Adi Da: Dying, Death, and Beyond: Common questions of spiritual beginners

MORTALITY, DEATH, AND BEYOND

Part 2: You WILL take it with you

You WILL Take It With You What will occur after we die? This question can be answered, on the basis of a large body of reports across the centuries — on near-death experiences, experiences with the dying, after-life experiences, reincarnation experiences, paranormal phenomena, the experiences of sleeping and dreaming, and the direct awareness and report of Spiritual Masters — as well as by studying the laws of the psyche as we observe it in life, to predict its destiny after death. The report is not all roses, though. In fact, its conclusion is that there is life after death, and re-birth, but it is also likely that we are going to suffer greatly during the period between lives, unless we develop, during our lifetime, a powerful Spiritual practice that truly links up with God.

We are appropriately indignant at "hell and brimstone" preachers who have no direct experience of a Greater Reality and simply use such notions to terrify and manipulate their congregations. But quite distinct from this is the question of whether notions such as "heavens", "hells", and "bardos" do have a basis in spiritual reality. As it turns out, they appear prominently in the reports of every religious and spiritual tradition. We rightly understand them as experiences generated by our own psyche, rather than “rewards” or “punishments” imposed from without.

A simple check on the dreams we have at night will confirm that our (spiritually immature) psyche spontaneously generates a full range of experiences, from the very positive (the pleasant dreams) to the very negative (the nightmares). That same psyche survives the death of our physical body and, set free from the anchor of the physical body and physical brain, starts freely generating experiences over which we (in our immaturity) have relatively little control. Unlike when we dream at night, we will not be able to wake up from the nightmares that our own psyche creates, after the physical body has died.

These days, many "New Age" spiritualists tend to subscribe to a romanticized mythology about death, based on studies of near-death experiences. Reported near-death experiences tend to be positive because they are only near-death experiences, and thus generally include only the earliest events in the after-death sequence (e.g., the Vision of God). But they don’t tend to report what occurs after that in the actual death process, because the experiencers return to life instead at that point.

There are endless lifetimes, an endless wheel of births and deaths, until we Wake Up. Between lives there is an extended process of purification that we go through before reincarnate. We don’t simply go straight to some fixed place called “heaven”, “hell”, or “purgatory”. We go through a series of dreamlike events, some positive (even the Vision of the Divine Light) and some negative (even very hellish experiences). What determines these events is how we have lived our lives.

Being conventionally “good” will not get us into “heaven”. (Which is not to say that you can be conventionally “bad” and get into "heaven", either!) The full expression of the great Spiritual law (summarized by Jesus and other great Spiritual Masters) is to love God, then love all others. If we do (or rather, try to do) the second without doing the first (which requires first finding God for real; otherwise to speak of “loving God” is meaningless), we are not fulfilling that fundamental law. Finding and communing with God, who is Love, allows us to be Love, in turn, and fulfill the second part of the law.

If we do not learn how to find and commune with God while alive, then we will not be able to stay in communion with God, when the Vision of God appears (fairly early on in the after-death sequence). We will then go through a series of dreams determined by what was our “unconscious” in life, but which is now our environment (as when we are in a dream); the physical body has dropped off, and we are now in a realm of pure mind.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj
It is commonly said that human beings do not know about death, since nobody has come back to tell about it. Of course, this is false. Many people have died and been revived, and their reports are very revealing. Likewise, many reliable individuals devoted to one or another form of Spiritual practice have enjoyed and subsequently communicated about the subtle and Transcendental aspects of human existence, all of which relate to the process of death and one's destiny beyond it.

What people truly mean when they say they do not know about death is that they do not know exactly what will follow it in their own case. But the generalized attitude of no-knowledge about death only provides an emotional excuse for avoiding confrontation with the reality of death and the necessity to study it and prepare for co-operation with its process.

The death process, like all the common events of human experience, is clearly available for you to witness in others and to study as a common as well as a personal physical or psycho-physical event. You can and must prepare for that event, even as you normally prepare for other great events, such as childbirth, or an operation, or a test of knowledge and skills relating to a profession. Just so, like every individual, you have many experiences during your lifetime that clearly duplicate at least some of the psycho-physical aspects of the death process. These include the regular act of going to sleep, the experiences endured during periods of illness, and the progressive revelation enjoyed via a lifetime of meditation. Also, many people are given remarkable experiences that reveal and demonstrate to them the actualities of the death process. I Myself have had such experiences, including complete duplication of the death process, leading to emergence from the physical body, the mind-self, and this world, as well as to rebirth, or eventual resumption of psycho-physical existence.

Therefore, you should not presume that you do not and cannot know about the death process. You can and must know about that process, and you must prepare for it through psycho-physical self-study. Even if you do not come to know in advance exactly what will follow your own death, you can know about and do preparatory exercises in the death process itself, since it involves the familiar processes of your present body-mind. And you can, while still alive in this world, enter into the profound practices of esoteric Spirituality, wherein you can Realize your Real Condition and Ultimate Destiny as well as the actual structures of your experiential existence.

recommended reading: You WILL Take It With You

Part 3: You CAN take it with you

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All excerpts from the works of Avatar Adi Da Samraj and and pictures of Avatar Adi Da Samraj © 2011 The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, as trustee for The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam. All rights reserved. Perpetual copyright claimed.