What is Death

What is Death (or to die)? When the spirit (or consciousness [note: this is not the soul]) and bodily life-force withdrawals completely leaving the body totally motionless; dead still without heart movement or brain activity.

Death is not the end of life, it is the beginning of a new adventure for the soul. It’s the reason Hinduism celebrates death and mourns birth.

What dies exactly. Only the experience which the soul wanted to have in that particular body ends. The soul does not die, the mind or character does not die. Only the body made of water, carbon and other physical elements becomes void of essence and returns to dust; its primary life-force extinguished. Just like a building being declared unusable after a certain amount of functional years; everyone and everything has a time.

So who are we anyway, are we not the body and soul?  No, there is more. The soul resides with God and is only connected to us via a silver cord. It exists all around us, everywhere and in everything. It’s infinite so cannot be housed in a tiny body like ours. The mind, or our consciousness is what resides within us and leaves at the time of death. It holds all our experiences, all our memories and all our karmic deeds. It attaches to the soul and sends the experience to the soul which cannot sense directly through physical means, it can only know through the experience which the body/mind connection provides.

Our body is just like clothes for the soul, changed often and quite meaningless. During the time the soul wears that particular set of clothes it’s important, but given the amount of times it changes clothes, one set is not important. Each body experience is housed in the mind, the collector of knowledge and part of our spirit.

What actually happens at death (spiritually speaking), is our consciousness or life-force completely leaves the body. Some people have measured the weight of the body before and after death and have found a small difference, they think it’s the weight of the soul. But our soul has no physical part, only divine.

The mind does have some physical element since it’s still within the realm of causality. This consciousness then reviews the life it had and decides what is next, if it failed to complete its mission and because diseased (too negative) then it will put itself into a sort of hospital where the negativity can be removed. This place is often called hell. It is not permanent. If the review shows spiritual merit or success with its mission, more choices abound. Perhaps moving on to the next mission or staying in the lower heavens (astral realms) for a while. 

If this is the case then the body used will be a dreamlike (not physical) version of the one that just died, during the time it was most beautiful. For example, if a 100-year-old woman dies and had earned merit during her life, she may end up in Heaven looking like she did at 20-years-old. But the form in Heaven is not real, just something to distinguish all the light-energy-bodies. Even a dead animal may look like a human or animal, the form is not important as it’s not real anyway.

See what happens after death for more details.

Also, you may wish to read more about the meaning of life to understand why God created us this way and why it’s so beneficial for all creation to die naturally and continue our journey.