Death and the Journey Between Lives

What Happens Upon Dying

Death is not what you have been taught. It is not an ending. It is not a wall. It is a door -- one you have walked through many times before, though you do not remember.

The process is gentler than you imagine. When the physical body can no longer sustain the indwelling consciousness, a transition begins -- not sudden, not violent, but orderly. The yellow-ray body, the chemical vehicle that has been home for an entire lifetime, releases its hold. The mind and spirit, which were never truly confined to flesh, begin to recognize their broader nature.

The first movement is toward the Form-Maker Body -- the indigo-ray body, the etheric vehicle that has existed in potentiation throughout the incarnation. This body activates itself upon death. It is the architect of form, the template from which physical expression was originally drawn. It is not a ghostly remnant. It is the deeper body -- more dense with intelligent energy, more powerful than the physical shell it once inhabited.

In this body, the newly transitioned entity rests. It is given perspective. It is offered a place from which to view the experience most recently lived. The indigo body, being intelligent energy, serves as both vessel and vantage point -- holding the entity in a condition of awareness while the full implications of the life just completed begin to unfold.

This is the normal process, given a harmonious passage. But not all passages are harmonious.

There are those whose will is so concentrated upon the physical experience -- so attached to a place, a person, an unfinished act -- that the progressive movement toward the indigo body is resisted. The yellow-ray shell, though no longer activated, cannot be completely deactivated. The entity becomes caught between states. In the case of sudden death, or extreme concern for something left behind, this entrapment can persist until the will is released. These are the entities that many cultures have called ghosts -- not evil, not punished, but simply unwilling or unable to let go of what was.

This is the exception, not the rule. For the vast majority, the transition is seamless. The body falls away. The deeper body awakens. And the journey between lives begins.

The Subtle Bodies

To understand what survives death, one must understand what you are while alive.

You are not a single body. You are seven. Each corresponds to one of the seven Densities of experience, and each exists within you now -- most in potentiation, waiting. The physical body you inhabit is the yellow-ray body, the vehicle of third density. But beneath it, above it, woven through it, lie the other six.

The red-ray body is the most basic -- the unconstructed material, the elemental substance without form. It is the raw chemistry of existence, the building blocks before architecture.

The orange-ray body is the physical body formed without self-awareness -- the body as it exists in the womb before spirit enters. It can sustain life without mind or spirit, though it seldom does. When another entity desires the presence of one who has died strongly enough, this body can sometimes produce a faint semblance -- a manifestation without will.

The green-ray body is lighter, packed more densely with life. It is the body some have called astral. In certain conditions it can be perceived -- in the phenomenon called the seance, for example, when what is known as ectoplasm provides the medium for its visibility.

The blue-ray body is the body of light, the vehicle of communication and freely given energy. It has been called the devachanic body. Within it lies the capacity for communion that transcends the physical entirely.

The indigo-ray body -- the etheric body, the form-maker -- is the gateway body. In this body, form is substance. It can mold itself as it desires. It is this body that carries the entity through the space between incarnations, and that serves as the template from which the next physical form will be drawn.

The violet-ray body is the totality of being -- what might be called the Buddha body. It is the complete expression of the entity. It is not activated in ordinary experience but represents the fullness of what each entity truly is.

Each of these bodies corresponds not only to a density but to an energy center. They are linked, though the nature of their interrelationship is vast and complex. What matters here is this: when the yellow-ray body dies, you do not become less. You become, in a very real sense, more. The denser vehicle falls away, and the subtler vehicles -- which were always present -- come forward.

The Incarnation Review

When the transition is complete and the entity rests in the indigo body, the review begins.

This is not a trial. There is no judge, no jury, no sentencing. There is only seeing -- full, complete, and unflinching. The entity, aided by those who serve this purpose, looks upon the life just lived with a clarity that was never available during the incarnation itself.

In Time/Space -- the metaphysical counterpart of the physical realm -- time operates differently. It is not the rigid forward march you experience now. The self can observe the entire incarnation as a whole, examining each choice, each turning point, each moment of catalyst offered and either accepted or refused.

The process involves seeing the experience in full, viewing it against the backdrop of the total experience of the entity across all incarnations. Then comes forgiveness -- forgiveness of the self for all missteps, for the missed guideposts, for the lessons offered but not learned. Far from a formality, it is a genuine act of compassion directed inward.

Much of what occupied the waking mind during the incarnation is revealed, in this review, to have been surface illusion. The mental chatter, the social performances, the anxieties about status and survival -- these fall away. What remains is the pure distillation of emotions, biases, wisdoms, and distortions. The character of the entity stands revealed, stripped of the personality's costumes.

