Lesson 19 – Beyond Body, Beyond Death

The body is simply a brilliant invention of Consciousness to focus and localize its experience of creation so it can explore space and time in a linear fashion, from a particular and limited point of view, sequencing the lessons it wishes to learn in a certain order, and building a relationship with itself that continuously expands in a completely unique way. Bodies are the pens with which Consciousness writes its odes to The Absolute. Regardless of the brilliance that is the body-appearance, it is crucial to realize that we are ultimately beyond the body, and that we are continuous, whereas the body is a temporary means to meet an end. No pun intended. Bentinho Massaro

By recognizing that your existence is independent from—beyond—even the body, you start to open the gates to a whole new, much more profound and expanded sense of being and understanding of your Self and the universe.

As with all of the practices I provide in Trinfinity Academy, most of their results unfold and deepen over time, with practice and through sincere desire. Hence, I ask you to be patient with yourself and be excited for the possibility of experiencing true eternity.

The intention behind this lesson is for its contents to unlock what is potentially your first real glimpse of your Self as body and death-transcendent.

The seeker is he who is in search of himself. Give up all questions except one: “Who am I?” After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The “I am” is certain. The “I am this” is not. Find out what you are in reality. To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. Discover all that you are not—body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or that—nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. The clearer you understand that, on the level of mind, the real you can only be described in negative terms, the quicker you will come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being. Nisargadatta Maharaj

Stage 6 – “I Am Not My Body”

You’ve already seen clearly that you are not your circumstances, thoughts, emotions, sensations, or beliefs.

Now, I’m going to ask you to observe the idea, or instinctive feeling in you, that suggests that you are this body…

Look for this instinctive sense; it is very subtle and pervasive, hence it can be harder to pinpoint than, say, a mosquito bite sensation, which is very defined and has a specific location.

The conviction “I am the body,” in a sense, forms the background of your very existence as a person-world-consciousness. It has been conditioned not only by the humans around you, but also by your very own experience with environment.

Note: The feeling that we are the body is one of our remaining animalistic aspects, and it runs quite deep in our genes to believe we are the body. There is nothing wrong with that at all, but for the purpose of this lesson, it’s helpful to not give too much importance to the existence of the body. In later courses, and especially in the Empowerment teaching, the body is again included as a vehicle of expressing one’s true Self, and appreciation for it returns in full.

So, just give it your best shot at this time, and if you cannot get a sense of the belief “I am this body,” simply find a sensation or an idea as close to it as possible.

To further help you pinpoint the feeling, you can try repeating the following sentence verbally and/or in mind 30 times, with a full second or two in between each sentence:

“I am this body.”

As you start to get a feel for this belief, idea, conviction, or sense, again shift your attention back and forth from the stable, changeless Presence of your true I-AM Beingness, independent from any appearance, and then shift your attention back to the appearance of the feeling “I am this body,” which you are an observer of.

Back and forth between I-AM, and the appearance of feeling “I am this body.”

Really see that even the idea “I am my body” is an appearance that comes and goes, and that you remain beyond it, more eternal, truer, than the idea that you are—and the consequent feeling of being—a body.

See that the body itself—not just the idea that you are the body, but the very body itself—is an appearance appearing to you.

The more you can view the body as an appearance in consciousness, the easier it is to go back and forth between the appearance of the body, and the I-AM sense purely by itself, free from the body.

You cannot experience the body without being present, without I-AM, but you can experience being present, I-AM, without any focus on the body-appearance or the body-feeling, or the identification with the body-appearance.

Find this in your own experience.

Neti Neti Meditation – Stage 6

Everything is changeable, everything appears and disappears; there is no blissful peace until one passes beyond the agony of life and death.Buddha

The Starting Focus

“I am here and now. I exist with zero effort. I am Present. I am Conscious. I am changeless. I am Pure Beingness. I-AM.”

Then Realize

“The body, which I observe, is over there, while I am over here.”

I-AM before, during, and after the appearance and disappearance of this body. Attention on the body comes and goes, and the actual body comes and goes, while I remain as the ocean remains while its waves rise and fall, appear and disappear.

