There is a great mystery concerned with the astral body of man and with the astral light, and the nature of the mystery is still only known to advanced initiates. The astral light is thrown into objectivity by two producing factors, and the astral body of a man is responsive to two types of energy. They seem essentially in themselves to lack character or form but to be dependent for manifestation upon "that which is above and that which is below." The desire nature of man, for instance, seems to respond to the lure of the great world of illusion, the maya of the senses, or to the voice of the ego, using the mental body. Vibrations reach the astral body from the physical plane and from the mental world, and according to the nature of the man and to the point in evolution which he has reached, so will be the response to the higher or the lower call.

The astral body is either attentive to the egoic impression or swayed by the million voices of earth. It apparently has no voice of its own, no character of its own. This has been pictured for us in the Gita where Arjuna stands midway between the two opposing forces of good and evil and searches for the right attitude to both. The astral plane is the battleground of the soul, the place of victory or the place of defeat; it is the [217] kurukshetra, upon which the great choice is made.