let’s begin by stating that Death by its definitive and palpably obvious position in the array of experiences presented to us, is not subject to secure explanations. It is Mystery itself.
Some choose to use this, to dismiss any attempt to understand or prepare for it. I am not one of those. You are welcome to be one of those without any criticism from me. I will however put my approach in the most effective way I am able.
My approach has been to study every version of clarification or insight that I have been able to find. Since DJ dropped the idea of its significance into my plastic mind, I have grasped it with relish. I would appreciate it if anyone with references or information about people or schools who have covered this topic - place it in this Board, so that everyone can continue to cross check their own preparations and working templates.
I am going to present my digested versions now - this is my current working template, gleaned from many sources, and accorded weight due to my best assessments.
I prefer to approach death with a map. I am not wedded to the map, but I prefer to have some preparation rather than none, while always ready to either rearrange the map, or toss it completely. This map is built from both my own personal experiences plus the thoughts and experiences of others revealed to me along my way.
there are two deaths. Death of the Soul, and Death of the Body. I only use these terms to distinguish, not to be definitive about the concepts death, soul or body. Take them as symbolic headings only, and yet real events.
Death of the Soul.
I may cover this later in more detail, but I have already posted an extract about the Portal of Death with which this deals. What I mean by soul here is our ‘view of the world’, which runs very deep in our consciousness and subconsciousness. I am not referring to the actual astral vehicle, which I also call soul in a different context - its death would mean death of the body, so that will come later under that section.
Death of the Soul, means ‘die before you die’. face death before it is your allotted time. learn, discover, what death really means to you as the person who has not been properly ‘touched by death’. this is all about saying goodbye to everything. this is the emotional death.
it is also the death of our identity, our heritage, our family, our nation, our species. this is the end of all our ambitions, our expectations, our fears, our desires. the end of what it means for us to be human. the rejection of the ‘human form’.
it does require its own separate section. but enough for now to know that you can’t really pass through the Death of the Soul, unless your body is facing death. and it can’t be a quick event - it has to be dwelt on over a reasonable period of time, so that the layers have time to shrivel and drop away.
Death of the Body.
The bodies:
Our being is made up of numerous ‘vehicles’. not centres, but shells. I will cover the main ones:
The body. this is the physical vehicle - touch it: our experience built around senses and pain.
The etheric body. some call it the energy body, although that is a term used differently in different contexts. in this case it is the pure physical energy that vitalises out physical being, and is approximately the same size and shape - slightly larger in more energetic people, and extending many feet out in highly formidably people, though that is quite rare.
The astral body. some call our sentient being. a mysterious vehicle, which in daily world is our emotional life. in our sleep it is how we experience the dream world. it is picture oriented, but feeling sensitive and manipulated. it can be of varying size, from smaller than the physical body, to vast and in the case of Manus, will in itself be worlds. it is best seen when the person is not physically in front of you - just quickly think of someone, and feel them in an instant - that is seeing their astral body. best experienced immediately after a person physically leaves your presence, just as the details of the interaction fall away, and their vibe remains.
The casual body. not a body at all, but we add it in here for placeholder reference. in fact it is the absence of any vehicle. properly speaking it is a point of perception. however it does have around it a ‘mist’ of quality, out of which our future experiences evolve. thus it is the final reduction of past experiences, into an essence which then ‘causes’ our future experiences. the only difficulty with that explanation is the issue of time, which doesn’t exist in this area - so let’s just use it in the knowledge of the limitations of our language shaped comprehensions.
Some also call the astral body the casual body, and there is some truth in that, as ‘causes’ come down through the bodies. emotions in the astral body create effects in the ‘contents’ of the body, which if not balanced, are carried back to the source on death and then enter the ‘shell’ of the body as a structural flaw in the new life being built. However, for my current purposes, I prefer to call the causal body the 3rd attention or 3rd world aspect of our being, whereas the astral is the 2nd attention.
The Process of Death:
I am only going to talk about the ‘normal’ process. Accidents and clever tricks are a separate issue.
Death begins about the age of 25. Picture an arrow being shot at an angle into the air - watch it’s trajectory. From leaving the string, it is pure upward force. Then comes a point where its upward force begins to decline for the first time - in trajectory we see this as the arrow continuing to go higher, but at a declining velocity - it also begins to curve away from the straight upward line. Until all upward force is exhausted, where a peak point is reached and the arrow then turns downward.
From the moment of birth, we are pure outward force - all our etheric energy is directed out into the world, into life. During this phase, the knowledge of death is absent, except in hybinating seed, so there is no visceral awareness inherent in us of death. Until we reach 25, the point where the arrow first begins to taper in its trajectory. The knowledge of death first awakens in our etheric body.
