by Steven Bancarz

July 2015

from SpiritScienceAndMetaphysics Website

Spanish version

• Atheism tells us that when we die, we don't go anywhere except the dirt.

   

• Naturalism tell us that our consciousness is created by the brain and when the brain dies our experience ends.

   

• Religion tells us that we are either going to heaven or hell based on our belief system.

But is there a fourth option that we are missing here?

In our culture, we tend to think of the afterlife as either religious superstition or a heaven/hell dichotomy, when in reality there are so many different ways of understanding death from a place of consciousness.

By consciousness, I mean taking into account scientific evidence, personal experiences and revelations, intuitions, ancient wisdom, anecdotal testimonies, logic, and combine these things with how the universe operates as an organism.

So what really happens to us when we die, and how are we to understand death from a place of spiritual awareness?

Here are 5 ways that spiritually enlightened people view death:

1) Death is creativity

Death is not the end, nor is it the beginning.

 

It is simply part of a universal ongoing creative process of regeneration. When a cell in your body dies, it is immediately replaced with a new cell. We wouldn't really call the process of cell regeneration cellular death because death is only 50% of the creative process in the body.

When the physical body dies, it decays into the earth to be recycled, while the consciousness (or matrix of memory) goes on to be recycled into a new body.

Death is part of a Nature's process of recycling matter and consciousness.

 

Here is Deepak Chopra explaining more clearly what this view of death really means.
 

 

 

 

 

2) Death is a transition

This view of death believes the very concept of death to be fundamentally flawed.

 

There is no such thing as death, there is only a shift from one dimension of reality to another. From the physical to the spiritual, from the material to the immaterial. As a soul, you retain your sense of self, your memory, and even some personality traits.

Your consciousness detaches from your body when the physical brain shuts off, and you peel away from your empty vessel as a soul to go back home.

 

So why call it death when YOU don't even die? This view of death is compatible with many different spiritual philosophies and religious ideologies, and it's what most people believe about the afterlife.

 

We are only visiting right now, and what we call "death" is really just a crossing-over back to where we came from.

 

 

3) Death is rebirth

Death is a new beginning.

 

It's a rebirth metaphorically in being a remembrance of who and what you are when you leave your body, and it's also a rebirth in terms of reincarnation.

 

 

 

 

When you die, you hang out in the spiritual world for a while to reflect, review your life with your guides/angels, mingle with your soul group, and then it's time to go back to physical reality to learn more lessons and evolve as a soul.

After choosing your body and your basic life outline suited to the lessons you need, you take one last look at the spirit world and make the decision to reincarnate into human form once again.

 

Here is an article I put together summarizing all of the scientific evidence for reincarnation if this seems too far-fetched for you.

It is better to spend one day contemplating the birth and death of all things than a hundred years never contemplating beginnings and endings.

Buddha

 

4) Death is impersonal - Ego death

Death is the moment at which you shed everything you take to be "you".

 

 

 

 

Your conditionings, your history, your sense of identity, your thoughts about who and what you are, your beliefs, your values, and anything else that belongs to you as a personal being.

Your ego, your goals, your memories, and your physical body all get dissolved after physical death and you return to your identity as a soul before it became identified with thought and form.

 

Who you are right now is something much more grand than your job title, your past experiences, and your minds thoughts about who you are. You are Infinity experience itself as as infinity of roles, and the skin-encapsulated ego you are right now is just one of many roles it plays.

Your consciousness then rejoins into the universal field of consciousness where it loses individuality and awaits fragmentation to begin a new life.

 

Death is not the end of your consciousness but it is the end of subjective self-identity.

 

 

5) Death is waking up

Are you awake right now?

 

You feel awake. Your senses are awake. You know your body isn't asleep. But just because your body isn't sleeping doesn't mean that you aren't sleeping.

 

How can you even be sure that you are alive right now?

What if this life is all just one big simulation and you are living within some kind of Intelligent Matrix that has been created to give souls the ability to evolve and experience duality? Death is only "death" if you believe that you are actually alive.

 

Medically speaking, you are alive. But metaphysically speaking, life is just a dream, and when you die you wake up realizing the whole thing was just a play in your consciousness.

 

You are just asleep in life's waiting room:

Live without fear of death

Every spiritually enlightened person, every person who uses psychedelic drugs, every person who has ever had an OBE or an NDE, and every person who has ever experienced transcendental meditation knows for through experience that death is nothing to fear.

Only the ego fears death, not the soul, since the soul already knows that death is just a transition process and has went through it many times before.

Overcoming the fear of death starts with seeing past our transient identity as an ego with a history, talents, goals, personality traits, and beliefs. The meaning of enlightenment is to die before you die.

This simply means that you see the ego is now who and what you are, you experience your consciousness as something more expansive than your personal sense of self, and in doing this you free yourself from the fear of non-existence.

You will always exist. Period. Not your ego, but YOU. Find out who you are, and you will no longer fear death.

The thought of death will actually start to enrich your life and add meaning to it...