The sumtotal of energy remains the same for as long as a planet persists, with its forms and life expression. It is part of the great storehouse of energy. It is the use and the effect of this energy, as it is appropriated by a form or forms of some kind, which we note as it is attracted from its own place to a place where normally it would not be functioning. There it creates situations and produces difficulties which are closely connected with a man's karma and destiny. There is a great abstracting energy which we call Death, whose influence at a given time proves more potent than the united influences of the body atoms and cells. It produces the tendency to withdraw and finally to abstract the soul energy which avails itself of these potencies in the process of discarding a vehicle on some plane or another. It might be said that the seeds of death (the germ of death) are latent in the planet and in the forms. [348] When powerful enough to be recognized, we call them germs, but this connotes a definite stage of almost tangible proof. When unduly potent, they produce acute disease and consequent death; when more feeble in effect, we call them illness and note their purificatory effect. These contaminations (as they can be called, though it is by no means a good name) are only such when that aggregate of energies which we call a man is brought in contact with these contaminating influences or types of ancient energies, and the reaction or the response is, from the angle of the comfort of the physical body, bad.