We reach the peak of our trajectory about the ages 27 to 31, depending on the quantity of etheric energy we were born with. From that point we level off an slowly decline - the core of our being is called back to its source. Around the age of 57 onwards, a process of reflection on our life begins, which intensifies the older we get. This is about the ‘unravelling’ process, which is what the post death period is all about, but we begin it towards the end of life, by reminiscing and talking about our past - recalling our salad days. Older people spend a lot of time reviewing, and retelling about their past - who they were, who they knew, and things that happened ‘back when’. This is a good process, as it prepares for the post death tasks, unfortunately it is rarely done well, such that people dwell on only a few highlights which they get stuck on, instead of a systematic recapitulation - a releasing of the energy stored in our memories.
Physical death:
the moment of ‘death’ is critical. we spend our lives preparing for this. death is the most clear touch of Spirit, the being at the core of the universe, that comes to everyone. at that point, a vortex opens, as does with birth and conception - seen clearly these are also ‘deaths’. these are essentially dramatic changes of states. at such points we have the best opportunity to grasp the essence of Spirit. but herein lies a problem.
do you really know what is happening now around you, in your own life? are you really aware of the true significance of your present situation as you read this? have you ever asked yourself, especially in dramatic circumstances, “What is really happening here?” instead of only what appears to be happening. if it is so difficult to penetrate to the truth of any situation, how do you expect to see the truth of what is happening at death? only a life time of clearing away your own delusions and filters, will help you at that moment.
at any point of death - the death of any of our bodies, the change of any state, and identity - the moment you leave a job you have done for many years, leave a relationship, or begin a new job, a new house, a new relationship - at these points a precious opportunity opens to us. the Tibetan Buddhists talk of the ‘light’. This is the difference between the eye and the beak of the Eagle. The idea is that at that moment, by the audacious leap into the highest point of awareness, we merge with the eagle, and its awareness, instead of being consumed, which happens by being dragged asleep into the beak. this moment, this opportunity, this concept is the ultimate audacity, and it should be the one you prepare for all your life. It entails absolute non-resistance, absolute lack of tardiness, absolute readiness, and absolute daring. all our jumping at our work boss’s commands, is in preparation for jumping into full awareness at the moment of death - quite possibly the least expected moment. think about it.
Etheric death:
after the death of the physical body, the etheric body survives for about 3 days - some say for as long as you can go without water. the etheric body is the storehouse of our physical life’s journey - its impulses and memories. during this time, as well as before and after, but primarily at this time, we unravel this storehouse. We relive our physical life, and release all the energy stored in the etheric body out into the cosmos. it passes before our point of perception as it drifts away from us. it doesn’t take long, as time is intensified, and because compared with our life’s astral journey, very little happened to the physical. it is our emotional world that consumes most of our attention, not the physical.
this is about why many old cultures will not burn ar bury a body before the 3 days are up, and this process has completed naturally.
Astral death:
after the etheric body is released from its physical shell, it exhausts its energy, and then releases the astral body - the silver cord is broken, and the astral body floats off without its anchor. then begins the rather long journey of the astral body sans physical and etheric. over time the astral body drifts further and further away from it’s earlier life’s ‘location’. passes through many phases, about which you can read in some esoteric texts.
one of the primary tasks during this time is to unravel our dream storehouse of memories/energy. we relive our dreams. this means we relive our identity. in contacting the dead, you will at first see images of them very similar to how they were before they died - if they were sick, it will take them some time to unravel and work through all the ‘fixations’ or ‘identifications’ associated with the experiences of sickness or old age. after some time, perhaps many years, you will have dreams or visions of them as the younger person you knew them from earlier times, as they pass through those phases themselves. also as your own unravelling of your own astral connections progresses.
this phase is intimately connected with the solar system, the ‘being’ in which we cycle.
as ‘astral’ time passes, we journey into finer and finer reaches of the astral. This can either take a very long time, for those who spent a lot of time during life pondering the finer things - metaphysics, artistic and spiritual knowledge etc. Or a very short time if you were a pretty basic sort of person who just liked sex, food and TV.
once every grain from our astral body’s storehouse has been released into the cosmos, and we have thoroughly relived it all, plus explored what was potential and prepared in that world, our astral body dies. this is what esotefforists call the second death (not what I call the second death).
Causal world:
Then we are released into a world of pure spirit, retaining only the most absolute refined and distilled essential ‘flavour’ of our previous life. how long we remain there depends, but for most, a very short time, before the cycle begins again, and our ‘flavour’ attracts to it particles of unaware and aware matter. like a magnet, we pull to us the items we have stored a sympathetic energy for, in our ‘flavour’ - what DJ called our ‘that which remains’.
part of this pulling to us is our purpose in the next cycle, our friends, our talents, our ‘beam’. for an aware person, it becomes a task in this life, to begin this process of seeding our next cycle - right here. We are already doing it unconsciously, so it is not too big a jump to do it consciously.
that is a very brief summary.
Michael Maher 2007
