A horoscope is a set of possibilities. By knowing a person's astrological makeup, one can describe what the person's appearance should be like, one can describe what the person's character should be like, and the horoscope sets the limits of what the person can be. For example, one person can have a certain horoscope which says that he cannot rise above the station to which he was born, but that he can do certain things with immense effort.

The second person could have a horoscope which says that he will rise above his station and he will progress very rapidly with hardly any effort at all. If you really want to know what the horoscope is like - consider it in this light; it is a specification, an informed guess of what a person's capabilities are.

To make it clearer let us take two cars. The 'horoscope' of a Rolls-Royce car can say that the car will be very silent, very fast, very comfortable, that it will have a certain maximum speed and it will use so much petrol every few miles. The horoscope of the second car perhaps - are there still Morris Minor's in England? - will say that it is a low-powered car, very very suitable for local jaunts (liten tur), that its maximum speed is such-and-such a figure, that it doesn't use much petrol, and it is a very nice little car for getting about in traffic. Well, people are like that, they have their specifications only we call them horoscopes.

A horoscope will not tell the eager young lady, you know, the one who is anxious to get a husband in a hurry, that she will go out and meet 'Mr. Right' under the third lamp-post as she turns to the left or to the right, or that she will meet a dark haired young man who is busy tying his shoe laces, and it will be love at first sight. That's not horoscopes at all, that's not real astrology, that is fake fortune-telling.

There are very very few really genuine, really capable astrologers advertising. They don't have to advertise. Their fame, their accuracy, is passed by word of mouth, and if you think you can fill in a coupon and send it off with fifty cents or five shillings and get a life reading - well, think again, for you are one of the gullible ones who really dererve to be caught in the sucker trap for thinking you can get something so cheaply. You only get what you pay for.

I will not do horoscopes for any sum of money. If I do them I do them free under very special circumstances, but in my considered opinion no horoscope which costs less than a hundred dollars is worth having because it means that the person who did the horoscope just did not spend enough time and take enough trouble, so all you have is just a few marks on a piece of paper.

In my own case my past was foretold by astrology with utterly stupendous accuracy. Everything that was foretold about me has happened, sadly enough a few things extra have happened, a few things, which the astrologer didn't get around to discussing, and all the wretched 'extras' were bad things, too!

To answer a question, then, 'Is astrology genuine?' I will say, yes, astrology can be very genuine, it can suggest what a person's life will be like, it can indicate probabilities, but they are probabilities only. So do not take astrology too seriously unless you get an absolute gem of an astrologer who knows exactly what he is doing and who is completely ethical, that is, one who tells you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So many people, so many astrologers, have their 'information' and put in quite a few stock paragraphs because they know what people want to hear.

Now here is another one, my daughter's husband is a very strange sort of man, he doesn't believe in the same things as those in which I believe, he doesn't believe in occult things. What can I do to make him?'

The only answer that one can give here is to state most definitely that nothing can be done to help in the way in which the lady means. If a person is not yet ready to study occult subjects then it is definitely wrong to try to force occult things at him.

Everyone has a right to free choice, and whichever choice they make is entirely their own affair, and their own responsibility. If Billy Bugsbottom decides that occult stuff is all a lot of hogwash - then why should one try to persuade Billy anything different - it is his belief and his choice and it is definitely wring to influence a person.

Here comes an answer on that: the silvercord is like everything else - a vibration - which means that it is also a source of energy. The Cord does not necessarily have to go to just one other object, that is, it is not limited to connecting body and soul together. Extensions can be taken from it in just the same way as you can have extensions taken from your telephone. If you have a telephone in your living room, then it's no great difficulty to have an extension to your bedroom.

It is ordinary common sense to realize that the Overself is the source of each person's energy, the source of each person's being, and the Overself, you can say, has each human on a leash("i bånd"). So just as you can have a dog on a leash, or you can have ten dogs all on leashes, so you can have an Overself connected to an astral and to a physical body. There is really nothing to answer in that question except to say that if you have a dog, let us say a big dog, at the end of a leash it is quite easy to connect a small dog to the leash of the big dog and that would correspond to the Overself, the astral, and the physical.