Since I am over here, and my beingness remains beingness, even while my body-consciousness comes and goes on the surface of my beingness, I cannot possibly be my body or my body-consciousness, for I am here witnessing the appearance of the body.

Similarly, I shall be there to be a witness to its disappearance and whatever follows that experience.

I exist prior to—and am therefore more fundamental than—the coming and going of the body-focus. I am effortlessly aware of the body at some times, and I exist without being aware of this body at all other times.

Even without the body being in focus, I still exist.

I am Presence-Consciousness. I-Exist, no matter what. I-AM, independent of this body or that body. I remain unaffected by the turmoil, the presence, and the absence of this body. I-AM, beyond the body, already.

My true Identity is Presence-Consciousness. The body is just a complex, brilliant configuration of energy; an appearance created out of my being’s essential Presence-Energy—again, like waves are made out of the ocean’s water.

The water is not actually changed by the dynamic forms of the waves, just as my basic existence is not altered by the body (or lack thereof) that my existence uses to express itself.


Your Future Is Bright and Deathless

As you exercise Stage 6 of the Neti Neti experience, you will gain a clearer and clearer, visceral and experiential (as well as intellectual) realization of the fact that your existence, your Presence-Consciousness, is in fact independent—free from—the coming and going of the body or bodies.

As a result of this growing conviction in your eternal Self, while your body is still active on this physical-vibrational plane of Play-Presence-Energy, the man-made misperception of fear of death—which is subtle and pervasive in its infiltration of the mind-portion of a being—will gradually be uprooted from the different layers where it has settled in some form, and be dissolved by the loving light of your clarity regarding the eternal and independent nature of Presence-Consciousness.

So, as your clarity regarding the true deathlessness of Consciousness becomes more brilliant, more bright, you will be increasingly better equipped (with “light”) to engage ever-more-wisely with the arising fears in the mind-portion of your mind-body-spirit complex, as it walks its path through this temporary physical life-appearance.

You are already deathless and eternal, and you can realize this with the appearances in your life right now, by seeing that you exist no matter what comes and goes.

Since the idea of being this body generally runs the deepest of all identifications, I feel that a little more context regarding the expansiveness of Existence is necessary to prepare you for any realizations that may follow the application of this lesson—now, or in the future.

After decades of having moved around/with/in/as this seeming bodily complex, most people will unconsciously, instinctually, deeply feel and respond to life’s events as if they are their body—even when they can intellectually, spiritually, or philosophically understand that they are not their body.

Stage 6 of the Neti Neti Meditation above will further aid you in experientially unhooking the sense “I-AM” from the sense “I-AM-this-body,” and leave you knowing your Self as truly free and independent of the appearance of the body.

Presence-Beingness shines on its own accord—is its own source for being—and is therefore self-existent and self-sufficient. The body, however, is merely an appearance of which we are hardly ever truly aware anyway. Our body-awareness comes and goes, but our existence remains at all times. The body needs Awareness and Presence-Energy to be experienced—to exist—but neither Awareness nor Presence-Energy need the body in order to be and endure. Bentinho Massaro

By disentangling the “I-AM” principle from the “body-appearance,” you will also automatically grow in your conviction of the fact that you, as Presence-Consciousness, are eternal and beyond the physical illusion of body-mind-world. In other words, you start to naturally know that death is an illusion.

This opens up a real gateway into being able to more consciously access a greater reservoir of intuition and metaphysical knowledge regarding yourself and creation in general. You will start to notice this increase in intuitive clarity throughout your everyday life, following this lesson and this course.

Note: Especially after you complete the Empowerment courses, you will be more tapped into your physical-life-transcending intuition and wisdom. You will be opened up to receive, channel, and “download” metaphysical/astral truths and realizations.

The feeling of trust, confidence, or faith in your true Self can translate into many feelings or realizations. One way that it translates itself is as the feeling: “I continue to exist beyond the cessation of this physical apparatus.”

Expect this conviction to continue to organically grow in brilliance and brightness over time, removing more of the fear of death as you go. This happens largely by itself and “unconsciously.”

