Being a Ray from the Absolute, emanating, as it must, from that Causeless Cause lying hidden behind all manifestation, the Higher Ego possesses the creative and ideative functions involved in its own emanation, or creation. This creative power in the Reincarnating Ego - creative in the sense of changing or renewing form only - is most important to bear in mind. It must not be supposed that ordinary men consciously create - that is a power reached by Adeptship alone; - or even that the Reincarnating Ego consciously creates or builds its own bodies - that again is only possible for those in whom the Higher and Lower Egos have become one: - but the Reincarnating Ego does build astral and thought forms unconsciously, under the potency of that power or force which is carried with it in its emanation from the Causeless Cause.

This creative power is the source of the Linga Sharira, the second human principle, within which the physical molecules which constitute the Sthula Sharira, or physical form, are moulded. It is also the source of all thought forms, from the "Mayava Rupa," the consciously constructed "illusion body" of the Adept, to those airy forms and scenes which in dreams change and shift even while we gaze upon them, so unstable and feeble is the action of the will in these unrecognized, faint functionings of a soul thus unconsciously exercising creative faculties.

In harmony with all nature, the Reincarnation of the Higher Ego occurs in regular cycles of alternating objective and subjective existence. Its objective arc is earth life; its subjective is termed Devachan. * With the return of the Higher Ego to incarnation, when its subjective cycle of existence in Devachan is ended, the Linga Sharira for the new physical body which is to be built becomes an active, formative potency. It awakens into activity all those elementals or "skandhic" forces, in enforced pralaya during the devachanic interlude. Conception having taken place, these and still lower hierarchies of Builders begin to mould physical cells within the astral model so furnished. Here and now occurs the first struggle with matter and material limitations which attends all the subsequent conscious experience of the Ego in the new body. Under the awakening presence of the Higher Ego, the hierarchies of Builders, called by scientists - though very unscientifically - "natural forces," must set to work; but this work is very greatly modified because of the stamp upon the physical cells by the parents of the physical form, under the law of physical heredity, the lowest phase of the triple evolution before referred to.

On the other hand, this physical impress is again modified in a greater or lesser degree by the urgent tendencies of the Higher Ego to express certain dominant qualities under the force of "skandhas" of past incarnations. Unmodified by a Higher Ego, man would represent the exact average of the sum of his parents' qualities, both physical and psychic, as is seen in the almost endless continuation of identical forms in the vegetable kingdom and in the lower animal - in mollusks, for example. Unmodified by physical heredity, the Higher Ego would have no real karmic hold upon earth. As experience is an absolute necessity for development, the struggle with this physical impress given by parents under the law of physical heredity affords the opportunity required to develop the Higher Ego's functions and potencies upon this plane of consciousness. It also satisfies the law of cause and effect, or Karma, which compels Egos with certain characteristics to seek parents having similar ones, for growth must always proceed from the present point of attainment.

Did physical heredity not modify the habitation and powers of the Reincarnating Ego, there would be no reason why it should seek expression through one parent rather than another, and we would be forced back upon the unjust Christian hypothesis of the human soul having no voice in the selection of its body. Did not the Reincarnating Ego have the power to very greatly modify its material tenement, the faculties and psychic powers of the child would represent the average of the sum of those of its parents, at best; and the innumerable instances where these are very greatly transcended, as well as those where the account is on the debit side, would be wholly unaccounted for.

* Devachan. See chapter on Post - mortem States.

It is thus apparent that man's soul and body are each the exact complement of the other so far as the karmic adjustment of any one life is concerned. The relation of the one to the other becomes explicable, and is but another illustration of the absolute play of cause and effect, or of action and reaction, between the material and spiritual poles of the One Reality. Intellectual, or Higher Ego, heredity brings over the results of man's entire conscious past; physical heredity enables him to begin further evolution or widening of consciousness at the exact point where he left off, and along just those lines where his spiritual need is greatest. Thus, a man in a body full of any of the lower, rajasic qualities proclaims to the world that his Higher Ego has need to further evolve their opposites, and such instances ought to arouse all our sympathies - call forth our best brotherly efforts, rather than that contempt and aversion which we are too apt to experience. It is as though we were to turn shudderingly away from a pure, saintly prisoner because the cell in which he is confined is loathsome.

Physical heredity is thus explained: There are, according to Weissmann, certain cells in man's body which have never died since his appearance in a physical form upon this earth. These cells are, necessarily, according to him, transmitted directly from parent to offspring, and actually carry forward those physical qualities which constitute purely physical heredity. But it is not necessary to predicate an eternal cell, although this is possible and probable. It is enough that actual, physical matter is so transmitted, for no possible division of matter into smaller particles can destroy or even diminish its physical properties. The great and all-important quality of matter is to register and record conscious experiences obtained by material associations. Upon tablets of some degree of materiality all conscious records must be graven, even though this be the Mulaprakriti of Eastern, or Primordial Substance of Western, Philosophy.