Life After Death

“HAVE I LEARNED enough now?” Savitri asked. She was beginning to change, she could feel it. Many things she once considered real now seemed like phantoms, while the most profoundly real things were invisible.

Savitri’s heart skipped a beat. “But how do I get back? I don’t know where I am.”

“Or so you imagine.” Ramana pointed into the darkest part of the forest, and Savitri saw a swarm of lights that might have been fireflies, only it was midafternoon. Ramana nodded toward them. “Go,” he said. “I know you think I won’t be with you. That’s just another bit of imagination.” Seeing her reluctance, Ramana bowed his head. “Everything will be as it will be.”

Savitri remembered that those were Yama’s exact words to her. She lingered for a moment until Ramana’s form disappeared into the heart of the forest. Then she walked toward the hovering lights. They grew larger, and she knew she was seeing a band of devas. (A deva is the same as an angel, but it can also be a Nature spirit.)

“Who are you?” she asked. “Are you tree devas?” In India devas inhabit every level of Nature to infuse them with life.

But instead of answering, the lights darted away. Savitri had the distinct feeling that they were afraid of her. In her gentlest voice she begged them to come back. One of the lights said, Why should we when all you want to do is kill us? The voice was not outside Savitri’s head but inside.

The light replied, You are doing it right now. We are the devas assigned to you, yet look how feeble we are.

Savitri said, “Tell me how I did this, because if I ever needed you, it’s at this moment.”

The light said, You have been full of secret sorrow. You are anxious about death. You think nothing of us, and you never call upon us. That’s how you are trying to kill us.

Savitri had never thought of devas that way, that they needed attention. But now the very mention of death drew her mind back to fear, and when it did, the lights grew smaller and dimmer.

To which the light replied, You can’t. We are immortal. The danger isn’t that you can really hurt us but that you can break our connection to you. We need your love and attention, and in return we will help you.

Through inspiration. We bring messages. We can let you see us, as you do now, and that will help you see your place in the divine plan.

“Is it in the divine plan for Satyavan to die?” Savitri asked. The devas had been coming closer, but now they scattered and moved away from her. Savitri caught herself and took a deep breath, asking for hope and courage. The lights cautiously drew closer.

The divine plan is life itself. It includes all creatures in their proper place. The proper place for humans is, first, in eternity and second, here on earth. Death, like the pause between two breaths, is how you cross from one home to the other.

Savitri felt a rush of gratitude, which brought the lights even closer. They began to gleam, lighting the way. Savitri found that she wasn’t lost. In fact, her hut was close by, and with determined steps, led by a flickering host of lights, she headed home.

Drawing a sharp line between real and unreal ignores how consciousness really works. If you say to me, “I have a guardian angel,” I can interpret that statement through several states of awareness. You could mean:

I imagine I have a guardian angel.

My religion teaches me that I have a guardian angel in heaven.

I have read eagerly in the mythology of angels, and the one that attracts me is the guardian angel.

I see my guardian angel and experience its presence.

Having a guardian angel is my cherished wish.

I saw my guardian angel in a dream.

Certain states of awareness, such as dreams and imagination, are accepted in our society, but they press close to other states that modern people often relegate to superstition, such as seeing departed spirits and having holy visions. Yet I’ve met too many people who tell me soberly of having saints appear to them in meditation, and others who have been visited by gurus, the archangel Michael, Jesus, Buddha, ancient Tibetan lamas, and incarnations of themselves. Access will not be denied.

Other cultures have felt more comfortable navigating the subtle dimension than we do; our tendency is to wall this region off from the physical world and to make arbitrary judgments, like the following:

People who see angels are imagining things.

Dreams are illusory, so every other subtle phenomenon is an illusion also.

If you see or hear anything that isn’t physical, you must be hallucinating.

Seeing a god or angel is the equivalent of seeing a UFO. Both are outside normal experience.

Sacred visions are the result of organic diseases like epilepsy or paranoid schizophrenia.

Yet, to create in consciousness is our greatest gift, and what we create continues to evolve. If you open yourself without judgment to your role as a creator, you gain much more freedom. Genesis doesn’t have to be a far-off event that put the universe into play. It can be a constant event that renews itself at every moment.

A great work of art can begin in a dream, a vision, or an inspirational moment. It gestates in the invisible reaches of the imagination, but then the artist begins to shape it in clay or on a canvas. The Mona Lisa needed an audience, and that audience had to think that painting was important. The painting had to inspire viewers with its beauty, and as it did, it gained fame, appreciation, and understanding. Eventually, if an artwork is supreme, a whole culture adores it. The word “angel” could be substituted for “Mona Lisa” without much change. Being a work of art, a human product, the Mona Lisa doesn’t stir our skeptical nature, but since we can’t observe ourselves creating angels, we aren’t as accepting of the process. The next step, then, is to unfold that process in detail.

