All this is reproduced in the astral life, repeatedly. As one whose mind is completely filled with a subject--let us say something that is the cause of much anxiety--finds it impossible to turn his attention from it and think of other things, or go to sleep, and is impelled against his desire to think the matter over and over, so the assassin is enmeshed in the emotion web of his crime and can not escape from living and acting it all over and over again until a revulsion of feeling arouses him to full comprehension of the horror of his crime. Again it should be said that no attempt is here made to give more than a very fragmentary description, and a few hints, of the manner in which the retributory laws of nature work. A writer on the subject should also be careful that, in pointing out the fact that to certain classes of offenders against nature's laws severe penalties accrue, the reader does not get the impression that suffering is the common lot in the astral life. The truth of the matter is that people who live clean, moderate lives, and refrain from generating forces that are injurious to others, will know nothing whatever of the unfortunate side of astral existence. In the limitations, the vexations, the physical aches and ills, the poverty, sorrow and suffering of the material plane, most of us are as near to hell-conditions of existence as we ever will be. The ordinary man of average morality has so little of the matter of the lowest level of the astral plane lingering in him that as a rule he would begin his postmortem existence on the next higher subdivision, which is the counterpart of the earth's surface. He would therefore have no knowledge of the hell that exists on the lower level. But that is not at all true of those who live grossly and freely indulge the emotions of anger, jealousy, hatred, revenge, and their kindred impulses, that often lead to violent crimes. It is possible to live the physical life so sanely, usefully, harmoniously and unselfishly that at the death of the physical body one will pass almost immediately to a joyous and useful career in the astral world. But while that is quite possible the unfortunate fact is that a great many people so color all their emotions with selfishness that the astral sojourn is unpleasantly affected by it. It is the emotions that determine the astral life and it is said that if they are directly selfish they bring the man into conditions on the astral plane that are very unpleasant.