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FOOTNOTE TO “LETTERS ON ESOTERIC THEOSOPHY”
[The following footnote may have been written by H. P. B., although it is not signed by her as Editor of The Theosophist. The writer speaks of the Incubi and Succubi of mediaeval writings, and of elementaries, in connection with his description of the after-death states. The footnote is as follows:]
The variety of states after death is greater, if possible, than the variety of human lives upon this earth. As 189 remarked further on, not all, by any means, become piśachas, nor are they all Earth-walkers. The victims of accident are generally exempt from this curse, only those falling into the current of attraction who die full of some engrossing earthly passion; the SELFISH who have never given a thought to anyone but their own selves. Overtaken by death in the consummation—whether real or imaginary—of some master-passion of their life, the desire remaining unsatisfied even after a full realization, and they still craving after more, such can never pass beyond the earth’s attraction to wait for the hour of deliverance in happy ignorance and full oblivion. Among the “suicides” those to whom the statement of the writer applies in full are that class who commit the act in consequence of a crime, to escape the penalty of human law, or of their own remorse. Natural law cannot be broken with impunity; the inexorable causal relation between action and result has its full sway, but in the world of effects—the Kama-loka; and every case is met there by an adequate punishment, and in a thousand ways which would require volumes to describe them even superficially. In one of the future numbers of this magazine will be given quotations from the Buddhist Scriptures, and the Hindu Shastras concerning this subject with volume, page, and verse for easier verification.