Gradually, as evolution goes on the organisation of the astral body will go on in everybody, but it is possible, as I suggested to you a few Sundays ago, very largely to quicken that evolution, and gradually to make the astral body what it ought to be, as perfect an instrument for contact with the astral world as the physical body is for contact with the physical world. That is, of course, what a very considerable number of people have done, and they are able to act either in or out of the physical body. We will take both cases in a moment. Take the finer part first of the subtle body—the mental body. In most of you that also is fairly organised, but, again, it is organised for working within yourself, but not receiving from the outer mental world all that hereafter it will be able to receive and utilise, and only a few of you, comparatively, would be able to leave the denser and the astral body behind, and live in the heavenly world, in full consciousness, working there as thoroughly as you can work in the physical world.
What signs are there by which you can judge how far the organisation of the astral and the mental bodies is going on, so that if you work to quicken their organisation you will be able partly to judge how far your work is effective? Let us take the working in the body, the physical body, first. As these other higher forms of consciousness begin to become co-ordinated with the physical, and to hand on to it the impressions that they receive, the mental body is becoming highly organised; when the person possessing it is strong in science, physical science, above all in the grasping of principles, in the power of observation, in the ability to draw conclusions from the observations that have been made, organisation is improving. Among the scientific men of our own time that mental body will be very highly developed, chiefly for use in the waking consciousness, very imperfectly as yet for direct reception on the higher planes. The higher development of the astral body will show itself in forms of art and of high emotion, and just in proportion as those are transmissible to the waking consciousness may you realise that the astral body is becoming more definitely organised. When the body of the intellect, the lasting body, part of the spiritual body, is becoming organised, then it is that you find fine metaphysical ability, great philosophical profundity of thought, the highest conceptions of idealistic art, the highest achievements in idealistic literature. Those are the faculties that belong to the beginning of the spiritual body in man, transcending the transitory, beginning to shape the permanent instrument of the Spirit. Where you have great talent, where the mental body is highly organised, where you have the highest genius, there the spiritual body is beginning its organisation. For that highest genius is the flashing down from the organised spiritual body into the lower nature of knowledge which in those regions alone can be gained; and when art and literature become illuminated by the Spirit, then you have the mighty geniuses of history that outlast the passing generations and shine out in the world of thought.