The Art of Dying or Life Between Lives

Life Between Lives

You cannot choose Life without rejecting Death. Happiness is merely the temporary absence of unhappiness; Life is merely the temporary absence of Death. The realization of this also brings suffering. Whenever you choose, you choose for something and against something.

If you are for something, then you are already against something: you cannot be only "for," nor can you be only "against." When "for" appears, "against" immediately follows like a shadow. Where there is "against," there must be "for"—hidden or unhidden. When you choose, you divide: this is good, and that is bad.

But Life is Unity! This is one of the most fundamental Truths to understand: opposites are not opposites. Look deeper and you will perceive them as one Energy. If you have chosen Love, then you have also chosen Hatred. Hatred is inherent in Love; it is always subconsciously hidden within it. And by at times hating the one you love, you will be forced to suffer. The Truth is in the middle!

Become non-choosing, simply BE! This is difficult, it seems impossible, but nonetheless—try. In all cases where you have two options for choice, try to be in the middle.

Those who stray from the Path can still return and start anew, but those who go nowhere are already dead. If you know how to die—laughing, rejoicing, welcoming Liberation—then you have annihilated Death.

We have ascertained that there are two alternatives to physical Death, as we imagine it, and both are connected with the functioning of Consciousness. (True, there is also a third alternative, described by Carlos Castaneda, which we will not dwell on here, because it is—as yet—available only to some very highly developed initiates. This is Ascension, where one no longer needs to die, because the person simply consciously transitions from the material World into the Subtle World, taking their body with them).

The Individuality of Death

When you see someone dying, you never actually see Death itself – the process that occurs within the dying person. You cannot see this because this process is not only invisible to your physical eyes but is always – exclusively, absolutely individual. From my many observations of dying people, carried out by me (Oris, and later) outside the physical body and in various situations, I concluded that no two Deaths are alike, and that the process of dying itself is very difficult, practically impossible, to reduce to any common denominator.

Each time, following the deceased in the astral body, I entered a completely new and unfamiliar World, having ABSOLUTELY nothing in common with our familiar physical World. This unknown World resembled even less what, according to all sorts of descriptions I had read, should be the continuation of our earthly existence. I could not even imagine that this new would be so vastly different from everything we are accustomed to here on Earth, that it would not even have anything in common with it.

All existing descriptions of the so-called “otherworldly” or “afterlife” proved upon closer inspection to be absolutely incorrect and erroneous; all of them are too pale, poor, monotonous, and artificial compared to what is actually observed.

Firstly, because in the Subtle World everything, absolutely everything, exists in indissoluble connection and unity with each other; every phenomenon and object does not exist on its own, separate and independent, but necessarily explains something by itself and is itself explained by something. Everything is so interconnected that no phenomenon can be described separately, isolated from EVERYTHING else. One must either transmit EVERYTHING AT ONCE, or transmit nothing at all separately, because nothing separate, as here, simply does not and cannot exist "THERE."

All things and events in the Astral prove to be closely and incomprehensibly connected by a single chain of causes and effects. Everything necessarily depends on something or someone, and every thing or phenomenon is, as it were, inside another. “There,” everything you encounter is astonishingly alive; “there” is nothing dead, unconscious, or inanimate, nothing deprived of the possibility for its turbulent self-expression through Thoughts and feelings.

With everything, as with each thing individually, one can communicate, talk, argue, and discuss for as long and as productively as desired: it is absolutely impossible to convey in words the emotional element of unmotivated joy, boundless surprise, unrestrained delight, all-consuming horror—and the constant intermediate state of these feelings transitioning into one another.

“There” one can experience in their fullness emotions that simply do not exist in our ordinary earthly Life. In the Subtle World, it is simply impossible to remain indifferent or detached towards anything or anyone; “there” one can either love what or whom one encounters, or burn with wild hatred for it, one can either strive for something, or admire someone, but it is impossible to simply remain indifferent.

