At our present level of evolution they come into obvious contact with us only very rarely, but as we develop we shall be likely to see more of them--especially as the cyclic progress of the world is now bringing it more and more under the influence of the Seventh Ray.

This Seventh Ray has ceremonial for one of its characteristics, and it is through ceremonial such as that of the Church or of Freemasonry that we come most easily into touch with the angelic kingdom.
When all the man's lower emotions have worn themselves out--all emotions, I mean, which have in them any thought of self--his life in the astral world is over, and the ego passes on into the mental world.

This is not in any sense a movement in space; it is simply that the steady process of withdrawal has now passed beyond even the finest kind of astral matter; so that the man's consciousness is focussed in the mental world.

His astral body has not entirely disintegrated, though it is in process of doing so, and he leaves behind him an astral corpse, just as at a previous stage of the withdrawal he left behind him a physical corpse.

There is a certain difference between the two which should be noticed, because of the consequences which ensue from it.
When the man leaves his physical body his separation from it should be complete, and generally is so; but this is not the case with the much finer matter of the astral body.