in his life in the mental world; therefore that life in the mental, world
cannot be other than blissful. The astral life, which the man has made for
himself either miserable or comparatively joyous, corresponds to what
Christians call purgatory; the lower mental life, which is always entirely
happy, is what is called heaven.

Man makes for himself his own purgatory and heaven, and these are not
planes, but states of consciousness. Hell does not exist; it is only a
figment of the theological imagination; but a man who lives foolishly may
make for himself a very unpleasant and long enduring purgatory. Neither
purgatory nor heaven can ever be eternal, for a finite cause cannot produce
an infinite result. The variations in individual cases are so wide that to
give actual figures is somewhat misleading. If we take the average man of
what is called the lower middle class, the typical specimen of which would
be a small shopkeeper or shop-assistant, his average life in the astral
world would be perhaps about forty years, and the life in the mental world
about two hundred. The man of spirituality and culture, on the other hand,
may have perhaps twenty years of life in the astral world and a thousand in
the heaven life. One who is specially developed may reduce the astral life
to a few days or hours and spend fifteen hundred years in heaven.

Not only does the length of these periods vary greatly, but the conditions
in both worlds also differ widely. The matter of which all these bodies are
built is not dead matter but living, and that fact has to be taken into
consideration. The physical body is built up of cells, each of which is a
tiny separate life animated by the Second Outpouring, which comes forth
from the Second Aspect of the Deity. These cells are of varying kinds and
fulfil various functions, and all these facts must be taken into account if
the man wishes to understand the work of his physical body and to live a
healthy life in it.