Curiosity about death also brings curiosity about life. To understand life, you need to know death. To understand death, you need to know life. 

Death only indicates that life is eternal. It’s like changing your clothes, moving from one room to another room. Near death experiences are not an uncommon thing. There is a lot of scientific evidence about this also. Many people have gone to the border, had a near death experience, and have come back. 

It’s good to have that curiosity. What is after death? This very question gives a bigger dimension to our lives. It expands our awareness. It makes us think bigger than just focusing on the day to day events and circumstances that we face in life.

The definition of soul

Consciousness is all permeating, like radio waves, which are everywhere. But it has certain attributes to it. Then it becomes a soul. What are they? 

Everything is experienced within consciousness: likes, dislikes, desires, aversion, happiness, unhappiness, uniting, and merging all occur within the field of consciousness. These aspects together give us a life-force, which upholds consciousness. And this life-force is the same, whether for an elephant or for an ant.

Here, measurements fail. You can’t say an elephant has a bigger soul and an ant has a smaller soul. The only difference is that one is expressing itself a little more as it moves from an ant to an elephant to a human being. Its expression has blossomed. 

Suppose if it is in a bud shape in an ant, then it blossoms in an elephant, and it becomes fully blossomed in a human being. You can also say it’s like a rice paddy, then rice, and then puffed rice. But it’s the same stuff.

Realms other than the physical

Of course, there are many realms. The brain is only attuned to a particular bandwidth. That’s all. 

The concept of creation as per our cognition, our perceptual ability, is very limited. What we cannot perceive from our five senses does exist. We can’t deny that or say that it doesn’t exist. So there are realms after human life, when this soul leaves this body and becomes something else, and then something else again. Then it moves on to higher realms. 

Evolution of the soul

The soul has to take a human birth to evolve. Impressions go with the soul and they keep manifesting within that realm, like in dreams. Suppose you’re laughing the whole day and then in your dreams you also start laughing. Haven’t you experienced this? It’s a practical experience.

If you’re crying in the daytime, then in your dreams you also start crying. If you’re happy, haven’t you had dreams where you’re happy? That’s why a human birth is very, very important. 

So, when the soul leaves this body, it remains in different realms. But to become free, it has to come back. 

How the soul leaves the body

Your soul leaves the body sometimes through the eyes and sometimes through the mouth. You’ll see that sometimes people’s eyes roll, and they leave through the eyes. Sometimes it goes through the ears or the mouth. It can leave through the anal region also, and also through the toes. For yogis, it goes through the top of the head. 

If we keep our mind free from cravings, aversions, agitations, and hatreds, then we go in a more peaceful (sattvic) way and move up. Or if we live in a rajasic way we go in a different direction. If we’re tamasic then we go through the anal region. 

Breath impacts death and beyond

Breathing assumes its own rhythms and cycles when the soul is leaving the body. There is so much more to death than is normally spoken about. The way you die makes a difference. At the moment of death we say the soul leaves through one of the nostrils. 

When it exits through the right nostril, then it’s free. It goes with knowledge, with more awareness of wisdom.

But if it’s going through the left side, then it’s going with certain intentions and emotions, so it’s going to come back. There’s a connection in life also. If you see that the right nostril is functioning, then there’s more left brain activity, and so you’re more alert, conscious, and logical. But when the left nostril’s functioning, then your right brain is more active. That means you’re more emotional and you have intentions to do something. You have plans, so you have to come back soon. 

When both are functioning, then that is samadhi. When you exist in a meditative state, then you have no obligation. You don’t have to come back. You’re merging with infinity, instantaneously. Even if you do have to come back it’s because of a grand plan, for the sake of others, not for your own sake. 

Time of death

If you’re a good yogi, you can decide when you will die. It’s all connected to karma. That’s why it’s said that the time of birth is important, to make one’s chart and to get an overall view about what one’s life will be. The time of death also has a meaning. Do you know the last five stars of the zodiac? When a soul leaves at that particular time, when these stars are there, it is said that the soul is still very earthbound. It doesn’t quickly move on. 

There’s a season to sow the seed. Only then, the seeds will sprout. In the same way, on certain days when the soul leaves the body, it remains earthbound for six months and still lingers around that place. It gets attached to that place. That’s one belief also. 

Mind doesn’t age

You can see

people who are 85, 86, or even 90, who look so sad and are carrying so many cravings, aversions, sadness, and disappointment in their minds. 

The mind doesn’t age. The body ages. People feel as though they haven’t aged, although their body is aging. There’s something in them which makes them feel they haven’t aged. This mind takes on the impressions. 

For example, some people who are beyond 80 get so addicted to pornography. Their body is dysfunctional, but their mind is craving for all of those impressions. What impressions do they have? You can see. Do you think that elderly people who engage in cribbing (non-stop complaining) and being negative, that they won’t be reborn? How could that be?

People who pass a certain age, if they aren’t spiritual or they haven’t adopted a broad mindset, they can still complain. Anybody who complains will have to come back. 

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