Death, if it is not seen as an end, can also be thought of as a positive experience. The concept of immortality appears to be the answer to a situation that would otherwise give rise to despair. What is meant by immortality is an essential element of waking consciousness that continues to exist after death: consciousness may undergo many changes, but its continuity persists.
Growing Evidence
Although it is still difficult to prove that human consciousness exists after death, evidence for it is growing as a result of scientific research on out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and extrasensory perception (ESP).
Many people have found themselves outside their bodies while the physical body was still lying in bed. In "near-death" experiences, people have become aware of themselves outside their bodies on the operating table or inside a wrecked car. Such experiences show that the range of consciousness we regard as "normal" can be extended; but it has been left to Theosophical concepts to explain the fundamental nature of consciousness.
The Indwelling Spirit
The Ageless Wisdom (Theosophy) affirms the existence of a spirit that exists before birth and continues to exist after death.
Each of us, being in our essential nature a part of this indwelling spirit, is on an evolutionary journey that requires many lives to unfold our spiritual potential. All of us, therefore, have passed through the gates of birth and death many times.
The studies by the psychiatrist Dr. Ian Stevenson and other researchers of the memories many people (especially children) have of previous lives on earth offer evidence for reincarnation and thus for the continuation of existence.
The Field of Consciousness
Although human beings instinctively sense that they are more than their bodies, it is hard to grasp that the physical world is only part of a great continuum of matter that extends, with ever-increasing subtlety or rate of vibration, beyond the reach of our senses. Our knowledge of X-rays, radio and television makes it easier for us to accept the reality of the unseen world. Science is working with ever-widening concepts of the nature of matter and energy, and non-specialists can now more readily grasp ideas that include unseen forces as well as seen ones.
Death and Sleep
If we accept that existence continues after leaving the physical body, death is not very different from sleep. When we fall asleep or are anesthetized, consciousness temporarily withdraws from the body; yet we go on having emotional and mental adventures, and when we wake we often remember them. In our dreams we descend to depths and rise to heights that reveal realms of consciousness beyond what we experience in our waking hours. Theosophy holds that with death, when the body is permanently abandoned, consciousness sets out on a journey toward realms far loftier than those it enters in sleep.
In out-of-body experiences a person often sees himself connected to the physical body by a silver cord made of subtle energy. At the moment of death a clairvoyant may see the life force leaving the body along this same cord, as a fine, silvery stream from the crown of the head. This time, however, the link between the physical and the superphysical is permanently severed.
Where Do We Go?
According to Theosophy, with death we experience an ever-increasing freedom, as consciousness is freed step by step from the heavy vibrations of physical matter. The soul passes through a process of purification before moving on to the next stage of its journey. When salt is obtained from seawater, what remains after the water evaporates is not pure salt but a residue containing impurities that must be removed; this residue must be refined separately. The state of the soul is similar. The person then enters the mental world and continues to refine the experiences of life. Whether one is a profound thinker or concerned only with the details of everyday life, the motives that guided one's life on earth determine the level of the mental world at which one will begin to extract the essence of one's life's endeavors.
Near-Death Experiences
In recent years the testimonies of hundreds of people who have undergone "clinical death" have been collected and published by medical researchers. The best known of these researchers are Dr. Raymond Moody, author of Life After Life (Ölümden Sonra Yaşam), and Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, author of On Death and Dying (Ölüm ve Ölmek Üzerine). The experiences of these people, who are alive to tell what happened to them when they "died," are strikingly similar.
For most, the first experience is passing through a dark tunnel. Then their consciousness refocuses and they find themselves in a "spiritual" body that is hard to describe. From this state they watch, like an independent observer, as their physical bodies are resuscitated on the operating table or pulled from a wrecked car. Many then find themselves in a world of light and freedom, where they meet a "being of light" radiating perfect understanding and perfect love. Many experience an incredibly vivid and instantaneous review or replay of their lives, and realize that they must return to complete the unfinished work of this incarnation. Many were reluctant to return. All of them have said that the experience changed their lives radically and that they no longer fear death.
