This “in-breaking” energy that joins up with the raw material of procreation,--this is the Kamma of some other existence which has been unable any longer to maintain its form against the pressure of the external world, an occurrence which we usually denominate “death.” The Kamma of the disintegrating existence--so the Buddha teaches--at the moment of death passes over into a new abode, plants itself, breaks in here in new inflammable material, kindles a new _I_-process, fashions a new _I_-sayer. And as the igniting spark _becomes_ the flame by developing itself, growing, unfolding along with the material of which it has taken hold, so does Kamma _become_ the new form of existence by developing itself, growing, unfolding along with the material of which it has taken hold. In other words, _I am the form of my Kamma. I am my Kamma corporealised._ This Kamma series it is which constitutes the _actual_ genealogical tree of a living being. As the genealogical tree of a fire does not lead in the direction of the forest or the coal-mine whence its material was derived, but back to the flame from out of which the kindling spark took hold, so the genealogical tree of living beings does not run back in the direction of progenitors but in the direction of the Kamma, the direction of a disintegrating existence. “Heirs of deeds,” therefore, the Buddha calls living beings, not heirs of mother and father; and, “springing from the womb of Kamma (_kammayonī_).” The Kamma, in virtue of which I now say “_I_,” derives from a previous existence; the “_I_-sayer” of this previous existence, on his part again, derives from a previous existence, and so on further and further back in a series that never has had a beginning. _At every moment of my existence I am the final member of a beginningless series of “I-sayers.”_ The Kamma at this moment active in me--it has never not existed, never not been active. This is what means a self-sustaining process. Such a process can never have had a beginning; for then it would be no self-sustaining thing, it would have been created, either by a god, or by external circumstances and antecedent conditions. It would be no actual process but a product. As soon as clear cognition brings me the insight that I am a pure process of combustion, _i.e._ sustain myself, along with that insight is given as a logical necessity beginninglessness.