In Death There Is Life

IN DEATH THERE IS LIFE

Sy4ndene Jahia

{Dedicated to Sandy 9.9.2017}

Many years ago after the transitioning of a close family member, I came across the book. The Astral Body and Other Astral Phenomena by Arthur E. Powell. I did not fully understand the complex minutiae of astral matter being the engine room of the spirit. Could not quite fathom how the many grades of physical matter corresponded to who we are and finally become and could not quite grasp why the transitioning had happened at all.

I found myself struggling to find credible answers to the questions I had posed myself regarding this foreign concept of permanent absence from the body spiritually. I had been taught from an early age that "All living matter is fuelled by that which is ethereal. That the veil drawn between the ethereal and physical world is a temporary construct to keep us balanced. Protected from the piercing phenomena metaphysically of that which we cannot yet comprehend or ingest fully and that the physical has finite purpose in this world"

I knew that I was too young to understand the complexities of this wisdom shared with reverential expediency but somehow the correlation between my adult struggles with the enigma of transitioning and the depth of knowledge passed down seemed to make sense, seemed in some contrived way; to be working out its blueprint for changing my understanding of this strange thing we call [death]

Like so many of us. I realized that I had been indoctrinated into a mode of thought considered hallowed ground by default, by a system that had used just enough of my reserved energy to make me believe that death was an intrinsic part of how we finally slip away from the tribulations of this earthly platform.

I have never been one to shy away from exploration of the mysticisms of this world. Parents. Peers and elders throughout the years had furnished my thoughts with hermetical sound-bites on everything from inner connectedness to another to avoiding great hulking cross eyed men with bowed legs.

So the appetite to strip away the pseudo religious constructs defining [Death] in favour of a more metaphysical affiliation now felt more appropriate after stumbling across Arthur E. Powell's illuminating book. I had come full circle because somewhere amidst the steady trickle of sound-bites, traditional drills about the souls flight from the body, uncomfortable moments of personal loss and detachment from the pseudo religious narrative. I found myself chasing after a deeper understanding of what it meant to be free from the astral body.

I continued to work diligently through this illuminating book until I came to the paragraph that would precipitate a cascade of cathartic ruminations upon my own fragile mortality and the gossamer thin thread of life binding us to consciousness of, another self. The ethereal self. ["Death thus consists of a process of unrobing or unsheathing. The ego, the immortal part of man, shakes off from itself, one after the other, its outer casings. First the dense physical: then the etheric double: then even the astral body"]

Slowly; like all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fitting into place, it started to make sense. I did not need all of the scientific metaphors on [Death]-Transitioning, to understand that in its simplest conception the human body can be compared to a giant onion with an infinite number of layers that pertain to elements of our journeying through planet earth. That physical matter is the key to this flowering into a myriad of astral transformations on our way to Nirvana [Nirvana being the penultimate stage set before entering complete purification away from this world] was not lost upon me.

We are all reflections of monadic essence and therefore expressions of The Supreme Power's consciousness made manifest in the flesh. We are born, we live and then we transition and this flesh through a series of trials, tribulations and sufferings allows us to experience all of the idiosyncrasies associated with striving for a more celestial walk on many and varied levels as this is how loftier universal principles co-create our connection to that Supreme Power that is eternal.

I took a pensive look back at the loved ones I had lost, even the near misses and realized I had nothing to fear for if we are such loved expressions of this supreme being that is infinite and omnipresent within and without then just by spiritual osmosis alone into that which is higher we are continually connected to those loved ones that have gone before. Their physical only a temporal construct to house souls decorated with our memories of good times, laughter and anticipatory reunions.