You may find that a year from now, perhaps without having put in any special effort to work through your fear beliefs psychologically, you will look back on your present level of fear of death, and you simply won’t be able to experience it as real anymore—and you won’t be sure what you did to deserve that freedom 🙂 .

About six weeks before I left Madura for good, a great change in my life took place. It was quite sudden. I was sitting in a room on the first floor of my uncle’s house. I seldom had any sickness, and on that day there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden, violent fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account for it; and I did not try to account for it or to find out whether there was any reason for the fear. I just felt, “I am going to die,” and began thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a doctor or my elders or friends. I felt that I had to solve the problem myself, then and there. The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: “Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies.”

And I at once dramatized the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out stiff, as though rigor mortis had set in, and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the inquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, so that neither the word “I,” nor any other word, could be uttered. “Well then,” I said to myself, “this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body ‘I’? It is silent and inert, but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the ‘I’ within me, apart from it. So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. This means I am the deathless Spirit.”

All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thought-process. “I” was something very real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with my body was centered on that “I.” From that moment onward, the “I,” or Self, focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death had vanished once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on.

Other thoughts might come and go, like the various notes of music, but the “I” continued like the fundamental sruti note that underlies and blends with all the other notes. Whether the body was engaged in talking, reading, or anything else, I was still centered on “I.” Previous to that crisis, I had no clear perception of my Self and was not consciously attracted to it. I felt no perceptible or direct interest in it, much less any inclination to dwell permanently in it.

If a man considers he is born, he cannot avoid the fear of death. Let him find out if he has been born or if the Self has any birth. He will discover that the Self always exists, that the body which is born resolves itself into thought and that the emergence of thought is the root of all mischief. Find where from thoughts emerge. Then you will abide in the ever-present inmost Self and be free from the idea of birth or the fear of death.

Ramana Maharshi

Life and Death Are the Same

I believe there are two sides to the phenomenon known as death, this side where we live, and the other side where we shall continue to live. Eternity does not start with death. We are in eternity now.Norman Vincent Peale

At some point, you will not only know that consciousness remains after death, but you will start to realize that consciousness already resides beyond the physical presence of the body, simultaneously, right now…

You will, thus, see that life and death are simply different experiences of the same always-ongoing dream that is Creation. You will see that death never applied to Consciousness, and that you, as Consciousness-Presence, in that sense, were never truly incarnate to begin with. Even while you experience the body, you are already beyond it.

Death, at some point, is no longer viewed and felt as something that actually exists; nor is its opposite, “being alive,” seen as something that stands out on its own as a separate occurrence.

The idea “I am alive” is the result of the belief “I could be dead.”

Both ideas are rendered irrelevant to you at some point. Can you imagine the freedom in this? You will :-).

Soon, life will be known by you to be all that there is, and that it is endless in its exploration of itself. The idea of life/death as two opposites will simply disappear.

When the charged ideas of life/death as actual things or events equalizes, harmonizes, and becomes less and less charged with a feeling of stark contrast, what shines forth through this transparent equalized understanding of life and death is simply the stability and conviction in eternally-free Presence-Consciousness.

A fearlessness descends upon your heart.

I-AM Shall Remain

Presence-Consciousness always prevails over any idea of limitation. Presence-Consciousness always prevails over illusion.

I-AM will continue after this or that falls away from it, including the body. The body is, ultimately, just another this or that; just as I-AM continues right now—after thoughts, emotions, circumstances, and even awareness-of-the-body fall away—constantly already, in your everyday life.

There has never been a time when you and I have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist. As the same person inhabits the body through childhood, youth, and old age, so too at the time of death he attains another body. The wise are not deluded by these changes. Bhagavad Gita

Appearances die every second, and you remain to see them all come, be, and dissolve back into the Presence-Energy substratum from which they arose in the first place. You have experienced many, many deaths—even in this single “lifetime” perception.

What makes you think it will be any other way with the body?

Just because the body forms the focal point around which, or due to which, a large degree of your experiences are known to you, that does not mean that the vehicle for physical, localized exploration is the great I-AM itself; existence itself is not contained within, or by, the body-focal-point-appearance.

