THEO. He will not be compelled, nor will he see anything. Having persistently denied during life the continuance of existence after death, he will be unable to see it, because his spiritual capacity having been stunted in life, it cannot develop after death, and he will remain blind. By insisting that he _must_ see it, you evidently mean one thing and I another. You speak of the spirit from the spirit, or the flame from the flame—of Atma, in short—and you confuse it with the human soul—Manas.... You do not understand me; let me try to make it clear. The whole gist of your question is to know whether, in the case of a downright materialist, the complete loss of self-consciousness and self-perception after death is possible? Isn’t it so? I answer, It is possible. Because, believing firmly in our Esoteric Doctrine, which refers to the _post-mortem_ period, or the interval between two lives or births as merely a transitory state, I say, whether that interval between two acts of the illusionary drama of life lasts one year or a million, that _post-mortem_ state may, without any breach of the fundamental law, prove to be just the same state as that of a man who is in a dead faint. ENQ. But since you have just said that the fundamental laws of the after death state admit of no exceptions, how can this be? THEO. Nor do I say that it does admit of an exception. But the spiritual law of continuity applies only to things which are truly real. To one who has read and understood Mundakya Upanishad and Vedanta-Sara all this becomes very clear. I will say more: it is sufficient to understand what we mean by Buddhi and the duality of Manas to gain a clear perception why the materialist may fail to have a self-conscious survival after death. Since Manas, in its lower aspect, is the seat of the terrestrial mind, it can, therefore, give only that perception of the Universe which is based on the evidence of that mind; it cannot give spiritual vision. It is said in the Eastern school, that between Buddhi and Manas (the _Ego_), or Iswara and Pragna[42] there is in reality no more difference than _between a forest and its trees, a lake and its waters_, as the Mundakya teaches. One or hundreds of trees dead from loss of vitality, or uprooted, are yet incapable of preventing the forest from being still a forest. ENQ. But, as I understand it, Buddhi represents in this simile the forest, and Manas-taijasi[43] the trees. And if Buddhi is immortal, how can that which is similar to it, _i.e._, Manas-taijasi, entirely lose its consciousness till the day of its new incarnation? I cannot understand it.