8. The moral state of the soul is the condition that determines the ease, or the difficulty, with which the spirit disengages itself from its terrestrial envelope. The strength of the affinity between the body and the perispirit is in the exact ratio of the spirit’s attachment to materiality; it is, consequently, at the maximum in the case of those whose thoughts and interests are concentrated on the earthly life and the enjoyment of material pleasures; it is almost nil in the case of an individual whose soul has identified itself, beforehand, with the spirit-life. The slowness and difficulty of the separation depends entirely on the degree of the soul’s purification and dematerialization. It is in the power of each of us to render our passage, from the life of the Earth to that of the spirit-world, more or less easy or difficult, pleasant or painful.
This point being laid down, both as a theoretic principle and as a result of observation, we have now to examine the influence exercised by the various kinds of death, on the sensations of the soul at the moment of dissolution.