The mechanism by which angels are created is called projection. In the field of psychology this term is often used pejoratively, as a synonym for hanging a subjective state on an object outside ourselves. Instead of being able to accept their own negative emotions, for example, people frequently project them onto others. Consider these familiar exchanges:

I don’t think you love me anymore. You’re just projecting. Of course I do.

There’s a noise outside. I’m sure it’s a burglar. You think every noise is something dangerous. You’re just projecting.

If I go to the party next week without losing ten pounds, everyone will think I’m disgusting. Stop projecting. You look fine.

Projection can get complicated. A society that feels endangered can project wild fantasies. Muslim fundamentalists project a West that is corrupt, unholy, and decadent, while Christian fundamentalists project an Islam that is barbaric, fanatical, and godless in return. Projection is “successful” when we no longer can see reality but have created a false version based on fear, hostility, anxiety, or insecurity—any negative emotion for which we refuse to take responsibility. Projection also can be positive, as it is when a smitten lover sees perfection in the object of his love, although to friends and family the beloved remains an ordinary creature of flesh and blood.

Vedic rishis said that projection is the mechanism by which consciousness created reality. We are all familiar with this because the movie business depends entirely on projection. In Hollywood, a star is an actor who has crossed the dividing line between reality and projection. When Tom Cruise stops to help a stranded motorist change a tire, or when Jennifer Aniston goes out on a date, it’s worldwide news. Why? Because stars are projected into a superhuman dimension. Their smallest gesture is significant beyond reason. If you or I help someone change a tire, it’s not a feat of heroism; if a young woman goes out on a date, the Goddess of Love hasn’t entered the world. Projection is a recipe for turning the human into the superhuman, and the natural into the supernatural. Here are some of its ingredients:

Symbolism: Our projection must stand in for something deeper and more significant.

Desire: Our projection must fulfill a wish or need that cannot be fulfilled directly.

Fantasy: Our projection must operate in the realm where physical constraints don’t hold sway.

Myth and archetype: Our projection must be universal in meaning.

Idealism: Our projection must connect us to higher values.

These requirements can be met only in the consciousness of a creator. A fireman who rescues a child from a burning building isn’t a hero. He’s just a man in a fireproof coat who runs into flames as part of his job. Heroism is created by projecting the necessary ingredients:

In fantasy he is more powerful than the fire. He defeats it in personal combat.

He fits the myth of the great warrior and the prince who rescues the maiden in distress.

We idealize him as heroically masculine. Firemen don’t just do a job—they live up to our manly ideal.

Without projection we wouldn’t see firemen the way we do, and they wouldn’t see themselves that way either. This is a good example of how we first create the projection and then participate in it. Society is constantly caught up in the rise and fall of its projections. Sports figures who take drugs become fallen heroes; soldiers in battle step into hell; movie actresses are goddesses until their next extramarital affair, which turns them into home wreckers. People we deem larger than life have learned how to manipulate symbols, fantasies, ideals, and myths. The most successful products in the marketplace do this as well.

However, these superficial examples of projection hide a profound power inside all of us. Our entire culture has been built upon projection, and at this moment you and I are continuing the process. Projection creates meaning. By themselves, events are meaningless until we give them value. Think of the many deaths we see on the television news. Some deaths feel meaningless to us because they seem so remote. But if we attach value to a person, everything changes. Certain phrases—“somebody’s child,” “cancer victim,” “a soldier who loved his country”—cause us to project a positive meaning. Other phrases—“insurgent,” “escaped convict,” “gang member”—flip meaning to the negative side. It could be the same death in question, since everyone is someone’s child, for instance. We react to information (which often comes prepackaged with spin included) so quickly that we lose sight of the power we are exerting as creators.

If you want to make an angel, you must project it, but to do that, you must be in a state of consciousness that accepts angels as real. In India there’s a specific region called Devaloka, where angels abide, but it’s not the same as heaven. Devaloka is often portrayed like heaven—a place in the clouds where ethereal beings float—but it’s understood that all Lokas, or other worlds, are layers of consciousness. Therefore angels are part of the whole self system.

