Looking into Death

To begin to grasp the truth of death it’s necessary to see how the human mind has made a concept of what is essentially an intrinsic part of life. Death is always perceived to happen in another body; the reality is that death is utterly subjective and occurs within the inner space of the outer form. Death intrigues and appals people in equal measure, since no-one can avoid the fact that each body is born to die. The psychological effect is to escape into the world as a projection of hope, the mantra of the masses being that death comes tomorrow and never today.

The fear of death is now so deeply ingrained in the human race that hope has become a psychic buoyancy of protection to avoid facing the awful truth. When the death process begins and the focus merges with the psychic vortex, all fear disappears and, with it, all hope of coming back. This is the state of peace that people strive to realise while alive. It’s irrefutable that every body dies. But the life does not end; it merely withdraws, just as it does every night when the body goes to sleep. The only difference is that at physical death the thread which connects the senses to the surface awareness is severed. This signifies the end of the formal living experience and the beginning of a new phase of life.

Prior to physical death, and sometimes in life-threatening situations or extreme shock, there is a crossover between the normal fixed position of mind to an altered state of consciousness. This is commonly referred to as ‘an out of the body experience’. The body is not actually ‘left’ because the reality of the psycho/spiritual field of perception extends beyond the physical limitations of sensory existence and has no definitive shape. So from this perspective the attention can appear anywhere, from a point of consciousness looking down upon the body or from the deepest constellation in space.

Everyone is engaged in the cyclic process of life and death from the moment of birth. Just as the body is programmed for its eventual decomposition of matter, so the emotional body prepares for death through the gradual detachment from the experience of sensory existence. The difficulty is that people become identified with the world as a permanent structure, and to the relationships that support its foundation. It’s these attachments to the formal side of life, particularly to loved ones, that makes the transition in the death process invariably distressing to some degree. Nevertheless, in life’s infinite compassion the distress is neutralised and the man or woman goes unconscious through the passage of death to awake into a new phase of life of incomparable wonder.

At the time of death, freed of the enormous strain of holding up existence in sense, the intelligence speeds up and opens up a new realm of heightened perception. After each living recurrence, the essence of the individual’s virtue gravitates towards the soul centre, which is an individual’s evolving spiritual light. It’s the attachment to the world that determines the depth an individual consciousness reaches within the gradations of the psyche. Someone who has been totally immersed in the material world during their lifetime may be more comfortable in the space nearer to the earth. Here they can experience the after-death process in a similar but less formal version of their earthly existence. Someone else, having made the search for truth a more conscious part of their life, will gravitate to a deeper level of reality and participate in an even finer octave of purified space.

To die consciously and pass from one state of being to the next is to participate in the totality of life everlasting. Similar to a vapour trail of a jet or the shimmering light of a shooting star, the consciousness of such a being creates a radiance of spirit that is forever impressed upon the human psyche. This then provides a source of light and inspiration for others to draw upon during the dark crossing of death. The evolution of mankind is towards the bridging of the physical and psychic worlds. It will be a world of immortality, with death effectively transcended as an intermediary procedure. In future earth cultures, the immortal state will ensure that death is no longer a restriction to life.