Life After Death

ATTENTION has been focused recently on the question of whether, according to the Theosophical tradition, we are conscious in the after-death state.

OUR subject this evening can scarcely fail to be of the greatest interest and importance to every one of us; for who is there among us who has not been called upon to experience the pain of bereavement, who has not felt a desire to know where the loved ones have gone, to know something of the conditions of the life after death into which they have entered and upon which we must all embark when our time comes, as one day inevitably it must?

The Music of the Spheres is an ancient Pythagorean concept, wherein Pythagoras was fascinated by the harmonics of a vibrating string on a Greek instrument-the lyre. He discovered an amazing correspondence between the order of musical intervals and the spacing of planets. For Pythagoras, there appeared to be a direct mathematical relationship between music's vibrational frequency and the corresponding position of planetary bodies; it seemed that the order of notes on vibrating strings were, somehow, an intrinsic property of the whole universe.

Theosophy teaches that after a person dies, the Ego and its non-physical bodies undergo a process consisting of multiple stages before reincarnating. The process may be very brief (as in young children or cases of premature death) or it can be as long as 3,000 years. Theosophical literature, particularly the Mahatma Letters, has extensive teachings about the after-death states, some of which have received validation in parapsychological studies in the past century or so.

The question of “What happens when we die?” is one which the vast majority of people have and especially so as their own life begins to draw to an end or when a family member or loved one dies.

The true “I” of your being will never die. Your astral body will eventually disintegrate when the very last particle of the dead physical body disintegrates. Also, the prana (vitality, life energy) which now animates your physical body and keeps you in physical incarnation will return after death to the universal prana.

I am not the body that has served me for so long. I am the Spiritual Self of Light. I am not the emotional nature that has caused such sorrow. I am the Spiritual Self of Love.