, the shorter will be the
devachanic period.

When the experiences are assimilated, be the time long or short, the
Ego is ready to return, and he brings back with him his now increased
experience, and any further gains he may have made in Devachan along
the lines of abstract thought; for, while in Devachan,

In one sense we can acquire more knowledge; that is, we can
develop further any faculty which we loved and strove after
during life, provided it is concerned with abstract and ideal
things, such as music, painting, poetry, &c.[40]

But the Ego meets, as he crosses the threshold of Devachan on his way
outwards--dying out of Devachan to be reborn on earth--he meets in the
"atmosphere of the terrestrial plane", the seeds of evil sown in his
preceding life on earth. During the devachanic rest he has been free
from all pain, all sorrow, but the evil he did in his past has been in
a state of suspended animation, not of death. As seeds sown in the
autumn for the spring-time lie dormant beneath the surface of the
soil, but touched by the soft rain and penetrating warmth of sun begin
to swell and the embryo expands and grows, so do the seeds of evil we
have sown lie dormant while the Soul takes its rest in Devachan, but
shoot out their roots into the new personality which begins
to form itself for the incarnation of the returning man. The Ego has
to take up the burden of his past, and these germs or seeds, coming
over as the harvest of the past life, are the Skandhas, to borrow a
convenient word from our Buddhist brethren. They consist of material
qualities, sensations, abstract ideas, tendencies of mind, mental
powers, and while the pure aroma of these attached itself to the Ego
and passed with it into Devachan, all that was gross, base and evil
remained in the state of suspended animation spoken of above. These
are taken up by the Ego as he passes outwards towards terrestrial
life, and are built into the new "man of flesh" which the true man is
to inhabit. And so the round of births and deaths goes on, the turning
of the Wheel of Life; the treading of the Cycle of Necessity, until
the work is done and the building of the Perfect Man is completed.

NIRVANA.

What Devachan is to each earth-life, Nirvana is to the finished cycle
of Re-incarnation, but any effective discussion of that glorious
state would here be out of place. It is mentioned only to round off
the "After" of Death, for no word of man, s