In your terms, there is a great loss of the mind's surface activity. In deeper terms, nothing of importance is lost. The spiritual channel opens wide -- for the forgetting characteristic of third density is no longer necessary.

This review is not conducted by an external authority. Until an entity has become consciously aware of the process of spiritual evolution, the Higher Self guides the review entirely. It is this deeper aspect of the self -- the self that exists in mid-sixth density with full understanding of all accumulated experiences -- that assists in examining what was learned and what remains to be learned.

For the more advanced entity, one who has awakened to the mechanics of evolution during incarnation, the review becomes a conscious collaboration. The entity itself takes part in all decisions. The assessment shifts from guided to participatory.

In either case, the purpose is the same: to understand, to forgive, and to prepare.

The Healing Between Lives

After the review, healing begins.

The regions of time-space through which the entity moves are extraordinarily permeable. Much can be penetrated, absorbed, and integrated that could not be processed during the intensity of physical incarnation. The entity, placed in the proper configuration by the form-maker and the higher self, rests in a state suited to its particular needs.

Depending upon the entity's location in time-space, certain helpers are available. These are not abstract presences. They are beings who serve the function of assisting the newly transitioned entity in understanding and integrating the incarnation just completed.

The healing is not passive. It is a process of seeing and accepting. What was denied during the incarnation must now be faced. What was suppressed must now be acknowledged. What was distorted must now be understood in its fuller context. The entity, freed from the body's urgencies and the veil's obscuring, can see with a breadth that was simply impossible during physical life.

This period of rest and healing serves a dual purpose. It prepares the entity for the choices that come next -- the planning of the next incarnation. And it integrates the lessons of the life just lived into the deeper structure of the self, so that they are not merely experienced but understood.

The duration of this healing varies enormously. Some entities require great spans of what you would call time. Others move through the process quickly, their experience having been relatively straightforward. But for all, the healing must be completed before the next incarnation is designed. There is no hurrying of this process. The architecture of time-space is patient.

Planning the Next Life

When healing is complete, the entity turns toward the future.

The next incarnation is not assigned. It is designed -- carefully, deliberately, with the full cooperation of the higher self and, for more advanced entities, with the conscious participation of the entity itself. The purpose of incarnation is evolution of mind, body, and spirit. Without Catalyst, the desire to evolve and the faith in the process do not normally manifest. Therefore, catalyst is programmed.

The programming is precise. The entity, in consultation with its higher self, selects the lessons it most needs to learn. It chooses the relationships that will provide the friction necessary for growth. It arranges the circumstances -- the family, the culture, the historical moment -- that will create the conditions for the catalyst it requires. If one opportunity is missed during the incarnation, another will appear. The guideposts are invisible, but they are persistent.

Notice how this works. Before incarnation, the individual identifies the experiences it desires most deeply -- perhaps learning to offer love without expectation of return, or confronting the distortions that have gone unbalanced in previous lives. Agreements are made with other entities -- those who will serve as parents, siblings, partners, even adversaries. Each agreement is a mutual commitment to provide the catalyst needed for growth. The lessons always have to do with other selves, not with events. They have to do with giving, not receiving.

The higher self operates not as a puppet master but as a resource. It examines the distillations of all previous experience. It grasps firmly the lessons that remain to be learned. It uses the projected probability and possibility vortices -- the countless potential futures -- to construct a plan that offers the best chance for growth.

There are entities who serve directly under the Guardians -- beings you may call angelic -- who are responsible for the incarnation patterns of those who incarnate without conscious awareness of the evolutionary process. For these entities, the programming is arranged by others, with care and precision. But for those who have awakened to the mechanism of spiritual evolution, the entity itself will arrange and place the lessons needed for maximum growth.

There is a risk in this freedom. Some entities, in their eagerness to grow, program more catalyst than they can absorb. They attempt to learn too much in a single incarnation, and the intensity disarranges them rather than polarizing them. It is as though a student signed up for more courses than could possibly be completed in a single term. The intention is noble. The result is sometimes overwhelming.

And yet, the system allows for this. No lesson truly fails. What is not learned in one incarnation becomes the seed of the next. The process is patient. It has time enough for everything.

Karma and Its Function

There is a word long associated with the journey between lives: Karma. It is widely misunderstood.

Karma is not punishment. It is not cosmic justice dispensed by an authority. It is inertia. Those actions which are set in motion will continue, using the ways of balancing, until something stops them. The stopping is called forgiveness. These two concepts -- inertia and forgiveness -- are inseparable.