Our Overself, as I have explained, is getting experience on Earth. The Overself itself is too big, too powerful and too high-vibrating to come to Earth, and so it has to employ those lumps of protoplasm which we in our ignorance think is the highest form of existence an anywhere. We humans are just hunks of meat supported on a bony framework and propelled around by grace of the Overself, but inevitably hitch-ups occur.

Sometimes a car manufacturer says to himself (in effect, of course) Oh, glory be, I've connected the brakes back-before-frontways on such-and-such a car. Let's call it back.' So notices go out to car owners and the cars have to be recalled to the factory for certain things to be put right.

In the hurly-burly of getting from the astral world to that world we call Earth, mix-ups occur. Being born is a traumatic experience, it's a most violent affair, and a very delicate mechanism can easily become deranged. For example, a baby is about to be born and throughout the pregnancy the mother has been rather careless about what she was eating and what she was doing, so the baby has not received what one might term a balanced chemical input. The baby may be 'short of a chemical and so development of certain glands may have been halted. Let us say the baby was going to come as a girl, but through lack of certain chemicals, the baby is actually born a boy, a boy with the inclinations of a girl.

The parents might realize that they've got a sissyfied little wretch and put it down to over-indulgence or something, they may try to beat some sense into him one end or the other to make him more manly, but it doesn't work; if the glands (kjertler) are wrong, never mind what sort of attachments are stuck on in front, the boy is still a girl in a boy's body.

At puberty the boy may not develop satisfactorily, or again, he may to all outward appearances. At school he may well appear to be one of the limp-wristed fraternity, but the poor fellow can't help that.

When he reaches man's estate he finds he cannot 'do the things that come naturally', instead he runs after boys men. Of course he does - because all his desires are the desires of a woman. The psyche itself is female, but through an unfortunate set of circumstances, the female has been supplied with male equipment, it might not be much use but its still there… (end of extract on this theme - but Martinus says much more about this - and that the process of being double-poled - where both the masculine and the feminine pole is in totally balance - are a long prosess of development. So no one becomes a homesexual or lesbian quite accidental or by some mistake of nature. But the theme is too extensive to be explained more here. Are you interested - read especially LIVETS BOG - part 5 of Martinus - R.Ø.remark.)

"…. I do have a question, Dr Rampa. What is the most important thing a person should or can do to develop any latent occult abilities he or she might possess? I am asking this because I seem to have trouble getting started with the things you describe so clearly in your books. Obviously I am doing something wrong and I am wondering whether there isn't a way of preparing one's mind and body.'

Actually, it doesn't really matter if you do astral travel or not, consciously, that is, because everyone does astral travel in the time of sleep. But if you find difficulty in doing some-thing, then are you sure, really sure, that you want to do it? Are you sure that there is not some bar imposed, let us say, by difficulties in a past life?

Supposing a person - oh, not you, of course! - had been a witch in a past life. Supposing you had been burned at the stake or bumped off in some equally interesting way, then if you came back to this life with more or less of an interest in occultism you might have some ingrained fear that if you started again you would end up at the stake or at the end of a rope, and so your sub-conscious would clap the brakes on and you would make no progress.

The only way one can proceed if one finds real difficulty in settling down to occult work is:

Meditate on the problem. Do you really, sincerely desire to astral travel or to do clairvoyance or read the cards or do anything in that field?

If you do, if you can say 'Yes', then ask yourself why you want to do it. You must clear up all these problems first.

The next thing to ask yourself is, do you fear that you will be out of the body and will not be able to get back, are you afraid that some strange entities will attack you if you get out of the body? If so, remember that no harm whatsoever, no harm of any sort can happen to you if you are not afraid.

