The Otherworldly Realm. Life Between Lives

Inhabitants of the Subtle Worlds

The entire otherworldly realm consists of all sorts of separations, communities, and associations where the deceased live, gathered on the principle of identical aspirations, beliefs, mentality, and so forth. Each of these communities is incompatible in its formation principles with various other associations and is even territorially, spatially separated from them. Most have no idea about the existence of other dwelling places besides their own, familiar, and native environment.

Such a fragmented stratification of the entire host of the deceased into an infinite number of different communities based on the historical era in which they lived before their Death, on their belonging to a particular nationality, people, as well as on the quality of vibrations prevailing in the Consciousneses of the deceased people, is very difficult, or rather, practically impossible to imagine from the perspective of three-dimensional Space.

Moreover, the inhabitants of the numerous subtle worlds of the lower and middle astral levels are little interested in the underlying reasons and laws that ensure their "afterlife" existence. They perceive the world they live in as a given and treat everything that happens around and to them as self-evident, exactly as we, the living, perceive our own world.

For example, when I asked someone where they got their clothes, I practically always received the same answer: "They were given to me..." or "I've always had them," and so on. Only a few of the deceased could say that he or she had invented their own clothes or had shaped their surroundings through their own volitional and psychic influence. Most have no idea where things come from or where they go.

The memory of the details and peculiarities of their earthly Life is practically absent in all inhabitants of the lower astral layers, just as living people lack memories of past experiences that their Soul once had. Nevertheless, they continue to live and behave as they did during their Life on the Physical Plane of Earth.

Thus, during some of my astral excursions, I had the opportunity to meet and interact with Indians who, even after Death, continue to live in wigwams, wear their customary clothes, hunt bison in vast prairies, ride mustangs, and know nothing (and do not want to know) about the existence of other worlds that are completely unlike their own.

Everything in their world is exactly the same as in the earthly one, with the exception that there is no civilization so hated by them nearby, and one can communicate with a mustang and learn its personal views on the surrounding Life; a wigwam or a bow, or even an Indian pipe, can tell a lot about their owners, and bison understand their positive role in the lives of the Indians, which suits them perfectly, and so on and so forth.

Once I even found myself in a community of Christian dogmatists, whose environment exactly corresponds to church notions of paradise: the same banal "paradise groves" with paradise trees and birds, among which devout inhabitants monotonously and uniformly spend their "paradise" existence day after day.

There is even its own "hell", all the terrible accessories of which are also imagined and materialized by blindly believing sinners: red-hot cauldrons with boiling tar, "devils" subtly tormenting the poor doomed, whose post-mortem fate consists only in "eternally" suffering and being tormented.

The more a person restricts himself in Life with all sorts of fabricated and ignorant ideas about himself and the world around him, the harsher and more restrictive conditions of post-mortem existence he will encounter — this is an axiom. What resides in your Consciousness as the dominant thought will form the basis of your entire Life after Death.

The immediate post-mortem experiences differ from those during life in that a person suddenly begins to live their entire Life as if in reverse, starting from the moments preceding Death, all the way back to childhood and even their birth in the Physical World. Before their inner gaze, in reverse order, their entire past gradually and sensuously unfolds, all those events that during their Life did not originate from their spiritual Nature. Moreover, everything that had a negative emotional or sensory coloring in relation to other people immediately, cloaked in the flexible and dynamic Matter of the Astral, turns into real pictures and events that are a source of spiritual suffering for the deceased themselves.

Secondly, at the moment of Death, every dying person indeed sees the primary shining Light, which practically all researchers of the "Life after Death" phenomenon define as a "luminous Being", full of Love, Grace, and Benevolence towards the dying, sympathetically understanding the whole essence of the post-mortem problems and concerns that have suddenly fallen upon them.

Fears in the Afterlife

Do not try to do anything with your fear, because nothing will help, and it will only worsen the situation. Whatever you do out of fear will generate even greater fear. It is better to accept it, note that you have it, and continue to be afraid for some time.

However, when you can realize the fact that you are afraid, your fear will very soon dissipate on its own, as it cannot continue indefinitely. The nature of all our problems is such that they disappear as soon as we reconcile with them, and become even more complex if we start to conflict with them. Only acceptance of the inevitable disperses its clouds, only acceptance, not fighting against it.

Only fear itself can give you fearlessness, just as compassion manifests from anger, and from understanding the nature of your hatred, Love can be born in your Heart. But this does not require conflict, only vigilant awareness. And if you set out to know each of your experiences yourself, the time will come when you approach the most important and most acute of experiences – Death.

Compared to Death, Life is just a faded moment stretched over many years, a nothing, because it cannot be as intense and sharp, nor as mysterious and final, as Death, which always comes whole, not in parts. Nothing is more acute, exciting, and fateful for subsequent incarnations than the experience of Death.

