s many rounds but it is
always mounting and never returns to the same point. In each cycle, that
is made up of the journey from the heaven world through the astral
plane, into the physical and then back through the astral plane into the
heaven world, it touches each of them at a higher point, or in a higher
state of development, than it had previously attained. Each rebirth
finds it abler here to gather a larger harvest of experience and each
return to the mental plane, or heaven world, finds it abler to digest
and assimilate its experiences, and to comprehend more of the realities
of the life of its home plane.

This round, or cycle, through the physical, astral and mental regions,
is a continuous progressive journey of the soul which began away back at
the dawn of mind in man and will continue until he is the perfected
mental and moral being. At each incarnation here he gathers experience
in proportion to his alertness and to the opportunities his previous
lives have made for him. He learns to help others, to be sympathetic, to
be tolerant. Such activities will give him pleasure in the astral life
and joy and wisdom in the mental region, or heaven world. But he also
does some evil things. He makes enemies, he generates hatred and he
injures others. This will give him distress in the astral life and no
results for soul growth or general progress in the heaven world. If he
does an equal amount of good and harm his progress will be slow. If he
does much good and little evil his progress will be rapid and his
existence happy. If he is a man of great energy, and no very great moral
development, and selfishly does much wrong, he will suffer much in the
astral life.

It often puzzles the student of elementary theosophy to be told that
the soul passes through the purgation of the astral plane and goes on
into the heaven world only to return to another incarnation and later to
again enter the astral purgatory. Why, it is asked, must one who has
thus been purified be again purified? The astral reactions are the
results of the blunders made in each incarnation. Each of us in any
given incarnation creates by his wrong doing the purgatory that awaits
him after death. If he does no wrong there cannot possibly be any
reaction. As a matter of occult fact the average good man will find the
astral plane life a happy existence and will soon pass on to the
blissful heaven world. As for the evil doer the suffering relates only
to his ev