Karma

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophical Publishing House

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I say, rather than a "life", because a life means too little if it be used in the ordinary sense of a single incarnation, and it means too much if it be used for the whole life, made up of many stages in the physical body, and of many stages without it. By life-period I mean a little cycle of human existence, with its physical, astral and devachanic experiences, including its return to the threshold of the physicalthe four distinct stages through which the soul passes, in order to complete its cycle. These stages are retrodden over and over again during the journey of the eternal pilgrim through our present humanity, and however much the experiences in each such period may vary, both as to quantity and quality, the period will include these four stages for the average human being, and none others.
It is important to realize that the residence outside the physical body is far more prolonged than the residence in it; and the workings of karmic law will be but poorly understood unless the activity of the soul in the non-physical condition be studied. Let us recall the words of a Master, pointing out that the life out of the body is the real one.
The Vedantins, acknowledging two kinds of conscious existence, the terrestrial and the spiritual, point only to the latter as