PREPARING FOR DEATH AND BEYOND
our experience in the Sphere of Beauty, we feel happy and expansive. W h e n we act in a manner that takes us away from that distant memory of bliss, we feel disturbed. In this way, the experience between lives helps to act as an unconscious guiding force to remind us of our spiritual origins.
Qabala and the Invisible Worlds According to qabala, upon death we leave the physical world, shedding our physical body, and our consciousness ascends into the invisible world of Yetzirah. This journey takes place in several stages. T h e first is identical to the alchemical path, in that the Elements that compose our body break down, and the control of the mind over the life force itself is relinquished. Earth collapses into Water; Water collapses into Air (or Fire); Air collapses into Fire; and finally, Fire dissolves into the pure energy of Spirit that unites them. This final stage is nearly identical to the one that follows it, or the withdrawal of energy into Yesod. As the energy withdraws, the consciousness accompanies it. This collapsing of the energies is the withdrawing of the vital energy of the etheric and lower astral body (Nefesh) from the physical body, so that the latter might disintegrate and return to the matter from which it was formed. This process is a slow one, and during it a variety of visual, auditory, and emotional experiences are had that are both psychic, and physical in nature. Once freed from the material body, the consciousness of the Middle Self (Ruach) is destabilized as it enters a new environment, unless there has been significant training in meditation, lucid dreaming, astral projection, creating the Body of Light, or practices around death and dying prior to one's death. This new level of consciousness can easily be a confusing and frightening experience as well. For this reason, the spiritual seed or the Higher Self (Neshamah) will create for itself a simulacrum or projection of a spiritual being, such as an angel, god, master, or loved one, to help escort the newly deceased through the rough transition period of death. Some even suggest that the Higher Self, or an individual's Holy Guardian Angel, creates a sort of psychic shell around the newly released ego.
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