Life in 4D (The Astral Realms) - Conclusion

This is the final installment on the nature of the astral realms as related by guru Sri Yukteswar to his disciple, Yogananda, in "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramhansa Yogananda.

[QUOTING]

"The span of life in the astral world is much longer than on earth. A normal advanced astral being's average life period is from five hundred to one thousand years, measured in accordance with earthly standards of time. As certain redwood trees outlive most trees by milleniums, or as some yogis live several hundred years though most men die before the age of sixty, so some astral beings live longer than the usual span of astral existence. Visitors to the astral world dwell there for a longer or shorter period in accordance with the weight of their physical karma, which draws them back to earth within a specified time.

"The astral being does not have to contend painfully with death at the time of shedding his luminous body. Many of these beings nevertheless feel slightly nervous at the thought of dropping their astral form for the subtler causal one. The astral world is free from unwilling death, disease, and old age. These three dreads are the curse of earth, where man has allowed his consciousness to identify itself almost wholly with a frail physical body requiring constant aid from air, food, and sleep in order to exist at all.

"Physical death is attended by the disappearance of breath and the disintegration of fleshly cells. Astral death consists of the dispersement of lifetrons, those manifest units of energy which constitute the life of the astral being. At physical death, a being loses his consciousness of flesh and becomes aware of his subtle body in the astral world. Experiencing astral death in due time, a being thus passes from the consciousness of astral birth and death to that of physical birth and death. These recurrent cycles of astral and physical encasement (BG: "reincarnation") are the ineluctable destiny of all Unenlightened beings. Scriptural definitions of heaven and hell sometimes stir man's deeper-than-subconscious memories of his long series of experiences in the blithesome and disappointing terrestrial worlds.

"The physical karma or desires of man must be completely worked out before his permanent stay in the astral worlds becomes possible. Two kinds of beings live in the astral spheres:

1. Those who still have earthly karma to dispose of and who must therefore re-inhabit a gross physical body in order to pay their karmic debts could be classified, after physical death, as temporary visitors to the astral world rather than as permanent residents.

"Beings with unredeemed earthly karma are not permitted after astral death to go to the higher causal sphere of cosmic ideas (5D), but must shuttle to and fro from the physical and astral worlds only, conscious successively of their physical body of sixteen gross elements and their astral body of nineteen subtle elements. After each loss of his physical body, however, an undeveloped being from the earth remains for the most part in the deep stupor of the death-sleep and is hardly conscious of the beautiful astral sphere. After the astral rest, such a man returns to the material plane for further lessons, gradually accustoming himself, through repeated journeys, to the worlds of subtle and astral texture.

2. "Normal or long established residents of the astral universe, on the other hand, are those who, freed forever from all material longings, need return no more to the gross vibrations of earth. Such beings have only astral and causal karma to work out. At astral death, these beings pass to the infinitely finer and more delicate causal world. Shedding the thought-form of the causal body at the end of a certain span, determined by cosmic law, these advanced beings then return...to a high astral planet, reborn in a new astral body to work out their unredeemed astral karma.

"Only when a being has no further desires for experiences in the pleasing-to-the-eye astral cosmos, and cannot be tempted to go back there, does he remain in the causal world.

[END QUOTING]

[BG]: It is hoped that these excerpts have helped to provide a stimulating glimpse of what life in the astral world is about. A prerequisite for a permanent move to the higher astral worlds is to forsake this Physical realm and the Lower astral realms that come with it. The Desire for all things material must be permanently overcome, as one would extinguish every last, smoldering ember of a campfire, lest it arise in flame once more.

Leave this undivine universe of Sorrows behind and don't look back. Love, Joy, Peace, Rest, Wonder and all the true Beauty that the Divine Universe has to offer awaits all those who will look up and heed The Call.

It won't be long now.

All Love,

~~ g