After-Death Choices And The Mechanics Of Transition (3)

Seth Speaks, Session 546

After-Death Choices And The Mechanics Of Transition (3)

The time of choosing is dependent upon the condition and circumstances of the individual following transition from physical life.  Some take longer than others to understand the true situation.

Others must be divested of many impeding ideas and symbols, as explained earlier.  The time of choosing may happen almost immediately, in your terms, or it may be put off for a much longer period while training is carried on.  The main impediments standing in the way of the time of choosing are, of course, the faulty ideas harbored by any given individual.

A belief in heaven or hell, under certain conditions, can be equally disadvantageous.  Some will refuse to accept the idea of further work, development, and challenge, believing instead that conventional heaven situations are the only possibility.  For some time they may indeed inhabit such an environment, until they learn through their own experience that existence demands development, and that such a heaven would be sterile, boring and indeed “deadly”.  Then they are ready for the time of choosing. 

Others may insist that because of their transgressions they will be cast into hell, and because of the force of such belief, they may for some time actually encounter such conditions.  In either case, however, there are always teachers available.  They try to get through these false beliefs.

In the Hades conditions, the individuals come somewhat more quickly to their senses.  Their own fears trigger within themselves the answering release.  Their need, in other words, more quickly opens up the inner doorways of knowledge.  Their state does not usually last as long, therefore, as the heaven state.

Either state, however, puts off the time of choosing and the next existence.  There is one point I would like to mention here: in all cases the individual creates his experience.  I say this again at the risk of repeating myself because this is a basic fact of all consciousness and existence.  There are no special “places” or situations or conditions set apart after physical death in which any given personality must have experience.

Suicides, as a class, for example, do not have any particular “punishment” meted out to them, nor is their condition any worse a priori.  They are treated as individuals.  Any problems that were not faced in this life will, however, be faced in another one.  This applies not only to suicides, however.

A suicide may bring about his own death because he rejects existence on any but highly specific terms chosen by himself.  If this is the case, then of course he will have to learn differently.  Many others, however, choose or deny experience while within the physical system, committing suicide quite as effectively while still physically alive.

The conditions connected with an act of suicide are also important, and the inner reality and realization of the individual.  I mention this here because many philosophies teach that suicides are met by a sort of special, almost vindictive fate, and such is not the case.  However, if a person kills himself, believing that the act will annihilate his consciousness forever, then this false idea may severely impede his progress, for it will be further intensified by guilt.

Again, teachers are available to explain the true situation.  Various therapies are used.  For example, the personality may be led back to the events prior to the decision.  Then the personality is allowed to change the decision.  An amnesia effect is induced, so that the suicide itself is forgotten.  Only later is the individual informed of the act, when he is better able to face it and understand it.

Obviously, however, these conditions are also impediments to the time of choosing.  It goes without saying that an obsession with earthly concerns also acts in the same manner.  In such instances, often the personality will insist upon focusing his perceptive abilities and energies toward physical existence.  This is a psychic refusal to accept the fact of death.  The individual knows quite well that he is dead in your terms, but he refuses to complete the psychic separation.

There are instances of course where the individuals concerned do not realize the fact of death.  It is not a matter of refusing to accept it, but a lack of perception.  In this state such an individual will also be obsessed with earthly concerns, and wander perhaps bewildered throughout his own home or surroundings.  The time of choosing will, of course, necessarily be postponed.

The mechanics of transition therefore are highly variable, as the mechanics of physical life are highly variable.  Many of the impediments that I have mentioned impede progress not only after death, but during your own physical existence.  This should certainly be taken into consideration.  An overly strong identification with the sexual characteristics can also hold back progress.  If an individual considers identity strongly in terms of male or female identity, then such a person may refuse to accept the fact of the sexual changes that occur in reincarnational existences.  This kind of sexual identification, however, also impedes personality development during physical life.

While, generally speaking, the issues just mentioned operate as impediments, there are always exceptions.  A belief in heaven that is not an obsessional belief can be used as a useful framework, as a basis of operation in which an individual will often accept easily then, the new explanations that will be offered.

Even a belief in a time of judgment is a useful framework in many instances, for while there is no punishment meted out in your terms, the individual is then prepared for some kind of spiritual examination and evaluation.

Those who understand thoroughly that reality is self-created will have least difficulty.  Those who have learned to understand and operate in the mechanics of the dream state will have great advantage.  A belief in demons is highly disadvantageous after death, as it is during physical existence.  A systematized theology of opposites is also detrimental.  If you believe, for example, that all good must be balanced by evil, then you bind yourself into a system of reality that is highly limiting, and that contains within it the seeds of great torment.

In such a system, even good becomes suspect, because an equal evil is seen to follow it.  The god-versus-devil, angels-versus-demons – the gulf between animals and angels – all of these distortions are impediments.  In your system of reality now you set up great contrasts and opposing factors.  These operate as root assumptions within your reality.