If you are sure that you really want to do occult work, then the best thing is to devote a certain time each day, even half an hour of an evening, to thinking about it. And the best way is to imagine as strongly as possible that you are doing what you want to do, because when you can get over to your sub-conscious that you want to get out into the astral he will, metaphorically (billedlig), unlock the gate and set you free. Think of the sub-conscious as a sort of idiot, a high-grade idiot, if you like, who obeys orders quite literally so that if at some time in the past you have said, 'Gee! For Pete's sake don't let me get out of the body!' then the subconscious will obey that injunction until you can overpower its one-track mind and replace the obsolete order by another.

But remember that if you think you are not making progress, you definitely are so long as you are aware of things. And my strong advice to you is that if you are experiencing obstacles or difficulties, then just do not bother, wait until things settle themselves.

When I was studying morse many years ago I was warned about 'the hump'. Well, this mysterious 'hump' bothered me until I reached a speed of twenty-three words a minute, and no matter how much I tried, no matter how many hours of practice I put in, I could not get over that 'hump'. It proved to be a mountain in the way of my progress towards a faster, morse sending and receiving speed.

One day I uttered some really naughty words with fervour (begeistring). I said, in effect, 'Oh well, if I can't go any faster I just can't.' Later in the day I sat down at the old morse key again and found that I could go much faster, in fact I could do nearly thirty words a minute. I had got over the 'hump'. I had been trying too hard, and I think probably you are trying too hard, Mr. Czermak, and you, and you, and you also are trying too hard. If you are meeting obstacles don't go on like a bulldozer, take it easy, think about things, and you will find that the path of least resistance has enabled you to get over the hump, and you will be surprised at the result.

….the newest occupant or inhabitant of the astral world, the former driver of the body, will be met by helpers ready to do anything they can to assist in the process of accilinatization,. It sometimes happens unfortunately that a truly ignorant person will not believe in life after death, so what then?

If a person definitely refuses to believe in the life after death, he or she is in a state of complete hypnosis, auto-hypnosis, and even on Earth there are many cases of people being blind just because they think they are, there are many cases of people who are deaf only because they have wished themselves deaf perhaps to escape the noise of a nagging wife, and such cases are attested by the medical profession.

In the course of time the person begins to realise that there must be something in this life after death business after all; why does he hear voices, why does he sense people near him, why does he hear perhaps music? With dawning awareness that there might just possibly be something after death, the thick black fog lightens and becomes grey, light can filter in, he can see dim figures moving about, and he can hear more clearly. So, gradually, as his prejudices and inhibitions break down, he becomes more and more aware that something is happening around him. People constantly try to help him, they try to tell him that they want to help, they invite him to accept that help, and as soon as he does feel that he will accept help, then the fog disperses and he can see all the ~glory of the astral world, colours such as Earth lacks, brightness and lightness, and very very pleasant surroundings.

Our poor friend, who is only just beginning to realize that there is life after death, is taken to what we might call a hospital, or rest home, or recuperation centre. There by various rays his mental inhibitions are further dispersed, his spirit body is strengthened and made healthy, and it is also nourished.

Things are explained to him, he is in much the same position as a new-born baby except that he can understand all that is said to him and he can reply whereas a baby has to learn even to speak. So the person hears an explanation of what life on the Other Side is like. If he wants to argue about it he just cannot, people will not argue with him, he is just left to think about what he has been told, and when he can freely accept that which he has been told, the explanation continues. He is never persuaded of anything, he is never forced to do anything, he has a right of choice; If he doesn't want to believe then he has to stay in a somewhat static condition until he will believe.

Many there are who pass beyond the Earth to the next life with the firm, absolutely unbreakable conviction that their own particular religion is the only one which can exist. These poor wretches are in much the same position because the helpers on the Other Side know quite well that they cannot help the newcomer if their mere appearance shatters a lifelong belief, so, let us suppose a person is a very strong Catholic believing in angels and devils and all the rest of that pantomime. (insert picture)

Then, when they get to the Other Side they do indeed see the Pearly Gates, they see an old fellow with a beard and a whacking great ledger in which they think all the sins are being recorded.

