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Heaven bless your inheritance to you! You will at least have in me one to whom you are as dear and as precious as you have been to your father. Rupa was not backward in his wish to promise an exhibition of gladiators in your name, but neither I nor any of your friends approved of anything being done in your absence which would tie your hands when you returned.
Of these seven principles, the last or higher Three, namely, the Atma, Buddhi, and Manas, compose the higher Trinity of the Soul the part of man which persists; while the lower Four principles, namely, Rupa, Prana-Jiva, Linga-Sharira, and Kama-Rupa, respectively, are the lower principles, which perish after the passing out of the higher principles at death.
This body is the artificial vehicle used on the four lower or rûpa divisions of the devachanic plane by those capable of functioning there during earth-life, and is formed out of the substance of the mind-body.
It is well known to the initiated, though difficult to explain to those who are not, that in a sense space ceases to exist for the astral body. When you get out of your rupa, you are out of space as ordinary persons understand it, though it continues to have a certain subjective existence.
This Vital Soul, then, is the seat of all those instincts which go towards the preservation of the individual's physical body, and towards the propagation of the race; and it is on this account that our theosophical friends call it the "Desire Body" or, to use the Indian term "Kama rupa." It acts with conscious intention, but not with conscious reasoning.
The Theosophical books state these principles as follows: The Body, or Rupa; Vitality, or Prana-Jiva; Astral Body, or Linga-Sharira; Animal Soul, or Kama-Rupa; Human Soul, Manas; Spiritual Soul, or Buddhi; and Spirit, or Atma.
Whenever I went with my astral body, or linga sharira, into the mysterious region of Thibet already alluded to, leaving my rupa, or natural body, in Khatmandhu, I was always conscious of a feeling of rawness; while the necessity of looking after my rupa of keeping, so to speak, my astral eye upon it, lest some accident should befall it, which might prevent my getting back to it, and so prematurely terminate my physical or objective existence was a constant source of anxiety to me.
Behind that, and consisting of a finer grade of matter that of the rûpa levels of Devachan lies the devachanic body or aura of the lower Manas, whose colours, changing only by slow degrees as the man lives his life, show the disposition and character of the personality; while still higher and infinitely more beautiful, where at all clearly developed, is the living light of the Kârana Sharîra, the aura or vehicle of the higher Manas, which shows the stage of development of the real Ego in its passage from birth to birth.
Sometimes it makes rather a failure of it, so far as the rupa is concerned, but it always retains its own fascinating contour and deliciously diaphanous composition undisturbed.
Fortunately this, the most incomprehensible part of the vast subject, does not come within the province of this manual, as those first and second elemental kingdoms exist and function respectively upon the arûpa and rûpa levels of the devachanic plane.
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