The Mental Body Manas — The Vehicle of Thought — A.E. Powell — 1927
The Mental Body
Manas — The Vehicle of Thought — A.E. Powell — 1927
Beyond the dense and the astral lies the mental plane — the luminous architecture of mind itself. This is the vehicle of concrete intellect, the forge of thought-forms, the battleground of Kama-Manas, and the gateway to the Causal Body where the immortal Thinker dwells.
The Vehicle of the Thinker
The mental body is the vehicle through which the Self manifests as concrete intellect — the instrument by which man thinks, remembers, imagines, and in more advanced stages of evolution, functions as a fully independent consciousness separate from both physical and astral existence.
Unlike the etheric body, which is the scaffold of physical vitality, or the astral body, which churns with emotion and desire, the mental body operates at a higher and finer vibrational register. Its matter is drawn from the four lower sub-planes of the mental plane and is shaped, over many incarnations, by the quality and character of one's thought.
A critical distinction runs through the entire subject: occult psychology divides man's mental equipment into two fundamentally different parts. The mental body deals with concrete thoughts — particulars, specific objects, definite ideas. The causal body, built from the three higher sub-planes of the mental plane, deals with abstract thought — principles, universals, the domain of the Higher Self or Ego. This book concerns primarily the lower four sub-planes and the mental body proper, though the causal body and its relationship to rebirth are addressed in full.
"The mind is the reflection of the cognitional aspect of the Self, of the Self as Knower: the mind is the Self working in the mental body."
A.E. Powell — The Mental BodyAt the present stage of human evolution, the Fifth Root Race is engaged specifically in the development and vivification of the mental body. The physical body has long been developed; the astral is largely active; it is the mental vehicle that now calls for the greatest conscious effort of unfoldment.
The Seven Sub-Planes of the Mental Plane
The mental plane consists of seven sub-planes, divided into two distinct regions. The four lower sub-planes constitute the world of concrete, formed thought — the Rupa (form-bearing) levels. The three higher sub-planes are formless, abstract — the Arupa levels, home of the Causal Body and the Higher Ego.
The mental body of an average man is built from matter of the four lower sub-planes. As a person develops spiritually, coarser combinations of mental matter are eliminated and replaced by finer varieties. In the highly developed man, the mental body contains only the finer varieties — those of the fourth and fifth sub-planes predominating — making it responsive to the higher workings of intellect, the delicate impressions of art, and the pure impulses of lofty emotion.
Structure, Colour & the Mental Unit
The mental body appears to clairvoyant vision as a luminous ovoid, interpenetrating and extending beyond the physical body. Its matter consists both of ordinary mental substance drawn from the four lower sub-planes, and of Mental Elemental Essence — the ensouled matter of the Second Elemental Kingdom, which surrounds us and responds instantaneously to the impulse of thought.
Within this ovoid the matter arranges itself into distinct zones or bands of colour, each corresponding to a quality or type of mental activity. Reading roughly from top to bottom:
| Zone / Colour | Mental Quality | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Violet / Blue-Violet | Spiritual devotion, higher aspiration | Floats in upper region of the ovoid |
| Blue / Blue-Grey | Devotion, religious feeling | Fetish-worship if muddy; purer blue = true spiritual devotion |
| Rose / Crimson | Affection, love | Muddy crimson = selfish affection; clear rose = unselfish love |
| Orange | Pride, ambition | Often closely connected with yellow intellect |
| Yellow | Intellect — philosophical and scientific | Two bands: philosophical and scientific thought. Clear yellow = pure intellect |
| Broad mid-section | Concrete thought-forms | The region from which all ordinary thought-forms are issued |
| Green | Deceit, treachery, avarice (dirty green) or adaptability (clear) | Rises in the aura as a man develops — less coarse than anger |
| Scarlet / Red | Anger, irritability | Coarser matter; tends to sink lower in evolved men |
| Brown / Grey-Brown | Selfishness, meanness | Deposits at base of ovoid; a "mud" of undesirable quality |
The condition of these bands reveals character at a glance. Strong will manifests as firm, clearly defined striations throughout the entire body. A weak or vacillating person shows indeterminate lines between zones. Courage appears as strongly marked lines in the orange band. Intense emotion of any kind temporarily disrupts the zones, mixing the colours — which then slowly re-sort themselves by the specific gravity of their matter.
At the heart of this structure is the Mental Unit — the permanent atom of the mental body. It belongs to the fourth sub-plane and preserves, encoded as latent vibratory powers, the accumulated result of all mental experiences across incarnations. The mental unit corresponds to the permanent atoms of the other bodies, and all permanent atoms of a given man belong to the same ray or type.
