Having shown that just beyond the threshold of human life there is a place of separation wherein the better part of man is divided from his lower and brute elements, we come to consider what is the state after death of the real being, the immortal who travels from life to life. Struggling out of the body the entire man goes into _kama loka_, to purgatory, where he again struggles and loosens himself from the lower _skandhas_; this period of birth over, the higher principles, _Atma-Buddhi-Manas_, begin to think in a manner different from that which the body and brain permitted in life. This is the state of _Devachan_, a Sanscrit word meaning literally “the place of the gods,” where the soul enjoys felicity; but as the gods have no such bodies as ours, the Self in _devachan_ is devoid of a mortal body. In the ancient books it is said that this state lasts “for years of infinite number”, or “for a period proportionate to the merit of the being”; and when the mental forces peculiar to the state are exhausted, “the being is drawn down again to be reborn in the world of mortals”. _Devachan_ is therefore an interlude between births in the world. The law of karma which forces us all to enter the world, being ceaseless in its operation and also universal in scope, acts also on the being in _devachan_, for only by the force or operation of Karma are we taken out of _devachan_. It is something like the pressure of atmosphere which, being continuous and uniform, will push out or crush that which is subjected to it unless there be a compensating quantity of atmosphere to counteract the pressure. In the present case the karma of the being is the atmosphere always pressing the being on or out from state to state; the counteracting quantity of atmosphere is the force of the being’s own life-thoughts and aspirations which prevent his coming out of _devachan_ until that force is exhausted, but which being spent has no more power to hold back the decree of our self-made mortal destiny.