“Mr. Old: The next question is: What determines the length of the Devachanic state?
Mme. Blavatsky: Your actions.
Mr. Old: In the previous life?
Mme. Blavatsky: In the previous life.
Mr. Old: It is not, the aggregate?
Mme. Blavatsky: It is not the aggregate, unless there is some surplus that has to be worked out.
Mr. Old: Then you consider that at the end of Devachan, we are quits?
Mme. Blavatsky: We are quits with that personality of Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown, and there is the end of it.
Mr. Gardner: Still, it is possible to spread it over a series of Devachans. For instance, Napoleon Bonaparte’s Devachan – that would spread over several.
Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. I think he will have a nice Karma for the people he has killed.
Mr. Old: It is such an accumulation of energy. It is quite an event to have a man like Bonaparte in the world, and in order to have reaction in the next life, it would be quite a different thing.
Mme. Blavatsky: I don’t suppose he has much to do in Devachan. He was the most materialistic man that ever was. He had no Devachan. If he had a Devachan after his own mind he would have all you English and try that you should have one head, and cut it off.
Mr. Gardner: I suppose he was the embodiment of the nation?
Mme. Blavatsky: No.
Mr. Old: What seems to determine the length in my mind is the activity of the nature, the rate at which the monad runs.
Mme. Blavatsky: The intensity of your aspirations or desires, and the degree of your sufferings unmerited – those that you have not deserved directly, but through the Karma or the bad actions of somebody else – that is what determines it.
Mrs. Besant: The more desires you have, the longer you will be there?
Mme. Blavatsky: Yes. But if you have desires that were perfectly on the spiritual plane, then you are sure to be a spook.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 