Everything is done to put on the sort of show that the good, ignorant Catholic wants to see. He sees angels with flapping wings, he sees people sitting on clouds playing harps, and for a time he is quite satisfied thinking he has reached Heaven. But gradually it dawns on him that all this doesn't ring true, the people do not fly in the right rhythm for beating wings, etc., etc. Gradually it dawns on the new-comer that all this is a stage show and he begins to wonder what is behind it all, what is behind the drapes and the set piece, what are things really like, and just as soon as he begins to think that way he begins to see 'cracks' in the facade of the Heavenly Crowd. Soon there comes a time when he cannot stick the pantomime any longer and he cries out for enlightenment. 

Quickly the angels with their flapping wings fade away, quickly the harpists sitting in their nightshirts on a cloud beat it, quickly highly trained, highly experienced helpers show the newly awakened new-comer the reality instead of the illusion, and the reality is far greater than the illusion ever could be. It is a sad fact that so many people see a few pictures in the Bible - and they take them for gospel. Well, book illustrators ~e employed to illustrate the Bible as well, remember.

No matter what religion it is, if there are adherents (tilhengere) who believe unswervingly in the legends and, let us say, fantasies, of that religion, then that is what they see when they leave the Earth and enter the astral plane.

When the newcomer can realize the nature of the world he is in, then he can proceed further. He goes to the Hall of Memories and there, alone; he enters a room and he sees the whole of his life, everything he has done, everything he has tried to do, and everything he wanted to do. He sees every-thing that happened to him, and everything that he thought while upon the Earth, and he, and he alone, can make a judgement of whether his life was a success or a failure.

He, and he alone, can decide whether he will 'go back to college' and start the Course all over again in the hope of passing successfully next time.

There is no mother or father or best friend to stand by and take the blame for anything that he has done wrongly, he is there alone, entirely alone, more alone than he has been since he stood in that place before, last time. And he judges himself.

No devils, no Satan waiting with twitching tail and fiery breath, nobody is going to jab pitchforks into him, and as for all the flames, well, they don't even use such things for central heating!

Most people emerge from the Hall of Memories considerably shaken and remarkably glad of the help and sympathy which their helpers, waiting outside, offer.

There comes a period of adjustment, a period when the newcomer can think over all that he has seen, think over all the mistakes he has made, think over what he is going to do about it. It's not a matter to be decided in a few minutes, all manner of things have to be considered. Is it worth going back and starting all over again, or would it be better to stay a few hundred years in the astral waiting perhaps for more suitable conditions to come along? But then, thinks the newcomer, he doesn't know about all the suitable conditions or when they are likely to come along So he is invited to go to helpers who will discus everything with him, and who will advise him without putting any pressure whatever on him. At all times he has complete freedom of choice, freedom of decision, no one is going to force him to do anything. If he wants to go back and do a bit of hell-raking on Earth, that is his choice, and his choice only.

Many newcomers are not aware that they can pick up all the sustenance, all the nourishment they need from the air, from the vibrations around them. They think of their earthly life, they think of all the choice foods they would have liked to have had but perhaps couldn't afford, so, if they want it they can have it. No matter what type of food, it is there for the asking. If they want fat cigars or thin cigarettes or stinking pipes, yes, they can have those as well. Clothes - you'll never see such a medley of clothes and, costumes as you will on the astral plane! Anyone can wear any style of clothes he desires and it's not considered at all wrong, no one cares, it's the other person's affair. So if a fellow wants to get himself done up as a hippy with a load of pot on each hand, he can do so, the pot there won't hurt him, it only hurts when he's on the earth because astral pot is entirely harmless - Earth pot is horribly dangerous.

