ondence
there, although not in the literal sense in which these things have
been taught. For instance, a wicked man dying immersed in his desires
and longings of his lower nature, and believing that he will be
punished in a future life for sins committed on earth--such a one is
very apt to awaken on the lower planes or sub-planes, in conditions
corresponding with his former fears. He finds the fire and brimstone
awaiting him, although these things are merely figments of his own
imagination, and having no existence in reality. Murderers may roam for
ages (apparently) pursued by the bleeding corpses of their victims,
until such a horror of the crime arises in the mind that at last
sinking from exhaustion into the soul-sleep, their souls pass into
re-birth with such a horror of bloodshed and crime as to make them
entirely different beings in the new life. And, yet the "hell" that
they went through existed only in their imaginations. They were their
own Devil and Hell. Just as a man in earth life may suffer from
_delirium tremens_, so some of these souls on the Astral plane suffer
agonies from their delirium arising from their former crimes, and the
belief in the punishment therefor which has been inculcated in them
through earth teachings. And these mental agonies, although terrible,
really are for their benefit, for by reason of them the soul becomes so
sickened with the thought and idea of crime that when it is finally
re-born it manifests a marked repulsion to it, and flies to the
opposite. In this connection we would say that the teaching is that
although the depraved soul apparently experiences ages of this torment,
yet, in reality, there is but the passage of but a short time, the
illusion arising from the self-hypnotization of the soul, just as
arises the illusion of the punishment itself.

In the same way the soul often experiences a "heaven" in accordance
with its hopes, beliefs and longings of earth-life. The "heaven" that
it has longed for and believed in during its earth-life is very apt to
be at least partially reproduced on the Astral plane, and the pious
soul of any and all religious denominations finds itself in a "heaven"
corresponding to that in which it believed during its earth-life. The
Mohammedan finds his paradise; the Christian finds his; the Indian
finds his--but the impression is merely an illusion created by the
Mental Pictures of the soul. But the illusion tends to give pleasure to
the soul, an