4. The Beings of the Astral World

Thus, we have already met two kinds of entities that we meet in the astral space: Masters and disciples. In addition, there are those people who are also psychically developed but have not had regular lessons, the somnambulists, who have an ambiguous consciousness. They know that there are people for whom it is possible, without having received instruction from a master, to make very special perceptions at certain times, perceptions that are independent of their senses. But only for the one who enters the astral region through theosophical training, there is no error. The theosophist knows how to distinguish what comes from pathological states and what are deeper truths. If we follow the somnambulist in the awake and in the trance state, we see that the soul can step out of the body and become seeing. But we would not believe a word of the somnambulist if we did not have evidence that this undisciplined seeing can coincide with the seeing of the seer. The student who has developed continuous consciousness, who sees astral things as he sees tables and chairs, knows also that the somnambulists in their special states sometimes behold true things. They have the ability to temporarily lift their self out of corporeality and thereby see what cannot be seen with the ordinary senses. These temporarily body-liberated souls are the third that you can meet as inhabitants of the astral space. The fourth thing we encounter in the astral world is something not very pleasant, it is the destroyers and devastators in the astral.