Consciousness

[JJCarsonian]

In the physical reality, I am constantly thinking about life and the meaning thereof. I feel like i have a very strong conscious awareness, but during dreams, i only sometimes realize i have conscious awareness. Normally, during dreams, i am moving along the story with no real awareness, and I don't have a full memory, maybe a memory bank pertaining to the dream. Only sometimes i realize who I am and have conscious awareness.

My question is, when we die, do we have a lower, same, or higher conscious awareness than we do in this physical reality? Do our physical bodies give us more conscious awareness? I don't know if i should be judging based on how i am during dreams or what.

What are your understanding?

Thanks

[Stranger]

Leadbeater's Textbook of Theosophy provides a detailed narrative about what occurs after death. It's freely available and very interesting.

Although I can't independently corroborate all of the details, enough of the book's obscure metaphysical details match my experience to make me inclined toward accepting the book as accurate.

[Minyatur]

Only sometimes i realize who I am and have conscious awareness.

But who are you really?

I think there's somewhat a spectrum of that all up to one unified center where you are like "yeah, I am aware that I am truly all Infinity from all of that It is that I am" and this awareness is boundless and echoed forever.

[Cainite]

In the physical reality, I am constantly thinking about life and the meaning thereof.  I feel like i have a very strong conscious awareness, but during dreams, i only sometimes realize i have conscious awareness.  Normally, during dreams, i am moving along the story with no real awareness, and I don't have a full memory, maybe a memory bank pertaining to the dream.  Only sometimes i realize who I am and have conscious awareness.

My question is, when we die, do we have a lower, same, or higher conscious awareness than we do in this physical reality?  Do our physical bodies give us more conscious awareness?  I don't know if i should be judging based on how i am during dreams or what.

What are your understanding?

Thanks

The quality of conscious awareness in dreams also depends on how deep you sleep. not just how strong your conscious awareness in wake life is.

And yes. if there's an afterlife in which we're conscious, chances are it's much better in every way.

[JJCarsonian]

Leadbeater's Textbook of Theosophy provides a detailed narrative about what occurs after death.   It's freely available and very interesting.

Although I can't independently corroborate all of the details, enough of the book's obscure metaphysical details match my experience to make me inclined toward accepting the book as accurate.

Thank you for your replies. Can you give a brief summary of what you believe?

[Stranger]

I try not to believe anything I haven't directly experienced or have had confirmed through consistent information from multiple trusted sources. I hold the rest as hypotheses with various degrees of likelihood of being true.

I recommend the following sources:
Textbook of Theosopy: "What happens after death" chapter: http://www.sacred-texts.com/the/tot/chap06.htm

Michael Newton's "Journey of Souls" and "Destiny of Souls"

Robert Monroe's books - I've only read Ultimate Journey. His firsthand explorations of what Ra calls "the inner planes" appears consistent with Leadbeater's descriptions, although they focus on different aspects.

[Diana]

The human mind is limited. It wants to "know," but it is constrained by this physical 3D existence and its linear time construct. It's great fun to canvass philosophies intellectually, but to "know" through 3D mind as it operates from linear time will not happen.

This relates to the wave/particle duality. In the wave function, all outcomes are possible. In the particle function, the wave has collapsed to one outcome. The mind desires a collapsed outcome, something specific. But that state ignores the infinite field of possibilities. To "believe," to "know," is to bar or inhibit new information and the expanded awareness.

So as one explores reality through mind, it is best to resist a definitive conclusion (collapsed outcome). 

I recall two channeled sources—Seth (Jane Roberts), and The Pleiadians (Barbara Marciniak)—that said we create our afterlife experience the same way we create our lives in 3D. That is not to say this is my belief because I don't believe. But it is a possibility.

[anagogy]

In the physical reality, I am constantly thinking about life and the meaning thereof.  I feel like i have a very strong conscious awareness, but during dreams, i only sometimes realize i have conscious awareness.  Normally, during dreams, i am moving along the story with no real awareness, and I don't have a full memory, maybe a memory bank pertaining to the dream.  Only sometimes i realize who I am and have conscious awareness.

