What happens when your body dies?

You are an eternal soul. When your body dies you leave it and return as a unique consciousness to the non-physical dimensions. The non-physical dimensions are also known as the spiritual dimensions or spiritual realms.

Your body only exists in the physical universe. Death means that your physical body ceases to function as temporary housing for you. Death is part of your natural soul cycle. Death is not a punishment.

In the spiritual realms you will have a spiritual body. Unlike your physical body, your spiritual body does not require environmental support.

There is no reason to fear death if you have tried to live an unselfish life, and treated others the way that you would like them to treat you.

As a soul, you always have access to all dimensions of creation, though your conscious awareness of this is usually veiled from you in order that you may fully experience your current physical incarnation. This veil is called the "Veil of Forgetfulness."

It is possible for souls to leave their bodies and visit the spiritual dimensions, and then return to their bodies with a conscious memory of their visit. These experiences include, but are not limited to, what are called "Out-of-Body" or "Near-death” experiences. The majority of people who can remember these experiences have said that leaving their bodies was a wonderful and liberating feeling. However, some souls do not have a positive experience when they leave their bodies.

The spiritual dimensions are our true or real home. When we arrive back in the spiritual dimensions the veil of forgetfulness will be lifted for most of us, and we will remember that we are back in our real home.

All souls transition to the spiritual dimensions when their body dies, regardless of what they believed or how they behaved during their physical lifetime.

Soon after you arrive back in the spiritual dimensions you may experience a review of your recent incarnation so that you may learn from it. This is often referred to as a "Life Review". You will feel the impact that your thoughts and actions had on other souls, from their perspective. The Golden Rule represents the standard by which your thoughts and actions are measured. You will understand that when we hurt others we hurt ourselves.

The purpose of a physical incarnation is to learn to love, and your life review is part of your education. It helps you to evaluate your progress. God does not judge or punish you based on this review. To the extent that there is judgment, you judge yourself.

During your life review you will be surprised to learn that what you think are insignificant thoughts and actions may end up causing great joy or pain to others. You will also be surprised to discover the extent to which your thoughts and actions ripple through and affect God's creation. This includes all life, including plant life and our planet.

As a soul, you generally maintain the level of soul growth that you have achieved. You do not usually regress on the death of your body, but your character does not become perfect because your body dies.

As you move into the spiritual dimensions, what you experience will be affected by your attitude and beliefs. This is the same as your experiences during physical life where your attitude and beliefs shape the feedback you receive. You will therefore be better off if you develop kind, gentle and loving attitudes and beliefs during your physical incarnation, because you will take them with you when you leave your body and return to the spiritual realms.

Those souls who have used their freewill to live an unloving and selfish life have rejected God's loving way. They will not feel the love of God when their bodies die because God respects their freewill to reject Him. Instead they will find themselves in an environment which corresponds to their inner nature. However, all souls may choose to grow and progress spiritually, and these opportunities are available to those who are willing to reconcile themselves with God and ask for His help.

Deathbed confessions and “conversions” are often misunderstood. Deathbed repentance does not redeem our unloving acts. We are always forgiven by God, but this does not mean that our karma is erased when our body dies. It is also important to understand that being forgiven by God does not mean that our personality or character is upgraded when our body dies, and we somehow automatically become more loving. While the burden of guilt can be lifted by our sincere and authentic confessions, as souls we are measured by our capacity to love, and how loving we are determines where we fit into God's creation in the spiritual dimensions. This is God’s perfect system of justice.

Our time in a physical incarnation is best spent increasing our capacity to love. However, if we make no progress, and do not learn the lessons we agreed to try to learn, we will have many opportunities, if we choose, to reincarnate and try again.

If you are afraid, confused, or fear God, especially around the time of your death, talk to Him and ask for His help. Remember this even if it does make much sense to you now, or you never came to know God during your physical life. When the time comes, you can sincerely ask God to help you, and He will do so.

Afterlife

When our bodies die and we move on to the spiritual realms, we commonly refer to this as being in the “afterlife”. The “afterlife” is misnamed because the reality is that life continues in the spiritual realms, and this new life will seem more real than the physical life we just left.

For most of us, our existence in the afterlife is an infinitely more positive experience than our life in the physical incarnation we just left. Even though our character does not automatically upgrade, in the afterlife we are not subjected to the negativity of other souls who are less developed that us. Our own level of negativity, if it is not too great, is canceled or dissolved by the love of God. We will feel the love of God to the full extent once the veil of forgetfulness is lifted.

