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favourable circumstances. 9: The bāla-bāla death always leads to
undesirable conditions, except where tapaścharaņa (asceticism) is practised under the influence of a faith which, though not of the right sort, enjoins its practising, in which case the individual will reach lower heavens, and all will subsequently, in ordinary cases, be reborn amongst men under inauspicious circumstances. In the worst cases, the bāla-bāla death is the source of the most undesirable conditions and surroundings. The soul is sure to descend into hells, which may be for a very very long term of life, in the very worst cases. Those who die in the bāla-bāla mode generally descend into the animal kingdom and may be reborn amongst minerals and plants. Some even sink back into what is known as nigoda, which is almost like an unending eternal stupor. · The bāla-bāla death will also lead to a human birth where some sort of active goodness is present to modify the effect of evil and vicious ignorance.
The form of the future rebirth is usually fixed about the time that a third of the life-force (the force of longevity) remains to be gone through in any particular form. If it is not fixed then, it will be fixed when a third of that third remains to be gone through, and again, if not determined even then, when a third of the remainder is left to live, and in any case at the moment of death. But what is fixed in this manner is the general type of the gati (one of the four main types of embodied existence, namely, human, celestial, sub-human and hellish). The actual form and other attendant cirumstances
