Page:The Invisible World About Us - Rogers.pdf/6

 the visible liquid called water into the invisible gas called steam. It is precisely the same matter all the time. We have merely raised the vibratory rate, and in doing that we have caused a solid to disappear. Of course, every atom of that matter is as much in existence as though we could still see it, and if this were done in a laboratory the steam could be reduced to vapor, the vapor to water and the water to ice, giving us the identical solid with which we began.

In order to understand something of the conditions of life after bodily death, we must understand what a human being really is, and not what to the deceptive physical sight he appears to be. We saw a moment ago that we are dealing with three regions, two of which are invisible to the physical eye. Now, just as the earth has its visible and two invisible regions of matter freely interpenetrating each other, so a human being has a visible and two invisible bodies, composed of these different grades of matter, with the same interpenetrating relationship. So, from birth we have not only the visible physical body, but the invisible astral and mental bodies, and just as the astral region of the earth not only interpenetrates the physical but extends beyond it in all directions, as in the illustration of the sponge and the sand, so the matter of the astral body interpenetrates the matter of the physical body, and extends somewhat beyond it. It is an exact duplicate in form and feature, except that it is a little larger than the physical body.

To understand how the real self, or conscious being, comes into possession of these bodies, we must get rid of some of the delusions of which we are now the unconscious victims. One of these is that this physical life is the point where we begin the journey in the cycle of birth. This is not the home region of the soul, but the fartherestfurthest [sic] region away from it. 5