we must remember that this does not represent any movement in space, but a gradual release from the astral body and a transfer of consciousness to the mental body.
Each of these planes of nature, the physical, astral and mental, has its particular purpose in evolution. In the physical here we produce causes; we generate certain forces which, later on, must have either good or bad effects. It is, so to speak, the seed time. The astral is the purgative plane, where detrimental tendencies are worn away and undesirable tendencies exhausted. The mental plane is the place of assimilation, the harvest time, the period in which we reap the rich reward of noble thought and deed and garner the wisdom from all the experience we have passed through on the other planes. Here, in a perfectly blissful life, in a state of ecstasy impossible to describe, is passed a comparatively long period. Just as on the astral plane, the circumstances once more determine the length of the life in the heaven world, but the investigators agree that on an average it is a period equal to several times the length of the combined physical and astral life. This is a period of rest and mental and spiritual growth. Here all the highest aspirations of our life on the physical plane have their complete working out. Experience becomes wisdom, and noble desire becomes faculty for future accomplishment. All the grossness of every possible kind has dropped away during the astral life, and not a single shadow of any sort remains to mar this life of perfect joy.
"Does this life on these two planes of the unseen world include a recognition of those we have known here?" is a very natural inquiry. A moment's reflection on the laws of attraction and association will show that it could not be otherwise. Passing from the physical plane to the astral through death does not change one's appearance nor characteristics, any
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