stands alone. As I have said, although they all interpenetrate, their
substance has a general tendency to arrange itself according to its
specific gravity, so that most of the matter belonging to the higher
subdivisions is found at a greater elevation above the surface of the earth
than the bulk of the matter of the lower portions.

Hence, although any person inhabiting the astral world can move into any
part of it, his natural tendency is to float at the level which corresponds
with the specific gravity of the heaviest matter in his astral body. The
man who has not permitted the rearrangement of the matter of his astral
body after death is entirely free of the whole astral world; but the
majority, who do permit it, are not equally free--not because there is
anything to prevent them from rising to the highest level or sinking to the
lowest, but because they are able to sense clearly only a certain part of
that world.

I have described something of the fate of a man who is on the lowest level,
shut in by a strong shell of coarse matter. Because of the extreme
comparative density of that matter he is conscious of less outside of his
own subdivision than a man at any other level. The general specific gravity
of his own astral body tends to make him float below the surface of the
earth. The physical matter of the earth is absolutely non-existent to his
astral senses, and his natural attraction is to that least delicate form of
astral matter which is the counterpart of that solid earth. A man who has
confined himself to that lowest subdivision will therefore usually find
himself floating in darkness and cut off to a great extent from others of
the dead, whose lives have been such as to keep them on a higher level.

Divisions four, five and six of the astral world (to which most people are
attracted) have for their background the astral counterpart of the physical