After Death Experience – Part 9
After Death Experience Part Nine
In this life we are consciously aware of two distinct worlds of experience: Our internal world of subjective private experience, which is going on inside the physical organism with its senses and natural capacity for cognition, and the external material world with its objects and sentient beings of many kinds.
We experience the outer objective material world with its beings, events and relationships; we register and understand this experience within ourselves based upon our knowledge of the world, our instincts, reactions and responses, and our memories of past experiences.
For some both the external and internal world are subjective; this may be true in some ways, but that is not how the consensual reality of the world functions or how we actually behave within it or towards it. Our responses to the outer world may be partly subjective but the external world in no way behaves towards us as if it were simply a subjective extension of ourselves.
We experience ourselves as singular individual beings distinct from all others, at the same time we know that we share a fundamentally common human nature and experience with all other human beings. We take what we understand as human nature for granted while recognizing that many aspects of human nature remain outside our comprehension. Our knowledge and understanding of the world, ourselves and others remains incomplete.
We acquire knowledge of the world through upbringing, training and education within a language and culture. We gain knowledge and understanding of ourselves, through our capacity and willingness to understand others and know the truth about ourselves. In the course of a lifetime many experiences and understandings imprint themselves upon us in a deep compelling and long-term way.
In addition to our ability to balance and order our lives so that the inner subjective and objective external worlds are brought into a reasonable working harmony; we also have the natural power of free imagination. Through thought, memory and imagination, we are able to present alternative futures to ourselves and find creative solutions to perceived problems and challenges.
Mind is not only the limited and confined result of the brain developed through the process of biological and neurological evolution, neither is mind the product of language and imagination alone. For theosophy all of life and existence is the expression of a vast mind-field within which all life remains and continues to develop and evolve. This mind-field is called Akasha.
While we exist and have our being within the physical awareness organism, with its senses and inner subjective life, we are compelled by the objective external material world to act in ways that permit us to share the everyday world with others. If we make mistakes about how to best survive in society, consensus reality corrects us and we are forced to learn and adapt to the world around us. Failure to bring our lives in to a working accord with the world around us can result in failure or punishment.
As awareness organisms our lives are experienced through the information, knowledge and impressions coming from the surrounding world. As subjective beings with the capacity to learn, think thoughts and imagine possible futures we function at a higher more subtle level of the mind-field or Akasha than we experience through the organism and senses.
In the after death states of kama loka three and four we continue to experience a surrounding world distinct from our subjective inner awareness of ourselves, but we are much more strongly connected to and integrated into that surrounding world. We are connected to and integrated into that surrounding soul world by the corresponding level of the mind-field or Akasha. This connection is highly magnetic, energetic and intense.
Even though we are in a familiar world of experience that at the same time strikes us as completely new we have the confidence that comes from being able to easily understand a great deal of what is happening around us and the ability to recognize our lack of understanding of those beings and experiences which are new to us.
We experience errors in our perception and understanding as incomprehensible hallucinations; when we wonder about what we are perceiving and experiencing the Akasha reveals the truth to our enquiring minds .Having transcended the polarity of emotional reactivity, of like and dislike, we quickly see the mistake in our perceptions and correct them by understanding how beings and events are really connected.
When we enter kama loka four the Akasha plays the same role in stabilizing our awareness as the physical body and brain did in the material world. The Akasha ‘remembers everything’ including who we really are, who the people we are in ‘bi-location’ with really are, and the underlying truth of every moment. “Heightened Awareness” is really ‘heightened awareness’ within the Akasha.
Akasha; the mind-field of the universe is highly complex, but looked at from this perspective we can regard it as the conscience and guide of the universe the perfectly perceived truth in every situation. This is possible because we are awakening to a higher level of Akasha. Akasha is totally impersonal.
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