Thought-Waves & Thought-Forms
When a man thinks, two distinct and simultaneous effects are produced in the mental body. Understanding both is central to understanding the practical reach of mental activity.
When emotion accompanies thought, the thought-form becomes an astro-mental form — built of both mental and astral matter. This combined form travels directly toward its object and fastens upon them. It can be compared to a Leyden jar: the elemental essence forms the vessel, the thought-energy the charge.
Thought-forms generated by Kama-Manas — mind entangled with desire — tend toward irregular, cloudy shapes. As a man's thinking clarifies and desire is less dominant, his thought-forms become more geometrically precise, more brilliantly coloured, and more powerfully effective.
"Every thought which a man sends out makes its contribution to the thought-atmosphere of the world, and acts as a tiny invisible force in moulding the minds of others."
A.E. Powell — The Mental BodyThe colours of thought-forms directly mirror their nature. A brilliant yellow form indicates pure intellectual activity — clear, geometric, and entirely uncontaminated by personal emotion. Golden yellow with radiating points marks mathematical or logical thought of high order. Rose forms express affection. Dark crimson anger. The form and clarity of outline additionally indicate the precision and definition of the thinking mind behind it.
Collective & Persistent Thought-Forms
Long-sustained individual or collective thought builds permanent structures in the mental atmosphere. Nations, races, and religious traditions accumulate vast aggregations of thought-forms — thought-centres — that exert continuous pressure on all individuals entering the mental field of that community. This is why men think in herds; the lazy mind absorbs ready-made thought rather than generating original movement.
These collective thought-atmospheres are among the most significant unseen forces shaping human civilisation. Thought-forms of a destructive type act as disruptive energies — the source, according to this teaching, of many physical-plane events that appear random: accidents, natural upheavals, cycles of crime and epidemic. Evil thought contributes materially to the perpetuation of social disorder.
Kama-Manas — The Desire-Mind
The most critical dynamic in the mental body of the average human being is the entanglement of Manas — mind — with Kama — desire. This fusion is called Kama-Manas, and for the majority of humanity it constitutes the effective centre of consciousness.
Manas is the Thinker — a spiritual entity inhabiting the Causal Body on the higher mental plane. Unable to directly contact the lower worlds, it projects downward a Ray of itself: the lower manas. This Ray plays through the physical brain, sets the nerve-cells into vibration, and gives rise to waking consciousness. But this lower mind, descending into the quaternary of the personality, becomes clasped by Kama — desire — on one side, and retains its link to the higher Ego on the other.
| Principle | Nature | Function | Vehicle |
|---|---|---|---|
| Higher Manas | Spiritual, abstract | Abstract thought, pure reason, intuition | Causal Body (Arupa) |
| Lower Manas | Concrete, reflective | Concrete thought, memory, imagination, brain-consciousness | Mental Body (Rupa) |
| Kama | Desire, instinct, passion | Drives appetite, sensation, emotion | Astral Body |
| Kama-Manas | Desire-tainted mind | Rationalises desire; the ordinary waking mind of the unevolving man | Lower mental + upper astral |
The entire arc of human mental development can be read as the progressive disentanglement of Manas from Kama. As a man develops, the centre of consciousness gradually transfers upward: from the body to emotion, from emotion to lower mind, from lower mind eventually to ego-consciousness in the causal body. The cultured man begins to govern desire by reason rather than to let desire direct reason.
When Kama wins the struggle, lower manas is dragged down into purely sensory and self-interested activity. When aspiration prevails, the chains of sense are broken, and the mind lifts. In the undeveloped man, this mind — harnessed to the service of the senses — makes of him, as Powell notes with striking directness, a more dangerous and calculating brute than any animal, whose passions are limited and immediate.
"The mandate of the ego comes not in the fire or the whirlwind... but only when there has fallen the stillness of a silence that can be felt."
A.E. Powell — The Mental BodyThought-Transference & Mental Healing
Powell identifies three distinct pathways by which thought passes between individuals. The first is the physical or etheric method — thought vibrates through mental body, astral body, etheric brain, and finally the dense physical brain. The vibrations pass outward through the physical ether to another brain and the chain reverses. This is the most common method for ordinary men.
The second is the astral method, in which the thought passes between the two astral bodies directly, without fully descending into physical brain. This is the mechanism of much unconscious thought-influence between people in emotional rapport.
The third — the highest — is the direct mental method, in which the thought passes directly from mental body to mental body, bypassing astral and physical intermediaries entirely. This requires the sender to be self-conscious on the mental plane, and is the method employed by Masters in the instruction of their pupils. On the mental plane there is no barrier of language — thought is conveyed as colour, sound, and form simultaneously.
