The earth-bound soul, on leaving the physical body, feels overcome by the shock of its final trouble with and severance from that physical body and remains in an inert state for a time. When it recovers from that shock, it finds that it has been transferred to a worse state. Although the air-body in which it encased is not diseased, it has, however, no openings for its senses to perform their respective functions. It finds it cannot see or hear or smell or touch or taste anything and yet the desires for these objects of the senses are as strong as when it was in the physical body. This makes it weep for the loss of its dear physical body and it hovers about in space sad and restless. It has no stomach, yet is filled with mental hunger and thirst which grow intense because it has no means of satisfying them. Indeed, finding this astral life to be of greater torment, the unhappy earth-bound soul longs to have a flesh covering again, to be reborn, and flies hither and thither blindly, because of the want of physical organs, and some day gains this object. It enters, through the vigor (Sanscrit Virga, 'virjya,' force, power) of a man into a woman's womb. This causes conception. No conception can take place without a disembodied spirit entering the womb. Vigor mixed with the mother's blood supplies the physical body which is mere dead matter without the vivifying astral soul. It is only when an astral soul enters it that the womb closes and conception takes place. The incoming soul then feels itself confined within its scope and cannot go out of it by its own effort or will. The selection of the vigor and the womb for the astral soul is made principally according to the subtle law of individual Karma and, secondarily, according to the law of affinity. The mental characteristics of the parents must be similar to those of the soul to draw it to them. As for its physical body, it may favor in appearance its mother or its father more or less according as their individuality and image are stamped on the vigor and the blood through the state of extreme mental concentration induced at the time. If the incoming soul possesses far stronger individuality than those of the father and the mother, it asserts this upon its body and the child looks like neither the father nor the mother. He looks like himself—a form and appearance born of the imagination of its own strong individuality.