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We have been led to believe that we have an immortal soul that will "live forever" after we die.
Not true.
The soul you now have is a mortal soul. This means that just like the physical body, it is subject to decay and death. The mortal soul is created at birth from material borrowed from a child's mother and father. Like everything which has an origin in the material world, it has a temporary existence.
The mortal soul will outlive the death of the physical body (the "first death"), but will eventually dissolve after a somewhat longer existence in the regions of the reflection-sphere. This is the "second death" referred to in Revelations:
"Be faithful even unto death, and I will give you a crown of Life. He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches: he who overcomes shall not be harmed by the second death" -- Revelations 2:10-11
This passage recognizes that there is an alternative to the death of the mortal soul. That alternative is the rebirth of the Immortal Soul, which can only be accomplished when one begins to walk the Path of Return. Those who embark upon the Path endeavor to overcome the powerful pull of physical matter with the goal of obtaining permanent liberation from the wheel of death-and-rebirth.
Man is a temporary, emergency-order being. Nothing about the personality and its soul-vehicles will survive death. Only the emptied microcosm and its accumulated karma will persist, to eventually provide a home for a new personality. If one wishes to avoid falling victim to this scenario yet again, it will require the birth of a New Soul, generated from astral materials not-of-this-earth. This is what the gnostic Path of Return is all about: the alchemical process that leads to True Immortality.
~ g
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2 comments:
g
I have heard that when we die our life's experience is played back as if we are watching a film. It is recommended that the physical body should not be touched for at least three and a half days (no autopsy examination)My question is what is observing our life's experience? If its the auric being or higher self which is astral by nature, surely it would not require time to record these experiences as they would already be recorded as karma. Or have I missed something? Thank you. Andrew
andrew,
The life review is an important, true aspect of the after-death experience. The review unfolds in reverse order, that is, the events of the life just lived are replayed backwards. The purpose of this is to enable the deceased to trace effects back to their causes.
As to "who" is observing the life experience, it must be remembered that at the time this review takes place (immediately after the death of the physical body) the man is still alive in the invisible worlds and continues to have the use of one-half of the etheric double, plus his full desire and mental bodies. It is the remaining portion of the etheric double that is able to tap into the reflecting-ether and engage in the life review.
As for the time element involved, because the man's vehicles still exist within the time-space of the physical realm, everything that happens to him after-death remains subject to the laws of time. The relativity of time is involved here, as once the man is freed from the bonds of physical matter, the laws that govern the perception of time change somewhat -- they are not extinguished.
What happens is that time in the invisible worlds is compressed, or "sped up", as it were. This is what enables the deceased to review his entire life in the span of 72 hours.
We can get an idea of this phenomena by contemplating our own dreams, which take place in the hours of sleep during our nightly sojourn to the astral realms (a.k.a the Desire World). The events in our dreams appear to cover many hours, days or even years, yet we wake up from them after only a few hours of sleep.
Max Heindel discussed these after- death matters in The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception. For more information, you may wish to read the chapter on "Death and Purgatory".
In closing, the ultimate fruitage of the after-death life review is stored in the auric being of the microcosm. The etheric, astral and mental vehicles will eventually dissolve, as discussed in the post above, but the lessons and the experiences of the life just lived will be added to the accumulated store of such information retained by the auric being.
Very good questions. Let me know if anything has not been answered to your satisfaction.
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