The vast majority of thought-transference occurs without any conscious intention on either side. Most men's ordinary thinking is not original — it consists largely of cast-off fragments of others' thoughts, absorbed unconsciously from the mental atmosphere. National and racial thought-forms, built up over generations, exert a continuous pressure that biases and channels ordinary thinking without the thinker being aware of it.
Animals are shown to be particularly receptive to unconscious thought-transference from their human companions — instances of dogs responding to their owners' intention to return home before any physical signal is possible, and of animal communication within species operating at subtle rather than physical levels, are discussed at length.
For deliberate thought-projection, the sender visualises the recipient clearly and directs specific thought-images toward them with full concentration. The image is a vehicle through which the thought-force operates. If the patient is asleep, they are drawn toward the thinker and animate the image. The practitioner must guard against projecting his own desires disguised as help — the intent must be genuinely directed toward the patient's wellbeing.
Mental healing operates through the established interconnection of mental, astral, and etheric bodies. The mind, when convinced of health, drives its conviction into the astral and down into the physical. Since the astral body is, in the nature of things, more amenable to the power of thought than the physical body, even the physical may be reshaped by sustained, directed mental force. The literature of stigmata, psychosomatic medicine, and hypnotic cure are cited as evidence that physical matter responds, slowly but verifiably, to mental pressure.
The mind's influence is not limited to other minds and bodies. Objects can be saturated with thought, becoming vehicles for its continued radiation. Talismans charged with focused mental magnetism may retain and broadcast that influence for extended periods. Conversely, objects repeatedly used in fear, hatred, or violence accumulate those atmospheres and radiate them outward. The "unlucky" atmosphere of a place or object and the "blessed" atmosphere of another have a literal, not merely metaphorical, basis in this framework.
Habitual thought makes its impress on physical features. The strongest talisman on Earth, Powell states, is the Rod of Power kept at Shamballa, used in Initiations and at other times.
Faculties, Concentration & the Ladder of Meditation
The functions of the mental body — concrete thinking, memory, imagination, and eventually independent consciousness on the mental plane — develop as the man himself develops. At first, the mental body cannot function independently; all mental activity must clothe itself in astral matter before it becomes accessible to consciousness. In more evolved individuals, the mental body can operate as a direct vehicle of experience, independent of the astral and physical.
The deliberate development of mental faculties follows a graduated path. Each stage is both a discipline in itself and a preparation for the next.
The development of the mental body affects all the other vehicles. As the mental body becomes more organised, more finely structured, and more luminous, the astral body is drawn progressively into alignment — tending to mirror the mental colours rather than generating its own turbulence. The physical brain, in turn, is gradually tuned to receive impressions from higher levels of mind that previously passed through it unrecorded.
Devachan — The Heaven-Life Between Incarnations
After the death of the astral body, the Ego withdraws into the mental body and enters Devachan — the heaven-world, constituted by the four lower sub-planes of the mental plane. This is not metaphor or religious consolation; Powell presents it as observed fact within the Theosophical framework, systematically investigated and cross-checked by multiple clairvoyant researchers.
The heaven-life is not a reward imposed from without but the natural and inevitable working-out of the forces generated during physical and astral life. Every aspiration, every frustrated effort, every act of genuine unselfish love — all these are energies that must find their full expression. On the physical plane they were perpetually interrupted, thwarted, incomplete. In Devachan they run to their natural completion, without interference or limit, for as long as the force lasts.
The length of the Devachanic period varies enormously. It is determined entirely by the quantity of unselfish mental and spiritual force generated during the physical and astral lives. A short, intense life of pure aspiration and love may generate forces requiring centuries to work themselves out. The deeply materialistic man, whose energies were all directed toward sensation and selfish acquisition, may pass through Devachan rapidly — there being little mental or spiritual content to unfold.
The dominant characteristic required for Devachanic existence is unselfishness. Affection of an exacting, possessive kind — which desires to be loved rather than to give — has no seed of mental development in it and will never rise above the astral plane. Only what is genuinely outward-flowing in quality can generate the forces that sustain life on the mental plane.
"Every aspiration is worked up into power; all frustrated efforts become faculties and abilities; struggles and defeats re-appear as materials to be wrought into instruments of victory."
A.E. Powell — The Mental Body, Chapter XXIThe Mental Plane, Akashic Records & Inhabitants
The mental plane is not a remote afterlife destination; it is a vast, existing world of vivid life surrounding us constantly. Our development — or lack of it — determines whether we consciously access it. Those who enter it in full consciousness find themselves immersed in what appears to be a universe of ever-changing light, colour, and sound: floating in a sea of living light surrounded by every variety of loveliness in form and colour, the whole shifting with every movement of thought.
On the mental plane there is no language barrier. Communication between minds occurs through the simultaneous transmission of colour, sound, and form — a complete thought conveyed as a musical, coloured picture. Certain ancient texts known to Initiates were written in this "colour-language of the Gods," which corresponds to the natural speech of the mental world.
