Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/36

32 known that the mold on which the physical body is made up is held in perpetuity by the agents of the Lords of Karma. Thus, however complicated and unusual a man's Karma may be, these agents, or Lipika, are able to give a mold in accordance with which a body exactly suiting it can be formed.

The inhabitants of the etheric plane are as varied as those of the astral and physical planes, with this distinction, that certain types and races of men never rise above the last-mentioned level. For example, English is scarcely spoken on the astral plane and never on the etheric, where for most part is heard only some form or derivation of the Sanscrit. Those who aim to make of the bluntly practical English a universal tongue must soon see the futility of such efforts. For a language which barely reaches the astral plane can never be universal, while at the upper limit of Devachan, as is well known, all language disappears. Only the Voice of the Silences, the vibrations of the perfect Om, the one word which closes the lips whenever it is spoken, is heard in the Crystal Vaults Superior.

The learned Swami proceeded to divide the inhabitants of the etheric plane into seven great classes, for the sacred number seven is involved in all these investigations. These are (using our inadequate English words): (1) The embodied, (2) the bodiless, (3) the shells, (4) the incubi, (5) the extra-planetary visitors, (6) the essences, (7) the artificials.

Those of the first class, or embodied entities, have bodies on earth, still engaged in operations on the physical plane. These may be adepts or Chilas, or they may be canny yogis, or Initiates, possessed of second sight, or again ordinary men fast asleep at home, whose etheric doubles are drifting about involuntarily, swayed through esoteric currents, or the so-called 'winds of dreamland' of your western mythology, or finally they may be magicians, white or black, seeking their own ends, some of them unfortunately evil. The investigator may meet also on this plane students of the invisible, quite unconnected with the great master and knowing nothing of the mahatmas. These men, Slavs, Lapps or Malays, are often most earnest and self-renouncing seekers after truth, and the wise wanderer on the etheric plane will greet them with the omnic kiss of esoteric brotherhood.

Of the bodiless class are likewise man} r, some of whom have wandered from afar. Even from Nirvana, perfect souls have descended, creating for themselves a perfect ethereal body for the purpose, since the more refined vesture of Nirvana would be invisible to ethereal sight. These souls never attempt anything in these lower planes, for in Nirvana is the final quenching of desire. Here too, the ego of adepts may await reincarnation, an unusual mode of procedure, it is true, but sometimes to the self-renounced such favor is granted by the great master of reincarnation, Gautama-Buddha himself. But here the greatest care is