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 it comes to us all in time. 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 deeply ingrained in the human race, which necessitates hope and is the last thing to go when all is lost. 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 and the freedom from existence, and can often be observed in the dying. It’s irrefutable that every body dies. But the life within doesn’t die; 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 that particular recurrence and the beginning of a new phase of life.
Prior to physical death, and sometimes in life-threatening situations or extreme shock, there’s 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 body extends beyond the physical limitations of material 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 to the deepest constellation in space.
Everyone is engaged in the process of death from the moment of birth, as the whole ageing system is a gradual preparation for the physical body’s demise. Just as the body is programmed for its eventual disintegration, so the emotional body prepares for death through the gradual detachment from the experience of sensory existence. The difficulty is that people become so attached to the continuity of life, particularly in their relationships to loved ones, that the transition in the death process is invariably distressing to some degree. Nevertheless, in life’s infinite compassion, the trauma is neutralised and the man or woman goes unconscious through the passage of death to awake into a new phase of life and 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 enlightenment point. The attachment to the world determines the depth an individual consciousness reaches within the gradations of reality. Someone who has been totally immersed in the external 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 the psyche and participate in an even finer version of their inner reality.
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, consciousness creates a celestial beam impressed upon the human psyche for others to draw upon during the crossing of death. The evolution of mankind is towards the bridging of the material and psychic worlds. It will be a world of immortality, with death effectively transcended as a necessary function of human existence. In future earth cultures, the immortal state will ensure that death is no longer a restriction to life.