The man’s position in the mental world differs widely from that in the astral.  There he was using a body to which he was thoroughly accustomed, a body which he had been in the habit of employing every night during sleep.  Here he finds himself living in a vehicle which he has never used before—­a vehicle furthermore which is very far from being fully developed—­a vehicle which shuts him out to a great extent from the world about him, instead of enabling him to see it.  The lower part of his nature burnt itself away during his purgatorial life, and now there remain to him only his higher and more refined thoughts, the noble and unselfish aspirations which he poured out during earth-life.  These cluster round him, and make a sort of shell about him, through the medium of which he is able to respond to certain types of vibrations in this refined matter.

These thoughts which surround him are the powers by which he draws upon the wealth of the heaven-world, and he finds it to be a storehouse of infinite extent, upon which he is able to draw just according to the power of those thoughts and aspirations; for in this world is existing the infinite fullness of the Divine Mind, open in all its limitless affluence to every soul, just in proportion as that soul has qualified itself to receive.  A man who has already completed his human evolution, who has fully realized and unfolded the divinity whose germ is within him, finds the whole of this glory within his reach; but since none of us has yet done that, since we are only gradually rising towards that splendid consummation, it follows that none of us as yet can grasp that entirety.

But each draws from it and cognizes so much of it as he has by previous effort prepared himself to take.  Different individuals bring very different capacities; they tell us in the East that each man brings his own cup, and some of the cups are large and some are small, but small or large every cup is filled to its utmost capacity; the sea of bliss holds far more than enough for all.

A man can look out upon all this glory and beauty only through the windows which he himself has made.  Every one of these thought-forms is such a window, through which response may come to him from the forces without.  If during his earth-life he has chiefly regarded physical things, then he has made for himself but few windows through which this higher glory can shine in upon him.  Yet every man who is above the lowest savage must have had some touch of pure unselfish feeling, even if it were but once in all his life, and that will be a window for him now.