through the change which we call death. In broad philosophical terms death
may be described as the withdrawal of the life into the subjective
consciousness to the total exclusion of the objective consciousness. Then
by the general law of the relation between subjective and objective mind,
the subjective mind severed from its corresponding objective mentality has
no means of acquiring fresh impressions _on its own account_, and therefore
can only ring the changes on those impressions which it has brought with it
from its past life. But these may be of very various sorts, ranging from
the lowest to the highest, from those most opposed to that ultimate destiny
of man which we have just been considering, to those which recognize his
possibilities in a very large measure, needing little more to bring about
the full fruition of perfected life. But however various may be their
experiences, all who have passed through death must have this in common
that they have lost their physical instrument of objective perception and
so have their mode of consciousness determined entirely by the dominant
mode of suggestion which they have brought over with them from the
objective side of life.[6] Of course if the objective mentality were also
brought over this would give the individual the same power of initiative
and selection that he possesses while in the body, and, as we shall see
later on, there are exceptional persons with whom this is the case; but for
the great majority the physical brain is a necessity for the working of the
objective mentality, and so when they are deprived of this instrument their
life becomes purely subjective and is a sort of dream-life, only with a
vast difference between two classes of dreamers--those who dream as they
must and those who dream as they will. The former are those who have
enslaved themselves in various ways to their lower mentality--some by
bringing with them the memory of crimes unpardoned, some by bringing with
them the idea of a merely animal life, others less degraded, but still in
bondage to limited thought, bringing with them only the suggestion of a
frivolous worldly life--in this way, by the natural operation of the Law of