Where Do I Go When I Die?

Death has been the greatest mystery of the ages. “Where do I go when I die”? is one of the great unsolved questions of the ages.

Every one of these various concepts is founded on the false premise that the body is the person, the identity, the being. As the body is not the person, or the identity, these conceptions fall apart by sheer logic.

The question: “Where do I go when I die”? has two answers. It has one answer for the idea that the body is the person, and another answer for the idea that the Mind is the person. Let us answer the last question first. The answer is that you do not die. You are a Soul–which is a unit idea of immortal Mind. You are an Identity within The Universal Oneness, but you are that Oneness. You are the thinking of the Thinker who centers a body which records the thoughts of the Thinker.

You are desire in Mind to manifest Mind. You are the Universe, manifesting the whole universe at one pinpoint Soul of all the universe. That which you manifest at your one pinpoint of the universe is remanifested in all of the universe. You cannot manifest separateness for there is no separateness to manifest.

You are divinity dwelling in the impenetrable dark of motion for long ages of seeking to penetrate the dark. You are the genius who has penetrated the dark to henceforth dwell in the Light. You are Conscious Mind, fully knowing the Light of your immortality, fully commanding your thinking and the body which images your thinking.

Let us now reconstruct the question to read: “Where does my body go when it dies?” The answer to that question is that your body does not die. It lies down to rest periodically for the purpose of renewal but its life and the body pattern, and the record of every thought you have ever given birth to, is enfolded in your Soul seed.

If you will but realize that your living body is but a machine which performs the work decreed for it to do by the Mind Intelligence which centers it, you will not have any concern about what happens to it. The only reason you have concern about your body is because of the long habit of thinking of your body as you.

Another thing which confuses you is that you think of your body as it is today. All you see of it is that part which is still living today, which weighs about 150 pounds. You never think of those parts of your body which are not living today. Every day of your whole life your body has been dying while you were constantly renewing it with more of your body than you took from the ground with which to renew it. You call it nourishment, but it is a constant renewal and repair process. That part of your body which has died has to be renewed with living tissue. That part of your machine which has worn out has to be repaired with new material.

One or two pounds of your body dies every day and is eliminated by its various processes. If you are seventy years old your body would weigh about twenty tons if parts of it had not died. Over nineteen and nine tenths of your body has already died. There are only one hundred and fifty pounds left of your body.

Why should you be more concerned about what happens to the few pounds of your body which are going to die, than you are concerned about the many tons of your body which have already died? The parts which have died have been returned to the ground. The small part which still remains should be returned to the ground in order that your new body and other bodies can be reborn from it.

Why should you be concerned about a few pounds of calcium, iron, manganese, iodine, nitrogen and other materials which built your body? They are not you. They are not your identity. They are the house you live in, but the house can burn down without affecting you. You can build another house to live in. That is what you do when your house of clay dissolves into its clay. You build an- other house of clay, another body. You are never without a body except during those periods of rest when you are repairing and replacing worn-out parts of your body, or building an entirely new one when the old one becomes too worn-out to renew or repair.

Let us look at it from this angle. It is a new angle of thought which should give you an entirely different idea of your body than the generally accepted one. Instead of thinking of your body as living and dying, think of your eternal Soul which is eternally living. Your Soul extends its life to your body to manifest the life which your Soul is. The body regives to the Soul that which has been extended to it. That is neither life nor death of the body. It is eternal life of the Soul expressed as two directions of life by the body.

You must, therefore, learn to think of life as action, and death as rest from action. Every day of your life is divided into action and rest from action. You are awake and active all day. Your body is thoroughly aware of its existence. But you rest each night and your body is as thoroughly unaware of its existence as though it were dead. The only reason you rest at night is to renew and repair your body. When your body is entirely worn-out you rest a longer time between periods of full renewal than between partial renewal. During those periods of acquiring an entirely new body, it is also unaware of bodily existence for a long period, instead of just one-night periods.

