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 |   As the first blog entry got exhausted. My second book |
| Evolution of Love Part 2 |
| THE DEATH EXPERIENCE EXPLAINED BY A SPIRITUAL MASTER: Paramahansa Yogananda says: “Don't depend on death to liberate you from your imperfections. You are exactly the same after death as you were before. Nothing changes; you only give up the body. If you are a thief or a liar or a cheater before death, you don't become an angel merely by dying. If this was possible, then let us all go and jump in the ocean now and become angels at once! Whatever you have made of yourself thus far, so will you be hereafter. And when you reincarnate, you will bring that same nature with you. To change, you have to make the effort now and this world we are living in is the place to do it. We don't become angels merely by the instrument of death. If we are angels now, we will be angels in the hereafter. If we are dark, negative personalities now, we will be the same after death. Death is not as terrible as you think. It comes to you as a healer. Sleep is nothing but a counterfeit death. What happens in death we can picture in sleep. All our sufferings vanish in sleep. When death comes, all our mortal tortures cease; they cannot go beyond the portals of death. He says we must remember that from joy people are born; for joy they live and in that same joy they melt at death. So death is an ecstasy, for it removes the burden of the body and frees the soul of all pain springing from body identification. It is the cessation of pain and sorrow. At physical death man loses his consciousness of the flesh and becomes conscious of his astral body in the astral world. Thus physical death is astral birth. Later, he passes from the consciousness of luminous astral birth to the consciousness of dark astral death and awakens in a new physical body. Thus astral death is physical birth. These recurrent cycles of physical and astral encasements are the ineluctable destiny of all unenlightened men. Births and deaths are inevitable for man only during the state of ignorance in which he thinks he is the body and cannot exist without it. Only the man who will not seek the awakening of wisdom must suffer the nightmares and delusive dreams of births and deaths and the fanciful miseries and limitations attending them. Death is not a blotting-out of existence, a final escape from life; nor is death the door to immortality. He who has fled his Self in earthly joys will not recapture It amidst the gossamer charms of an astral world. There he merely accumulates finer perceptions and more sensitive responses to the beautiful and the good, which are one. It is on the anvil of this gross earth that struggling man must hammer out the imperishable gold of spiritual identity. Take life as it comes and death as it comes. Death is really beautiful; if it were a bad thing, God would not let it happen to us. It is really freedom, an entry into another, higher life. We must utilize this life in order to realize the life beyond this one. Beyond this earth garden is the infinite land wherein we meet those whom we have thought lost. Although we must not seek death, when it comes we should know that it is the final examination for a great reward. When you reflect that this world is filled with death, and that your body, too, has to be relinquished, God's plan seems very cruel. You can't imagine that He is merciful. But when you look at the process of death with the eye of wisdom, you see that after all it is merely a thought of God passing through a nightmare of change into blissful freedom in Him again. Saint and sinner alike are given freedom at death, to a greater or lesser degree according to merit. In the Lord's dream astral world— the land to which souls go at death—they enjoy a freedom such as they never knew during their earthly life. So don't pity the person who is passing through the delusion of death, for in a little while he will be free. Once he gets out of that delusion, he sees that death was not so bad after all. He realizes his mortality was only a dream and that he is free and safe. The astral world is the subtle sphere or "heaven" behind the gross physical world. The Bhagavad Gita gives this beautiful description of the soul, “No weapon can pierce the soul; no fire can burn it; no water can moisten it; nor can any wind wither it. The soul is immutable, all-permeating, ever calm, and immovable, eternally the same. The soul is said to be imponderable, unmanifested, and unchangeable. Therefore, knowing it to be such, thou shouldst not lament.” But such is the delusion of desire for material things that, after a time of freedom from the body, the soul wants to come back to earth again. Even though the soul knows that the body is subject to disease and troubles, these delusive desires for earthly experience veil that knowledge and deceive his consciousness. So after a karmically predetermined time in the astral world, he is reborn on earth. When death comes, he goes forth once more from the gross dream of this earth experience to the finer dream of the astral plane, only to be drawn back to this world. And again and again he returns, until he is no longer desirous of an earthly life. When a dear one dies, instead of grieving unreasonably, realize that they have gone on to a higher plane at the will of God, and that God knows what is best for