The rishis tell us that any one projection affects all the Koshas. While we are creating in the material world, we are affecting every level of consciousness and therefore every level of creation. Meaning is never isolated. Angels exist because they have been projected in consciousness. Just as a movie requires an image, a projector, and a viewer, so do angels. In terms of Vedanta three elements are involved:

In a movie house the audience is the rishi, the machine run by the projectionist is the devata, and the images on the screen are the chhandas. It’s not so important to remember these terms, but ancient sages hit upon a universal rule of consciousness, called three-in-one. If you occupy any of these roles—seer, seen, or the process of seeing—you occupy all of them. These modest-sounding words have the potential to revolutionize the world.

If you are blankly looking at the world, it has power over you, because you are passive and the world is doing everything to you. If you engage in a process—going through a divorce, driving to work, cooking a meal—you are a bit closer to power, but the process has its own momentum and can overwhelm you. If you are the object being seen—a rich man, a beautiful woman, a preacher, a criminal—those objective labels give you status and meaning, but you have given yourself over to others, the ones who make labels and stick them on people. Only in the unity of all three roles do we achieve our complete power as creators.

At the soul level all three roles are enfolded into unity. That’s why, paradoxically, God is the Creator and his creation. Once he projects his creation outward, unity turns into diversity. This is Vedanta’s equivalent of the Big Bang. When the creator begins to look at himself, instantly there is a three-in-one state. An observer (rishi) beholds an object (chhandas) through the process of observation (devata). As soon as the three emerge, the entire universe emerges with them; the matter dispersed by the Big Bang is only one facet of an invisible mechanism in which the creator suddenly sees what’s possible, and in that seeing the possible comes true in infinite variety. We shouldn’t be surprised that the entire universe contains only 4% visible matter and energy, the remaining 96% being so-called dark matter whose function seems to be that it holds the visible universe together in some mysterious way. The “Creator” doesn’t have to be a person; it can include the invisible field from which everything visible is organized and upheld.

The three-in-one state wouldn’t matter if it didn’t affect everyday reality, but it does. Seeing is enough to create. The “observer effect,” as it is called in physics, literally creates matter: It takes an observer to turn the invisible energy state of an electron into a specific particle located in time and space. Before the observer effect takes place there is no electron; there is only the possibility of one. Our eyes cannot detect it, but we are immersed in a sea of possibilities. Every possible electron that could ever exist is here right now. We pluck electrons out of the sea of possibilities simply by looking. Somehow the Vedic rishis understood this astonishing fact. How? Because they watched the process firsthand, not with electrons, but with the rise and fall of events, which are so fluid that to them it was no more than a dream.

Is this really believable? The spookiest thing about the observer effect is that when you see a single electron, all other electrons are affected. This makes sense only in a universe where there are no single electrons, only a vast, all-encompassing web of charges, positions, spins, and points in—which is exactly the view on which theoretical physics is converging. The Vedic sages called themselves rishis (seers) because to them everything comes back to the observer, the seer. Seeing is the ultimate creative act.

The mystery of creation lies in the gap between the observer and the observed. Angels exist in this gap; they are the processors of consciousness, and thus, to use a biblical term, the servants of God. Devata, the Sanskrit word for this process, has its root in deva, which means angel. Devas are more than messengers; they are agents of creation. They carry out the bidding of the creator, and since the creator does nothing but observe, devas stand for the active aspect of seeing, which is hidden. It would be fair to say that everything we’ve ascribed to projection belongs instead to the devata effect, the ability of consciousness to turn invisible impulses into physical reality. The devata effect regulates every level of reality, and angels therefore appear in all the Koshas.

In the physical dimension angels appear as visitors and guides. They deliver messages from God or offer help in times of crisis.

In the vital dimension angels sustain Nature by breathing life into creation. They serve as builders of form; they give each living thing an essential connection to Nature.

In the mental dimension angels appear in visions and dreams. They embody the mind of God and connect it to our thoughts.

In the dimension of bliss angels surround God and praise Him constantly. They embody joy in its most exalted state.

All five levels share the need for communication. The creative impulse must cascade from one level to the next. Angels are really symbols for how information gets passed along and organized. The reality beneath the symbol is the devata effect. Let me offer a concrete example that might get us closer to understanding this hidden reality.

I know a woman who earns her living from angels. Her name is Lily, and she first became aware of angels at a birthday party when she was three or four. “My mother turned off the lights so I could blow out the candles on my cake. I looked around and noticed these people standing around the edge of the room. They weren’t there when the lights were on. I pointed to them, only to discover that nobody else could see them. But I remember that they made me feel very happy.”

Lily’s first encounter was the most physical one. After her mother discouraged her from seeing “people” where there were none, they quickly disappeared. Lily was still aware of their presence, however, and as she grew up she learned to adapt to this presence. Eventually “the guys,” as she called them, became images she could see when she closed her eyes, and voices she could hear when she asked questions.

