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therefore retain it captive; for when Manas passes
90 The Astral Plane
into Devachan these clinging fragments adhere
to a portion of it and as it were wrench it away.
The proportion of the matter of each level present
in the Kamarupa will therefore depend on the
extent to which Manas has become inextrica-
bly entangled with the lower passions. It will
be obvious that as Manas in passing from level
to level is unable to free itself completely from
the matter of each, the Kamarupa will show the
presence of each grosser kind which has suc-
ceeded in retaining its connection with it.
Thus comes into existence the class of entity
which has been called The Shade an entity,
be it observed, which is not in any sense the
real individual at all (for he has passed away
into Devachan), but nevertheless, not only bears
his exact personal appearance, but possesses
his memory and all his little idiosyncrasies, and
may, therefore, very readily personate him, as
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indeed it frequently does at -seances-. It is
not, of course, conscious of any act of imper-
sonation, for as far as its intellect goes it must
necessarily suppose itself to be the individual,
but one can imagine the horror and disgust of
the friends of the departed, if they could only
realize that they had been deceived into accept-
ing as their loved one a mere soulless bundle of
all his worst qualities. Its length of life varies
according to the amount of the lower Manas
which animates it, but as this is all the while in
process of fading out, its intellect is a steadily
diminishing quantity, though it may possess a
great deal of a certain sort of animal cunning;
and even quite towards the end of its career it
is still able to communicate by borrowing tem-
porary intelligence from the medium. From its
very nature it is exceedingly liable to be swayed
by all kinds of evil influences, and, having sep-
92 The Astral Plane
arated from its higher Ego, it has nothing in
its constitution capable of responding to good
ones. It therefore lends itself readily to vari-
ous minor purposes of some of the baser sort of
black magicians. So much of the matter of the
manasic nature as it possesses gradually dis-
integrates and returns to its own plane, though
not to any individual mind, and thus the shade
fades by almost imperceptible gradations into a
member of our next class.
5. -The Shell.-
This is absolutely the mere astral corpse in
process of disintegration, every particle of the
lower Manas having left it. It is entirely with-
out any kind of consciousness or intelligence,
and is drifted passively about upon the astral
currents just as a cloud might be swept in any
direction by a passing breeze; but even yet it
may be galvanized for a few moments into a
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ghastly burlesque of life if it happens to come
within reach of a medium s aura. Under such
circumstances it will still exactly resemble its
departed personality in appearance, and may
even reproduce to some extent his familiar ex-
pressions or handwriting, but it does so merely
by the automatic action of the cells of which
it is composed, which tend under stimulation
to repeat the form of action to which they are
most accustomed, and whatever amount of in-
telligence may lie behind any such manifesta-
tion has most assuredly no connection with the
original entity, but is lent by the medium or
his guides for the occasion. It is, however,
more frequently temporarily vitalized in quite
another manner, which will be described under
the next head. It has also the quality of be-
ing still blindly responsive to such vibrations
usually of the lowest order as were frequently
94 The Astral Plane
set up in it during its last stage of existence
as a shade, and consequently persons in whom
evil desires or passions are predominant will be
very likely, when they attend physical -seances-
, to find these intensified and as it were thrown
back upon them by the unconscious shells.
There is also another variety of corpse which
it is necessary to mention under this head, though
it belongs to a much earlier stage of man s -
post-mortem- history. It has been stated above
that after the death of the physical body the Ka-
marupa is comparatively quickly formed, and
the etheric double cast off this latter body be-
ing destined to slow disintegration, precisely as
is the kamarupic shell at a later stage of the
proceedings. This etheric shell, however, is not
to be met with drifting aimlessly about, as is the
variety with which we have hitherto been deal-
ing; on the contrary, it remains within a few
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yards of the decaying physical body, and since
it is readily visible to any one even slightly sen-
sitive, it is accountable for many of the com-
monly current stories of churchyard ghosts. A
psychically developed person passing one of our
great cemeteries will see hundreds of these bluish-
white, misty forms hovering over the graves where
are laid the physical vestures which they have
recently left; and as they, like their lower coun-
terparts, are in various stages of disintegration,
the sight is by no means a pleasant one. This
also, like the other kind of shell, is entirely de-
void of consciousness and intelligence; and though
it may under certain circumstances be galva-
nized into a very horrible form of temporary life,
this is possible only by means of some of the
most loathsome rites of one of the worst forms
of black magic, about which the less said the
better. It will thus be seen that in the succes-
96 The Astral Plane
sive stages of his progress from earth-life to De-
vachan, man casts off and leaves to slow disin-
tegration no less than three corpses the physi-
cal body, the etheric double and the Kamarupa
all of which are by degrees resolved into their
constituent elements and utilized anew on their
respective planes by the wonderful chemistry of
nature.
6. -The Vitalized Shell.-
This entity ought not, strictly speaking, to be
classified under the head human at all, since
it is only its outer vesture, the passive, sense-
less shell, that was once an appanage of hu-
manity; such life, intelligence, desire and will
as it may possess are those of the artificial el-
emental animating it, and that, though in ter-
rible truth a creation of man s evil thought, is
not itself human. It will therefore perhaps be
better to deal with it more fully under its ap-
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propriate class among the artificial entities, as
its nature and genesis will be more readily com-
prehensible by the time that part of our subject
is reached. Let it suffice here to mention that
it is always a malevolent being a true tempt-
ing demon, whose evil influence is limited only
by the extent of its power. Like the shade, it
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