Rosicrucian Society ™

During life the collapse of the vital body at night terminates our view of the world about us, and causes us to lose ourselves in unconsciousness of sleep. When the vital[pg 159]body collapses just subsequent to death, and the panorama of life is terminated, we also lose consciousness for a time which varies according to the individual. A darkness seems to fall upon the spirit, then after a while it wakes up and begins dimly to perceive the light of the other world, but is only gradually accustomed to the altered conditions. It is an experience similar to that which we have when coming out of a darkened room into sunlight, which blinds us by its brilliancy, until the pupils of our eyes have contracted so that they admit a quantity of light bearable to our organism.

If under such a condition we turn momentarily from the bright sunlight and look back into the darkened room, objects there will be much more plain to our vision than things outside which are illumined by the powerful rays of the sun. So it is also with the spirit, when it has first been released from the body it perceives sights, scenes and sounds of the material world, which it has just left, much more readily than it observes the sights of the world it is entering. Wordsworth in his Ode to Immortality noted a similar condition in the case of new-born children, who are all clairvoyant and much more awake to the[pg 160]spiritual world than to this present plane of existence. Some lose the spiritual sight very early, others retain it for a number of years and a few keep it all through life, but as the birth of a child is a death in the spiritual world and it retains the spiritual sight for a time, so also death here is a birth upon the spiritual plane, and the newly dead retain a consciousness of this world for some time subsequent to demise.

When one awakes in the Desire World after having passed through aforementioned experiences, the general feeling seems to be one of relief from a heavy burden, a feeling perhaps akin to that of a diver encased in a heavy rubber suit, a weighty brass helmet upon his head, leaden soles under his feet and heavy weights of lead upon his breast and back, confined in his operations on the bottom of the ocean by a short length of air tube, and able only to move clumsily with difficulty. When after the day's work such a man is hauled to the surface, and divests himself of his heavy garments and he moves about with the facility we enjoy here, he must surely experience a feeling of great relief. Something like that is felt by the spirit when it has been divested of the mortal coil, and is[pg 161]able to roam all over the globe instead of being confined to the narrow environment which bound it upon earth.