There are planes upon planes of disembodied existence. These planes interpenetrate and those dwelling on one plane are not conscious of those dwelling on another, nor can they pass from one plane to another with this exception - those dwelling on a higher plane are able to see (if they desire) the planes below them in the order of development, and may also visit the lower planes, if they desire to do so.
However, those on the lower planes are not able to either see or visit the higher planes. There are seven great planes but each great plane has seven sub-divisions and each sub-division has seven minor divisions, and so on. When one speaks of a man rising from one sub-plane to another, one refers to transfering one’s consciousness from one level to another. In the case of a man with an astral body, the focus of his consciousness shifts from the outer shell to the next within it. In course of time, the outermost shell or ring disintegrates, the man then becomes able to respond to the vibrations of the next higher level of the astral plane and thus rises to the next sub-plane, and so on from one sub-plane to another.
The period of stay on each sub-plane corresponds to the amount and activity of the matter in his astral body belonging to that sub-plane. Thus gradually one becomes unresponsive to the vibrations of one order of matter and answers instead to those of a higher order.
Thus one world and its scenery and its inhabitants would seem to fade slowly away from his view while another world would dawn upon him.
One must not form the idea that it is only who functions as intellect in the causal body.
Man is a spark of the divine fire i.e., Monad, and that Monad manifests as its three aspects — Spirit in the world of atma, as Intuition in the world of buddhi, and as Intelligence in the higher mental/causal world.
It is these three aspects taken together, which constitute the ego which inhabits the causal body.
Thus man, as one knows, though in reality a Monad residing in the monadic world i.e., the plane of Anupadaka, shows himself as an ego in the higher mental world, manifesting the three aspects of himself which are designated as Spirit, Intuition and Intelligence.
The development of the ego is thus the object of the whole process of descent into matter - the ego assumes veils of matter precisely because through them he is able to receive vibrations to which he can respond, so that his latent faculties may thereby be unfolded.
All the activities that we call evil, whether selfish thoughts (mental) or selfish emotions (astral), invariably show themselves as vibrations of the coarser matter of those planes, while good and unselfish thought or emotions set in vibration the higher types of matter. As finer matter is more easily moved than coarse, it follows that a given amount of force spent in good thought or feeling produces perhaps a hundred times as much result as the same amount of force sent out into coarser matter.
If this were not so, it is obvious that the ordinary man could never make any progress at all while one is probably entitled to assume that 90 per cent of the thought and feeling of the undeveloped man is self-centred, even if not actually selfish, yet, if 10 per cent of it is spiritual and unselfish, the man must already be rising somewhat above the average.
The effect of 10 per cent of force directed to good ends enormously outweighs that of 90 per cent devoted to selfish purposes so that on the whole such a man makes an appreciable advance from life to life.
A man who has even one per cent of good makes a slight advance. A man whose account balances exactly, so that he neither advances nor retrogrades must live a distinctly evil life, while in order to go downwards in evil a person must be an unusually consistent villain. Following one’s physical life the period of life in the astral world commences.
One has to become dissociated from one’s recent involvement in physical matter.