In Blavatsky's account, the soul passing through death first traverses Kama Loka, a lower astral region where the lingering desires and passions of the completed life are gradually shed. What remains — the higher, purified self — then enters Devachan, described as a "state intermediate between two earth-lives," where the soul enjoys the fruits of its good actions and receives compensation for suffering it did not deserve.
The defining feature of Devachan is that it is entirely subjective: it is, in Blavatsky's words, "the exact representation and experience of what you had believed, hoped, and expected Heaven to be like" while still alive. A soul that longed for reunion with loved ones experiences that reunion as completely real from the inside — Theosophical teaching insists this is not mere illusion but genuine contact between higher selves — while remaining, from any outside vantage, a private and self-generated experience unshared even with other Devachanees occupying, so to speak, the same "place."