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This is the real origin of "extreme unction" in the Roman Catholic Church and the custom oi having a priest near the dying man in other religions. Gradually as a meterializing tendency began to assert itself, the Hindus invented a ceremony which is the next best thing they could do under the circumstances. It is a general belief among them that after physical death, the entity lingers on the earth for a period of ten days before passing into any other state of existence. During this period they perform a regular daily ceremony in which they prepare some rice balls and put them before crows. The belief is that crows are so sensitive as to detect any astral figure they see. If the man dies, having some unsatisfied desire, then his astral figure covers the rice balls which the crows cannot touch. If the balls are immediately touched, then it is concluded that the man having no unsatisfied desire is no longer earth-bound. But if they are not, then the relatives of the dead person go on recounting all the wishes of the latter, that they can possibly think of, promising at the same time to fulfil them. When the right thing is hit on, then it is believed the entity immediately goes off to its sphere, and the crows touch the balls. Whatever it may be, the Hindus have a horror of those elementaries, and instead of dragging them into séances they try by every possible means to release them from the earth's atmosphere. When the struggle between the lower affinities and the higher aspirations of the man is ended in Kama-Loka, astral death takes place in that sphere as does physical death on this earth. The shock of death again throws the entity into a state of unconsciousness before its passage into Devachan. The "shell" left behind may manifest itself until it is disintegrated, but it is not the real spiritual man; and the rare intelligence exhibited by it, occasionally, is the radiation of the aura caught by it during its connection with the spiritual individuality. From its fourth state of existence, it re-awakens in Devachan, the conditions of which, according to Hindu books are, Salokata, Samipata and Sayujata. In the lowest state, i.e., of Salokata the entity is only under the influence of the sixth and the