“They weren’t constant voices,” she says. “I never considered them hallucinations. I had to consciously call on the guys, and when I did I felt a comfort, a guiding wisdom. I know most people don’t make contact with their own guides, but I can see theirs, too. We all have them.”

This ability, which the rishis would say belongs in the world of “consciousness filled with subtle objects,” came and went in Lily’s life. A great deal seemed to depend on where she found herself. Right after college she had a brief marriage to a man who discouraged Lily from contacting “the guys,” and after their divorce Lily held an office manager’s job for fifteen years that needed little inner guidance. But eventually she was led to think about the issue of healing.

“The guys told me that I could heal people emotionally, and that they’d help. At first this made me nervous. But I kept noticing how painful it is for many people when they are faced with their old wounds. The guys told me it didn’t have to be that way. They would show me how to move the trapped energies of pain and trauma. I could learn to do this without the person feeling anything stressful. That appealed to me deeply.”

By the time she turned forty, Lily had begun her healing work in earnest. She started out with friends with whom she could freely talk about “the guys.” As the work deepened, she began to use the phrase “higher guides and angels” to fit what she saw.

“I’m a conventional person in many ways. When I’m not tuning in to the level where I do my work, my life is completely ordinary. It took me years to think of the guys as angels, but then they showed me the archangel Michael. I brought in the presence of Christ to help me. I tell people that they are energetically connected to God. It’s become very natural now because I can see everything I talk about.”

Outside the boundaries of the reality, on which we generally agree, people like Lily exist and always have. Lily brings us to a critical point in our investigations. It doesn’t matter if we try to settle the argument over whether angels are real or unreal, whether they are here on earth or far away in heaven. Our own consciousness regulates what is real and unreal; we have stepped into our own projection. If that projection consists of physical objects only, to the exclusion of subtle objects, it’s nevertheless a self-creation. You and I exist not as observer, or observed or the process of observation but all three at once. To deny this is to deny our wholeness, and the power that is our birthright.

“I have various ways of seeing people,” Lily says. “I see them physically, but even then I sense their energy. When I go inside, I see their energy as a field of light around them. That’s the basic reality, but if I ask to, I can also see their angels and other etheric beings. Some of these are very negative. They’ve been drawn to the person by negative beliefs. I can see people as they were in other lifetimes, and to a limited extent I can see them in the future. It’s all very fluid, but it’s all accessible.”

Twenty years ago I knew no one with subtle sight like Lily; now I’ve met many of them. Each has learned to ignore the boundary that society sets between one level of life and another. At the soul level we are free to do whatever we want with the potential given to us. Angels are not absolutes; they have changed over history as human imagination has changed. This creative project of ours goes back millennia, and it continues to this day.

When you die, how much of what happens will be your choice and how much will be left to outside forces? Lily herself is clear about this. She and “the guys” could work together without interruption by physical death. In this way Lily is doing consciously what we are all doing unconsciously. Thanks to the devata effect, we are the process of creation. Through us, gods, angels, and souls come in and out of being. Lily says, “When I started out on this work a lot of my vocabulary was Christian, because from early on I felt very close to Jesus. Then I began to experience him as the Christ presence, without any picture in my head. I discovered that there was an esoteric name for the universal Christ, which is Sananda, and the guys told me I could use that when I wanted to relate to the cosmic Christ. Now even Sananda has become more abstract, like a field of compassionate light.”

“That’s the big question, isn’t it? At some level I know I don’t really need the guys. They’re just aspects of myself. If I wanted to, I could just ask myself what needs to be done and rely on my own abilities. That’s the next stage.”

If she knows it is all herself, I asked, what keeps her from moving on to the next stage right now?

“Habit, maybe some residual fear that I haven’t faced. You’ve got to remember, the guys have been with me all my life. I imagine I’ll hold on to them until I’m comfortable enough to be on my own.”

We are all at some stage of taking responsibility for participating in creation. Gods and goddesses, angels and etheric beings exist because they have been drawn out of the raw material of consciousness. The workshop where this creation takes place is Akasha, the field of consciousness. The artisans in charge are those with enough awareness to do the job. I’d like to propose that even if you don’t feel competent to make a god, you can at least teach yourself to make an angel.

I once interviewed a man who had remarkable healing abilities, and he was very modest about them. He told me, “I could teach you to do the same thing in a few days.” When I replied that I doubted that, he said, “It’s actually very simple. The hard part is removing your belief that you can’t heal.” The same holds true for almost everything. We spend our whole lives projecting a dream, stepping into it, and believing the dream is real. See yourself as the one who is doing all three, and suddenly the world of angels becomes as real as this world of solid things.