ing its reflection upon the veil
of the future._[12]

This is the time during which the thought-images of the ended
earth-life, clustering around their maker, group and interweave
themselves into the completed image of that life, and are impressed in
their totality on the Astral Light. The dominant tendencies, the
strongest thought-habits, assert their pre-eminence, and stamp
themselves as the characteristics which will appear as "innate
qualities" in the succeeding incarnation. This balancing-up of the
life-issues, this reading of the karmic records, is too solemn and
momentous a thing to be disturbed by the ill-timed wailings of
personal relatives and friends.

At the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is
sudden, sees the whole of his past life marshalled before
him, in its minutest details. For one short instant the
_personal_ become one with the _individual_ and all-knowing
Ego. But this instant is enough to show to him the whole
chain of causes which have been at work during his life. He
sees and now understands himself as he is, unadorned by
flattery or self-deception. He reads his life, remaining as a
spectator, looking down into the arena he is quitting.[13]

This vivid sight is succeeded, in the ordinary person, by the dreamy,
peaceful semi-consciousness spoken of above, as the etheric double
floats above the body to which it has belonged, now completely
separated from it.

Sometimes this double is seen by persons in the house, or in the
neighbourhood, when the thought of the dying has been strongly turned
to some one left behind, when some anxiety has been in the mind at the
last, something left undone which needed doing, or when some local
disturbance has shaken the tranquillity of the passing entity. Under
these conditions, or others of a similar nature, the double may be
seen or heard; when seen, it shows the dreamy, hazy consciousness
alluded to, is silent, vague in its aspect, unresponsive.

As the days go on, the five higher principles gradually disengage
themselves from the etheric double, and shake this off as they
previously shook off the grosser body. They pass on, as a fivefold
entity, into a state to be next studied, leaving the etheric double,
with the dense body of which it is the counterpart, thus becoming an
ethereal corpse, as much as the body had become a dense corpse. This
ethereal corpse remains near the dense one, and they disin