"O my friends, Socrates said, if the soul is really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in regard to the portion of time which is called mortal life, but of eternity! And the danger of neglecting the soul from this point of view does indeed appear to be awful. If death were the end of being, the wicked would have a good bargain in dying, for they would be happily quit not only of their body but of their evil together with their souls. But since the soul unquestionably is immortal, there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom. For when the soul progresses to the after-life, it takes nothing with her but her strength of character, fortitude, and her own development of reason and morality; which are indeed said greatly to benefit or greatly to injure the departed, at the very beginning of its pilgrimage in the other world.
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Physical death is merely one of those natural experiences of moving beyond an old state of physical existence back to consciousness within a former state of eternal being. On the spiritual path, the quest for death and rebirth is continuous, with old "forms" being left behind as new understandings, new capabilities, new "aspects" are sought and attained ceaselessly. This essay examines all the dimensions of preparing our Soul for life after death. If we want to be capable of landing on our feet when we're suddenly transplanted into a totally new and unfamiliar environment--the after-life--we must begin during physical life to prepare for the varied requirements this transition will entail.
"Persons beyond the veil of what you call death . . . are not, you must understand . . . cut off from memory of earth life . . . for that is most often a type of experience which is of most immediate use to them in their next succeeding embodiment." Betty White, The Gaelic Manuscripts, circa 1935
The truly miraculous essence of human beings provides a foreglimpse of or metaphor for human evolution through the three stages of human consciousness and being: supersensible being, terrestrial existence, and return to supersensible being (after death).
The human transformation from terrestrial life to the spiritual after-life is analogous to the evolution of a caterpillar into a chrysalis and thence into a butterfly, an entirely different type of being from a caterpillar. Terrestrial human life should be similar, in essence, to the life of a caterpillar developing into a chrysalis: a caterpillar (ordinary human) developing into a completely different being, a chrysallis (the Higher Self), and hence evolving into a butterfly (supersensible being). During mortal life we should develop the characteristics, qualities, and powers that will make it possible to be transformed 1 into a new type of life (chrysalis) that contains within itself the capability of evolving into an entirely different kind of being (butterfly). The chrysalis is a state of being that differs entirely from a caterpillar, yet is the result of the caterpillar's development. The caterpillar generates and acquires non-caterpillar (transcendent) characteristics, qualities, and powers that at its death will enable the caterpillar-chrysalis to be transformed into a butterfly. 
A caterpillar's brain--as well as its body--is literally dissolved in the process of morphing into a chrysalis. The brain and body of the chrysalis is dissolved in the process of morphing into a butterfly. And yet, in the butterfly the memories of the caterpillar survive. Monarch butterflies, for example, retain memories about the route to return to the original home of the caterpillar.
"When we have come so far on our soul's pilgrimage that we carry within ourselves as a memory all that we call 'ourself,' namely, our own being in physical life, and experience ourselves instead in another, newly-won superior Self, then we become capable of seeing our life stretching beyond the limits of earthly life. Before our spiritual sight appears the fact that we have shared in another life, in the spiritual world, prior to our present existence in the world of the senses; and in that spiritual life are to be found the real causes of the shaping of our physical existence." Rudolf Steiner, A Road to Self-Knowledge, 1912
When we move from terrestrial existence to the after-life, we possess only those characteristics, qualities, and powers that we have developed in our Higher Self--that essence composed of intangible, non-terrestrial, enduring elements--that will, as Plato says, either assist or impede us in this new state of being. As we move into the afterlife, we find some familiar territory:
- We experience consciousness: awareness of our familiar being with the power to think, feel, remember, and act. 2
- We face situations, with their requirements, just as we faced situations and their requirements in terrestrial life. And just as in physical existence, if we've developed specific capabilities we can master these situations in the afterlife.