The body is made up out of I-AM Energy, so how could I-AM disappear when it stops sustaining the body-illusion it created in the first place?

That is as non-sensible as saying that the person eating his own home-cooked meal, disappears as soon as he swallows the last bite. It is as illogical as suggesting that the tree disappears when the apple is plucked. Does the ocean disappear when a wave collapses back into it?

I-AM is free from the body already; beyond the body already. The body does not limit or define Existence-Consciousness. It never did, and never will. The body-reality is an illusion; it’s just a thought, an idea that developed into a sense-perception.

It is Presence-Consciousness that knows and witnesses the body; it’s not the body that knows and witnesses Presence-Consciousness.

The body does not have any means of knowing itself, of being intelligent, other than for awareness to come in, wrap itself around the experience/perception, and then breathe intelligence, life, and self-consciousness into the body-experience.

You have never known anything because of the body, or even through the body—not really. You have simply known what you witnessed—whatever was created out of Presence-Energy within your Presence-Consciousness. That includes the body-appearance.

The body is an appearance.

Everyone has to die; so die as your true nature. Why die as a body? Never forget your true nature. It may not be acceptable to many, but it is a fact… this body has nothing to do with you. If you must have an ambition, have the highest, so that at least while dying, you will be the Absolute. Decide that now firmly, with certainty and conviction. Giving up the body is a great festival.

Death is generally considered to be a traumatic experience, but understand what happens. That which has been born, the knowledge “I Am,” which is the same everywhere, but which has gotten itself limited by the body, again becomes unlimited. A speck of consciousness is given up.

Why the fear? How has this fear of death crept in? That which cannot die somehow became convinced that it was going to die. It is based on the concept that one is an individual who is born… all the fear arises from mere words told to you by someone. This is the bondage.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Dream-Body Analogy

To help you realize that the body is just an appearance, the following analogy may make this truth really palpable for you.

When you dream at night, your consciousness creates a body to explore the dream-world with, using subtle energy (non-physical Presence-Energy).

In your dream at night, you use your fake ears to hear somebody call your name, even though your ears are dreamed up and don’t actually exist. What do you use to hear in your dream?

You can taste a peanut butter sandwich in your dream, even though your tongue is itself an appearance with no real ability to taste anything. What are you using to taste in your dream?

You can see far and wide in your dream, even though your dream-body’s eyes are simply subtle-energy phenomena created inside of your consciousness and don’t actually have nerve endings that see a world outside of itself. What do you think sees the dream?

You can touch the Earth in your dream, using your dream-hands, and you can feel the sensation of touching the Earth, even though your hands are “unreal.” What do you use to feel in your dream, if your hands are unreal?

You can smell a dream-rose using your dream-body’s nose, but you know upon waking that your dream body was imagined—so was the nose, the rose, and the smell. What was doing the smelling, if not consciousness directly, without an intermediary or medium?

You see, the medium of the body was simply a “permission slip”—an excuse, if you will—a symbol for consciousness to experience a certain thing, time, or location. It doesn’t actually need, nor does it in actuality use, a body to experience things. It experiences appearances directly.

This can be hard to viscerally understand in physical reality, but if you remain open to the idea that this might actually be how reality is set up, it will show you how true it is and it will become your lived experience.

Consciousness directly experiences all sensations, stimuli, and phenomena, with no real intermediary. The body is a beautiful illusion.

The intermediary (the body) is just an excuse to experience one particular space-time moment at a time, so as not to confuse the linear learning process you chose to have, before you started dreaming this waking dream within your consciousness.

If you did not focalize your consciousness into a singular, linear space/time reality, with a vehicle such as the body as the center of your point of view, you would simply be experiencing too many parallel realities at once. This, although expansive in its own way, would not actually be conducive to learning and evolving as much as is a restricted, sequential learning environment filled with catalyst, where your sense of self is limited to the dream scenario and the dream body, and the stakes seem to be high.

Hence, your—shall I say—Higher Self (more on this in the Empowerment teaching), will only allow as much expansion of consciousness as is relevant for you to experience, one step at a time.