Perception of Time and Space in the Afterlife

I'm not even talking about the fact that immediately after the Consciousness is freed from the dense shell, the sensation of time also qualitatively changes instantaneously: often it incredibly lengthens—seconds stretch into years in feeling, and minutes into decades.

In the Subtle World, absolutely any of your, even the most involuntary Thought instantly, right then and there, comes alive, acquiring the reality to be and act AS IF independently, AS IF regardless of you and your desires. Although desires, feelings, emotions, impulses, sympathies, and antipathies themselves are immediately transformed visually and sensually, and the more energy is invested in them, the more concrete and “real” they become, AS IF acquiring the ability to logically act and react to the constant and turbulent changes in your surroundings.

In the Astral, no walls, no “objective” conditions can simply constrain or hinder the realization of any of your fantasies, limit, or prevent your imagination from manifesting. Every image, as soon as it appears in your Consciousness, instantly begins to objectify into a completely “real” substantial form, absolutely no different in its qualities from the forms of other objects, which also constantly disappear somewhere, spread out, dematerialize, change, reappear, try to remind you of themselves in some way, attract your attention, rejoice, grieve, are jealous, and behave like “living” beings.

Multiply all this by even the tenth power, and you will still get a very pale imitation of what happens in the Subtle World with a Consciousness that has just entered it for the first time and has not yet mastered even a small part of its amazing Laws. Personally, this took me long months of hard work under the guidance of my Spiritual Mentor, who accompanied me initially in each of my astral exits. The most difficult thing was to learn to THINK IN OTHER CATEGORIES.

The World we transition into after our physical Death has not a single independent side, trait, or characteristic, which is why it is impossible, as is customary here, to first describe one of its characteristic sides, then another, and so on. Everything in it is seen at once, at any of its points, and this ALL constantly changes, transforms, moves, disintegrates, and perfects itself. And all these processes, if desired, can be observed simultaneously and concurrently.

Here, everything and everyone exists in logical, and most of all – in illogical interconnections, in which nothing and no one can exist separately, and all interrelationships between various things have a real existence, independent of the things themselves. Indeed, the things themselves AS IF do not exist at all, and instead there are only the “relationships between them” or only motives. The same applies to Thoughts.

A Thought that we, in our current physical state, might simply not notice or ignore, in the Subtle World instantly acquires reality and the ability for “independent” expression, movement, synthesis, transmutation, etc. For Thought, there are and can be no obstacles, no distances. It can freely and easily penetrate in any form into AS IF impenetrable objects and immediately reveal in the most detailed particulars their entire inner workings, composition, and principles, down to the structure of atoms, the chemical state of any star, the population of any planet in any period of its Evolution. All this is immediately concretized in the form of completely real holographic images, moving diagrams, four-dimensional models, etc.

Secondly, this ALL, literally collapsing upon you, immediately overwhelms with its grandeur, power, incredible nature, incomprehensibility, and extraordinariness. The higher the vibrations of the Astral into which Consciousness immerses itself, the more the extraordinary Music begins to manifest and create a sensual—that is, tangible and really perceptible—background, which in the lower overtones is perceived only as continuously sounding several very simple sounds.

Starting from the sixth overtone, this Music of the Spheres transitions into extraordinarily pleasant harmonious combinations of sound vibrations, expressed in the most diverse visible and perfect forms, allowing Consciousness, tuned to the same frequency of vibrations, to literally dissolve into their grace, bliss, and beauty of Harmony. On the highest overtones, the Music of the Spheres forms a single whole with everything that resides on that same level, and this explains the state of sublime Love, extraordinary spirituality, childlike ecstasy, and infinite altruism that fill every Consciousness dwelling here, either after physical Death or for the purpose of spiritual exploration of the Subtle World.

But, after such a futile attempt to describe what utterly defies any description, let us, dear reader, draw closer to the very subject of our conversation today and try as concretely as possible to understand WHAT ACTUALLY happens to a person on the eve and at the very moment of their departure from this World.

