What Is Life After Death

... it might interest you to know that I fought accepting that particular idea for many, many long years. As a matter of fact, come in, dear.

As a matter of fact, of all the teachings in occultism, the idea of personal survival after death was the tenet I was most reluctant to accept, strange as it may sound to you and therefore I do feel that in as much as I entered into the researches on that particular subject with a prejudiced mind prejudice that is not in favor of it but prejudice very much being against such an idea if I say to you which I do say to you that I feel there can be be absolutely no question whatever no question whatever of the survival of the individual I feel that such an assurance coming from me should bear a great deal of weight because you see so many human beings perhaps we might even say most human beings want to believe in survival or at least wanted to believe in survival before they received any proof of it. And you know when you want something it's very easy to deceive yourself.

When you want to think someone else is lovely you can deceive yourself very readily and close your eyes to all sorts of indications that show that this person may be very unevolved because you don't want to see it. And when you want to believe that you are never going to die that you will get your reward in whatever heaven you believe in for whatever it is you have here you will reach eagerly for any promise in relation to this idea and you will close your eyes indeed you will even become very angry perhaps at anyone who would try to express doubts or even express something stronger than doubt in relation to that idea so it is a rather interesting thing that humanity down through the ages has had a need to reach for the belief in immortality has hungered for evidence of this and even where evidence was lacking has still accepted it shall we say on a blind faith or on a belief and perhaps even in relation to intuition and again then it may seem very strange to you that I was somewhat different well you see I had a very strange attitude towards life during a very short period in my life because I went through that particular time when one throws away everything one ever thought or believed. You might say one washes the mind and the heart.

One washes the slate clear. And this is a good thing to do, especially when it is in your destiny to teach others, to be able to give to others. Because otherwise what we bring to others happen to be the various teachings, the ideas, the attitudes that have been trained into us by parents, by books, by people, by experiences, and these usually are nothing but accepted prejudices even if they are correct. They're prejudices if we haven't proven them in some way or other. So I did go through a process, a very painful one indeed, where I threw away everything. I called myself an atheist as a matter of fact for three years as a youngster. A very foolish thing to do and I'm sure most of you were far more intelligent than I was at that period. But then I needed to wash the slate clean. I didn't believe in any kind of God that I had heard about. I didn't see any kind of justice that I felt would exist in the universe if it were ruled by a creative and benevolent God.

And so I decided everything was wishful thinking in terms of religious thought, spiritual or immortal thought. And I announced myself as being an atheist, though I was a very strange atheist. These were just really words. Some people who think they're atheists are far more spiritually oriented, you know, and far more intensively guided by the divine than many people who call themselves spiritual aspirants and even spiritual teachers, as perhaps you know.

Because it isn't what we claim we are, it's what we live that shows the deeper part of the nature.

And during the three years that I claimed to be an atheist, I was overwhelmed with the pain that I saw, the suffering that I saw, the unhappiness and the poverty as I had been before and after. And no atheist is really concerned with the suffering of his fellow man, his fellow creature. It's an unconscious, definite and sure knowledge of the unity of life. And so you perhaps may know this about yourselves, that if you're bothered by what seems to be injustice and pain, it's your unconscious and eternal knowledge of your unity with all life. But then to get back to our subject, the definite subject, I wanted to give you this little preliminary idea merely to try to help you see that in as much as I was not out to prove survival, in as much as the idea of personal survival indeed was a very painful idea to me, because all it meant was that all human beings and all creatures as well as myself could continue being exposed to pain, since survival inevitably would also indicate a reincarnation, since no human being could do all his or her growing and evolving in one embodiment. That seemed very apparent at least. So you see the idea that one would still continue being exposed to the pain of life, the betrayals of others, the frustrations, the rejections, the poverties, the hurts, the illnesses.

