“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

What happens at the point of death? The question is much more easily asked than answered. Basically there is not any particular point of death in those terms, even in the case of a sudden accident. I will attempt to give you a practical answer to what you think of as this practical question, however. What the question really means to most people is this: What will happen when I am not alive in physical terms any longer? What will I feel? Will I still be myself? Will the emotions that propelled me in life continue to do so? Is there a heaven or a hell? Will I be greeted by gods or demons, enemies, or beloved ones? Most of all the question means: When I am dead, will I still be who I am now, and will I remember those who are dear to me now?

I am using your own terms here. By “dead,” therefore, I mean completely unfocused in physical reality. Now your consciousness, quite simply, is not physically alive, physically oriented, for exactly the same amount of time as it is physically alive and oriented. (Typing this on June 22, I wondered if I transcribed what Seth had said correctly. Jane and I decided that I had — and it does make sense.) This may sound confusing, but hopefully we shall make it clearer. There are pulsations of consciousness, though again you may not be aware of them.

Consider this analogy. For one instant your consciousness is “alive,” focused in physical reality. Now for the next instant it is focused somewhere else entirely, in a different system of reality. It is unalive, or “dead” to your way of thinking. The next instant it is “alive” again, focused in your reality, but you are not aware of the intervening instant of unaliveness. Your sense of continuity therefore is built up entirely on every other pulsation of consciousness. Is that clear to you?

Remember this is an analogy, so that the word “instant” should not be taken too literally. There is, then, what we can call an underside of consciousness. Now, in the same way, atoms and molecules exist so that they are “dead,” or inactive within your system, then alive or active, but you cannot perceive the instant in which they do not exist. Since your bodies and your entire physical universe are composed of atoms and molecules, then I am telling you that the entire structure exists in the same manner. It flickers off and on, in other words, and in a certain rhythm, as, say, the rhythm of breath.

There are overall rhythms, and within them an infinity of individual variations — almost like cosmic metabolism. In these terms, what you call death is simply the insertion of a longer duration of that pulsation of which you are not aware, a long pause in that other dimension, so to speak.

This process, you see, continues so smoothly that you are not aware of it. The pulses mentioned earlier are so short in duration that your consciousness skips over them merrily, yet your physical perception cannot seem to bridge the gap when the longer rhythm of pulsation occurs. And so this is the time that you perceive as death. What you want to know, therefore, is what happens when your consciousness is directed away from physical reality, and when momentarily it seems to have no image to wear.

The ideas that you have involving the nature of reality will strongly color your experiences, for you will interpret them in the light of your beliefs, even as now you interpret daily life according to your ideas of what is possible or not possible. Your consciousness may withdraw from your body slowly or quickly, according to many variables.

A belief in hell fires can cause you to hallucinate Hades’ conditions. A belief in a stereotyped heaven can result in a hallucination of heavenly conditions. You always form your own reality according to your ideas and expectations. This is the nature of consciousness in whatever reality it finds itself. Such hallucinations, I assure you, are temporary.

Now this honorary guard is made up of people in your terms both living and dead. Those who are living in your system of reality perform these activities in an “out-of-body” experience while the physical body sleeps. They are familiar with the projection of consciousness, with the sensations involved, and they help orient those who will not be returning to the physical body.

(10:26.) These people are particularly helpful because they are still involved with physical reality, and have a more immediate understanding of the feelings and emotions involved at your end. Such persons may or may not have a memory of their nightly activities. Experiences with projection of consciousness and knowledge of the mobility of consciousness, are therefore very helpful as preparations for death. You can experience the after-death environment beforehand, so to speak, and learn the conditions that will be encountered.

This is not, incidentally, necessarily any kind of somber endeavor, nor are the after-death environments somber at all. To the contrary, they are generally far more intense and joyful than the reality you now know.

Even these experiences will vary, however, and even this state is a state of becoming, for many will continue into other physical lives. Some will exist and develop their abilities in different systems of reality altogether, and so for a time will remain in this “intermediary” state.

Those of you who had faith in life after death will find it much easier to accustom yourself to the new conditions. Those of you who do not have such faith may gain it in a different way, by following through in the exercises I will give you later in this book; for these will enable you to extend your perceptions to these other layers of reality if you are persistent, expectant, and determined.

(10:50.) If consciousness vacated the body for the same amount of time from a normally physically awake state, it would consider itself dead, for it could not rationalize the gap of dimension and experience. Therefore in the sleep state, each of you have undergone — to some degree — the same kind of absence of consciousness from physical reality that you experience during death.

You become aware, then, of an expanded awareness. What you are begins to include what you have been in other lives, and you begin to make plans for your next physical existence, if you decide upon one. You can instead enter another level of reality, and then return to a physical existence if you choose.