CONSTITUTION OF MAN 119

by steps as if you go up a ladder, for the
terms " up and down" are entirely inappro-
priate, for each body is really within each.

Thus man as we know him, though in reality a
Monad residing in the monadic world, shows him-
self as an ego in the higher mental world, manifest-
ing these three aspects of himself (Spirit, Intuition
and Intelligence) through that vehicle of higher
mental matter which we name the causal body.

This ego is the man during the human stage of
evolution ; he is the nearest correspondence, in fact,
to the ordinary unscientific conception of the souL
He lives unchanged (except for his growth) from the
moment of individualisation until humanity is
transcended and merged into divinity. He is in no
way affected by what we call birth and death ; what
we commonly consider as his life is only a day in
his life. The body which we can see, the body
which is born and dies, is a garment which he puts
on for the purposes of a certain part of his
evolution.

In our present stage of evolution we are not
able to contact consciously all these bodies, the
three higher, or, shall I call them more refined,
more ethereal, being beyond our present know-
ledge, touch and conscious contact.

The idea of man as body, soul and spirit is not
to me misleading nor does it in any way conflict
with the idea of the seven, the three higher
belonging to the world of spirit and the lower
four to the soul and body (I still use the term
higher and lower, I cannot get way from it in