What Happens After You Die?

SECTION 21
After death. Communications with the dead. Apparitions. The doer becomes
conscious that its body has died.
The sixth class of psychic destiny is of the states through which the doer passes
after death, (Fig. V-D). After death the various entities that were combined into a
human being gradually separate. The more quickly the fourfold physical body is
disposed of the better it is for the entities composing it, for the doer and for the people
in the world. When the physical body is consumed, the elementals, nature units,
which are its atoms, molecules and cells, are freed and return to their respective four
elements, that is, states of matter, in the earth sphere. From there they are drawn into
other bodies, mineral, vegetable, animal and human. So they continue their constant
circulation during the life and the dissolution of the different bodies of which they
form a part.
The radiant-solid or astral body, which was during life the matter that contacted
the invisible breath-form, took its form from that and was visible to clairvoyants, is
now only the shadow of the physical body. During life the fluid body was the carrier
of life to the physical body from the food that the four states of matter furnished. In a
physical body each cell is insulated and is not in touch with any other cell. The astral,
airy, and fluid bodies pass through these cells and connect them with each other, so
that a current of life can flow through them. After death the astral body has lost touch
with the breath-form and is as dead as the solid body. It decays in the astral state of
the physical plane as the flesh decays in the airy, fluid and solid states of the physical
plane. The places are now reversed. In life the grosser physical body depended on the
astral, but after death the astral depends on the grosser physical and so can last only as
long as that does. This disposes of the fourfold physical body, which is dissipated
after death and takes no part in any of the after-death states of the doer.
The breath-form with its four senses and the portion of the doer remain together
in the atmospheres of the doer and go together through a process usually called hell.
This entity is the human without the fourfold physical body.
After death there is a period of unconsciousness, that separates the doer from the
physical world and the state in which it finds itself. The period may last less than an
hour, or it may be many years.
The doer becomes conscious again in different ways. It may become conscious in
a dream without being aware of its identity, as a person dreams during ordinary sleep.
These dreams are usually incoherent; the scenes in them lack sequence and tangibility
and are generally scenes without sounds. Or the doer may become conscious of one of
the very early conditions of its life; so a middle-aged man may be conscious as what
he was when he was ten years old and remain in that state, playing marbles or on his
way to school, for a long, long time. Or the doer may become conscious in one of the
positions which it filled in life and continue going over the same acts for a long time.
So a messenger may deliver his parcels, a clerk may make his entries, a librarian may
sort over his books, a banker may make his loans, a milliner trim hats, a housewife
look after her household, a prisoner serve over his sentence in jail, a soldier fight over
a battle, an invalid go through his period of illness, and a fisherman catch fish. In
these cases they follow the occupations which engrossed one period of their lives on
earth and do them over and over again. The rich continue their activities and the poor
theirs. Or the doer may wake up as though from a sleep and continue a number of
activities, either with or without the feeling of identity. So a fisherman catches his
fish, takes them to market, sells them, goes to a tavern, and mends his nets and boat.
Another case is where the doer just continues all its ordinary activities. These are a
few illustrations out of many.
In all these states the doer lives over scenes from the life it left. Nothing new is
done. There is no new thinking. A feeling of identity may or may not be present; if it
is present it is the false "I," the ego, of the human. Other persons may seem to take
part in these scenes, but in that case they are not those who actually did take part in
the scenes in life. In none of these instances does the doer do anything that it has not
done before in life and in none of them is the doer aware, at first, that it has passed
through death and has lost its physical body, or that the world it lives in is not the
physical world. Questions such as these do not come up, any more than in ordinary
life. The bookkeeper did not ask himself in life whether he was awake or dreaming,
dead or alive and no more does he ask that in the states described.
The characteristics of these and other such states are that the flesh body is dead,
and the doer is not yet aware that it has passed through death and does no new
thinking; that what it does it does automatically, with only dreamy sensuous
perceptions; and that all seems as real as though it were done for the first time. The
condition may be illustrated by scenes that have once been acted and which are
reproduced by cinema a thousand times. These states if passed through at all, are
passed through by the bad and the good alike; so far there is no reward or punishment.
Not all doers pass through these states, but only those in whose lives strong
impressions have been made on the breath-form and who have to wait some time
before the judgment. In these states, the doer is with its breath-form on the astral form
plane of the physical world. The breath-form cannot be seen by any clairvoyant if the
astral body has been sloughed off. If the astral body is still connected with the breathform
the astral body may be seen clairvoyantly. However, while the doer is in the
states mentioned it cannot communicate by any means with any one on earth, and it
cannot know what is happening on earth. It does not know that the body has died and
it cannot do anything but work off the impressions on the breath-form