This was a terrible idea to me, and so I did not welcome survival as a basic teaching or as a truth and when I started to study and read the literature which indicated that this did exist that is the evidence for survival and the evidence for much else. I decided that I would have to research it very thoroughly, and I have the type of temperament, in case you don't know it, it's a good one because it protects all of us from the delusions which we're all subject to. At least it protects us more than we would be otherwise. I have one of the most extraordinarily skeptical minds and natures that you're apt to find. So when I finally bow my head and say, yes, inevitably this must be so, I've been hit over the head a great deal to come to such a conclusion. Therefore I proceeded with my researches. Of course the very first thing that occurred to me, in as as much as I was basically mystical even when I was calling myself an atheist you know the first thing that occurred was that I did experience a type of cosmic consciousness where I knew that I was beginningless endless eternal and immortal however I did not know this of the personality or of the individual in this experience I had no consciousness of the existence of any separate beings or sentient consciousnesses so to speak. Therefore I said to myself, aha, everyone who believes in survival is just plain deluded. You see I was trying to disprove it. Now in view of this experience of mine which certainly was an extraordinary form of cosmic consciousness, in essence there really is no such thing as a separate individuality. Probably embodiment gives us that illusion.

Oh, I looked for every excuse under the sun, and believe me, when I look for them, I can find them, because I have a very fertile mind, and I found many an excuse. Wherever I read, because at this point I still had not yet had my personal verification of survival as individuals but that came later and meanwhile I was trying to find every other excuse or wherever personal survival was indicated so where it seemed that for instance a memory had survived in as much as contacts have been made since time immemorial with certain individuals from what we call the deceased which indicate the memory content of the individual who is said to have died I had a wonderful excuse for that I said oh they're just tuning into the universal subconsciousness and pulling out that memory see it sounds good doesn't it very good and And wherever it seemed that there was evidence for some deceased human being, not only being able to prove certain memory content, but actually act upon a situation, as happens occasionally, not often, but occasionally.

In other words, showing a concern for somebody who's still an embodiment. I had a wonderful excuse for that too. I said well the powers of this immortal spirit, which we are not as individuals, we're just the illusion is that, is such that it dramatizes the help. So that because you see, wasn't this diabolically clever of me finding such excuses?

So that the way I explained it was that the need for the human personality to dramatize after all we dramatize everything most of the time unconsciously after all if we get angry at each other we dramatize it we say how could you or if we want to be martyrs how could you I mean you know we're dramatizing the various situations because it's our nature that's why persons is persona mask so I decided on in as much as we're uh in this illusion or delusion of a persona, a mask. It's just the nature of this temporary mind and emotion to dramatize the tune-in to the memory content because it comforts us to figure that it was somebody else who loved us, who came and helped us. But it was really our own spirit, which is an immortal, all-inclusive oneness, having in its highest level no awareness, of all this nonsense going on below. You see? Just a bunch of whirlpools that come and go and come and go.

So I had my excuses for everything. But the place where I started to fall down was when I came across the cross-reference in psychic research. Now, I don't know how many of you are familiar with cross-references. But some 50 to 75 years ago, the scientific groups, or a group shall we say, of scientists formed the Scientific Research Society in England. And in that group, they decided to go in for all the various investigations from the very scientific point of view, in order to see whether one could prove things like telepathy, survival, telekinesis, which is the transporting of one object from one place to another by immaterial means, all the various types of psychic phenomena. Now the curious thing that occurred was this, that a couple of these scientists, well-known scientists who had become familiar with all the problems in psychic research, died. And upon dying, they proceeded to prove they hadn't died. And knowing all the various excuses that were given, being familiar with my kind of clever excuse to explain away some of this phenomena, because other people have tried of course to give the same type of answer in order not to accept what seems apparent. They, being familiar with these problems, decided on showing incontrovertibly, you might say, that the conscious intelligent entity is capable of continuing to be intelligent after death, and not only to prove memory content, but to prove purpose after physical death. So they evolved what's called cross-correspondence and cross-correspondence went something like this they had a group of mediums that is psychic individuals who worked with them who were known to be very psychically attuned to the astral level so one psychic sensitive or medium would receive a message giving either a line of a poetry and nothing else or else a bunch of words that were meaningless then another psychic medium say from Australia would receive something that was meaningless and would be asked from the discarnate entity to please mail it to the Psychic Research Society in England as would the other and when the two messages were brought together they made sense. Separately they made no sense at all, showing that an intelligence had been active to showing purpose. Furthermore, for instance, with H.

W. Myers, he was quite a poet, so he gave snatches of poetry. In one case there was a poem that had never been published, so it was in nobody's consciousness but his own. And I think it was two or three different mediums got snatches of it. But only when it was brought together did it make a whole, showing not only the content of memory had survived, but the purpose in proving it. And there were several such incidents. This, of course, disturbed me when I heard about the cross-correspondence because I had to be going too far afield to try to explain that. And so at that point, I decided to give up only to this degree, to say, well, I really don't believe in it, but maybe it's so.

