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Chapter XII: Astral Self-Expression2233
appear. We may carry this idea with us, a little more clearly, perhaps, if we
will make the following comparison:
I. The earth-life is like the phase of the crawling-caterpillar, which feels
within itself a something which it cannot express, and which it scarcely
understands;
II. The astral-life is like the phase of the chrysalis, in which the future
gorgeous butterfly is being formed, and in which the colored wings already
exist in Astral form;
III. The reincarnated earth-life is like the phase of the butterfly, in which
the ideal felt in the first stage and mentally experienced in the second stage
becomes fully manifest and active.
The Law of Karma performs much of its work on the Astral Plane, for
there the sole material is plastic and non-resistant, the coarse sheaths of the
body being absent. And this law is exact and unfailing in its operations—it
always brings the seed to fruition, and each seed brings forth only its own
appropriate fruit:
“Karma—all that total of a soul
Which is the thing it did, the thoughts it had,
The ‘self’ it wove with woof of viewless time
Crossed on the warp invisible of acts.
Before beginning, and without an end,
As space eternal and as surety sure,
Is fixed a Power divine which moves to good,
Only its laws endure.
That which ye sow, ye reap. See yonder fields
The sesamum was sesamum, the corn
Was corn. The silence and the darkness knew;
So is a man’s fate born.