of the way they cause themselves much unnecessary suffering and seriously delay their upward progress.

In this ignorant opposition to the natural course of things the possession of a physical corpse is of assistance to a man, the corpse serving as a kind of fulcrum on the physical plane. The best remedy for this tendency is cremation, which destroys the link with the physical plane.