I die hard and then it was shortly after I came to Dr. Case and he took me under his own personal wing for the further teaching and training I required that I started to receive other verifications both my own and from others that were the most fantastic verifications one could imagine dr case himself had these verifications regularly someone very close and near and dear to him incidentally who was a fellow cabalist who was with him in the golden dawn which was as you know the previous teaching training school to bota which dr case headed for a short time she indeed had been the one who had initiated him into this mystery spiritual training center she died and he was the inheritor of the estate for BOTA because she wanted the work to go on she wanted to give her help in fact she knew she was going she was a very highly evolved soul she could go to the zoo and pet the wildest creatures and they purred and rubbed against her this is the kind of contact she had with creatures. She was an unusual soul indeed. So she passed on, quite young by the way, and there he was. He had inherited the estate, he knew, because she had left him a note saying so, but he didn't have the formal papers. So he was sitting at her desk where he had been called.

He had looked through every drawer and he put his head in his hands, feeling rather depressed for the moment he missed her they had been very close suddenly there she was talked to him and she said I have a secret drawer here it is you reach your hand to this in this place and touch it it will open up and that's where I have the will and the papers which make you executor and so on which he did and there it was and she smiled at him and if that isn't proof of survival what do do you think well that's of course just one of many fantastic incidents now as I said I too have had astonishing proofs both inwardly and from and through others and incidentally it's a curious thing I still every once in a while find myself trying to find other reasons then I have to laugh at myself because there can be come in dear because there really can be no other satisfactory answer to all the evidence that has been amassed by science and through many other schools of thought that is the actual reality of the survival of the memory group or the individual who has the memories whom in incarnation we can allude to as the personality. And I have, without any question, been in contact with and met human beings who have proven their memory content. I have received items, some of which took me many months, and someone else near to me who did most of the library work and research took me many months to verify.

But I would say that I know of at least 20 individuals who have been deceased who have reported their various memories where it has been checked we can't always check individuals you know but these are the ones I refer to which have been checked and have been found to definitely have existed and all the data completely accurate. So you see that part I feel I should share with you, tell you about, and it's still a preliminary. Now what about the actual conditions of survival? I'm expecting that at this point we are all in agreement that it would be wise, if we want to be intelligent, to say that evidence points to the fact that survival is a definite reality. And the fact that I have not been that intelligent in the past in that realm of course as I explained to you it was due to my reluctance to think that people could continue to suffer seemed once was enough so let's accept that and go on then to what is taught as to the actual conditions which relate to so-called life and so-called death I don't know how many of you were here in a previous talk where and I don't remember whether I gave it in a Thursday night class or a Sunday morning you know after a while loses track but wherever I gave it it's a good idea to repeat it here if a few of you have heard this before because it has to do with the whole picture of survival and that is that actually when when we incarnate into a body the esoteric teaching is that it isn't the way it appears on the surface at all in other words the incarnating individual has a self-image now you have a self-image I have a self-image we all have a self-image some of us look in the mirror and say oh you handsome dog oh oh you lovely creature and some look in the mirror and sneer and say oh my god how horrible I hate myself and sometimes it depends on the mood we might do both but we have a self-image in terms of what we think we are emotionally what we think we are mentally what we think we and and altogether it forms a certain picture and this image is actually part of the true entity shall we say the true being to whom experience comes and in incarnating into a body actually this self-image which is immaterial in terms of the physical plane attaches itself because of karmic magnetic ties and necessities to the just then fertilized, or sometimes it might be a fertilized egg that has been fertilized several weeks before or even several months before. It may just sort of watch over it, you might say. The actual attachment of of the main core of the self-image may not take place for a long time. It depends on the evolutionary level of the individual, by the way. But there is a certain magnetic, at least one cord, almost like the, in the same manner as the navel is the area through which, you know, the umbilical cord through which the embryo receives its nourishment from the surrounding environment inside the womb of the mother. There is the same thing occurs actually in the inner plane that is the being which is an image remember because all of consciousness attaches itself magnetically with an invisible umbilical cord and starts to take from the environment to build into its own image its form and incidentally I don't know how many I've told this to I have discovered that in different incarnations we tend to build the similar kind of body and features from incarnation to incarnation we change it really only as we change our self-images not that they're exact but I'm talking about type I know definitely what my last incarnation is I mean I know it and it's on record and I had exactly the same type of vehicle the same long oval face I mean in other words the general pattern was identical I must have been satisfied I think this time I'll change it a little at any rate this self image then relates to what in actuality it relates to what we call our astral body you see you have often heard us talk about subconsciousness well in Qabalah we are taught that in essence what we call subconsciousness can also be called the astral vehicle so that the powers of subconsciousness really relate to the astral vehicle. Well, we know there's certainly no place in the physical vehicle for the various powers that subconsciousness has.