If your Higher Self would allow for a total obliteration of your singular experience and show you all that you are—on a higher level—all at once, that would most likely not serve your chosen timeline experience, unless it was given as a glimpse, that then gives you something to chew on and allows you to change your perspective as you go about exploring your life’s theme. But as a permanent experience, this is not relevant for almost anyone. If it were relevant, one wouldn’t have come into this incarnational timeline experience in the first place.

So, I ask you to be patient with your waking up process and trust in the way your enlightenment unfolds. Nevertheless, give it all you’ve got, because the higher your desire for enlightenment of any kind, the more amazing your life-experience will become and the more effective use you will make of this life-experience.

Let’s briefly return to the dream-body example:

In your dreams at night, your body is completely composed of the same dream substance that makes up the dream world. There is no separation between the dream body and its environment, or the illusory air that it breathes. It’s all the same substance, across the board. It’s the same energy shaped into different colors and frequencies.

And neither your dream-body, nor the world it appears to reside “inside of,” exist as real, inherent things separate from the Consciousness that dreams them into creation. There is no experience apart from Presence-Consciousness.

When you are dreaming, Consciousness (Awareness in subject-object focus) uses the power of infinite intelligence to shape Presence-Energy into the experience it desires it to be.

In exactly the same way, your body in the waking dream also consists of Presence-Energy, simply in a more crystallized, denser form, generating what seems to be “matter.” But even matter is exposed to be nothing but space and energy, by those who are Self-Realized, as well as by modern-day empirically-oriented (quantum) physicists.

In other words: all is an illusion of Consciousness, a dance of energy—The Play of God.

All energy—regardless of the dimension of experience—utilizes the same Presence-Energy, which is Creation Itself, to shape its experiences out of. Each level, realm, or plane uses this energy intelligently, in different vibrations and configurations.

Physical reality is shaped by Consciousness, using the same substance your dream reality, or other non-physical realities, are created out of—basically, light.

This one light of Consciousness is simply vibrating in different configurations, at different “rotational speeds,” or simply put: at different frequencies, creating different appearances.

So, everything you see in your waking dream is consciousness utilizing its innate intelligence to shape the Presence-Energy that makes up everything you experience.

Hence, the same Is-ness, or Beingness, can be found and felt in every single seeming “object” of creation; because it’s all made out of the same Being. (See Lesson 3.)

Waking up

When you are sleep-dreaming, you usually don’t realize that your body is illusory. You are convinced you are the dream-body, inside of a world. It is upon waking up that you realize it was all a dream inside of consciousness.

What if you could wake up from this waking dream too?

That is precisely what is happening every time you remember to recognize the clarity and awakeness of Presence-Energy, or Awareness itself.

Waking up to Presence-Consciousness, or to the Awareness which enables the experience of it all, is akin to, in the dream, remembering that you are actually lying in your bed, dreaming this dream.

This realization—that you are dreaming—changes your whole sense of self and identity-placement, and induces a sense of lucidity into your experience: a sense of transcendence, freedom, and fearlessness. This goes for both the sleeping dream, as well as the waking dream. These are two different types of dreams, but dreams nonetheless.


Which Came First—Consciousness or the Brain?

When I ask people the question, “What makes you so convinced that you did not exist before the body appeared?”

Many people say, “I don’t remember anything prior to my birth.”

This is because this body’s brain does not have memory-images of what was before this life. This body’s brain is made up out of this body’s perceptions only. Conventional methods of remembering won’t cut it.

If you wish to remember more of who or what you are beyond this life, however, you can—there are various ways to do this.

Many people remember this during dreams (when Consciousness is out of body), during trance sessions, or during meditation. Some, for whom it is relevant, connect to their parallel life-experiences (usually interpreted as past—or future!—lifetimes) while in their waking state. Some people are suddenly “struck by a memory” of another life, and it feels so real that they cannot deny they are more than they thought they were.

If a parallel lifetime is close in its orientation to one’s present physical reality, one can even retrace where that person lived and find confirmation that this other lifetime apparently actually existed or exists, even though before this glimpse, there was no knowledge of this “other person.”