All souls are not equal in the spiritual realms. The difference is your level of spiritual enlightenment, or the love within you, and it is obvious to all. There are no secrets in the afterlife.

The love within you determines the speed at which you spirit body vibrates. The more love it contains, the faster it vibrates and the more light your spirit body will project for all souls to see. This is a very fair and objective scientific process. It is the reason for references to light within the Bible. Halos are a way of depicting this light in art and literature. The ultimate light is God, and he has been described as being the brightest and most loving light imaginable.

Where you end up in the spiritual dimensions depends on how loving you are, not what you say you believe. In the afterlife, you will be treated the way you treated others during your incarnation. You get the afterlife that reflects your character. Some people express this in terms of getting the afterlife that you earned, because the more effort you make at developing your character and evolving as a soul, the better the afterlife will be for you.

Although God loves us unconditionally and forgives us completely, we have freewill, and He expects us to use our freewill to grow more loving. Therefore, we take our unresolved negative karma with us into the afterlife. This karma represents lessons that we still need to learn. We will have the opportunity to learn these lessons, and we may choose to re-incarnate to do so.

Some think of the afterlife in religious terms as a bipolar world consisting of heaven and hell. This is a misconception. Heaven and hell are not “either/or”, “black/white” or “pass/fail” alternatives. In reality heaven and hell are the opposite ends of a scale, and where you end up on that scale is entirely dependent on the love within you. This reflects God’s perfect system of justice. Anything else would be unfair.

Religions have many misconceptions about what happens in "heaven" and "hell". Heaven does not need to involve sitting around in front of God praising Him, and hell is not about fire and burning forever.

• The heavenly spiritual realms involve living in God’s love and being free to live and grow as we choose. We end up in the heavenly realms because we have used our freewill to attain a certain level of soul growth. The heavenly realms are indescribably wonderful, and God’s love and presence there is obvious.
• We do not feel God's love in the "hellish" realms. They are dark, and we feel isolated, cold and alone. This is why hell is sometimes referred to as the “void”. Hell is not forever. We can choose to move to the light by accepting God and asking for His help. God created all dimensions or realms. He does not share His love with the lower realms because He gave us freewill and those in the lower realms have chosen to use their freewill to ignore or reject Him by behaving without loving intent. Hell is the absence of God.

When we cross over to the spiritual realms, most of us will be greeted by souls with whom we had a loving relationship in the physical realms. We will also have guides and teachers available to help us with the transition. Help is never far away, both in the physical and spiritual realms.

To a certain extent, your initial experience in the spiritual realms is dependent on the beliefs that you take with you. If you are religious, you may gravitate towards religious communities with common beliefs until you realize that God is universal and that it is love that is important, rather than religion. Some unloving beliefs can be limiting or damaging to your existence in the spiritual realms, so be careful about what beliefs you develop during your physical incarnation.

Religions can teach you to love, but when your body dies the afterlife you experience is based on the love within you, rather than the religion you practiced.

Life in the heavenly spiritual realms is wonderful. As long as we are not causing harm to God's creation, we can choose who to be with and what to experience. We still have freewill, so we are free to live and grow as we choose. The presence of God is obvious to all, and we experience unimaginable joy during our time here.

The lowest spiritual realms are normally referred to as hell, and are reserved for those less developed souls who abused power and authority and caused deliberate harm or injury to others. Souls who find themselves here have chosen to reject God, but these realms are not a place of eternal punishment. Even here we can choose to learn to become more loving and therefore move up to more pleasant spiritual realms. Those who find themselves in the lowest realms can choose to reach out to God.

How much time do you have to grow your soul?

You have the freewill to decide how fast you grow as a soul. God is patient and you are eternal. However, time is relevant in this physical incarnation because your physical body is subject to time limits.

Understand that your time in the physical world is short, and that you have the opportunity to make significant progress here. This is why you agreed to come here! Your opportunities for happiness and love are dependent on the effort you make to grow as a soul, so your time here is best spent on your growth.

Opportunities for accelerated soul growth are not limited to one lifetime in this physical world. That would be grossly unfair. Reincarnation is real. You may have already reincarnated many times, and you may do so many times more till you have learned the lessons of love that karma teaches.

We generally retain the level of growth we have achieved as we continue to grow throughout eternity. We, as souls, are not magically upgraded and made perfect when our bodies die. Karmic lessons keep repeating until they are learnt.

The later years of your life can be very beneficially devoted to soul growth. Physical life is short, but it is never too late to learn to love unconditionally, and to forgive.