You know, it builds the body, supports, beats the heart, sends all these currents all over the nerves takes in assimilates sends out it's fantastic what subconsciousness does just with the vehicle but this is not a physical power this is an astral power and therefore the teaching basically is this we do when we die we do not go to any particular sphere all the spheres and levels are here in us now. You see, that's really related to the tree of life, which you see hangs in back. And when I give classes on the tree of life, we usually put another copy of it up here. But on the tree of life, we have ten circles, which are really ten spheres of activity. And in a sense, you can call them the ten vehicles of man. But in actuality, they're not exactly ten, they're really seven because three of them are different levels of one vehicle and that's in the astral part of our body so that when we die what happens actually all we've done this self-image this center of ourselves which says I drops its concentration for whatever reason you know sometimes it's sudden because of accident, sometimes it's slow because of deterioration, and usually it's in the pattern. It drops its concentration from that enclosed part of its consciousness which has immersed itself, imprisoned itself, in a certain group of vibrations, a concentration of a most intense kind which we call the physical body. It drops this concentration and then becomes aware of itself as still being in its body because it's still in its body it's in its astral body which is a counterpart of the physical body and at time of death it's an exact counterpart after a while it gets a little prettier but at time of death it's an it's exact because the image has been working you know through the experiences and so on so there it is now in actuality though this astral vehicle has many levels that's why you often hear us talk about the hierarchy of consciousness there are many levels within this astral level and the level or grade of our own evolution determines which level we will find ourselves on in our in the same body apparently to us when we die that we need to be on in other words it's a type of magnetic thing we are automatically and in a sense unconsciously magnetically drawn to that vibrational rate that is in harmony with the level and it's the astral level to begin with of our evolution now I suppose a person has been materialistically oriented and believe me darlings don't think that because somebody can spout god is love that this person is spiritually oriented because he can be somebody can be saying god is love and be putting a knife in his neighbor's back regularly you know it happens all the time so it isn't what people say or what they say they believe in again it's what they live that indicates uh their level it's just like jesus said by their works you shall know them and of course the time of death uh the one difference you might say among not the one but one of the primary differences after we drop our physical vehicles between uh physical incarnation and the things that occur afterwards is this that we can't make believe in other words we can put on holier-than-thou expressions when we're in a physical body we can be kidding ourselves deceiving ourselves about our own state of whether we have love in our nature or consideration or thoughtfulness we can actually think we have when we might really be very self-centered and selfish because we haven't grown enough you see but none of those self-deceptions work there because automatically like gravitation works automatically certain elements if they come together they'll automatically rush together and merge other elements they come together they will automatically explode and separate so automatically the vibratory condition of the astral vehicle which remember remember, looks just the same as it did when you were here, finds itself on the particular level that is its gravitational attraction.

Now then, the materialistically oriented person, and this includes, incidentally, unhappily, innumerable people in elementary metaphysics who judge spirituality by how well you can demonstrate money and or things and or prestige because this is the rankest kind of materialism that hides its face behind spiritual language but it it has its place because at least people are trying to learn how to keep their attention concentrated that is how to form images so in that respect in the final analysis after I don't know how many incarnations people will learn nevertheless those who concentrate on this materialistic level for the importances in life will find themselves pretty much earthbound and we have an extraordinarily tragic number of earthbound spirits by the way and they hover closest to us incidentally this includes alcoholics who if they cannot sell and dope addicts they cannot and they continue having the thirst for these physical things and being earthbound the thing that usually happens is they we should be familiar with these things although I don't like to talk about some of them but we should know about it because wisdom comes from knowledge knowledge properly digested and this is what we're all working for amongst other things of course so you see the uh alcoholic will naturally be earthbound uh with this thirst for the alcohol and being earthbound he will be attracted to spirits who drink heavily and he will push and urge telepathically because remember what we have said about the telepathic uh intercommunication that takes place not only between our minds but between discarnate minds and ours so that whatever we are in essence incidentally we are strengthened that way from discarnate minds as well as from incarnate minds at all times whether we are aware of it or not and the earthbound are very much involved in relation to those people that is the type of people who are concentrated on prestige, snobbery, position, you know, as well as money.

