Chapter 3: Transition

1Man fears death out of ignorance. 2What we experience at transition varies in conformity with our earthly refinement.

3At transition—which is called ‘death’—consciousness is retained as part of memory. 4After death, a reconstruction of atoms takes place.

5The ethereal composition of the soul, or psychic image, is radioactive. 6She is capable of generating inexhaustible energy and bringing about limitless changes of form and adaptations.

7Hence, death does not exist. 8Transition may be experienced as soft golden rain—9through and beyond the lightning of his flashing spear.

---

ECHOES & NOTES

Chapter 3: Transition

3.1: Man fears death out of ignorance.

The man who knows the truth about life does not deeply care whether he dies or lives, because he does not identify himself with the body. Death to him means no more than birth. The one life is eternal. It has never been born and can never die. It will go on and on. Realizing this infinite peace, why should the knower of truth unduly cherish the body? He is quite prepared to part with it at any time, for death has lost its terror. (Brunton [1939] 1982: 81)

3.2: What we experience at transition varies in conformity with our earthly refinement.

Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing. (The Gospel of Philip [c260] in NHLiE [1977] 1990: 153)

3.3: At transition—which is called ‘death’—consciousness is retained as part of memory.

Our empirical experience of death is the disappearance from the physical plane of living beings. Such is the fact of our experience from without that we have by means of our five senses. But the disappearance as such is not confined to the domain of our outward experience of the senses. It is experienced also in the domain of inner experience, in that of consciousness. There the images and representations disappear just as living beings do so for the experience of the senses. This is what we call ‘forgetting.’ And this forgetting extends each night to the totality of our memory, will, and understanding—of a kind such that we forget ourselves entirely. This is what we call ‘sleep.’ (Tomberg [1985] 1993: 342)

3.4: After death, a reconstruction of atoms takes place.

When the soul enters the soul world after death, it becomes subject to the laws of that world. The laws act on it and the manner in which the soul’s inclinations toward the physical are destroyed depends on the action. The way these laws act on the soul must differ depending upon the kinds of soul substances and soul forces in whose domain it is placed at the time. Each of these according to its kind will make its purifying, cleansing influence felt. The process that takes place here is such that all antipathy in the soul is gradually overcome by the forces of sympathy. This sympathy itself is brought to its highest pitch because, through this highest degree of sympathy with the rest of the soul world, the soul will, as it were, merge and become one with it. Then will it be utterly emptied of self-seeking. It ceases to exist as a being inclined to physically sensible existence, and the spirit is set free by it. (Steiner [1904/1922] 1971: 93-4)

3.5: The ethereal composition of the soul, or psychic image, is radioactive.

The phenomenon of radioactivity [in physics] gave definite proof of the composite nature of atoms, showing that the atoms of radioactive substances not only emit various types of radiation, but also transform themselves into atoms of completely different substances. (Capra 1975: 67)

In a letter to C. G. Jung Wolfgang Pauli—recipient of the Nobel Prize for physics in 1945 and co-creator with Jung, the idea of synchronicity as an acausal connecting principle—set himself the task of defining radioactivity in a ‘neutral language’: A process of transmutation of an active centre, leading ultimately to a stable state, is accompanied by self-duplication (‘multiplying’) and expanding phenomena, associated with further transmutation that are brought about through an invisible reality. (Pauli 1950 in Roth 2002:4 ‘The connection between radioactivity and synchronicity in the Pauli/Jung letters)

3.6: She is capable of generating inexhaustible energy and bringing about limitless changes of form and adaptations.

So powerful is the energy of the soul that it could not advance into a physical form without, literally, exploding that form. In the creation of personality, the soul calibrates parts of itself, reduces parts of itself, to take on the human experience. You higher Self is that aspect of your soul that is in you, but it is not the fullness of your soul. It is a smaller soul self. Therefore, ‘higher self’ is another term for ‘soul’; yet the soul is more than the higher self. (Zukav [1990] 1991: 87)

3.7: Hence, death does not exist.

The disciples said to Jesus, ‘Tell us how our end will be.’ Jesus said, ‘Have you discovered, then, the beginning, that you look for the end? For where the beginning is, there will the end be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning; he will know the end and will not experience death.’ (Gospel of Thomas Logion 18 (50/200) in NHLiE [1977] 1990: 128)

To meditate on death is to meditate on life. To ask any question that is significant about the fleeting experiences that come to the ego, brining pain as well as what appear to be happiness, to understand any of these fleeting experiences, is impossible, except in the context of the total continuum. (Lakshminarayan 1975:6)

There is no death. There is, as you know, entrance into fuller life. There is freedom from the handicaps of the fleshly vehicle. (Djwhal Khul through Alice A Baily 1934:300)

3.8: Transition may be experienced as soft golden rain...

And who at the end of his time leaves his body thinking of me, he in truth comes to my being: he in truth comes to me. For on whomsoever one thinks at the last moment of life, unto him in truth he goes, through sympathy with his nature. Think of me therefore at all times. (Bhagavad-Gītā 8.5-6 [c400 B.C.-c400 A.D./1962] 1980:77)

3.9: ...through and beyond the lightning of his flashing spear.

Sun and moon stood still in the heaven, at the glint of your flying arrow, at the lightning of your flashing spear. (Hab 3: 11)

The person who has committed suicide leaves his physical body in an artificial way, although all the feelings connected with it remain unchanged. In the case of natural death, the decay of the body is accompanied by a partial dying out of the feelings of attachment to it. In the case of suicides, there are, in addition to the torment caused by the feeling of having been suddenly emptied out, the unsatisfied desires and wishes because of which they have deprived themselves of their bodies. (Steiner [1922] 1971: 97)