are liable to invade the sphere of any medium no matter how good. The door once open, it is open to all. This class of shell has lost higher _manas_, but in the struggle not only after death but as well in life the lower portion of _manas_ which should have been raised up to godlike excellence was torn away from its lord and now gives this entity intelligence which is devoid of spirit but has power to suffer as it will when its final day shall come. In the state of _Kama Loka_ suicides and those who are suddenly shot out of life by accident or murder, legal or illegal, pass a term almost equal to the length life would have been but for the sudden termination. These are not really dead. To bring on a normal death, a factor not recognized by medical science must be present. That is, the principles of the being as described in other chapters have their own term of cohesion, at the natural end of which they separate from each other under their own laws. This involves the great subject of the cohesive forces of the human subject, requiring a book in itself. I must be content therefore with the assertion that this law of cohesion obtains among the human principles. Before that natural end the principles are unable to separate. Obviously the normal destruction of the cohesive force cannot be brought about by mechanical processes except in respect to the physical body. Hence a suicide, or person killed by accident or murdered by man or by order of human law, has not come to the natural termination of the cohesion among the other constituents, and is hurled into the _kama loka_ state only partly dead. There the remaining principles have to wait until the actual natural life term is reached, whether it be one month or sixty years. But the degrees of _kama loka_ provide for the many varieties of the last-mentioned shells. Some pass the period in great suffering, others in a dreamy sort of sleep, each according to the moral responsibility. But executed criminals are in general thrown out of life full of hate and revenge, smarting under a penalty they do not admit the justice of. They are ever rehearsing in _kama loka_ their crime, their trial, their execution, and their revenge. And whenever they can gain touch with a sensitive living person, medium or not, they attempt to inject thoughts of murder and other crime into the brain of such unfortunate. And that they succeed in such attempts the deeper students of Theosophy full well know. We have now approached _devachan_. After a certain time in _kama loka_ the being falls into a state of unconsciousness which precedes the change into the next state. It is like the birth into life, preluded by a term of darkness and heavy sleep. It then wakes to the joys of _devachan_. CHAPTER XIII.