Many people living today sadly do not have any understanding of the kind of experience they may have after death. For many it is "lights out." This seems entirely ludicrous since it is such a great gift to be born, and to think that is IT, a "brief player upon a stage" and snuffed out at the end must make many an angel chortle and scoff at our silliness.
It is very important that people understand that we are in fact "immortals" and we do not have to become "Gods" to be that way... we ARE that way. That is entirely our heritage. Death is a sort of changing room. We slip into death and drop the body we had which is often rheumatic and creaky in order to create a fresh new one. Unfortunately, we often have to leave the situations we lived in and our loved ones. This is where the greatest illusion comes in and the one that creates tremendous fear for so many. Our relationships with people only end if we think they have ended. Yet the very thought of a person or a photograph of them brings them back to us in full measure, so how can they be gone? If we developed relationships in life that were based upon deep soul-felt connections, death would make far less difference. This has been proven over and over by people who have lost a loved one, yet still feel the presence of the person on a daily basis and feel guided by their loved one just as in life.
Not only then do we have to revise our understanding of death, but it is vital that we realize that death is just about losing the body, and the real essence of us, the spirit that enervates and flows through our bones and muscles, is still very much alive and aware. At the point of death it is vital that the dying person be aware of what is to come, for it is not "lights out." If anything it is "lights on," for there is a huge shift and expansion of awareness. As in the ancient text "Tibetan Book of the Dead" instructions need to be given in life, before death, and during the dying so that the departing soul is prepared for the other side of having a physical body. This preparation can make the transition and "journey" a whole lot more happy and comfortable for the dying soul. If you die without this information, as so many do, you will assume that your surroundings are created by others, or at least you could believe that they are not under your control. This can lead you into after-death situations that are most often labeled: "hell."
Dying without the slightest awareness of "life after death" means you could die and be completely unaware of the fact. This does happen to many people. This can be very confusing since your thinking of friends and relatives will cause them to appear because you are drawn to them by your thoughts. However, they will not acknowledge your presence unless they are clairvoyant since you are in your spiritual or astral body which was released from your physical body at death. So you could wander for days or months trying to attract the attention of someone you know. In the meantime, there are negative spirits who take great delight in annoying such wanderers, and since they are the only ones who acknowledge your presence, they may entice you to follow them into their natural abode which is almost total darkness. There they will feed on your fear which they can generate by giving you torment, both physical and mental.
Since you would not be aware that you can change your surroundings just by thinking of somewhere else, these entities keep you occupied continuously with their mischief, and thus you think you are trapped in their world "hell." Fortunately there is a way out which you are about to discover.
So in your despair in this "hell" you find a dim distant memory of prayer. This would be the key to escape. Asking a Higher Being for help will instantly summon missionary angels who may appear as small points of light. By concentrating on a light, you encourage the angel to appear to you, and he/she will lead you into the light (increased light corresponds to an area of increased spiritual awareness in the astral world). There you will be instructed in how to handle your newfound freedom of movement.
But let us assume that you do not know about asking for help, or you forgot in the "heat" of the moment. Then you may be in for real Hell for an extended period, since these negative entities live off the fear energy you generate, and they are interested in keeping you imprisoned in your little world built of fear. However, the Beloved Father of us all will not allow an eternity to pass without summoning help, which may come as another incarnation, or perhaps a relative or friend will think of you in a loving way which will create a path to a higher level of reality where you will find deceased friends and relatives waiting to welcome you .
But despite all their good intentions, and despite God's intention to welcome you back into his loving arms, you may not be ready for this kind of love. In fact, if your world has been one of self-centeredness with little concern for others, God's kind of love can actually be painful, and you may decide to move away from God's presence into a lower kingdom where people think just like you do. In fact they have already created such a world, and your presence adds to its expanse. Here you will be surrounded by those of similar interests; in time stagnation may set in, since you may be perfectly content to exist in the outer fringes of God's love. But at least you will be away from torment. Here you will stay until after a period of perhaps years, you become restless and wonder what it's like in higher realms. This attracts teachers and guides who help you on your progress toward enlightenment. Free will is the over-riding principle in all levels of reality, so there is no coaxing or pleading. You gravitate to the level of reality that best suits your personality and experience. If at least some of your experiences in the physical life have been selflessness, with respect and love given to others as well as yourself, you will be greeted at death with a host of friends and relatives, and later a loving compassionate being of light will provide you with an instantaneous life review in which you experience from the other person's perspective every encounter, good and bad, which you have ever had with another.