These are the most poverty-stricken, of course, of souls, and these too are earthbound, and they suffer, they suffer the sufferings of what are called the damned, and indeed this is part of what eventually grows them out of it. So that you see automatically the lower parts of the nature that continue to thirst and have no way to satisfy that thirst on the astral level suffer. And eventually from this suffering comes the refinements where they then go on to whatever level they're capable of before reincarnating again. Now that we were just mentioning the lower types and the reason we felt it's important to mention it also is because we feel you should realize that in most psychic mediumistic circles this is what's usually contacted because this is what's closest not that it will always happen even with in a low psychic astral mediumistic level occasionally somebody may manage to come through and give some message of comfort and love because there is a line through to God under all conditions so no one can ever say anything is a hundred percent one way or another and much good and comfort has come from certain psychic mediumistic levels we must realize this but on the whole it's a dangerous thing to fool with because of the illusions and delusions and the low level of vibrations that inevitably would be attracted to this type of thing. You see, the individuals who have learned how to love will reach the highest astral level automatically before going on to places even beyond. And of course the difficult thing to get people to understand when they're in incarnation on the physical playing is that in essence we should live in a body as though we know that we have eternity to live in but also at the same time live in such a way that we know we're going to have to face our own higher soul any day any minute any hour this is the idea of I die daily because once we have dropped the physical vehicle there's certain types of growth we cannot have until we come back in a body we digest on the other side of the veil you might say we assimilate our experiences in order to get the essence out of them and some human beings grow grow through an incarnation only a little smattering and some might grow volumes. Again, it depends on the aspiration drive and what we do in the incarnation. Now, the important thing, though, to remember about the Qabalistic teachings of life after death is this. Your degree of actual self-conscious control there is exactly in accordance with what you develop here and no more and no less so that on the other side you have an awful lot of individuals once they get up away from the lowest the earthbound levels you have an awful lot of souls who float around in a dream state and their assimilation takes place almost exactly like a dream state would do you know and you know how you are when you're dreaming it's pretty much like that they have not yet evolved strong enough centers of self-consciousness to take over with them in order to continue to consciously work and assimilate on the other side. Now you see on that other side again, the level that one is attracted to, one works in harmony with all the other individuals. In other words, you find your own family automatically, or else your own family for that time. So that you have things, curiously enough, like streets, houses, parks, schools, because consciousness keeps working with form at all time until it reaches the highest levels of complete unity with the Absolute. And at that point we would be in no position to discuss what this would or would not mean, would we? So what we have to do is deal with those areas where we can understand and prepare ourselves for that which is for us. In other words, prepare ourselves to really have the gravitational attraction on that level where we can continue to do ourselves and others the most good. Now here is an interesting thing that most people aren't aware of.

Occasionally and when we say occasionally we mean that out of how many billion have we got on this planet something like two billion out of the something like two billion that we have on the planet now I think it's more than that there happens to be a fraction of souls who have evolved to a point where they can continue to do something about their evolution even on the other aside and they do not have to rely completely on incarnation these individuals though have to have at least done enough preliminary work the kind that we give you here in bota in other words there has to have been a certain amount of transmutation of the personality there has to have been the development of a degree of love which automatically acts with thoughtfulness and unselfishness towards others without having to take uh count in other words without having to do it deliberately spontaneously and uh also with having developed an ability to hold high levels of consciousness in this way of having developed the ability to hold something like for instance our tarot key number 14 in mind saying the higher soul lives me the higher soul walks me the higher soul talks me in other words to the degree that one manages to relate the identity to the higher soul to that degree and along with that incidentally I might tell you that here is where a certain degree of value, great value comes in, in being associated with a group, a really spiritual group, who have the connection of the inner energies in and through and with the hierarchy. Because it's like having a family on the different level steps of the ladder, each standing in readiness to pick you up and take you that step beyond. And that is why, incidentally, in our work, those who have reached a certain point of the work, if they pass on, I noticed that the Master mentioned it years ago when we were getting certain very unusually beautiful communications for teaching that was being prepared for our members, and he referred to somebody who had passed on, and he said something about, and he was was able to enter into the third order.

