The School of Hard Knocks

Lately I've been watching various accounts of Near Death Experiences of NDEs on YouTube. It's slowly dawning on me that a physical incarnation on Earth is really the only way to make significant progress spiritually. While living on this planet, we are utterly focused temporally and geographically due to our physical bodies. Unless we are conjoined twins, these same bodies divide us absolutely from other bodies. We may try to fuse with another body sexually but such encounters are short-lived and often unfulfilling. 

Our bodies may be sick and frail, damaged or incomplete. We may eat too much or not enough. We may eat foods or take drugs that undermine our physical health. Our life is dependent on taking our next breath and, if that is denied us for any reason, we die. Death is literally one breath away. Our awareness of the world is created and sustained by a wondrous but bizarrely intricate nervous system supported by an assemblage of other interconnected systems.

Psychologically we are slaves to an ego that should act in our best interests but instead wreaks havoc in our lives due to outbursts of anger, jealousy, lust and other excesses. The mind is a butterfly that flits into a remembered past or an anticipated future, never alighting on the moment. The frustrations we experience because of our physical and psychological limitations can drive us to madness or suicide. Material and emotional losses can be equally destructive but both can be transformative in ways that are not possible on the non-physical planes of existence.

On the astral plane, or subtle plane as it's sometimes called, we remain distinct but much less so than when we are in physical bodies. We can feel what others feel and know what others are thinking without the need for words. We are diffuse and bathed in the ashen light. For the majority of suffering humanity, its only experience of the astral occurs for a short time after "crossing over". Soon the astral body sinks into a state of profound subjectivity as the life just lived unfolds and the life review proceeds.

The astral body slowly fades away as it literally digests itself. Even in the astral world, energy cannot be created or destroyed but only changed into other forms. The energy required for the life review draws by necessity on the energy contained within the astral body and is transferred to the mental body that stores the insights and lessons that arise from the review process. 

This review process is far different from what might have been its equivalent in the physical body. Remember in the astral world we can feel what others are feeling and know what others are thinking. During our life review, we get to feel the effects of our actions on others and know directly what they thought and felt. Freed from our bodies, our ego, that was once very much associated with our physical form, undergoes a transformation. There is still the sense of "I am" but it is no longer connected with the body or the thoughts that are generated by our physical brains.

We can therefor observe the life just lived with dispassion and objectivity (within our deep subjectivity). We can see our imperfections clearly, understand how we could have done better and begin to formulate a new plan for a new life that will set matters right. All our insights are progressively stored in our mental bodies as the energy of our astral bodies fade. Eventually the light flickers on and off and then goes out forever. All that we once were in our previous incarnation is gone forever.

As this point there is no awareness of anything. We are simply the potential energy that is stored in our mental body, although "body" is not the best term perhaps. We have no form, no shape but only potential. This point of potential now begins to grow an astral body. This is the beginning of our true gestation. I'm not sure what our state of awareness is as this body grows. I would imagine that we are immersed in the light and love that pervades the astral plane. There would be awareness of that without our necessarily having any thoughts or self identity. There would be a feeling of lightness, diffuseness, joy and vibrancy.

As the time draws near for a new physical incarnation, the descriptions offered by the Tibetan Book of the Dead describe the situation fairly accurately. We begin to feel like we are being squeezed or squashed into small crevices in rocks. It is a painful process to accept the limitation and confinement of a new physical body. For some, just this initial experience of the physical plane, is sufficient. The fetus fails to thrive or is terminated and the embryonic astral body is raised on the astral plane by benevolent astral entities. For most however, physical birth will ensue.

Some people, upon passing over, do not go through the immersion into deep subjectivity and subsequent rebirth because their connection to the physical world was already tenuous. Instead they can begin to live and function on the astral plane. They can remain there as long as they like and make progress through the various subplanes of the astral realm. Nonetheless, for ultimate realisation it will be necessary for them to take physical incarnation again. In some cases, only one lifetime will be necessary but in other cases several. The same is true of the astral bodies who only associate temporarily with a human fetus and spend their childhood on the astral plane.

The physical world is truly the school of hard knocks where consciousness experiences maximum resistance. These knocks however, are necessary to knock some sense into us so that we eventually realise who we really are. These knocks or shocks are not possible on the higher planes that are permeated with the divine radiance. Meher Baba has described the music of the astral planes as being so indescribably sweet that it can be listened to for days on end without boredom. On the higher planes we bask in such divine radiance but we are not one with it.

On the physical plane, this divine radiance is denied us and it can only be regained with great difficulty. The terrible struggle to find it again is sufficient in some cases to draw a person into the circle of a perfect master, someone who is already one with this divine radiance. If we are deserving, the perfect master will bestow realisation on us and in turn we may pass it on to others. This happens rarely but it happens and in the fullness of time it will happen to us all. Jai Baba.