es a determined and persistent effort to
eliminate pride, envy and ambition. He cultivates the habit of thinking
first of the welfare of others and always last of himself--in short,
tries hard to eliminate selfishness and see all things impersonally.
Such a man could know nothing whatever of the disagreeable part of the
astral life and would pass quickly through even the higher subdivisions
and reach the ecstatic happiness of the heaven world.

From the lower subdivisions a man rises very gradually to the higher. He
remains on a given level so long as is required to eliminate the matter
of that level from his astral body. He is then immediately conscious on
the next higher level. The grosser matter falls away because the man has
at last stopped sending his life force through it. Ungratified desire
has finally worn itself out and he is free. The process can be greatly
hastened or retarded by the man's attitude toward life. If he foolishly
dwells upon his desires, he gives new vitality and prolonged life to
them. If he can resolutely turn his mind to higher things he hastens his
release. His fate is in his own hands, and he is fortunate indeed if he
has a knowledge of such matters.

One who dies in advanced years will pass more rapidly through the astral
world than he would have done had he died in the full strength of
manhood. As the years accumulate the emotions that vivify the lowest
grades of astral matter are not so much in evidence and the matter in
which they are expressed loses its vitality. That is an additional
reason why it is desirable to live to old age in the physical world.

The hold that the material world has upon the mind is one of the causes
which greatly prolong existence in the astral world. Some people give
their time and thought so exclusively to material things that after
they lose the physical body they cannot keep the mind away from the life
that lies behind them. This difficulty does not necessarily arise wholly
from having given one's energies entirely to personal ambition and
material accumulation. Sometimes the ruler of a country is so determined
to still manage affairs, as far as possible, that this vivid interest in
the physical world stretches out the period of astral life most
unfortunately.

Ordinarily one's sojourn in the astral world is comparatively short, if
we measure it in the terms of physical life. A person who has lived here
seventy years may have thirty or forty years on the