240] these memories soon cease
to occupy its attention, and it gives itself up wholly to the
impressions received from the new world into which it has entered. In
this first stage of the after-life, then, there is a kind of darkening
of the memory of the past earth life--darkening, not oblivion.

When the purgatorial life is at an end and the astral body
disintegrates in its turn, the soul functions in the mental body, in
the mental world.[241] On this new plane, the memory of the worlds
left behind continues, though far less clearly than the memory of the
physical existed in the astral world; this is owing to the fact that,
in ordinary man, the mental body is not sufficiently developed to
constitute a complete vehicle of consciousness, capable of registering
all the vibrations that come to it; everything in the past that has
been _purely_ the work of the astral or the physical plane then
disappears from his memory; there remain only memories that have been
caused either by the mental qualities or qualities superior to these,
all the highest elements concerned with affection, intelligence, or
art. The mental world, generally speaking, is seen only to a small
extent or not at all, because of the incomplete development of the
mental body. Besides, recollections assume a new character[242]; every
thought takes a concrete form--that of a friend, for instance, appears
as the friend himself, speaking and thinking, more vivid than on the
earth plane[243]; everything is dramatised in marvellous fashion, and
life is intense throughout the realms of paradise.

The mental body, after exhausting the forces that make it up, also
dies, and the soul is "centred" in the only vehicle it has left, the
causal body, a body that is immortal, one may say, up to a certain
point, since the soul retains it until the time comes when it can
function in a still higher and more lasting vehicle,[244] and this
happens only after millions of years.[245] Here, another diminution of
memory takes place, because the soul loses a large portion of its
consciousness when it comes into contact with none but the vibrations
of this body, which is even more incompletely developed than the
former ones, though holding within itself all the germs of these
latter. The Ego then remains apparently sunk in sleep for a varying
period, though never for very long; then the germs in the causal body
become active, build up a new series of bodies in succession--the
mental,