Many young children vividly describe knowledge and experiences from before this physical lifetime. We often discount this as “imagination” (and sometimes it is), but many of these “imaginations” have a true origin. The veil of forgetfulness is not yet thick in young children, especially in the generations that are being born today.

Another confirmation can be found in the hundreds of thousands of accounts of near death, and/or out of body experiences people are experiencing every day.

The idea of “past lifetimes” is not nearly as universally relevant to The Way of Self-Realization as realizing that you—as Beingness, as a Consciousness, as I-AM—exist outside of (independent from) the realm of the physical body’s world-experience.

Knowing about alternate lifetimes your Soul-Consciousness has lived before—or more accurately, is experiencing right now, simultaneously—is not crucial to knowing that you are death-transcendent.

Also, it is simply not relevant for everyone to have these experiences in this lifetime. As such, a person won’t necessarily access this knowledge, and thus, we cannot rely on it to instruct you into greater confirmation of life beyond death. I just wanted you to know that there is the option to explore this idea, if it resonates for you.

What IS a more universally, experientially-reliable pathway into confirmation of consciousness beyond death, is the following exercise.

Where Were You Before You Were Born?

You can feel into, or sense, Presence “before” this life.

You can “remember,” intuitively and viscerally, that you existed before your body’s birth.

Start with the Starting Focus, by simply relaxing your mind, attuning yourself to Presence/Beingness. Perhaps sit down, if it feels more centering and silencing.

Then ask yourself, “Where was I before my birth?” or, “Who was I before my birth?”

Feel into this…

Really let this question sink into the silence of the here and now.

This is called “contemplation,” or meditation.

Let it show you the answer—feel into the answer.

Whenever you sincerely ask for a realization, and then remain in the most receptive, attuned, open state you can presently assume, you will always be shown something of value, whether it is something you expected or not.

Some Variations

You can also pinpoint a specific time period, a handful of years or so before your birth, to give your consciousness a specific time/space frame to tune into. It doesn’t matter much which time period you choose, as long as it is a time/space frame before your physical birth on this planet.

For some people, this makes it easier; for others, slightly more difficult or more distracting. If you find it distracting, stick with the original question above.

For me, for instance, being 26 at the time of writing this, that question could be:

“Where was I, 50 years ago?”

Or, an alternative question could be:

“What was I, 50 years ago?”

“Who was I, 50 years ago?”

“Where was I when the Wright brothers completed their first flight?”

“What was I doing during World War II?”

More varieties:

“Where/who/what was I before my grandfather was born?”

“Where was I before planet Earth supported animal life?”

“Where was I before planet Earth was formed?”

“Where/who/what will I be 1,000 years from now?”

And then there is a potentially very powerful question, which jumps a few steps ahead of where we are (in general terms) in Trinfinity Academy’s course progression. This will be addressed in greater detail in the Infinity teaching, but can already give you access to an instinctual, experiential confirmation of Consciousness beyond the body:

“Where was I before Creation was created?”

Choose whichever one of these examples resonates most powerfully. Which one excites you the most? Pick that one for now, then sit down, and in silent receptivity, ask the question. Tune into the answer as you would listen carefully for someone calling your name in a noisy crowd. Attune yourself to the frequency you wish to receive, and ignore everything else.

Feel free to try a few more, or all of the varieties given above, or come up with a question yourself that works best for you.

Now, since time as we know it does not exist outside of our mind-consciousness, it is more accurate to say that when we have a feeling of having existed before our birth, we are truly just sensing into the Presence-Consciousness which is here, now, beyond the realm of linearity and physicality already.

We get to know ourselves as deathless aliveness—here, now, exploring and expanding forever—as free agents of Infinity itself. We are desired to be exactly who we are.

Discover your Blueprint

As another fun alternative, which may not be everyone’s “cup of tea”—especially this early on in the course progression—you can also tune into the moment right before your conception. This is the moment when, in a sense, you were looking down upon what was about to become your experience as an incarnational focus of Consciousness.