"The eye of the mind, if pure and strengthened by habit, makes for itself a line across, and steps upward into, the next plane of human evolutionary progress; and it is for this return to become co-ordinated to the Divine Original Image and Archetype that we are sent here, as Boehme and the rest teach. Souls are not and cannot be co-ordinated to the Divine Image or Archetype here perfectly, but if well begun here the line of progress will, I infer and believe, lead on towards the achievement of its destination hereafter." From the Introduction by Walter Leslie Wilmhurst
of Mary A. Atwood's, Hermetic Philosophy and Alchemy, 1850
What capabilities must we have developed in our Higher Self to master these new situations in this new state of being?
- Understanding:
- The situation: all the elements (persons, events, objects, difficulties) we're facing
- The requirements of the situation: what we need to master the situation
- Ourselves: our strengths and weaknesses
- How we can overcome our weaknesses and enhance our strengths
- Wise aims: what we want to and
should accomplish by mastering our situation
- Self-mastery:
- Calm acceptance of the replacement of one's old environment with a new one
- Stability of self-confidence
- Critical thinking: forming one's personal beliefs by basing them on experience
- Critical consciousness: acting in accordance with knowledge of self and the world
- Altruism and fellow-feeling: going beyond merely personal development to a genuine concern for other beings
- Courage
- Eager desire to understand new situations and gain comprehension of what they are and what they require of us
- Not expecting someone to give us the answers or the solutions; eagerness to develop these for ourselves
- Mastery of our capabilities and qualities to meet the demands of any situation
These characteristics and proficiencies are ones which we will need in every evolutionary stage as we move forward to new levels of being after death. We either develop these capabilities and qualities or we fail to realize the full potential of each stage of being as it presents itself. Sooner or later, we must develop these competencies if we are to continue our necessary evolution.
"For the soul personality, as it develops, must get sufficient power over its own nature-formation and a sufficient self-expressive mental and vital individuality to persist without the support of the material body, as well as to overcome any excessive detaining attachment to the physical plane and the physical life: it would be sufficiently evolved to subsist in the subtle body [Higher Self] which we know to be the characteristic case or sheath and the proper subtle-physical support of the inner being. It is the soul-person, the psychic being, that survives and carries mind and life with it on its journey, and it is in the subtle body that it passes out of its material lodging; both then must be sufficiently developed for the transit. But a transference to planes of mind existence or life existence implies also a mind and life sufficiently formed and developed to pass without disintegration and exist for a time on these higher levels."
Aurobindo, The Life Divine
Aurobindo is suggesting that a person can fail to attain a mind and life "sufficiently formed and developed" so that the person would experience "disintegration" in the after-life and fail to attain a new state of existence. Plato appears to indicate that no matter how much a person fails to build "strength of character, fortitude, and her own development of reason and morality," that person will continue to possess being, but that his development or lack of development of these soul essences during tesrrestrial life will greatly benefit or greatly injure the person's soul in the after-life.
No other person can make you ready for the afterlife or give you "salvation" 3 from any difficulty in the afterlife--no matter what falsehoods the world's orthodox religions encourage you to believe. We enter the afterlife with precisely the intangible, spiritual, intellectual capabilities and qualities we've personally developed in this life. All terrestrial, physical elements are gone: wealth, power, influence, physical beauty, etc. If we achieved higher intellectual, moral, and spiritual qualities during earth life, we experience the realm of eternal being as a joyful abode where we retain these qualities and continue to evolve. If we failed to develop eternal qualities of reason and morality, we will experience remorse 5 and arduous correction.
It is possible for persons to develop false being to the point of becoming sub-humans without genuine self-awareness or independent consciousness. Such atavistic (genetic modifications of a biological strain whereby an ancestral trait reappears after having been lost through evolutionary change in previous generations) creatures are composed primarily of subconscious compulsions, prejudices, egomaniacal grandiosity, mindless thought patterns, and immorality, seen by the sub-human as strength.
Plato says that "when the soul progresses to the afterlife, it takes nothing with her but her strength of character, fortitude, and her own development of reason and morality." The atavistic sub-human creature has NO strength of character, fortitude, or development of reason and morality.
