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Ghosts & Ancestors An
excerpt from Of Spirits:
The Book Of Rowan_ by Ivo
Dominguez, Jr. ŠAll
rights reserved
The Process Of Dying
To properly understand ghosts and
human spirits of the dead it is necessary to understand the
process of dying as well as the qualities of time of the linear and
nonlinear types.
Being born is not just the birth
itself but is also the pregnancy, the conception, and the choices
that were made that led to that new life. The process of dying is
much like the process of coming into an incarnation only reversed.
Death is the final harvest and the preservation of a life's work. In
death we shed the various bodies that are the vehicles used by a
spirit in an incarnation. To elucidate the concept of death as a
harvest consider agricultural images. We cut the plant from its
roots and we separate the grain from the chaff. We pick the
grapes and through the alchemy of fermentation create the wine that
will last for years beyond the harvest. Each harvest, the most
promising seeds are set aside to be planted in the next year. There
are limits to all metaphors, comparisons and similes but these
clarify more than they obscure. There are many systems for counting
and naming the subtle bodies, and I am not endorsing one system over
another as they are often equal parts of truth and doctrine. In this
description I will adhere to what I believe is the essence of the process.
First, the physical body is shed
and those experiences, the learning of that life, that are stored in
the flesh are translated into energetic patterns that rise into the
Etheric body, which is the subtle body that is closest to the
physical. This is the layer of the aura that clings closely to the
body. What the body has learned is stored at the cellular level and
in the learned reflexes that are stored in the nervous system.
There is a long standing
description/perception by those with the sight that there is a silver
cord that connects the subtle bodies to the physical body. During
dying, it is severed when what the body has learned has been fully
transferred to the subtle bodies. This is the silver cord that
is seen by some during astral travel and is an analogue of the
umbilical cord. When we were in our mother's womb, we were connected
to her via the umbilical cord to the placenta that rooted within her.
Once born, our physical body was like a placenta that drew
nourishment from the Earth Mother which in turn both anchored and fed
our subtle bodies.
Like the placenta, the physical
body disconnects from the Earth Mother so that we may move on. The
silver cord also has actual and symbolic resonances to the 32nd
path in the Qabala that connects the sphere of the Earth and the
sphere of the Moon. The passage through the birth canal and the
passage through the tunnel oft reported by those with near death
experiences is in essence one and the same. At this point in the
process the ghost most resembles the incarnation that has just ended
both in appearance and in personality. Here the grain is cut
then separated from the chaff.
What follows next is the delicate
and intricate process of the translation and the transfer of what the
personality and the soul have learned during their sojourn on Earth
into progressively more rarefied subtle bodies. One way to
conceptualize this is the conversion of a large quantity of data into
an abstract or an elegant set of theories or principles. Another apt
comparison would be the deep insights that hopefully come at the
completion of an important sequence of life experiences expressed as
a poem or a painting. The juice, the essence, of what is contained in
each layer of the aura is extracted and collected in the layer above
it. The subtle bodies that are emptied of their essence are then
shed, like the physical body, and are deposited onto the plane of
being to which they correspond. Even though they are empty husks,
they persist for some time until they lose their cohesion and
disintegrate. If the ghost is encountered during this phase of the
dying process it still bears some resemblances to the person that
died, but less so as the process continues. The person examines the
whole of their life and transforms it into a mythic saga which
describes their journey on Earth with greater depth. It should be
remembered that mythic truth is not journalism nor is a portrait a
photograph. Like grapes in the process of becoming wine, the
individual grapes can no longer be tasted when they are juice. Then
as time goes on, the juice no longer tastes like grape juice. The
flavor changes to become a summation of the soil, the climate, and
all the factors and the choices made that led to that specific vintage.
The final process is one in which
the personality is distilled into the individuality. The
individuality is also the highest self and is the part of the person
that is truly eternal. At this point there are no more subtle bodies
to be shed, rather it is about integrating the old linear life with
the evolving spirit of the individual. At this stage, the resemblance
to the incarnation that has just finished is very slight. It is like
looking at the photograph of a child and the photograph of an elderly
person. If you know that they are the same person you can see the
similarities. If you do not know, then it is just as likely that you
will not see them as the same individual. At this point
everything that could be resolved has been resolved and brought into
focus. What remains is that which is carried by the eternal self, the
individuality, and the seeds of future incarnations. These seeds
contain both the progress that has been made and also those areas
that need additional work. The incarnation is truly finished at this
point, the person is truly dead. Yet, they are also profoundly vital
and striving, with guidance, to choose the proper times, places, and
characteristics for future incarnations. The seeds that will be
planted are now set aside and prepared.
There are other ways of
summarizing this process. One would be to see it as the sequence of
the Four Elements folding into each other as we rise on the planes of
being. The essence of Earth, the body, rises into Air. This rarefied
essence condenses in the Air into clouds of Water. The celestial
Water releases the bolt of Fiery Lightning that unites the beginning
and the end. This description of the dying can also be seen as
the Nephesch, nesting into the Ruach, which in turn nests into the
Neschamah. Another yet would be to see it in terms of the modalities
with the Mutable becoming the Fixed modality, and then the Cardinal
modality as the last stage of dying. I will not elaborate these
summaries any further but suggest that you meditate upon each
sequence a number of times. Each time you do so, new meanings
and nuances should emerge. If no new insights emerge, do some
research, dig deeper, and meditate again.
The length of linear time that is
needed to complete the process of dying, varies dramatically from
person to person. The nature of the death determines a portion of
this as does the nature of the person dying. Tragic circumstances or
dying in an unusual state of consciousness (such as a drug overdose)
can slow the process. This delay in the process can stem from the
physical body's memory not having adequate time to transfer itself
into the etheric body. Another complicating factor is that most
people need some amount of time to prepare themselves emotionally for
death and the energy of these unprocessed emotions can clog the
channel. It is well known that leaving unfinished tasks can
slow the process, but in my experience this only has a significant
impact when the unfinished tasks relate directly to the purposes of
that incarnation, not just to the desires of the personality that is
dying. If someone presses the question for an approximate
duration, my usual response is somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 to
49 days to complete the first phase.
I base this duration on my
observations of spirits of the recently departed and upon certain
correspondences to the influences of the Moon, the Sun, and the
Stars. Thirty five days is enough time for one complete lunar cycle
with the buffer of a week for the process to begin and end. The lunar
cycle has an especially strong impact on the lower subtle bodies.
There are also powerful tides moved by the solar cycle of the
solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days. The interval of time
between each of the eight holidays in the Wheel of the Year is
roughly 45 days. For some, the change in the solar tides equivalent
to one turn of stations on the Wheel is enough to push the first
phase to completion.
The number 49 is symbolic of a
reconciliation between linear time and nonlinear time as it is the
equivalent of a week of weeks. The seven days of a week corresponds
to the Seven Elder Planets. When 7 weeks have passed, a complete
cycle of the Elder Planets is completed. There is also a
correspondence to Tibetan Buddhism wherein the 49 days after a death
is known as the Bardo period during which the life just completed is
assessed and confronted through a series of visions. The length of
time needed to complete the second and third phases is too
idiosyncratic to offer any guesses. Moreover, these phases occur at
higher planes of being where time as we know it has little meaning. |