In this alternative, you can imagine yourself anticipating the conception that would lead to your about-to-be-manifest experience and the ideas you chose to explore in this particular lifetime. As such, you can imagine a high degree of excitement and anticipation, akin to a director about to see her movie come into being.

For those to whom it is relevant, this proves to be an interesting experience of “who they were,” specific to preparing for this life’s incarnational experience.

It can potentially give great intuitive insight into the blueprint, theme, or intention you had in store for this life. In addition, it can be a confirmation of your presence-consciousness beyond—or before—inhabiting the physical body, and therefore, also confirmation of the time frame after the physical body is let go of.

This exercise can greatly clarify why you have chosen some of the challenges in your life; what the reason or intention behind them is.

What Will Happen After the Body Dies?

Die happily and look forward to taking up a new and better form. Like the sun, only when you set in the west can you rise in the east. Jelaluddin Rumi

I’m going to state the following descriptions as fact, as it is as obvious to me as a circle is round; however, it is always up to you to take from whatever I say the things that resonate, and leave out what does not. This, as a principle, is always more important than whatever I say.

If you’re not sure what to think or believe, or if you’re not sure what resonates, I encourage you to simply remain open to receiving these confirmations in your own good time, through your own direct experience with Consciousness, and become convinced of what is obvious in that way.

There is no need to believe in anything; just let information and confirmation come in stages and be presented in ways most natural and relevant to you.

The absolute truth is that all points of view are equally true.

Without going into too much philosophical/metaphysical detail at this time, I will summarize:

(Your) Consciousness, upon the cessation of the body-vehicle, will experience itself as if it wakes up from a long dream and enters into a “more real” reality of Self, remembering much, much more of its Greater Self. You will wake up in a different, lighter dimension, where space is not the container for time, but time is the container for space. I will explain this in more depth in the Empowerment courses.

For now, you can liken it to your dream-substance experience at night, where you can be in any time and any space you can think of.

Your Higher Self’s Consciousness will then, in all its wisdom and self-knowledge, assist your level of consciousness in synthesizing the life experience gained from the incarnational experience (a “life-review”) to grow in wisdom, clarity, and precision of intent. Your Higher Self’s Consciousness will then decide, from a very expanded place of seeing the entire Beingness totality (of which the individual you now know yourself to be is but a portion—like a finger belongs to a hand) what it desires to explore and experience next.

Then, when it’s ready, and the incarnational experience is synthesized/integrated, it will start focusing itself into the proper configuration/frequency of energy to generate another vehicle/body of some kind. This does not have to be a physical body; it can be a time/space vehicle, instead of a space/time incarnational vehicle. A time/space, non-physical body is much like your dream-body.

Whether your consciousness’ next choice is to wear another physical representation (body) in a space/time reality, consonant with your desire to explore, or whether it is to dwell more freely within the time/space planes of consciousness for a while, or whether it is to embody a different density/dimensionality of energy altogether and explore creation there—it (You) will choose at that timing whatever is most desired and relevant for your ongoing expansion into, and expression of, All-That-Exists.

The Journey Has No End

Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live. Henry Van Dyke

Make no mistake, this human journey of spirituality offers merely the beginning reflections of an infinite exploration of creation in its endless dimensions and expressions of The Infinite One. We explore—and accelerate—this exploration by means of effective utilization of Infinity’s Free Agent, which is Awareness, or—You.

The Way of Self-Realization helps you go deeper, to retrace the steps and order in which Creation was expressed, so as to discover the more original, timeless, and non-dual states of you. The Way of Self-Actualization helps you to spread wider, to create more powerfully, and to shine more brightly in your mirror-reflection of Infinity.

Both ways are highly valuable and, to the true seeker of Unity (the adept), both are crucially deserving of attention, each in its own good timing. It is important to attend to them in an alternating way as well, to deepen each by way of the continued support of the understandings gained from the other.

Each way encourages greater subsequent embodiment of the other. They are, most certainly, complementary.

Personally, I tend to go back and forth in my primary focus, and yet to an extent, always simultaneously deepen and expand in my embodiment of both ways.