The Akashic Records are a permanent registration, preserved in subtle matter, of every event that has ever occurred. They are not a storage medium in any ordinary sense — the record is the event itself, preserved as a standing wave in the fabric of the plane. A trained observer reading the Akashic Records does not see a reproduction; they see the event itself, as it happened, from within it.
Reading the Records requires a link — a physical connection to the event through a person, object, or location involved in it. Dating the records requires ingenuity: observing what is written in documents within the scene, reading the assumptions of people present about their own era, or cross-referencing with other datable events. Clairvoyant investigation of the Records by multiple observers, Powell reports, has produced a striking degree of convergence — errors and discrepancies proving rare and minor.
The ultimate implication is that for the Solar Logos — whose consciousness encompasses the entire solar system — every event that has ever occurred is not a memory but a presently occurring reality, accessible at will in any sequence, at any speed, forward or backward.
The mental plane is populated by a range of entities far beyond the human dead. Adepts and Initiates embodied in physical form nevertheless move in full consciousness on the mental plane, appearing to clairvoyant vision as splendid globes of living light. Egos in Devachan inhabit the four lower sub-planes according to their development. Human souls out of physical incarnation occupy the levels their spiritual development enables.
Devas (angels) of various orders inhabit the mental plane, their evolution proceeding largely through service — particularly in connection with ceremonial work, through which they receive opportunities for development. Some are described as Rupadevas inhabiting the four lower levels, others as Arupadevas of the three higher. Cosmic entities — visitors from other systems — appear on the mental plane more frequently than on lower planes, and are concerned with great cosmic processes rather than individual human affairs.
Mental Elemental Essence — the Second Elemental Kingdom — inhabits all four lower sub-planes and responds instantaneously to every impulse of human thought. This is the raw material that thought-forms draw upon in their formation.
Personality, Ego, & Re-birth
The relationship between Personality and Ego is among the most important themes in the book. The Personality consists of the transitory vehicles — physical, astral, and lower mental — through which the true man expresses himself across a single incarnation. The Individuality (or Ego) is the Thinker himself, the Self in the Causal Body, the one who endures across all reincarnations.
As a tree puts out leaves that last through spring, summer, and autumn and then fall — but the tree endures — so does the Individuality put forth a Personality with each incarnation and withdraw it at death. What was genuinely earned, genuinely transmuted into character and faculty, is gathered back into the Causal Body at death and carried forward. The rest dissolves.
The analogy of flame is used: lighting a thousand candles from a single flame does not diminish the flame. A thousand personalities may emerge from a single Ego without dividing or reducing it.
"That which in thee shall live for ever, that which in thee knows, for it is knowledge, is not of fleeting life: it is the man that was, and will be, for whom the hour shall never strike."
The Voice of The Silence, quoted in The Mental BodyThe process of Re-birth begins as the Devachanic forces are exhausted. The mental unit resumes activity, acting as a magnet to draw around itself mental matter consonant with its accumulated vibratory character. The new mental body is thus determined by what the Ego has become — not arbitrarily assigned, but self-created through the law of vibration. The personality's karma shapes the conditions of the new incarnation at the physical level; the Ego's accumulated qualities shape its mental endowment.
The plasticity of the child's mental body in early life is extreme. Before the age of seven, physical development is primary; up to fourteen, the emotional nature should receive chief attention; up to twenty-one, the mind calls for its primary cultivation. These stages correspond to the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, and reflect the sequence by which consciousness progressively inhabits its vehicles.
Discipleship & Initiation
The final chapters address the life of the man who has sufficiently developed to enter the Path of Discipleship — accepted by a Master of the Wisdom as a Chela or pupil. Powell presents this not as a remote religious ideal but as a practical stage of development available to those who undertake the requisite qualifications deliberately and systematically.
The qualifications for Discipleship — drawn from the Vedantic tradition — are presented as follows:
Once accepted, the pupil's mental body comes into a closer and closer relationship with the Master's consciousness. The Master can at any moment sense the pupil's thought, and when that thought is unfit, erects a barrier — an act that briefly diverts His attention. The accepted pupil learns to train himself to hold his mental body in a state that is never an intrusion on this connection. He must become not a passive channel but a keenly intelligent co-operator in the work.
Initiation marks successive stages of this development. At the First Initiation, the lower nature is decisively brought under the ego's control. At the Second, significant expansion and transformation of the mental body occurs — though years may pass before the physical brain is sufficiently re-tuned to express the change. The period immediately following the Second Initiation is described as particularly dangerous, the danger arising not from external pressure but from the enormous strain placed on the brain by forces it cannot yet sustain.
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