This can be very rewarding if your life has been in keeping with the above description. Normally there is a mixture of both good and bad reactions of others to your encounters with them, and you get to also live the sadness and grief you have caused others. So herein lies the good/bad first experiences with the hereafter. You set the tone by the way you have treated others all your life. Hopefully the life review gets better as you have aged and have learned better how to relate to others with more openness and love.
But it doesn't matter at this point. You are in for a variable stay in the astral plane, where you gravitate to those of like interests. But now there is joy and light and you may be invited to progress toward further enlightenment. Unfortunately you have unresolved situations from past lives which now come back to haunt you. You realize that the only way to put them to rest is to go back to earth another time, with situations prearranged so as to give you the opportunity to make up for past shortcomings. You choose your new parents, or if you have not advanced spiritually sufficiently, helpers will arrange for your benefit the circumstances which can bring out the best in you if you learn from these circumstances. But if you don't learn from these circumstances, new similar circumstances are arranged for you to re-experience the same challenges until you learn what you failed to learn before. If you have wondered why you keep having similar experiences, such as failed romances, this is the reason. Lessons unlearned means lessons repeated.
Thus progress is made over many, many lifetimes, each subsequent one geared to take advantage of the lessons learned previously as your life becomes more and more based upon unconditional love. Here then is the secret of all incarnations. We start out as a spark of the Divine which is unconditional love, but with free will to experiment with different life circumstances. And we come into this incarnation not remembering who we really are but with opportunities of rediscovering this wonderful truth.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In 1993 my father passed away after a bout of pneumonia and emphysema. I immediately got out my "Tibetan Book of the Dead" and started the verses for him for each day after his departure. These are verses said each day until the soul reincarnates and are meant to assist the dying person on the journey between bodies.
I felt him come to visit me a few days after he passed out of his body. He told me that he saw my dog, Wendy, who had died in 1986 waiting for me. He asked me why I could talk to him and why no one else he spoke to could see him. Unfortunately he had not understood he had died. So I explained this to him that my mother and siblings could not see him now, but that I could see him because I had been given a special ability from Muktananda, my guru, to see other dimensions.
( It was ironic that my yoga and meditation practice, which in his life my father had criticised, abhored and despised, was the reason I could now communicate with him.)
I explained to him that he needed to go to the light, as his wife and family were preparing for the funeral. He refused to believe this. He visited a few more times in this fashion, and I followed his progress after death along with chanting verses from the "Tibetan Book of the Dead" and my own Guru's special chant.
Around the eighth day after my father's death, I awoke with a feeling of dread and horror inside my heart. I felt it was about him, so I meditated on this feeling and I saw my terrified father on a high cliff face that had jagged rocks above and below him. He was being battered by an icy wind, and he could not see how to go up nor down. His terror was abject and total. In his life my father had been a fireman, yet he had a deep fear of heights. He would not even go into tall buildings unless he had to. So I knew that this was indeed the day his subconscious fear of heights was coming to him.
In meditation I joined my father on that jagged, icy cliff face and I told him clearly, "Dad this is just your imagination. It is not real. Think of some warm, good place." This seemed to give him comfort and the jagged cliff disappeared, and he seemed to go into a state of peace and passed away from me into light. I then checked the verses from the "Tibetan Book of the Dead" for this eighth day and found on this day the terrifying aspects of the mind appeared which indeed was the very stage my dad had gone through. At that point I knew that this book was wise indeed and I felt most grateful that it had helped me help my father after his death.
It is because of this and other such experiences that I have joined Jack O'Brien in writing this for people who may still believe that after death it is "lights out" as my father so strongly believed. I am just glad that he did not convince me of this, or I should not have been able to be there to provide assistance for him at the key time. Once again, thank goodness for Muktananda, my esteemed guru. Angela Wright.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
END Compiled by Angela Wright and Jack O'Brien (jobrien@yournet.com) from personal experience and from the following sources:
http://www.worldtrans.org/lyssa/perspow.html
http://www.spiritweb.org/astral-planes.html
http://www.spiritweb/Spirit/toraya-ayres.html
http://www.spiritweb.org/Spirit/tales-from-nature-kingdom-obrien.html