Only the knowledge of the Truth can free a person from the horrors of Death, that at Death, the human Soul does not die, but merely transitions, is born into the Subtle World, from where, after a certain period, it returns to Earth in the body of a newborn child. The human Soul, being reborn, lives many Lives, constantly perfecting itself. Having exhausted the possibilities of the physical body's functioning during Life, the human Soul simply departs from it into its further post-mortem existence, taking its Subtle bodies with it.

The first of these – the etheric, astral, and mental – undergo a series of destructive transformations, during which they decompose, returning to each Plane the Energy "borrowed" by the Spirit during its next incarnation on Earth, so that ultimately, upon completion of the cycle of human incarnations, only one immortal Spirit remains (the Monad, clothed in the Matter of the causal, buddhic, spiritual, and atmic bodies).

Exit Points from the Body at the Moment of Dying

During the dying process, under the pressure of life energy accumulated in the center of the greatest concentration of Consciousness, a puncture or opening eventually forms in the web, from which the Soul exits the physical body when the internal impulse for its rejection intensifies. In animals, children, and also in people whose Consciousness during Life was completely polarized in the physical or astral bodies, the psychic centers serve as the exit points for the Soul: the solar plexus - Manipura Chakra and the sacral - Swadhisthana Chakra.

In people of the mental type, whose life activity was closely connected with high-vibrational levels of thinking, as well as in spiritually developed people accustomed to intensive exchange with the energies of the Spiritual Plane, the Soul is released through the crown of the head – the Sahasrara Chakra – during Death. The Soul of the "average developed" person uses (temporarily) a third exit — directly below the upper part of the heart there is another exit opening.

There is a close connection between the place of the Soul's next post-mortem manifestation in the Astral and the quality of the energy of the center through which Consciousness "exits" at the moment of Death.

Therefore, all evil and cruel people, when exiting through the Manipura Chakra at the moment of Death, experience an astonishingly identical and similar sensation of endless falling downwards, directly entering various Spheres of Hell for the obligatory liberation of their astral bodies from the predominance of gross Energies in their field envelopes.

If the Soul leaves the Physical Plane through the uppermost exit, which synthesizes all the high-quality vibrations of the supradiaphragmatic centers, then the rebirth in the Subtle World will be very favorable, light, joyful, and prosperous. Everything depends on the vibrations in which Consciousness resided at the moment of Death and on the predominance of energies of one quality or another in the field envelope.

The exit in the shoulder blade area has a direct connection to the middle divisions of the Astral — with the multiple manifestations of the so-called "World of Doubles", not much different (for the better) from ours, but very strictly differentiated depending on the religious orientation of the deceased's Consciousness.

In the process of "dying," the Soul of an ordinary person, not prepared for a conscious Transition to the Subtle World, does not "fly away" immediately. Various religious traditions speak of forty or forty-nine days, during which the semi-conscious Soul as if searches for a "window" into its better World (we, however, assert that this adaptation period for each unprepared Soul is strictly individual and can last significantly less — from an instant to several hours — or significantly longer — months and even years).

The ordinary, "average" Soul, during these seven conditional earthly weeks — once every seven days — as if dies anew, losing Consciousness each time and transitioning to a higher level of awareness. Coming to its senses again, the deceased discovers that it is now in a new, cozier, and more attractive World.

The Power of Imagination in the Afterlife

As it progresses through the numerous stages and areas of the Outer Sphere of the Astral, the Soul, through its experiences and spiritual sufferings, increasingly purifies its field envelope from destructive vibrations and gradually acquires a more attractive human appearance. After all, the external appearance in the Subtle World completely corresponds to the state of the Soul.

Everything else – private and minor, which could not touch the Soul and did not evoke any prolonged vibrations of true feeling within it – be it Goodness or Hatred – dissolves quite quickly after Death in the corresponding Spheres of the Astral Plane and is erased from the memory of the deceased, like spent material. This process is usually accompanied by rather unpleasant and painful sensations, reflected in the Consciousness of the deceased.

For what, in essence, is the true meaning of the "art of dying" that we are trying to teach you, dear reader? First and foremost, it is to learn to maintain a high level of self-awareness during the Transition process and, through continuous high spiritual aspiration, not to allow lower energies to draw your Consciousness into the vibration levels of low-quality astral currents.

Imagination during the Transition acquires immense power and might. Whatever picture you create in your mind, the vibrations of your astrosome will immediately begin to resonate accordingly with the imagined, and if only your Will sends even the slightest impulse in the direction of fulfilling the desired, the Matter of the Astral will immediately transform the imagined into reality.

Every deceased person brings with them into their post-mortem existence the memories of their past, the desires that overflowed them during their earthly Life. You cannot escape or run from this: sooner or later your Thoughts, your actions will catch up with you, and only you personally will have to bear full responsibility for everything you once generated.

In general, it should be noted that Death is only simple and easy in very rare cases, when truly good and altruistically lived people die. In most cases, it is not a very pleasant period in the existence of the Soul, at least until its full adaptation to the new conditions of Life in the Subtle World.