When you decide to try to become a more loving soul, you can sincerely ask God to help and guide you.

Have you left it too late to change?

When your body dies you, as a soul, are defined by the love within you. It does not matter what you used to be 20 years ago. Your character at the time of your death is what matters.

Your character may be a reflection of what you did during your lifetime, but the number and type of your thoughts and actions are irrelevant. What matters is the quality of your love, not the quantity of your thoughts and actions.

We came into this world to have trouble and to learn from it. Unfortunately many people don't realize this and complain about their bad luck and spend their lives chasing pleasure, fame and money. Then they die without making any spiritual progress. And so they waste life after life. It should be obvious that all we'll take with us is our character, our karma and our abilities, and that we'll have to live with people like ourselves. Therefore, our highest success would be to rise into the highest heaven through unselfish love.

​Arthur Yensen

I believe there are two sides to the phenomenon known as death, this side where we live, and the other side where we shall continue to live. Eternity does not start with death. We are in eternity now.

Norman Vincent Peale

Death is nothing else but going home to God, the bond of love will be unbroken for all eternity.

Mother Teresa

Death is not the end, it is simply walking out of the physical form and into the spirit realm, which is our true home. It's going back home.

Stephen Christopher

Death is only an experience through which you are meant to learn a great lesson: you cannot die.

Paramahansa Yogananda

Death is simply a shedding of the physical body like the butterfly shedding its cocoon. It is a transition to a higher state of consciousness where you continue to perceive, to understand, to laugh, and to be able to grow.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Those who have stunted their spiritual growth through an undeveloped or misdirected lifestyle, have led a purely self- centered life or have hurt other people, their spiritual environment will reflect something of these realities. A self-centered life on Earth places one in an area of the spirit world with like-minded people who have yet to learn the value of unselfishness for the advancement of the soul.

Nora Spurgin

Each time we die we gain more of life. Souls pass from one sphere to another without loss of personality, become more and more bright ... I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself ... Earth, though are not my abyss! ... The whole of creation is a perpetual ascension, from brute to man, from man to God. To divest ourselves more and more of matter, to be clothed more and more with spirit, such is the law.

Victor Hugo

It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again ... Nothing is dead men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some new strange disguise. Jesus is not dead he is very well alive: nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor Aristotle at times we believe we have seen them all, and could easily tell the names under which they go.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.

Tecumseh

If the Lord should bring a wicked man to heaven, heaven would be hell to him for he who loves not grace upon earth will never love it in heaven .

Christopher Love

We have no evidence whatsoever that the soul perishes with the body.

Mahatma Gandhi

The spiritual state of being you have on earth is the spiritual state you take with you to the world beyond when you die. There is no sudden metamorphosis from an idle person into an active person, from a nonreligious person into a religious person, from a money-centered person into a God-centered person. This is not an automatic thing.

Margaret Tweddell

Since we know that we enter the spiritual world at the same level of spiritual development we have gained while on earth, then it makes sense that those who have had much give and take with selfishness, revenge and maliciousness will continue such acts in the spirit world.

Nora Spurgin

Every soul is immortal -- for whatever is in perpetual motion is immortal … All that is soul presides over all that is without soul and patrols all heaven, now appearing in one form and now in another…Every man's soul has by the law of this birth been a spectator of eternal truth, or it would never have passed into this our mortal frame, yet still it is no easy matter for all to be reminded of their past by their present existence ... By making the right use of those things remembered from the former life, by constantly perfecting himself in the perfect mysteries, a man becomes truly perfect -- an initiate into wisdom more divine.

Plato

A man is what he is, not what men say he is. His character no man can touch. His character is what he is before his God and his Judge and only he himself can damage that. His reputations what men say he is. That can be damaged but reputation is for time, character is for eternity.

John Ballantine Gough

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me- nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.

Charles H. Spurgeon

Character is the total of thousands of small daily strivings to live up to the best that is in us. Character is the final decision to reject whatever is demeaning to oneself or to others and with confidence and honesty to choose the right.

Arthur G. Trudeau

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.

Joan Baez

Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live, and as if you were to die tomorrow.

Mother Anna Lee

Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time... It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other.

Leo Buscaglia

Yesterday is ashes tomorrow is wood. Only today does the fire burn brightly.

Old Eskimo proverb

Each today, well-lived, makes yesterday a dream of happiness and each tomorrow a vision of hope. Look, therefore, to this one day, for it and it alone is life.

