THE EMOTIONAL OR ASTRAL BODY

The Soul reflects itself in the personality that is itself threefold:

1.       A mental body.

2.       An emotional body.

3.       A physical body.

The aim is to bring these lover aspects under the control of the Soul.

The emotional or astral body is, as is well known, distinguished by its colourfulness, and according to the stage of unfoldment, so will the colours be beautiful, clear and translucent, or ugly, dark and cloudy. Vibrations reach the astral body from the physical plane and from the mental world, and according to the nature of the man and to the point in evolution which he has reached, so will be the response to the higher or the lower call. It is either attentive to the egoic impression or swayed by the million voices of earth. It apparently has no voice of its own, no character of its own. The disciple stands midway between the two opposing forces of good and evil and searches for the right attitude to both. The astral plane is the battleground of the soul, the place of victory or the place of defeat.

In, Letters on Occult Meditation, we read the following:

The emotional body is simply a great reflector. It takes colour and movement from its surroundings. It receives the impress of every passing desire. It contacts every  whim and fancy in its environment; every current sets it in motion; every sound causes it to vibrate unless the aspirant inhibits such a state of affairs and trains it to receive and register only those impressions which come from the intuitional level via the Higher Self, and therefore via the automatic subplane. The aim of the aspirant should be to so train the emotional body that it will become still and clear as a mirror, so that it may reflect perfectly. His aim should be to make it reflect only the causal body, to take on colour only in line with the great Law, and to move under definite direction and not just as blow the winds of thought, or raise the tides of desire.  It should be still, serene, unruffled, quiet, at rest, limpid and clear, of a quality mirror-like, of surface even, a limpid reflector – one that accurately transmits the wishes, the desires, and the aspirations of the Ego and not of the personality.

The best way that I have worked out to deal with my emotions or to control them is an attitude of [1] acceptance, [2] surrendering, [3] and I don’t give a damn attitude. [4] I also practice harmlessness in thought, in emotional reaction and in physical action. [5] Spiritual reading and study keep me from depression and gives direction to my live. [6] Service also help for depression, keeps me out of trouble and gives meaning to life.

Purification and transmutation of the emotional nature

Before the desire of a man can be towards things spiritual he has to cease to desire the things of the world, and of the flesh. This produces an interlude of great difficulty in the life of neophyte, and the process is symbolized for us in the use of the word “conversion” in orthodox Christian circles; it involves “a turning round” with its consequent temporary turmoil, but eventual quietness. 

Purification and transmutation are brought about in several ways, some at the direction of the aspirant, and some at the direction of the Master.

1.       By the constant watching of all desires, motives and wishes that cross the horizon daily, and by the subsequent emphasising of all those that are of a higher order, and by the inhibition of  the lower.

2.       By a constant daily attempt to contact the Higher Self, and to reflect His wishes in the life. At first mistakes will be made, but little by little the building-in process proceeds, and the polarisation in the emotional body gradually shifts up each subplane until the atomic is reached.

3.       By definite periods daily directed to the stilling of the emotional body. It should be remembered that the stilling of the emotional nature is a step preliminary to the quieting of the mind; one succeeds the other and it is wise to begin at the bottom of the ladder. Each aspirant must discover for himself wherein he yields most easily to violent vibrations, such as fear, worry, personality desire of any kind, personality love of anything or anyone, discouragement, over-sensitiveness to public opinion; then he must overcome that vibration, by imposing on it a new rhythm, definitely eliminating and constructing.

4.       By work done on the emotional body at night under the direction of more advanced egos, working under the guidance of a Master. Stimulation of vibration or the dampening of vibration follows on the application of certain colours and sounds.

The work is gradual, and as the polarisation shifts up, the moment of transition from one subplane to another is marked by certain tests applied at night, what one might term a series of small initiations that eventually will be consummated in the second great initiation, that marks the perfection of the control of the body of the emotions.

We must not suppress and restrict the feeling nature but the suppressed or hidden conflicts must be faced and resolved, and the astral body rebuilt of higher grade substance. At this higher vibration the emotional body becomes a functioning asset to the disciple instead of a hindrance, and through it he becomes aware of the needs of others. 

In the early stages of his invocative work, the instrument used is the creative imagination.  This enables him at the very beginning to act as if he were capable of thus creating; then, when the as if imaginative consciousness is no longer useful, he becomes consciously aware of that which he has—with hope and spiritual expectancy—sought to create; he discovers this as an existent fact and knows past all controversy that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

The evolutionary processes can equally well be stated to be those of eliminating the physical substance lying between the dense physical body and the astral sentient body, and substituting substance of the four highest planes, the four cosmic ethers. Physically speaking, it is this etheric substitution which enables a man successively to take the five initiations which make him a Master of the Wisdom.
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