Mental World (in Theosophy)

Formerly known as the Manas Plane. In the theosophic scheme of things, this is the third lowest of the seven worlds. It is the world of thought into which man passes on the death of the astral body, and it is composed of the seven divisions of matter in common with the other worlds. It is observed that the mental world is the world of thought, but it is necessary to realize that it is the world of good thoughts only, for the base thoughts have all been purged away during the soul's stay in the astral world.

Depending on these thoughts is the power to perceive the mental world. The perfected individual would be free of the whole of it, but the ordinary individual in past imperfect experience has gathered only a comparatively small amount of thought and is, therefore, unable to perceive more than a small part of the surroundings. It follows from this that although the individual's bliss is inconceivably great, the sphere of action is very limited. This limitation, however, becomes less and less with the individual's abode there after each fresh incarnation.

In the Heaven world-division into which we awake after dying in the astral world, we find vast, unthought-of means of pursuing what has seemed to us good—art, science, philosophy and so forth. Here, all these come to a glorious fruition of which we can have no conception, and at last the time arrives when one casts aside the mental body and awakens in the causal body to the still greater bliss of the higher division of the mental world.

At this stage, one has done with the bodies which form mortal personality, and which form one's home in successive incarnations, and one is now truly whole, a spirit, immortal and unchangeable except for increasing development and evolution. Into this causal body is worked all that one has experienced in the physical, astral, and mental bodies, and when one still finds that experience insufficient for one's needs, one descends again into grosser matter in order to learn yet more and more.

These concepts derive from the Hindu religious classification of three bodies or states of being: gross (or physical), subtle, and causal (known as sthula, sukshma, and karana shariras ). The causal body is pictured as surrounded by five sheaths (or koshas ): annamayakosha (food or physical sheath); pranamayakosha (subtle energy sheath); manamayakosha (mental sheath); vijnanamayakosha (wisdom sheath); and anandamayakosha (bliss sheath of spiritual unity).

Sources:

Jinarajadasa, C. The Early Teachings of the Masters, 1881-83. Chicago: Theosophical Press, 1923.

Powell, Arthur E. The Astral Body and Other Astral Phenomena. London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1927.