Sanskrit Poem

I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

J R R Tolkein - 'Lord of the Rings'

Plan for this world as if you expect to live forever but plan for the hereafter as if you expect to die tomorrow.

Solomon Ibn Gabirol

Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.

Albert Camus

It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour.

George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

Carl Sandburg

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Helen Keller

To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not. For it is to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not even turn out to be one of the greatest blessings of human beings. And yet people fear it as if they knew for certain it is the greatest evil.

Socrates

Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.

Dag Hammarskjöld

I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Death is nothing more than a doorway, something you walk through.

Dr. George Ritchie

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children who has filled his niche and accomplished his task who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had whose life was an inspiration whose memory a benediction.

Betty Anderson Stanley

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.

Albert Pike

Death is not extinguishing the light it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Rabindranath Tagore

What we call life is a journey to death. What we call death is the gateway to life.

anonymous

Death ... is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

Helen Keller

Life is a dream walking. Death is going home.

Chinese proverb

I am standing on the seashore. A ship spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the ocean. I stand watching her until she fades on the horizon, and someone at my side says, "She is gone." Gone where? The loss of sight is in me, not in her. Just at the moment when someone says, "She is gone," there are others who are watching her coming. Other voices take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!" That is dying.

Henry Scott Holland

Death is not extinguishing the light it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Rabindranath Tagore

Some day you will read in the papers that D.L. Moody, of East Northfield, is dead. Don't you believe a word of it. At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. I shall have gone up higher, that is all out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal, a body that death cannot touch.

Dwight L. Moody

There are many rooms in the Father's House just as there are many grades in school. The period of time we spend on earth is but one grade of life. It is but a beginning.

Robert A. Russell

George’s passing is really sad, but it does make the afterlife seem much more attractive.

Michael Palin talking about George Harrison’s death

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

George Eliot

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Walt Whitman

Death is but a passage out of a prison into a palace. Unknown Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

Walt Whitman

There is no telling how much I might change in the future. Just as one wouldn’t draw a lasting conclusion about oneself on the basis of a brief experience of indigestion, one needn’t do so on the basis of how one has thought or behaved for vast stretches of time in the past. A creative change of inputs to the system—learning new skills, forming new relationships, adopting new habits of attention—may radically transform one’s life.

Sam Harris, Free Will

The best way to get to heaven is to take it with you.

Henry Drummond

You grow to heaven. You don't go to heaven.

Edgar Cayce

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Kahlil Gibran

You'll not be in heaven if you're not leaning on the arm of someone you have helped.

Edgar Cayce

The sheer volume of evidence for survival after death is so immense that to ignore it is like standing at the foot of Mount Everest and insisting that you cannot see the mountain.

Colin Wilson

But not everyone goes to the same location in the next world. We will be acutely aware of everything we have done or failed to do in our lives. We will also know the lives of those around us and they will know ours. Therefore we will seek out those who "think" the same way we do, who "value" the same things we do. We will gravitate toward those we feel at ease with, who are like us. Judgment is more a process of self-evaluation than the product of a heavenly tribunal. The next world is segmented into spheres organized around qualities of love, service, and personal preparedness.

Dr. Harold Widdison

When we come to the last moment of this lifetime and we look back across it, the only thing that's going to matter is 'What is the quality of our love?'

Richard Bach

If everyone completely understood the afterlife, they'd quit trying to keep up with the Joneses and start learning how to live unselfishly. Here [in the world] we can change ourselves quite easily and should use this life to make ourselves into the kind of people we want to be in the hereafter. [The spirit world] is a miserable place for anyone who hasn't learned internal harmony - characterized by unselfish love.

Arthur Yensen

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

Douglas Adams English humorist & science fiction novelist (1952 - 2001)

Dear Child, I condole with you. We have lost a most dear and valuable relation, but it is the will of God and Nature that these mortal bodies be laid aside, when the soul is to enter into real life: 'tis rather an embryo state, a preparation for living. A man is not completely born until he is dead. Why then should we grieve that a new child is born among the immortals? A new member added to their happy society? That bodies should be lent to us is a kind and benevolent act of God. When they become unfit for these purposes and afford us pain instead of pleasure -- instead of an aid, become an encumbrance and answer none of the intentions for which they were given -- it is equally kind and benevolent that a way is provided by which we may get rid of them. Death is that way. … Why should you and I be grieved at this, since we are soon to follow, and know where to find him.

Excerpt of a letter from Ben Franklin to the widow of his brother John, Feb. 22, 1756

To die, to sleep To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?

Shakespeare (Hamlet, contemplating death)