Now comes another and a most interesting point. Forget, if you can, the sins you have committed in the flesh. You cannot escape the effects of those causes; but you can avoid strengthening the tie with sin, you can avoid going back to earth self-hypnotised with the idea that you are a sinner. Do not brood over sin. It is true that you can exhaust the impulse to sin by dwelling on it until your soul is disgusted; but that is a slow and an unpleasant process. The short-cut of forgetfulness is better. Now I want to express an idea very difficult to express, for the reason that it will be quite new to most of you. It is this: The power of the creative imagination is stronger in men wearing their earthly bodies than it is in men (spirits) who have laid off their bodies. Not that most persons know how to use that power: they do not; the point I wish to make is that they _can_ use it. A solid body is a resistive base, a powerful lever, from which the will can project those things conjured by the imagination. That is, I believe, the real reason why Masters retain their physical bodies. The trained mind, robed in the tenuous matter of our world, is stronger than the untrained mind robed in dense matter; but the Masters still robed in flesh can command a legion of angels.[3] This is by way of preface to the assertion that as you on earth picture your future life to be, so it will be, limited always by the power with which you back your will, and by the possibility of subtle matter to take the mould you give it, and that possibility is almost unlimited. Will to progress after death, and you will progress; will to learn, and you will learn; will to return to the earth after a time to take up a special work, and you will return and take up that work. Karma is an iron law, yes; but you are the creator of karma. Above all things, do not expect--which is to demand--unconsciousness and annihilation. You cannot annihilate the unit of force which you are, but you can by self-suggestion put it to sleep for ages. Go out of life with the determination to retain consciousness, and you will retain it. When the time comes for you to enter that rest which a certain school of thought has called devachan, you will enter it; but that time will not be immediately after you go out. On finally reaching that state you will, as a matter of course, relive in dream your former earthly life and assimilate its experiences; but by that time you will have got rid of the desire personally to take part, as a spirit, in the lives of those you have left behind. Do not, while still on earth, invoke the spirits of the dead. They may be busy elsewhere, and you may be strong enough to call them away from their own business to attend to yours unwillingly. You who write for me, I want to thank you for never calling me. You let me come always at my own time, and let me say what I wish to say without confusing my thought by either questions or comments.