Now the third order is really the highest level of functioning on the inner planes, not in terms of having attained the Christ consciousness, but in being able to consciously function on any one of the levels of our consciousness, whether it be the astral level of our emotional body, the astral level of our mental body, the higher level and beyond the astral level of the more subtle, a higher mind body, the higher egoic body and so on, an ability to function in that. And that's what first started me off on a research into that idea and I discovered that in actuality we can reach a point in our evolution right here in the body where we will not have to come back into enforced reincarnations that is blind ones anymore because of being able to take enough consciousness and development over with us on the other side so that we can do a great deal more of the work there and and what does it amount to basically of course it's a matter of consciousness how much consciousness are you able to take over with you across the line that is centered in the higher levels of the higher soul and therefore continues to be under the direction of the Christ consciousness of the the divine will, aspiration, and drive.

And I then discovered, and this I know, that any human being who has achieved the ability to work in harmony, in spiritual harmony, for the good or promotion of mankind that is like meditating together part of our work in the color and sound we do in our Qabalistic chant is meant to get your vehicles vibrating and receptive to that energy you know so as to help you strengthen your own center of beingness that's part of what we're what we work with together often we don't even mention some of the things that we are attempting to accomplish for your well-being and your greater attainment because this is necessary for the whole you know and I if I be lifted up shall lift all others unto myself and we need as many centers as possible to reach that point of liberation therefore on the other side then if one reaches a certain stage of development one is able to function consciously in continuing to help the evolution on the physical plane you see you can't get away from the evolution on the physical plane but there are many souls who are working it out from that side that is working out the last bits of their karma from that side of the veil because of having attained the ability to project enough love, enough kindliness, enough caring for others, enough power, spiritual power, naturally.

Not from the other side I take it and so in essence then we could say of course I could give you many incidents and anecdotes I give that in the classes wherever we come to those places and the classes where it's called for and in a Sunday morning talk we can't go into it that thoroughly because the class lasts an hour and a half and a Sunday morning talk has to be shorter otherwise you would get restless and start looking at your watches but that in essence then the thing we want to remember is this certainly we survive whatever our self-image is it continues to be until we change it when we drop our physical bodies we will automatically and magnetically be attracted to the level of evolution that we have attained to so that we will be with those who are on the same level imagine what hell it must be for those who are power mad and puffed up with pride and with avariciousness and so on all finding themselves together isn't that something and I'm sorry that we have to laugh so delightedly about it but how else would they learn at any rate and also the thing to remember that again in accordance with the qabalistic teaching we can while we are in a vehicle attain to enough strength of soul of aspiration of self-awareness so that we can work out a great deal of our karma on the other side but only if we manage to do, reach whatever our full capacity is on this side.

Sometimes we reach, I mean, there may be half a dozen on the planet at one time who can do it in and through a body right now.

But considering the age we're in, considering what's occurring, all the souls that are incarnating at this time, because of the division that is taking place already between those who will have the capacity to live a full brotherhood of man and those who will not, it becomes more important than ever that we work on being all those things that our spiritual ideals at least make us want to be more effectively and to remember that where two or more are gathered in my name there am I amongst them that when we gather together invoking these energies as we do with our services, our classes, our ritualistic work, our different techniques. And when we join together like that, we are opening ourselves to a far more intensive force and greater help than we could get usually just alone. And again, it's a practice in the sharing together of an aspiration, which makes a stronger shaft of light reaching to the heavens and coming back to bless us and the emanations of its love.

So let's at least try to remember also that it's kind of foolish to be afraid to die.

Most of us automatically sort of shrink back with fear. In reality, dying is living, and living is dying.

You are far more, anyone who has reached a point in aspiration who will come to the Temple of Tarot and Qabalah certainly has reached a point where he need not fear what level magnetically he will go to and the livingness on the other side is something so much more glorious and beautiful there's so much greater fulfillment and capacity to express all the powers that one has the powers of beauty and the powers of the spirit and that we must remember that an incarnation is as a blink of an eye to our higher soul to live it well but as immortal spirits we need not fear dying and we need not think that dying is being any different than living except that we are freer larger and have a greater capacity to reach to those of our own the beloveds of our soul to whom we will automatically go as water automatically rushes down the mountain to join itself to the ocean