THEFOURKINGDOMS 75
wave of the Animal Kingdom has a still longer past; while
Man, that is to say, the life now expressing itself in the
human form, has behind it the longest journey of all the four
kingdoms, and therefore leads. In time, the three life waves
which now animate the three lower kingdoms will reach the
human, and we shall have passed to higher stages of
development.
To understand the degree of consciousness which results
from the possession of the vehicles used by the life evolving
in the four kingdoms, we turn our attention to diagram 4,
which shows that man, the Ego, the Thinker, has descended
into the Chemical Region of the Physical World. Here he
has marshaled all his vehicles, thereby attaining the state of
waking consciousness. He is learning to control his vehicles.
The organs of neither the desire body nor the mind are yet
evolved. The latter is not yet even a body. At present it is
simply a link, a sheath for the use of the Ego as a focusing
point. It is the last of the vehicles that have been built. The
spirit works gradually from finer into coarser substance, the
vehicles also being built in fine substance first, then in
coarser and coarser substance. The dense body was built
first and has now come into its fourth stage of density; the
vital body is in its third stage and the desire body in its
second, hence it is still cloud-like, and the sheath of mind is
filmier still. As those vehicles have not, as yet, evolved any
organs, it is clear that theyalone would be useless as
vehicles of consciousness. The Ego, however, entersinto the
dense body and connects these organless vehicles with the
physical sense centers and thus attains the waking state of
consciousness in the Physical World.
The student should particularly note that it is because of
their connection with the splendidly organized mechanism