We have, after all, infinite time at our disposal, and an ever-expanding journey ahead.

Of course you don’t die.
Nobody dies.
Death doesn’t exist.
You only reach a new level of vision,
a new realm of consciousness,
a new unknown world. Henry Miller

There is no rush, yet we do our best to utilize our intended time in this “incarnational experience” as effectively as we can, to accelerate as joyfully as we can and learn what we came here to learn, as well as share with other-selves the love that we came here to share, each in our own unique ways.

The following, I find, is a helpful attitude to have throughout the entire spiritual journey during our time in the human suit: the attitude that this life is both urgent/precious and timeless/indestructible. That we have to be on top of things and do our very best, yet know that nothing can be out of place, realized too late, or realized too soon.

This balances will, desire, and intent with peace, healing, and faith, so that we don’t become either controlling or lethargic/inefficient, but instead live as joyfully alive, creative, and powerfully effective—as non-insistent, stress-free co-creators in alignment with the higher levels of (our) Consciousness.

However, I want you to realize this very clearly—there is no end to this Journey.

Oh I’m sorry, you thought there was an end to all this? Is that why some of you prefer The Way of Self Realization?

Bummer. 🙂

There are finalities to be realized, for sure, but none of them end the journey.

Even the most “final” of realizations—that on the Absolute level you are beyond experiencing, beyond Creation altogether, and that nothing ever truly happened to you at this level—does not end the journey; it just steps it up a notch and destroys all assumptions regarding who or what you are. But the journey continues.

There are as many endings as there are beginnings, as many answers as there are questions; but everything begins and ends in the never-ending Mystery of this Infinite Unity.

And so, you will find many resolutions to many sub-sections of your journey, closure to major sub-sections of your journey; but THE JOURNEY is infinite, my friends, because that which created THE JOURNEY, or Creation, is itself Infinity, and Infinity will continue to diversify itself as it seeks for ever more ways to adequately express its infinite potential.

You are one of the lucky volunteers that agreed to exist without end. 🙂

Don’t worry. Life only gets better from here. Soon enough you will be glad it never ends; boredom ceases to exist, and dissatisfaction becomes an empty memory.

Before long, you won’t be able to imagine an end, nor remember a beginning.

You only wish for finality, an ending to it all, because you know dissatisfaction so well. A True Satisfaction that expands without end does not know weariness. And you won’t either: not in your heart, not in your spirit.

Homework

Note: Since this is such a substantial and potentially perception-altering lesson, I strongly advise you to take your time with this one and not rush through it.

I suggest you take a minimum of four days to be present with the contents, exercises, analogies, and quotes contained in this lesson and contemplate each of them profoundly.

When you feel good about your new perception of deathlessness, and feel significantly more independent from the physical body’s shenanigans, you can proceed.

  1. Read this lesson’s text, or listen to the audio, at least twice (more is recommended) before you proceed with the next lesson, or as often as desired—ideally with some integration time between each reading session. Oh, and drink plenty of high-quality water in the next few days (and always). It helps flush out the chemical representations of the misbeliefs you've held onto regarding pretending to be something you’re not. Take plenty of rest, as well. Nourish your body while you transcend it; it’s the least you can do for it 🙂 .
  2. Practice the Neti Neti experience on the sensation and concept of “I am this body.” Dislodge/disengage/unhook your I-AM from the appearance we call “my body,” until you find a satisfactory, greater clarity regarding I-AM existing beyond, before, and without the body.
  3. Try out the “Where was I before my birth?” recognition/meditation.
  4. This lesson is substantial and has even more to offer experientially than it offers in text. It hints at a very deep and personal/impersonal discovery and transformation, and should be nourished and treated as such. This lesson signifies a serious “passing of a threshold” from Person to Presence, and it has, in the identity sense, a finality to it. The real gem is found in the application of the text, quotes, and meditations. Hence, take your time to integrate the information and experiences gained from this lesson (and the previous lessons), and apply the practices to a satisfactory degree before proceeding with this course. There is no rush.

Got a question, or just want to share?
Discuss this lesson in the forums!

Discuss this lesson