Nature tells the story of rebirth of bodies in very plain language. When you plant a seed in the ground for a flower, for a tree, or for a field of grass, these forms unfold from their seed into bodies. You think of these bodies as growing, dying and disappearing, but it almost escapes your notice that as every body unfolds from its seed it refolds back into it. For every branch and leaf of the oak tree you see with your eyes there is another branch and leaf which you do not see. What does that mean? It means that whatever unfolds from the seed to become a part of the visible universe, simultaneously refolds into its seed to disappear into the invisible universe. The Soul does not wait to take your body back after it is all dead, it takes it back as fast as it gives it out. There is your answer to what happens to your body when you die. Your Soul is your Self. You extend your body from your Soul-Self several billion times each second, and you return your body to your Soul-Self for rebirth at that same speed.

Everywhere in Nature you see rebirth of roses, of trees and of grass. Last year you picked an apple from this branch. This year you behold another apple where you plucked one last year, and the next year, and the next you can still pluck one. And if you open one you will find the same apple that you are going to eat all folded up in the seeds of other apples not yet born that will repeat the bodies of the apples which have long been born. That is Nature’s eternal process of repeating eternal life. She divides eternal life into eternal repetitions of life. We call them life and death, but both of them are opposite expressions of life. Is not that a wonderful thing to know? Is it not wonderful to know that every day you live in the visible world of bodies, your every thought and action is also simultaneously repeated and recorded in the invisible world of Mind?

During all the ages of your unfolding as an individual entity you have repeated your own Self in each new body and every experience which has progressed or retarded you is also repeated. Whatever progress you now make in this life makes your next life expression easier for you. You continually advance as you learn new lessons.

You do not remember the nonessentials of each life, for that would be a terrible punishment. You would but live a life of continual remorse if you had to relive the experiences of the hard struggles which brought you out of the jungle into today’s pleasant meadows. You do remember the essentials, however. If you have been a musician for several lives, and have thought music more than any other thought during those lives, you will undoubtedly think music again in succeeding lives. It is quite understandable why a musical prodigy exhibits such great musical talent at four or five years of age, if one thinks of it that way.

It is also quite understandable why some people are ahead of others and some so far behind. When you look over the human race you see many who exhibit the qualities of masters and leaders, while many more are but followers. That does not mean that some are “older Souls” than others, it simply means that some have made more of each life than others.

The great and wonderful thing about life is to learn to live it by profiting by every experience one must have on the long journey from body realization to Mind knowing, which also means from physical man to divine Spirit within man. The more you learn in each period of unfolding the more speedily you become aware of the kingdom of heaven within you as the goal of life. From that moment on the road is clear, for knowing the glory of life each period of it leads nearer and nearer to full illumination of Divine Consciousness in that Light.

SUMMARY

The first part of the journey of man from the dark of complete ignorance to the Light of Omniscience is entirely centered upon the import of his body. He knows naught else but body and requirements for body survival. His body works for him, fights for him, and provides him with its varying sensations and emotions.

After the dawn of Consciousness in him he acquires knowledge which he thinks of as being a part of his body. He believes that his brain is that part of his body which thinks and knows. He builds a concept which links his identity and personal powers to his body. Together with that concept he thinks that body is reality and that all reality is limited to what the senses of the body can detect. This growing concept of early man gradually built up a reverence and concern for his body. When he died he thought that his identity died with him. His reverence for his dead self led him to build great tombs and sepulchers–even to such monuments for the dead as the great pyramids of Egypt.

As spiritual man unfolds, he gradually loses his sense of body reality until that great day of his awakening to Mind Consciousness when he loses all body reverence as full knowledge of its unreality dawns upon him. The highest moments of exaltation of the genius are those of complete forgetfulness of body. It must never be forgotten, however, that our bodies are marvelous instruments given to us to manifest our spiritual identity and as such should be revered and cared for as a means of expressing the beauty of God’s Creation. The more we know how to care for it and keep it in balance with God’s law, the more we can forget it to express Mind creativeness.

As the divinity of man awakens in him and he knows his Self as Mind which centers motion, his concern as to what happens to his body will wholly pass away from him. That will be the great day of real knowing, the day when power in man is purely spiritual, the day when inner vision can see reality in the invisible CAUSE of the visible. This unfolding will some day come to man. He cannot avoid it, but the knowledge given herein will hasten its too slow unfolding by the hard way of paying for it through painful experience. It could save man many reincarnations by thus illumining his dark road with new Light.