But the newcomer soon tires of doing nothing, he soon tires of just kicking his heels and watching the astral world go by. Even if he was a lazy slob on Earth, one who just liked to hang around streetcorners and utter wolf whistles, well even that sort of fellow soon tires of doing nothing in the atmosphere of the astral plane. He asks for work, and he gets it. What sort of work? There are all manner of things to be done. It's impossible to say what sort of work he does just as it's impossible to say what sort of work a person would get here on Earth if they went to Timbuctoo or Alsace Lorraine suddenly. They do work within their capabilities, necessary work, and in doing the work they find considerable satisfaction and stability.

But all the time they have the nagging thought, the nagging wonder of what to do. Should they stay in the astral a bit longer? What would other people do? They ask again and again, and they are told again and again, always the same thing they are told, and never is there any attempt to persuade them to do anything, the choice is entirely theirs.

At last they decide they can't hang around any longer, they decide they cannot be a drop-out from the school of Earth, they must go back - do their lessons properly and pass the examinations.

They make their decision known and then they are taken to a special group of people who have vast experience and some very, very remarkable instruments. It is determined what the person has to learn - it is determined how best he may learn it - go to a poor family, will that help? Or should he go to a rich family? Should he be a white man or a coloured man, or should he be a woman, coloured or white? It depends on the sort of mess he made of his last life, it depends on how hard he is prepared to work in the coming life, it depends on what he has to learn. Anyhow, the advisers are well qualified to help him, they can suggest - and they suggest only - the type of parents, the type of country, and the conditions. Then when he has agreed to the conditions certain instruments are brought into play and the necessary parents-to-be are located Alternative parents are located as well, and these parents are observed for a short time. Then, if everything proves satisfactory, the person who is ready to reincarnate goes to a special home in the astral world. There he goes to bed, and when he wakes up he is in the process of being born into the Earth. No wonder he makes such a commotion and lets out wails of despair!

Many people, entities, decide they do not want to return to Earth just yet, and so, they stay in the astral worlds where they have much work to do. But before discussing them let us deal with a special class of people who have no choice; suicides.

If a person has wilfully ended his or her life on Earth before the allotted number of years, then that person has to return to Earth as fast as possible in order to serve out the unexpired time, just as if they were a convict who had escaped and had been recaptured, and had had a bit tacked on as an extra punishment.

A suicide gets into the astral world. He is met, received, just as if he were an ordinary legitimate person coming back, no recriminations, nothing of that type at all. He is treated precisely the same as other entrants. He is allowed a reason-able time in which to recover from the shock of leaving the physical body probably violently, and entering the astral.

When he has recovered sufficiently he has to go to the Hall of Memories, and there he sees all that has ever happened to him, he sees the flaws which ~ made him commit suicide. And so he is left with the awful feeling, the awful knowledge would be a better term, that he has to get back to Earth and live out the unexpired term.

Possibly the suicide is a person of poor spiritual calibre; possibly he lacks the intestinal fortitude to go back on Earth, and he thinks he is just jolly well going to stay in the astral and nobody can do anything about it. Well, he is wrong there because it is a law that a suicide has to return to Earth, and if he will not return of his own free will, then he is compelled to go.

If he is willing to return, then, at a meeting with special counsellors, he is advised of how many days or years there are remaining to him on his Earth 'sentence'. He has to live out all that time on Earth, he also has to live out all the time that has elapsed since he committed suicide and before returning to Earth again. So, perhaps it took a year to straighten him out and get him to decide that he had to go back to Earth, thus he gets a year added to his life on Earth.

Conditions are found on Earth so that he can return and encounter substantially the same type of conditions which caused him to take his life before, and then at the appointed time he is put to sleep and awakens to the act of being born.

If he proves recalcitrant and just will make no move to go back to Earth, then the counsellors decide for him on conditions, which would meet his case. If he will not go freely then the conditions are a bit tougher than if he did go freely. Then, again at the appointed time, he is put to sleep without him having any choice whatever, in the matte; he is put to sleep and when he wakes up he is back on Earth.

