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The Rosicrucian Mysteries by Max Heindel

IV. THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN

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_The Desire Body._

In addition to the visible body and the vital body we also have a body made of desire stuff from which we form our feelings and emotions. This vehicle also impels us to seek sense gratification. But while the two instruments of which we have already spoken, are well organized, the desire body appears to spiritual sight as an ovoid cloud extending from sixteen to twenty inches beyond the physical body. It is above the head and below the feet so that our dense body sits in the center of this egg-shaped cloud as the yolk is in the center of an egg.

The reason for the rudimentary state of this vehicle is, that it has been added to the human constitution more recently than the bodies previously mentioned. Evolution of form may be likened to the manner in which the juices in the snail first condense into flesh and later become a hard shell. When our present visible body first germinated in the spirit, it was a thought-form, but gradually it has become denser and more concrete until it is now a chemical crystallization. The vital body was next emanated by the spirit as a thought-form and is in the third stage of concretion which is etheric. The desire body is a still later acquisition. That also was a thought form at its inception, but has now condensed to desire stuff, and the mind, which we have only recently received, is still but a mere cloudy thought form.

Arms and limbs, ears and eyes are not necessary to use the desire body, for it can glide through space more swiftly than wind without such means of locomotion as we require in this visible world.

When viewed by spiritual sight, it appears that there are in this desire body a number of whirling vortices. We have already explained that it is a characteristic of desire stuff to be in constant motion, and from the main vortex in the region of the liver there is a constant outwelling flow which radiates towards the periphery of this egg-shaped body and returns to the center through a number of other vortices. The desire body exhibits all the colors and shades which we know and a vast number of others which are indescribable in earthly language. Those colors vary in every person according to his characteristics and temperament and they also vary from moment to moment as passing moods, fancies or emotions are experienced by him. There is however in each one a certain basic color dependent upon the ruling star at the moment of his birth. The man in whose horoscope Mars is peculiarly strong usually has a crimson tint in his aura, where Jupiter is the strongest planet the prevailing tint seems to be a bluish tone, and so on with the other planets.

There was a time in the earth’s past history when incrustation was not yet complete, and human beings of that time lived upon islands here and there, amid boiling seas. They had not yet evolved eyes or ears, but a little organ: the pineal gland, which anatomists have called _the third eye_, protruded through the back of the head and was a _localised organ of feeling_, which warned the man when he came too near a volcanic crater and thus enabled him to escape destruction. Since then the cerebral hemispheres have covered the pineal gland, and instead of a single organ of feeling, the whole body inside and out is sensitive to impacts, which of course is a much higher state of development.

In the desire body every particle is sensitive to vibrations similar to those which we call sight, sounds and feelings and every particle is in incessant motion rapidly swirling about so that in the same instant it may be at the top and bottom of the desire body and impart at all points to all the other particles a sensation of that which it has experienced thus every particle of desire stuff in this vehicle of ours will instantly feel any sensation experienced by any single particle. Therefore the desire body is of an exceedingly sensitive nature, capable of most intense feelings and emotions.

_The Mind._

This is the latest acquisition of the human spirit, and in most people who have not yet accustomed themselves to orderly, consecutive thought, it is a mere inchoate cloud disposed particularly in the region of the head. When looking at a person clairvoyantly there appears to be an empty space in the center of the forehead just above and between the eyebrows. It looks like the blue part of a gas flame. That is mind stuff which veils the human spirit, or Ego, and the writer has been told that not even the most gifted seer can penetrate that veil which is said to have been spoken of in ancient Egypt as “_the veil of Isis_” which none may lift and live, for behind that veil is the Holy of Holies, the temple of our body, where the spirit is to be left secure from all intrusion.

To those who have not previously studied the deeper philosophies the question may occur: But why all these divisions; even the Bible speaks only of soul and body, for most people believe soul and spirit to be synonymous terms. We can only answer that this division is not arbitrary but necessary, and founded upon facts in nature. Neither is it correct to regard the soul and the spirit as synonymous. Paul himself speaks of _the natural body_ which is composed of physical substances: solids, liquids, gases and ethers; he mentions _a spiritual body_, which is the vehicle of the spirit composed of the mind and desire body, and _the spirit itself_, which is called Ego in Latin or “I” in English.

That term “I” is an appelation which can only be made by the human spirit of itself. We may all call a dog, dog; or we may call a table, table, and any one else may apply the same name to the dog and to the table, but only a human being can be called “I” and only he himself can apply that most exclusive of all words, I, for this is the badge of self-consciousness, the recognition by the human spirit of _itself_ as an entity, separate and apart from all others.

Thus we see that the constitution of man is more complex than appears upon the surface, and we will now proceed to note the effect upon this multiplex being of various conditions of life.

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