e a period several times the length of his combined physical
and astral life. Some people will have only two or three hundred years
between incarnations while others may have six or seven centuries and
still others a much longer period.

In getting a right understanding of the subject of rebirth, or
reincarnation, it is necessary to keep in mind the fact that the soul,
or center of individualized consciousness, is the man and that the
physical body is merely an instrument he uses for a number of years;
that the causal body is his permanent body for the whole of human
evolution; that the mental plane is his home plane and that from there
he sends forth successive expressions of himself into these lower
planes. With such facts before us there should be no confusion of
thought about the successive personalities of an individual. Yet we
sometimes hear people speak of the absurdity of supposing that a person
can be one man in one incarnation and another man at a later rebirth. Of
course no such thing occurs. An individual remains the same individual
forever. "But," objects the critic, "may I not have been Mr. Jones, in
England six hundred years ago, whereas I am now certainly Mr. Brown, in
America at this moment? If so is that not a case of being two
individuals?"

It is certainly not a case of being two individuals. It is a case of
one individual being expressed through a physical body six hundred years
ago in England, dying from it, spending a fairly long period in the
astral plane and heaven world, and then again expressing himself through
another physical body in America at the present time. The confusion of
thought on the part of the questioner arises from thinking of the
physical body as being the man. But it is no more the man than the
clothing he wears. It is true that he is known at one period as Jones
and at another as Brown, but that no more affects his individuality than
the assumption of an _alias_ by a fleeing criminal changes him. The name
applies exclusively to the physical body, or personality, as
distinguished from the individuality. That body is but the temporary
clothing of the soul. Let us suppose that a man's name were applied to
his clothing and changed with his clothing as it does with his body. We
might then know him as Mr. Lightclothes in the summer and as Mr.
Darkclothes in the winter, but neither the change of clothing or name
would in the least degree make him somebody else. The majority of wome