It is often the case that a baby who is born and dies perhaps a month or two after is the reincarnation of a person who committed suicide rather than perhaps face two or three months of agony when they were dying from incurable, inoperable cancer. The sufferer may have taken his own life two or three, or perhaps six months or a year before he would naturally have died. But he still has to come back and serve out all the time, which he tried to short-circuit.

It is sometimes thought that pain is a useless thing, suffering is a useless thing. It is sometimes thought that it is good to kill off a human who is incurable, but do these people who advocate such a course really know what the sufferer is trying to learn? His very suffering, the very nature of his illness may be something about which he desired to learn.

People often write to me and say, 'Oh, Dr. Rampa, with all your knowledge how is it that you have to suffer? Why don't you cure yourself and live for ever?' But, of course, that's nonsense. Who wants to live forever? And people who write in with statements like that, how do they know what I am trying to do? They don't, and that's all there is to it. If a person is investigating a certain subject then often that person has to undergo a considerable amount of hardship in order to do the work properly. These people who wander off and bring aid and sustenance to lepers, for instance, well, they don't know how the leper feels or how the leper thinks.

They might be helping the leper's physical being, but they still are not lepers. Its the same with T.B., or cancer, or even an ingrowing toenail. Until one actually has the complaint or the condition then one quite definitely is not qualified to make any discussion on the complaint or condition. It always amuses me that Roman Catholic priests who are not married and who, presumably never have children, never become a father, that is, except in the spiritual sense, dare to advise women about having children and all that. Of course many of these Catholic priests go away for vacations and they get to know quite a lot about women. We saw that in Montreal!

It is definitely wrong, then, to commit suicide. You are just postponing the day when you can be free of Earth legitimately, you've got to come back like an escaped convict who has been recaptured, and you are hurting no one but yourself, and it's yourself you think about, isn't it? That's one of the things that has to be overcome, too.

The ordinary average person who is not too good and not too bad stays in the astral world for a varying period of time. It is not true that everyone stays there for six hundred, or a thousand, or two thousand years; it depends entirely on the conditions, which prevail in the case of each and every individual. There is an average time, but then there is an average man-in-the-street and an average woman in-the-street, and the average time is just - well, just a figure. (the pleiadian contactteam from Erra said that the average time between two incarnations for people on earth was at present ca. 170 y) There are many tasks to do in the astral world.

Some people help those who are coming to join the astral world, some people act as guides to them, and this 'guide' 'has nothing to do with spiritualist seances or old ladies who think they have a Red Indian guide or a Chinese Mandarin guide or a Tibetan Lama guide. What these old ladies usually have is an overdose of imagination. Actually, if everything was counted up and if everyone who claimed to have an Indian guide or a Tibetan guide was listed, there just wouldn't be enough Indians or enough Tibetans to go round, and in any case these people on the, Other Side have their own jobs to do, and those jobs do not include stirring teacups so some old biddy can give a reading, it doesn't include speaking through a tin trumpet or moving a bit of cheesecloth.

All that stuff, which of course is utterly useless, comes from a bit of nervous energy on the part of some usually hysterical operator. People on the Other Side have too much to do looking after their own affairs to come to Earth and poke about in dark rooms breathing down the necks of people who are there for a delicious thrill. The only ones who do go to these seances from the Other Side are the Nature Spirits of a lower type called Elementals. They are there just for some fun, to see what a lot of saps these humans are to believe anything and everything that is told to them. Don't you, my dear friends Reader, go in for this guff, because guff it is.

The same goes for this Ouija Board stuff. People will get a Ouija Board and play about with it, and some Elemental who is always dashing about like a mischievous monkey, will see what is being done, and he will definitely influence the reading. Now you might think there is no harm in that, but there is no good in it either, and definitely there is great harm in these Ouija Board readings if an Elemental causes the message to be given to sound highly plausible but which is just something extracted from the victim's own sub-conscious. A person's whole life can be affected for the worse by believing in this Ouija Board messages.

