“DEATH” CONDITIONS IN LIFE

(Humorously): Now: Chapter Ten: “‘Death’ Conditions in Life.” (Seth repeated this chapter heading to make sure I punctuated it correctly.)

After-death experiences will not seem so alien or incomprehensible if you realize that you encounter similar situations as a normal part of your present existence.

In sleep and dream states you are involved in the same dimension of existence in which you will have your after-death experiences. You do not remember the most important part of these nightly adventures, and so those you do recall seem bizarre or chaotic as a rule. This is simply because in your present state of development you are not able to manipulate consciously within more than one environment.

You do exist consciously in a coherent, purposeful creative state while the physical body sleeps, however, and you carry on many of the activities that I told you would be encountered after death. You simply turn the main focus of your attention in a different dimension of activity, one in which you have indeed continuously operated.

The simple fact is that when you dream you are flying, you often are. In the dream state you operate under the same conditions, more or less, that are native to a consciousness not focused in physical reality. Many of your experiences, therefore, are precisely those you may meet after death. You may speak with dead friends or relatives, revisit the past, greet old classmates, walk down streets that existed fifty years earlier in physical time, travel through space without taking any physical time to do so, be met by guides, be instructed, teach others, perform meaningful work, solve problems, hallucinate.

In physical life there is a lag between the conception of an idea and its physical construction. In dream reality, this is not so. Therefore, the best way to become acquainted with after-death reality ahead of time, so to speak, is to explore and understand the nature of your own dreaming self. Not very many people want to take the time or energy.

The methods are available, however, and those who do use them will not find themselves alienated when the full focus of their attention is turned in that direction after death.

As your daily endeavors have meaning and purpose, so do your dream adventures, and in these also you attain various goals of your own. These you will continue in the after-death experience. The vitality, force, life, and creativity behind your physical existence is generated in this other dimension. In other words, you are in many ways a fleshy projection of your dreaming self.

I am in somewhat the same position when I try to explain to you the nature of this inner self, for while you can become aware of it in dreams, you cannot truly appreciate its maturity or abilities; yet they are yours in the same way that the man’s abilities belonged to the child. In the dream state you learn, among other things, how to construct your own physical reality day by day, just as after death you learn how to construct your next physical lifetime.

(10:07.) In dreams you solve the problems. In the daytime you are (only) consciously aware of the methods of problem solving that you learned in sleep. In dreams you set your goals, as after death you set the goals for another incarnation.

The soul creates the flesh. The creator hardly looks down upon its creation. The soul creates the flesh for a reason, and physical existence for a reason, so none of this is to lead you to a distaste for physical life, nor toward a lack of appreciation for those sensual joys with which you are surrounded. Any inner journeys should allow you to find greater significance, beauty, and meaning in life as you know it now; but full enjoyment and development also means that you use all of your abilities, that you explore inner dimensions with as much wonder and enthusiasm. With proper understanding, therefore, it is quite possible for you to become quite familiar now with after-death landscapes and environments and experiences. You will find them to be as vivid as any you know. Such explorations will completely alter somber preconceptions about existence after death. It is very important that you divest yourself of as many preconceptions as possible, however, for these will impede your progress.

You should be fairly competent and sympathetic. At the same time you should be outgoing enough in your physical environment so that you are capable of handling your life as it is. You need all your resources. This is to be an active exploration and endeavor, not a passive withdrawal, and certainly not a cowardly retreat. Toward the end of this book, methods will be given for those who are interested so that you can explore these after-death conditions consciously, having some control over your experiences and progress.

(10:54.) Your experience, in other words, follows your expectations. Now the same applies to after-death experience and to the dream experience, and to any out-of-body encounters. If you are obsessed with the idea of evil, then you will meet evil conditions. If you believe in devils, then you will encounter these. As I mentioned earlier, there is greater freedom when consciousness is not physically directed. Thoughts and emotions are constructed, again, into reality without the physical time lapse. So if you believe you will be met by a demon, you will create your own thought-form of one, not realizing that it is of your own creation.

If it is your own thought-form, then, in fact, you may learn from it by asking yourself what it represents, what problem that you have so materialized. Now you may hallucinate the same sort of thing after death, use it for a symbol, and undergo a spiritual battle of sorts that would, of course, not be necessary had you more understanding. You will work out your ideas, problems or dilemmas at your own level of understanding.