Lesson 16; Beyond Death

As I originally asserted in this series, OOBE is exactly like the death state, the only difference being that we don't come back from death the same way we do from an OOBE. This concept has been known for centuries, among many different peoples, most notably the shamans of different tribes.

It was a requirement for the shaman to be able to project out, battle death itself on it's own plane for the life of someone they were working on, and to come back. Speaking to any shaman these days, and you will find a recurring role in their duties, a near death experience which opened up the "otherworlds" to them.

From speaking to those who have studied the path of the shaman for a while, I find that the near-death experiences that are spoken about can be induced. It's better by far to have a person who was critically ill for a time, in which the shaman in question was called upon to fight for their life, and take that person and try to share the path of the shaman with them, but just about any person who has had a near-death experience is capable of learning the way of the shaman.

In this way, a shaman could be seen as being an Astral Warrior, one who goes and confronts the gods on their own plane to acquire things and blessings for his people. They do this through trance, through mortification of the flesh (as in a sweat lodge), through dance (like the Sufi Muslims), through meditation. What is key about all this is that there is a lighter connection to the body by virtue of the bond with the body being severed and reconnected.

Yes, in near-death experiences, you do die. The Silver cord is cut or severed, but it takes time for the soul to move on to the next level. Usually this time is used in visiting the families of those you leave behind and comforting them, but sometimes the cord becomes severed by accident. During this critical time, the cord can be reattached by simply re-housing the body that was left.

At times, the body is no longer usable, and the reattachment is disallowed (by who? No one knows) or sometimes, the jobs are complete that the person who is having this experience came to do, and they choose to say "dead". Sometimes, in VERY extreme cases, damage to the body is healed if it is critical that the person in question be alive because of a job they left unfinished. Miracles like that we have heard about from time to time, but in most cases, the condition of the body left is the condition of the body being reinhabitted.

So, in those who have had near death experiences, thinking of the feet doesn't work. They have to fight to get back in the body, because that safety (the silver cord) is already severed. This is where a lot of the stories about possession come from as well. I have had personal experience with something like this.

If the cord is severed in death, but it takes time for the soul to move on, and the person in question tries to come back, it can be argued that another spirit beat them to the punch as it were. They could be prevented from returning to their own body by another spirit having already taken it from them, in fact, stealing it. My great grandmother was a kind and gentle lady, who died on the operating table at one point, and turned into an embittered, mean old biddy afterward. My grandmother said that she thought that her mother had been taken over by another spirit, and that her soul had gone on. I can't say as I blame her for this set of feelings.

It IS possible for this to happen. It's not common, nor is it good, but it can and does happen. There was a book I had a copy of a while ago, and I can't remember the name of it right now. However, the premise of the book is getting rid of spirits that "attach" themselves to a person in a hospital. His ascertation is that when you are in a hospital, that the dead souls there can attach themselves to your spirit and cause all kinds of problems in your life, because it's their wants, needs, desires and drives that are motivating an action, not yours. He went on to give tools for cleansing these clingers from the soul, by talking directly to them, and asking them to leave.

If that's true, can a soul who died in another room take a body that is dead, but which has been resuscitated? I would think so.

So, that deals with some of what happens upon death, but what about after?

The short answer is that no one knows. No one has died completely and come back to tell us about it yet.

However, there are some theories that I have, and that I have been able to verify in conversations with Herne and Rhiannon at different times.

My personal belief is that once you leave the body forever, never to come back to that particular body, you progress to a slightly higher level of the Astral Plane. It's not the same plane that you find when projecting, but it's a bit more refined than that portion of the plane. You can still see the physical realm, you can see the Astral Plane with all those who visit and work and live there, but they may not necessarily be able to see and interact with you. However, this is a temporary stop over. It's kind of "Heaven's Waiting room".

Here is where you will be visited by those greater powers that you honor, be they Gods, angels, avatars, Valkyrie or whatever. You will get to talk to them for a while, find out that, yes, you are really dead and you can't go back. Then you will be taken to your version of Heaven.

Let me explain that for a bit. In the Wiccan Tradition, there is an afterlife called the Summerlands. I get the impression that it is a realm of trees, grasses, streams, and a natural untouched wilderness setting. In Christian theology, there are the Pearly Gates, the wall of Heaven, the City itself, the Tree of Life and the Foot of the Throne, with God in his glory sitting on the Throne. In Asatru, there is the Rainbow Bridge going from Midgard to Asgard, there are the halls in Valhalla where the valorous are taken, and other areas of Asgard to live in for different people. In other theologies there are different places and sights to see and know.

All these are NOT the same place. A Christian practitioner will probably not meet a Wiccan on the streets of Heaven, just as a Wiccan will probably not meet a Mormon in the fields of the Summerlands. That is because each "heaven" is unique to the individual. Upon death, the practitioner will see exactly what their beliefs tell them they will see, and they will interact with exactly the environment they expect to interact with. There will be the places and the sights and personnel that they believe in their deepest levels of faith will be there. This will stay as long as the person in question still truly believes that this is the afterlife. However, there will come a time when that façade is stripped away.

Once that happens, others have described what will be seen. I the book, "Seth Speaks" there is a discussion about what happens next, which I won't relate here (mainly because I have not finished the book). I encourage you all to pick it up and read it for yourself.

However, the point here is that there is a "personal heaven" for each of us, made up of our beliefs and feelings on what happens after we die. At least for a little while.

I would make a few surmises at this point.

1) You can skip that "personal heaven" phase if you are sufficiently advanced to understand the reality of death, and the new environment around you.
2) There is a time of healing, when the heartaches and traumas of this lifetime are cleansed from your soul. I would further surmise that during this time, there are people there to help you cope with some of the more traumatic aspects, and I would bet they are your guides from this lifetime.
3) You DO still come back from this state. I know and have spoken to one or two dead souls who have moved past the personal heaven state and they have been almost nothing like what I knew them as when they were newly dead. There was a "disconnectedness" to them in which they seemed to have most of their attention on something else. One of these same people, I was later warned away from speaking with since it would "mess up" his progression. I can only assume that means that they had managed to shed all of this lifetime from them, and were considering other embodiments or lifetimes and they should not be distracted and reminded of here.
4) Eventually you will break out of this cycle, but what happens then is anyone's guess. I would assume that you become "one" with the IS, and dwell in bliss with it for ever. But I also know that you can choose to become Gods and Goddesses for other people. Rhiannon as much told me so once. That I could take over for her or Herne if I chose to. I still have yet to make up my mind.

It seems, no matter how much you know, there is a finite limit of what we can understand and expect. I would further assume that this is because while we can imagine what happens next, the complexities are so great that we would not be able to understand them even if it were explained to us without becoming something other than human. It would be like explaining quantum physics to a fish. IF they could understand it, they would no longer be "just" a fish anymore.

This is a relatively short post since I really don't know much about this particular topic, obviously since I'm still alive. So I will end it here and leave you with a few thoughts.

From Pippin:

The Lead Player to Pippin just before the Finale: "The FINAL affirmation of life, death"

From Shakespere:

Hamlett: How long hast thou been a grave-maker?

Clown. Of all the days i' th' year, I came to't that day that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.

Ham. How long is that since?

Clown. Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that. It was the very day that young Hamlet was born

Which both illustrate the point, "No one gets out of life alive."

Daven

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