This place (LOKA) of desire (KAMA) is where the personality finds itself after DEATH (AND AFTER-DEATH STATES). The Sanskrit term loka is cognate with English locus (borrowed from Latin). The kama loka is the plane or level of reality on which emotions operate, sometimes called astral, which is coexistent with and interpenetrates the physical plane. All through life, the emotional perturbations we experience are fluctuations in the matter of the kama loka. After the death of the physical body, we may become conscious in the kama loka, where intelligence is in abeyance and emotions dominate. On that plane, the disembodied individual, functioning in the KAMA RUPA, or desire form, may relive all the desire-driven episodes of the former life until the energy inherent in them has been exhausted and the ASTRAL SHELL disintegrates, after which the individual is free to move in consciousness to the higher realm called DEVACHAN. The time spent in kama loka is said to vary according to the quality of the previous life. An individual who has lived a pure and altruistic life will pass through kama loka, without being conscious of it, but emerge in consciousness in devachan.

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