My question is, when we die, do we have a lower, same, or higher conscious awareness than we do in this physical reality?  Do our physical bodies give us more conscious awareness?  I don't know if i should be judging based on how i am during dreams or what.

What are your understanding?

Thanks

The quality of your awareness in the dream state is simply a matter of practice. You can carry full waking consciousness into the dream plane (time/space). Again, it just takes a great amount of practice (intention repeatedly confirmed). The natural habit of most human beings is to aimlessly drift off as they sleep, get absorbed in their thoughts, and regenerate their minds by accumulating vital forces while they sleep. When you get good at taking your waking consciousness into the dream state, people start calling it "astral projection" (one step beyond lucid dreaming)

The body acts as an anchor for your spirit to the lower planes. Thus, most people dream in the lower astral, just slightly out of phase with physical reality, occasionally getting out further into the higher planes, where they might have prophetic dreams or interesting creative dreams. In fact many people even have NDE's in the lower astral (the personal zone) as well. The only difference is, during NDE's they are experiencing it in full waking consciousness because their anchor (the body) is all jacked up. Most people have never had this experience, and thus they take everything they see as The Ultimate Truth which I must now start a religion over. This is why there is so much variation in NDE's. In the lower astral, your personal beliefs will warp intelligent infinity to your personal perspective. Thus, all interactions from higher intelligences must needs take on the appearance of their personal religious ideology that they subscribe to. On the higher planes, the personal filters for reality are released, allowing in less distorted versions of the One Infinite Creator.

After death, you have a much higher consciousness than in the physical because the anchor is cut. Just like the anchor keeps you anchored to the physical, the spirit when out of the body is naturally anchored to the other end of the pole, thus, you naturally return to the higher self for healing after death (the indigo body). Some souls stubbornly refuse to go home after death, fearing divine retribution, and become earth bound ghosts (or lower astral ghosts trapped in emotional loops -- nightmares). Many of them can't see "higher beings" any better than Earth people can, thus they generally just move about familiar locations, repeating rote actions they did in life, often with the same warped physical life habits. Much like jello molds released from the mold, they retain much of the shape and limitations they did in life, which eventually decays, because entropy still holds sway on the lower planes, though less so than the physical world, and then, one way or another, are released from this torture and like a cork begin to float up to the higher planes (once the accumulated lower subtle matter decays -- sort of like dying again).

To get a concept of how most souls behave after death, Michael Newton's books do a good job of explaining how this is for most people. Though, I strongly suspect Newton left out a great deal of the "way out there" stuff that inevitably cropped up during his sessions. The books were a bridge for normal people to understand death, which they serve quite admirably.

[Cainite]

your personal beliefs will warp intelligent infinity to your personal perspective. Thus, all interactions from higher intelligences must needs take on the appearance of their personal religious ideology that they subscribe to. On the higher planes, the personal filters for reality are released, allowing in less distorted versions of the One Infinite Creator.

When I didn't believe in the afterlife, everytime I died in dreams I saw only nothingness.. I merged with the void. what you say explains it clearly.

[Stranger]

Both Monroe and Leadbeater describe after-death astral environments which match one's familiar surroundings. Each religion has its own "world" where its followers naturally gravitate.

Leadbeater describes a series of "deaths", as various layers (what Hindus call koshas) lose their integrity and dissipate, allowing the soul to rise higher through the planes. He mentions that a soul can remain at each stage for decades, basically living a kind of life there. The more negative gunk there is in one's system, the lower you end up and the longer you stay there, but eventually you are freed from it, as anagogy describes.

Monroe did not explicitly describe a sequence of such 'deaths', but what he does describe is consistent with that idea (he basically seems to describe the first after-life resting stop but not the subsequent ones).

[JJCarsonian]

Wow, very interesting!! I love hearing all your takes and appreciate your spending the time to write it out. I have read all of Dr Newton's books, i found it really interesting. He was one of my first links into the metaphysical realm. Before, i always did my searching by scientific, physics, and astronomy means.