sentient existence--and Upâdâna, which is the realisation or
consummation of Trishnâ, or that desire. And both of these
the medium helps to develop_ ne plus ultra _in an Elementary,
be he a suicide or a victim. The rule is that a person who
dies a natural death will remain from "a few hours to several
short years" within the earth's attraction--_i.e._, the
Kâmaloka. But exceptions are the cases of suicides and those
who die a violent death in general. Hence, one of such Egos
who was destined to live, say, eighty or ninety years--but
who either killed himself or was killed by some accident, let
us suppose at the age of twenty--would have to pass in the
Kâmaloka not "a few years," but in his case sixty or seventy
years, as an Elementary, or rather an "earth-walker," since
he is not, unfortunately for him, even a "Shell." Happy,
thrice happy, in comparison, are those disembodied entities
who sleep their long slumber and live in dream in the bosom
of Space! And woe to those whose Trishnâ will attract them to
mediums, and woe to the latter who tempt them with such an
easy Upâdâna. For, in grasping them and satisfying their
thirst for life, the medium helps to develop in them--is, in
fact, the cause of--a new set of Skandhas, a new body with
far worse tendencies and passions than the one they lost. All
the future of this new body will be determined thus, not only
by the Karma of demerit of the previous set or group, but
also by that of the new set of the future being. Were the
mediums and spiritualists but to know, as I said, that with
every new "angel-guide" they welcome with rapture, they
entice the latter into a Upâdâna, which will be productive of
untold evils for the new Ego that will be reborn under its
nefarious shadow, and that with every séance, especially for