them. Rejoice that they are free. Pray that your love and goodwill be messengers of encouragement to them on their forward path. This attitude is much more helpful. Of course, we would not be human if we did not miss loved ones; but in feeling lonesome for them we don't want selfish attachment to be the cause of keeping them earthbound. Extreme sorrow prevents a departed soul from going ahead toward greater peace and freedom. Death must be good, otherwise God would not have ordained that it happen to everyone. Why live in fear of it? If one dies of natural causes or is spiritually advanced, the body of sensations simply drops off, and when the consciousness reawakens on another plane it has all the sensations of the body without any physical form. In death one merely sloughs off his gross physical body, which is only a lower form of mind and the cause of all manner of troubles for the soul. Death is not a punishment; it is an awakening; it is a release. We cry for a loved one, saying, "How terrible. He is gone." Still, we are the ones to be pitied. One great saint in India said: "Insult not my death with your pity, ye who are left on these desolate shores still to mourn and deplore; it is I who pity you." After death, the soul, in an astral body of light, gradually awakens to a new existence in the astral world, or heaven, on a high or low plane corresponding to the merit of its actions on earth. The soul remains in the astral world for a karmically predetermined time; then it returns to earth in a new physical incarnation. These life-death cycles continue until the soul breaks all mortal bonds and becomes liberated and returns to God. If death were the end then there is no God and there are no realised masters - it is all a pack of lies. The great ones wouldn't urge you to became better, for what would be the use of it. What would be the value of the scriptures? There would be no justice whatsoever if this present existence is all there is to each individual life. An adept of Kriya Yoga conquers death by taking the soul beyond identification with the physical body, consciously and at will. By this process, he experiences the body as merely the material dwelling place of the soul. He can remain therein as long as he wants; and after that body has fulfilled its usefulness, he can quit it at will without suffering physical pain or mental pain due to attachment, and enter his omnipresent home in God. The greatest dread of ordinary man is death, with its rude imposition interrupting fortuitous plans and fondest attachments with an unknown and unwelcome change. The yogi is a conqueror of the grief associated with death. By control of mind and life force and the development of wisdom, he makes friends with the change of consciousness called death—he becomes familiar with the state of inner calmness and aloofness from identification with the mortal body. Life and death are but a passing from dream to dream. They are only thoughts: you are dreaming you are alive, and you are dreaming you are dead. When you get into the great state of Christ Consciousness, you see that life and death are dreams of God. Death is the means by which dream matter changes back into the consciousness of God, releasing the soul within it for the next step in its progressive return journey to God. Thus death is a part of the process of salvation. The upward cycle of evolving intelligence in potentially more efficient instruments of expression continues until it reaches the ultimate form in man. Only a human being has the ability to express his innate divinity and to consciously realize God and transcend His maya dream of delusion. Birth and death are doors through which you pass from one dream to another. All you are doing is going back and forth between this gross dream world and the finer astral dream world; between these two chambers of dream nightmares and dream pleasures. Thus reincarnation is a series of dreams within a dream: man's individual dreams within the greater dream of God. At the time of death a yogi reaches the Supreme Effulgent Lord if, with love and by the power of yoga, he fully penetrates his life force between the eyebrows which is the seat of the spiritual eye. And if he fixes his mind unwaveringly on the Being who, beyond all delusions of darkness, shines like the sun—the One whose form is unimaginable, subtler than the finest atom, the Supporter of all, the Great Ruler, who is eternal and omniscient. The Bhagavad Gita pointed out in these verses the three qualifications by which a great yogi passes from his physical body into the Divine Essence. First, love of God. Second, mastery of that kingly science of Kriya Yoga, by which he can usher his consciousness into the Infinite through the agency of the "single eye" in the forehead. Third through perfect control of the mind. Which is made possible through constancy in yoga meditation which enables him to place his thoughts undeviatingly on the Lord at the time of death—an hour whose finality is always known in advance by a spiritually advanced yogi. Yogananda says that we have passed through death and rebirth so many times, so why be afraid of death? It comes to free us. He says we shouldn't wish for death, but be comforted in the realization that it is our escape from so many troubles; it is a pension after the hard work of life........... |
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