r it
is in incessant motion, responsive to the slightest _feeling_ of a vast
multitude of beings which populate this wonderful world in nature. We
often speak of the "teeming millions" of China and India, even of our vast
cities, London, New York, Paris or Chicago, we consider them overcrowded
in the extreme, yet even the densest population of any spot upon earth is
sparsely inhabited compared with the crowded conditions of the Desire
World. No inconvenience is felt by any of the denizens of that realm,
however, for, while in this world two things cannot occupy the same space
at the same time, it is different there. A number of people and things may
exist _in the same place at the same time_ and be engaged in most diverse
activities, regardless of what others are doing, such is the wonderful
elasticity of desire stuff. As an illustration we may mention a case where
the writer while attending religious service, plainly perceived at the
altar certain beings interested in furthering that service and working to
achieve that end. At the same time there drifted through the room and the
altar, a table at which four persons were engaged in playing cards. They
were as oblivious to the existence of the beings engaged in furthering our
religious service, as though these did not exist.

The Desire World is the abode of those who have died, for some time
subsequent to that event, and we may mention in the above connection that
the so-called "dead" very often stay for a long while among their still
living friends. Unseen by their relatives they go about the familiar
rooms. At first they are often unaware of the condition mentioned: "that
two persons may be in the same place at the same time," and when they seat
themselves in a chair or at the table, a living relative may take the
supposedly vacant seat. The man we mistakenly call dead will at first
hurry out of his seat to escape being sat upon, but he soon learns that
being sat upon does not hurt him in his altered condition, and that he may
remain in his chair regardless of the fact that his living relative is
also sitting there.

In the lower regions of the Desire World the whole body of each being may
be seen, but in the highest regions only the head seems to remain.
Raphael, who like many other people in the middle ages was gifted with a
so-called _second sight_, pictured that condition for us in his Sistine
Madonna, now in the Dresden Art Gallery, where Madonna and the
Christ-