Another great source of misinformation is when the Ouija-Board is moved in accordance with the collective thought of the people who are gathered around. Often it will be impelled by wishful thinking and, again, will give a message which can be positively harmful by being misleading. The safest thing is - have nothing whatever to do with Ouija Boards and nothing whatever to do with seances. Remember, you came to this Earth deliberately not knowing the exact purpose of your visit, and if you try to find out too much without very, very exceptional cause, then you are like the student going to the examination room who manages to steal a copy of the examination papers first. That is just plain cheating, and it doesn't help at all.

One job which has to be done in the astral world is to receive those who come during the hours of sleep. People are arriving at all times because when it is daylight in one part of the world it is night in another part, so there are a constant stream of people going to the astral world during their sleep period, and they are like children returning from school. Just as children like to be greeted by their parents or friends, so do these night travellers.

Their traffic has to be directed, they have to be put in touch with those whom they desire to meet, and many of them desire information and counselling during what, upon Earth, is night. They want to know how they are doing and what they should do on the morrow. This does occupy a lot of time for a lot of people.

Then there are other entities in the astral world who are not reincarnating to Earth again, they are going on - going up, going up to an even higher plane of existence. At the right time they will 'die' very peacefully, very painlessly to the astral world. They will, in fact, just vanish to the astral world and will appear in a higher plane.

There are more and more people coming to the Earth, more and more people being born to the Earth, and many inquirers wonder why that should be so. The answer is Earth is just one speck of dust amid billions of specks of dust, and when people ask me why the population of the Earth is increasing I tell them the truth, which is that people are coming to Earth from other more nebulous planes of existence. Perhaps a person comes from a two dimensional world and comes to Earth as his first experience in a three dimensional world, so he starts his round of existence to the three dimensional world which we call Earth. And all the time there are more and more people coming as Earth becomes more and more of a qualified school of hardship. That is the purpose of Earth, you know, to teach one hardship and how to endure it and how to overcome it. People do not come to Earth to have a very enjoyable time, they come to learn so that all the information they learn can be passed on to the Overself.

After this world there is the astral plane, and from the astral plane, in the fullness of time, one is born upwards to different planes of existence until at last the fully evolved entity merges with the Overself. That is how the Overself grows.

If, having grown quite a lot, the Overself decides that there is much more to learn, then fresh 'puppets' are put down on some world and the whole process of cycles of life is started all over again; and each time when the puppets have completed their cycles they return purified to the Overself, which, again, grows through it.

When a person is living in the astral, that is, when a person has 'died' to Earth, then that particular entity enters into the full life of the astral world and is not just a visitor as are those who return to the astral world, during that time when their body is asleep on the Earth, and, being full-time members of the astral world, they behave as ordinary people would on the Earth. That is, at the end of an astral day they sleep. The astral body which, of course, is quite solid to people in the astral world, goes to sleep, and, again, the psyche leaves the astral body at the end of its Silver Cord and goes into a yet higher plane. There it learns things which will be of use on what we might term the lower astral when the spirit returns to the astral body. Do not think that the astral world is the highest world, do not think that it is Heaven; it is not. There are many, many different cycles or planes of existence.

While in that world which we call the astral world, we can have a family. We live in much the same way as people live down here except that there are not quarrels because in the astral you just cannot meet people with whom you are incompatible. So that if you get married in the astral, then you cannot have a nagging partner. This is not generally understood by people on Earth; while in the astral world you cannot meet those who were your enemies on Earth, and your family - well, your astral family are as solid to you as were people on the Earth to you.

