There are a variety of ways to maintaining the ego upon physical death. The semantics gets blurry here. But your Dreaming body, ie the 'fetch' as it were fragments from the other pieces of the body (the higher self, the soul, etc.) and is still attached to the etheric body. Together they can either learn to parasitically draw whatever form of energy that is required to keep the 'shell' alive...this can range up and down the EM spectrum depending on the nature of the splitting and in what form and level of maturity was maintained during the split. Aaargh! Sounds like spirit soup! Unfortunately if the split has occured there is no going backwards but if the split hasn't formally taken by death, the victim may be returned to 'normal'. Why all this insane fascination with the very much mistaken mystique about vampirism? Unless suffering under some horrifying trauma the physical death is a natural transition period. One of the biggest reasons that you don't have visitations from beyond the grave is that upon dying one isn't inclined to care about their past existance (this is where Lethe comes in...or whatever symbolic equivalent you'd like). Ghosts are only 'fragments' of the whole. Vampires are more highly evolved (so to speak) than ghosts and retain the astral shell and a fair amount of emotive force to drive it.
I'm sorry for going off topic here...would you guys like another thread dealing with afterlife for fun and profit (tongue in cheek)? Someone start one!
I've had a number of close encounters with astral parasites that were and sometimes are troubling. One encounter was thought, at first, to be an living arrangement with 'the Djinn'. I was an ass and I paid a high price. Thank you Fio! Be careful when inviting in houseguests...sometimes they don't leave! And they ALWAYS leave their mark! Hence, "Know Thyself" before inviting the neighbors in! Ask any decent spirit medium their thoughts on this! I assure you that you will be astounded! (IMG:
style_emoticons/default/zomby.gif)