Consider a stone thrown into water. The ripples spread outward, touching every shore they reach. They do not stop because someone decrees they should. They stop when the energy that propelled them is absorbed. Karma operates by the same principle. An action of great intensity -- whether of love or of harm -- sets patterns in motion that continue across incarnations until the entity addresses them.

The mechanism of resolution is not complex. At any point, in any incarnation, the entity may through understanding, acceptance, and forgiveness bring these patterns to rest. One who has set an action in motion may forgive the self and cease to repeat the error. This stops the inertia. This releases the karma.

This is why forgiveness is not merely a virtue but a mechanism. It is the brake applied to the wheel of repetition. Without forgiveness, the patterns continue -- not as punishment from above, but as the simple consequence of unresolved momentum.

In the planning of the next life, karma is taken into account. If patterns remain unresolved, situations are designed that offer the entity an opportunity to confront them. The same lesson, offered in different form, until it is finally learned.

But karma is never mandatory. No one is ever forced to resolve it. Free will remains paramount. The patterns will continue as long as they continue. Forgiveness is always available. And when forgiveness comes, the inertia ceases -- instantly, completely, regardless of how many lifetimes the pattern has persisted.

Guides and Helpers

The entity between lives is not alone.

The primary guide in this process is the Higher Self -- the entity's own self as it exists in mid-sixth density, offering its accumulated wisdom across what you would call time. Its nature and function are explored more fully in a later chapter. What matters here is that this guidance is always available, though it never overrides free will.

The relationship between self and Higher Self is paradoxical in the way that time itself is paradoxical. The higher self is the end result of all development that the entity will experience, yet it exists simultaneously with the entity it guides. In the realm where Time/Space holds sway, all stages of the journey coexist -- the seeker and the completed self are not separated by distance but by perspective.

Beyond the higher self, there are other helpers. For those entities who incarnate without conscious awareness of the evolutionary process, beings directly under the planetary Guardians attend to the incarnation patterns. You may call them angelic. Their function is to ensure that even the most unconscious entity receives guidance and protection. There is no entity without help.

For more advanced entities, teachers of appropriate density may also serve. Their role is not to decide for the entity but to offer perspective -- to help the entity see its patterns more clearly, to illuminate the areas where growth is most needed.

What is essential to understand is this: the process is never solitary. Even in the depths of the incarnation, when the veil is thickest and the entity feels most alone, help is available. It must be sought. It must be invited. But it is never absent.

Why We Do Not Remember

And so we return to the question that began the previous chapter: why do we forget?

Now, having traced the full arc of the journey between lives -- the transition, the review, the healing, the careful planning -- the answer takes on new depth. You forget because forgetting is the mechanism that makes the entire process effective.

Think of what you now know. Before each incarnation, the seeker -- in full awareness, in full consultation with its deeper self -- designs the lessons it will learn. It selects the relationships, the circumstances, the catalyst. It knows exactly what it is walking into.

And then the veil descends. All of this knowledge is hidden. The being enters the incarnation with no memory of the planning, no awareness of the agreements, no access to the accumulated wisdom of its past. It arrives naked -- carrying only the pure distillation of its character, the biases and tendencies shaped by all that came before, but none of the explicit knowledge.

This is not cruelty. It is engineering. The lessons would not work if you knew they were lessons. The catalyst would not catalyze if you could see its purpose in advance. The choice would not carry weight if you knew, with certainty, which option led to growth.

The forgetting creates the conditions for faith. And faith -- as we explored in the previous chapter -- is the faculty that makes transformation possible. Without it, the seeker has no mechanism to grow beyond what is already known.

Every incarnation follows this pattern. The self plans with full knowledge. The veil descends. The incarnate being lives, struggles, chooses, loves, fails, learns. The body dies. The veil lifts. The self sees, once again, the full picture. It heals, it integrates, it plans anew. And the cycle continues -- not as repetition but as a spiral, each turn deeper, each incarnation building upon the last.

This is why those who have approached the threshold of death and returned report such startling clarity. For a moment, the veil lifts, and the entity glimpses what it always was -- the broader identity, the connection to everything, the love that underlies all experience. They return changed, not because they saw something new, but because they remembered something they had always known.

The tools you will carry into your next incarnation -- the energy centers through which all experience flows, the patterns of activation that determine how you meet the world -- these are the subject of what follows. For the life you planned is not lived in abstraction. It is lived through the body, through the centers of energy that translate the infinite into the daily, the particular, the real.