Humans are not alone in the astral world, animals go there too. Never, never make the most tragic mistake of thinking that humans are the highest form of existence; they are not. Humans are just another form of existence. Humans think in one way, animals think in another way, but there are entities who, compared to humans, are as much above the humans as the humans are above the earthworms, and even these People know that they are not the ultimate form of evolution. So forget all about being a superior creature and concentrate on doing the best job you can.

Animals go to the astral plane, animals go higher as they merit it just as humans do. One of the big difficulties with the Christian religion is that they think humanity is the highest form of evolution possible, they think that all creatures were made for the satisfaction of Man, and that has led to some terrible conditions. The animal world and the animal Manus have been incredibly tolerant, knowing that humans have been misinstructed by their religious leaders, by their priests - who really rearranged Christianity to give themselves adequate power.

Accept it as fact, then, that in the astral worlds you will not find cowering (sammenkrypende) dogs or scared cats. You will instead find a partner who is in every way the equal of a human and who can communicate with a human with utter ease by telepathy.

Many people have asked about bodies, will a body appear to be just a bunch of gas, or what? And the answer is, no, a body will appear as solid ,to you in the astral as is that lump of me at which you now push about on two bony stems, and if two people should collide in the astral, well, they get a bump just the same as when two people collide on the Earth plane.

There is great love in the astral world, physical love as well as spiritual love but, of course, on a scale which the mind limited to Earth thoughts cannot comprehend while in the Earth body. There is no such thing as 'frustration' in the astral world because love is completely satisfactory at all times and for both partners.

Some people have written in asking for a description of God. God is not just the Head of a big Corporation, you know, He's not just an old fellow who wears a long beard and carries a lantern on the end of a staff. God is a great Force which can be comprehended and understood when one is out of the Earth body and in the astral world. At present upon the Earth one is in a three dimensional world and most people could not understand, let us say, the description of a nine dimensional object.

Each world has a Manu in charge of the world. You can say that the Manu is like one of the Gods on Olympus so thoroughly described in Greek legends. Or if you wanted to be more up to date you can say that the Manu is like the General Manager of the branch of a big firm. Under the General Manager of that branch - because this world is only a branch, after all - we have departmental managers who, in our terms, would be called the Manus of different continents and of different countries. These under managers are responsible for running, let us say, the U.S.A. or Germany or Argentina, and so on, and just as human managers have different temperaments so do the Manus, and so the country concerned gets a different national characteristic. The Germans, for example, are quite different from the Italians, and the Italians are quite different from the Chinese. That is because the 'Manager' of that department happens to be different.

The Manus, no matter how glorious they seems to be, are just puppets of the Great Entity or Overself which makes up 'God'. That Great Overself uses Manus as puppets in much the same way as the human Overself may use a whole bunch of humans in order to gain experience.

Another question which is so frequently asked is, "The astral body apparently has some sort of substance to it. If it has molecules, no matter how thinly dispersed, these could be subject to destruction or injury through heat, cold, or collision. If this were so some discomfort and pain in almost a physical sense could exist. How would the astral fare in the vicinity of a physical star?"

Well, when one talks of molecules one is talking of substances which are in the Earth plane. A molecule is a physical thing, a piece of matter, but when we are talking about the astral plane we are completely away from the low-grade vibration which comprises everything upon this Earth. A physical body on the Earth can receive injury from another physical body, but a physical body in the astral cannot - in any way - be damaged by the physical body of the Earth, the two things are completely and utterly different. One can say, just purely as an example and not a very good example at that, one can say that a rock and a light do not interact upon each other. If we, throw a rock up into the sky it doesn't hurt the sun. So in the'same way anything that happens on the Earth, does not hurt any astral body, but what does hurt people in the astral is the crass stupidity displayed by humans on the Earth in trying to bump each other off, liquidate each other in various painful ways, and generally behave like a lot of completely insane people instead of entities who are upon Earth to learn something. The way people of Earth as going on at the present time is much the same as the way the students who wreck million dollar computers are going on. It's time humans grew up, and it's time students learned that they go to a school or college to learn from people who know more than they do.