Most humans fail to prepare for life after death. Persons who repeatedly and intentionally commit evil acts, as Plato indicates, try to make themselves believe and wish that death would be the end of being, so they would be "quit not only of their body, but of their own evil together with their souls." Unfortunately for them, physical death is not the end of being.
"It makes me feel that I personally can never be annihilated. If my body were actually taken away from me entirely, and I left in space, I feel I should continue to hold myself together, a vigorously determined entity. I might be temporarily inactive, perhaps, but I'd be convinced of my ability to participate in an existence which would be within my reach for the effort of taking. Though I might be deprived of everything en route, I could not by any conceivable thing be overcome or annihilated. I know that the development of a spark, even a tiny spark, of individual power cannot die. It will seek and find its proper progression through its own vitality. The thing to do is to take a lively spark with you when you go."
Betty White, Across the Unknown, 1939
God (as depicted by Plato and other Perennialists 4 ) is of the essence of Goodness and therefore does not create a "hell" for the eternal punishment and suffering of the evil--as perverted orthodox religious belief would have it. Notwithstanding, Perennialists suggest that humans must face in the afterlife what they've made of themselves and go through a period of self-assessment.
"Men are not in hell because God is angry with them; they are in wrath and darkness because they have done to the light, which infinitely flows forth from God, as that man does to the light of the sun, who puts out his own eyes." William Law
Preparng our souls for the after-life should not be a merely egoistic pursuit. We must remember that our mission in mortal life is to locate our consciousness and life-effort in the Unitive Life of Eternal Being.
"For the life eternal, that which we call the one life, lies outside and beyond all personal aspirations, and hopes, and fears. It lives and moves in all, and has lived and will live from eternity to eternity, ever the great enigma to all that is personal and temporary. The personal devotee who loses his life for his faith, does so in the hope of a personal reward, it is still the personal 'I' who will meet in heaven with all 'I' hold blessed; 'my' friends, 'my' loved ones, 'my' ideal of a personal God and a personal Savior.This is not a renunciation, but an intensification of the personal, and therefore temporary and finite.
"Far deeper than that lies the path to life eternal. It lies within, not without; in the innermost of our own Being, in that Life which is itself the One Life, the One Being. The life Eternal which we must find will never be found in a heaven of personal bliss, where we seem to approach 'God' as we would approach the throne of an earthly king.
"To know 'God' is to know our own life and Being as part of his Life and Being, and to merge all personal interests in that larger life which is 'no respecter of persons.' Let those who can do so, put away from themselves all that conceit which places them in some specially favoured relation to a 'God' who takes a personal interest in every little triviality of their life. For if we are to understand the term 'God' in any sense which is adequate to the conception of the universe in its totality, as the sum of all Being, all consciousness, and all manifestation, and not merely as an expression of one or other of those anthropomorphic conceptions which have gathered round special names of the deity in various ages: then we must recognize that that One Life, expressing itself in countless forms of manifestation, . . . lives and moves, and has its being in and through all." 6
"Your awareness mechanism will be adapted in sort and kind to the manifestations you are capable of encountering, they will seem as natural and as homely as do those diminished realities you see in your present state." Betty White, The Gaelic Manuscripts, circa 1935
Persons who have developed themselves in the the manner depicted in this essay--preparing to master any situation that presents itself and locating our being in the Unitive Life--will look forward to an eternity of self-evolution and the unfolding of the Supreme Unity.
"I shall go on into a further degree of consciousness, but I must graduate to it. . . They tell me it [the next evolutionary stage] will be something comparable, but not quite as I know it here [life after death]. I know there are future manifestations of consciousness, but I do not know their characteristics. I know I shall go on. I have had the experience of transition. . . When they say to me that I am going to experience further transitions, but that I am only going to experience something familiar to my being, I believe what I am told. There is an ultimate or supreme degree of consciousness."
Betty White and Stewart Edward White, The Unobstructed Universe