They are extremely superficial and largely the result of misused intellectual abilities.  The intellect alone cannot understand what the intuitions most certainly know.  In trying to make sense in its terms of physical existence, the intellect has set up these opposing factors.  The intellect says, “If there is good, there must be evil”, for it wants things explained in neat parcels.  If there is an up, there must be a down.  There must be balance.  The inner self, however, realizes that in much larger terms, evil is simply ignorance, that “up” and “down” are neat terms applied to space which knows no such directions.

A strong belief in such opposing forces is highly detrimental, however, for it prevents an understanding of the facts – the facts of inner unity and of oneness, of interconnections and of cooperation.  A belief, therefore, an obsessional belief in such opposing factors, is perhaps the most detrimental element, not only after death but during any existence.

There are some individuals who have never experienced during physical life that sense of harmony and oneness in which such opposing factors merge.  Such individuals have many stages to go through following transition, and usually many other physical lives “ahead” of them.

As you form your physical experience individually and collectively, so after the time of choosing, you join others who have decided upon the same general kind of experience.  A strong cooperative venture is then begun as preparations are made.  These will vary according to the type of existence chosen.  There are general patterns, therefore.  No individual’s reality is identical to another’s, and yet there are overall groupings.

Quite simply, a belief in the good without a belief in the evil, may seem highly unrealistic to you.  This belief, however, is the best kind of insurance that you can have, both during physical life and afterward.

It may outrage your intellect, and the evidence of your physical senses may shout that it is untrue, yet a belief in good without a belief in evil is actually highly realistic, since in physical life it will keep your body healthier, keep you psychologically free of many fears and mental difficulties, and bring you a feeling of ease and spontaneity in which the development of your abilities can be better fulfilled.  After death it will release you from the belief in demons and hell, and enforced punishment.  You will be better prepared to understand the nature of reality as it is.  I understand that the concept does indeed offend your intellect, and that your senses seem to deny it.  Yet you should already realize that your sense tell you many things, which are not true; and I tell you that your physical senses perceive a reality that is a result of your beliefs.

Believing in evils, you will of course perceive them.  Your world has not tried the experiment as yet which would release you.  Christianity was but a distortion of this main truth – that is, organized Christianity as you know it.  I am not simply speaking here of the original precepts.  They were hardly given a chance, and we will discuss some of this later in the book.

The experiment that would transform your world would operate upon the basic idea that you create your own reality according to the nature of your beliefs, and that all existence was blessed, and that evil does not exist in it.  If these ideas were followed individually and collectively, then the evidence of your physical senses would find no contradiction.  They would perceive the world and existence as good.

This is the experiment that has not been tried, and these are the truths that you must learn after physical death.  Some, after death, understanding these truths, choose to return to physical existence and explain them.  Through the centuries this has been the way.  In the system of probabilities that originates within physical reality, this is also the case.

There are systems of probabilities not connected with your own system at all, much more advanced than any you presently imagine, and in these, the truths of which I have been speaking are well known.  In them individuals creatively and purposely create realities, knowing how to do so and giving full rein to the creative abilities of consciousness.

I mention this here simply to point out that there are many other after-death conditions not connected with your system.  When you have learned to your capacity in this in-between period, you are ready to progress.  The in-between period itself, however, has many dimensions of activity and divisions of experience.  As you can see, to put it as simply as possible, everyone does not “know” everyone else.

Instead of countries or physical divisions, you have psychological states.  To an individual in one, another might seem quite foreign.  In many communications with those in these transitional states, messages through mediums can appear as highly contradictory.  The experience of the “dead” is not the same.  The conditions and situations vary.  An individual explaining his reality can only explain what he knows.  Again, such material often offends the intellect that demands simple, neat answers and descriptions that tally.

Most individuals from these stages who communicate with “living” relatives, have not reached the time of choosing as yet, and have not completed their training.

They may still be perceiving reality in terms of their old beliefs.  Almost all communications come from this level, particularly when there is a bond of relationship in an immediately previous life.  Even at this level, however, such messages serve a purpose.  The communicators can inform living relatives that existence continues and they can do it in terms that the living can understand.

They can relate to the living, since often their beliefs are still the same; in fortunate circumstances they can communicate their knowledge as they learn.  Gradually, however, their own interests change.  They take up relationships in their new existence.

At the time of choosing, therefore, the personality is already preparing itself to leave for another existence.  In your terms of time this in-between period can last for centuries.  It can last only a few years.  Again, however, there are exceptions.  There are cases in which a personality goes very quickly into another physical life, in perhaps a matter of hours.  This is usually unfortunate, and is caused by an obsessive desire to return to physical life.

Such a quick return, however, can also be taken by a personality who is charged with a great purpose, who disregards or discards an old physical body, and is reborn almost immediately into a new one in order to finish an important and necessary project already begun.