Sufferings of Afterlife Souls

Every person lives their Life, and every person dies their Death. The Death of any of us is as unique as our Life. Often it appears to us, external observers, to be tormenting, frightening, and ugly, but in reality, behind all its seeming horrifying vileness and mercilessness lies the simplicity and naturalness of the logical completion of God's Design.

Truth is always simple; it is we who often – due to our ignorance and our degree of evolutionary immaturity – make it complex and inaccessible to understanding. So too is Death – always simple and always unique.

As a person approaches old age, their Mind, which has not yet discovered a deeper Reality beyond the material values of most people: worldly pleasures, sex, power, financial and material well-being, fame, and the like, – remains in a state of mental depression and hopelessness, as the dying dense body is no longer capable of fulfilling any of its desires.

At the moment of Death, the vague and ever-increasing inner anxiety, connected with the realization that its Mind is hopelessly entangled in the Illusions of the material World, does not disappear with the separation from the physical body at all, but instead passes with the deceased's personality into the afterlife, becoming the true cause of all its individual, so-called "hellish torments."

These desires in the physical World lead to the degeneration of mental abilities, while in the Subtle World they manifest as an intensification of all our vices: selfishness, greed, hatred, anger, lust, and other manifestations that firmly hold undeveloped Consciousnesses in the strong chains of the lower astral energies.

This terrible, and often fatal, struggle cannot be avoided by any deceased person whose Consciousness during Life was under the power of the Illusions of the Physical World, having been seduced by temporary benefits to satisfy the needs of the lower "ego," to the detriment of the Spirit's expectations.

Moving through the Spheres of the Astral and following the path of reason, the deceased, initially in the most difficult moments, and then more and more often, begins to turn to the better part of himself, trying to find support, advice, and wisdom in his Higher "Self," unknown during Life. Gradually, as the hardened crust of the lower "self's" egoism dissolves with the corresponding vibrations of the Astral, innate Wisdom begins to replace the manifestations of reason, and judiciousness follows the experiences of doubt, reflection, and immersion in the nature of Truth.

Very often, having lost the physical body after Death—the main conduit of Illusions into the personality's Consciousness—the deceased's lower "self" long refuses to obey the dictates of Wisdom, but sooner or later, as the astral body is cleansed of coarse energies, Consciousness gradually begins to ascend, comprehending through personal experience its own baseness and ignorance. In the end, when the Consciousness of the deceased begins to align with the greater part of the Divine Forces, the lower "self" ceases its struggle. The all-conquering power of the Divine elevates the astral personality to the highest energetic level of its further disembodied existence, which it achieved during Life.

I also frequently encountered this state in those deceased whose Consciousness during Life was not sufficiently prepared for understanding and accepting the reality of the fourth dimension. During their stay in an unconscious state, the Souls of such people indeed resembled something akin to a gray, fog-like mass. Most of the deceased still refused to understand what had happened—especially those who died suddenly, unexpectedly, for instance, during an accident. Such individuals most often did not even want to hear about their Death and accepted no advice, preferring to remain near the place where they had lived before their demise.

These unfortunate ones experienced truly hellish mental torments, unilaterally observing what was happening, unseen and unheard by any living person, thrashing and weeping in their despair, until the ethereal body, having decomposed into numerous fog-like shreds, deprived them of the ability to visually observe what was happening in the physical World.

Very often, many of the deceased took us—my clear-light-shining Mentor-guide and me—for Angels or gods, obediently heeding our advice, shedding the barely noticeable ethereal shell that enveloped their astrosome, and thereafter, joining the Souls of other deceased, calmly departed into Spheres of higher vibrations, striving to keep away from those who thrashed and writhed, fully immersed in an astral whirlpool of karmic delusions and perceiving nothing external except their internal experiences, passions, and Thought-forms...

Some of the deceased, however, barely having died, immediately, like arrows released from a bow, swiftly soared into the "celestial" blue heights and, a moment later, disappeared from my astral field of vision, dissolving in the golden radiance of the higher layers of the Astral Sphere. It is always so joyful to observe such perfect Souls, whom nothing can stop in their spiritual impulse and desire for unity with their Source.