What Happens When You Die?

The most comforting aspect of death is that there are no adverse consequences. Regardless of the circumstances that have caused your physical body to deteriorate to the point where death is inevitable, your body will stabilize in the day or two before you pass away. The discomfort you may have felt will diminish considerably, if not disappear completely, and you will experience a renewed sense of energy. It is at this moment that the active dying process commences.

Physical dying is in some ways like being born. You are about to enter a new reality, and you are clueless about it, so fortunately people you love are about to show up and help you through your dying.  The day of your death is meant to be the happiest and most beautiful day of your life. It’s the day when you will be reunited with loved ones you may have thought that you never would see again, the day you will get to see and hug the guides who have helped you make the most of this lifetime, and the blessed day when you will leave this illusion and return to the joy of your true home. For most people, dying is just that wonderful! And it is carefully planned to be that way, so you can just relax and enjoy the ride.

Within the last few days or hours of our lives, we first see our deathbed visitors. One or more of the dead people and pets that we are most likely to trust will show up, looking young and healthy. The number of visitors and the timing of their arrival is highly individual: there are reports of deathbed visitors coming and going for weeks, and also reports of deathbed visitors showing up immediately before the event. We might see just a spouse or parent or a childhood pet, or we might find ourselves entertaining a crowd. The usual interval between the arrival of visitors and the actual death is twenty-four to forty-eight hours, so let’s assume that is what happens in your case. Our dead loved ones usually first appear in an upper corner of the room, and they might stay there, although sometimes they will come down and take a chair and make themselves at home. Deathbed visitors generally converse with us mentally, and in fact, once we are in contact with them we tend to lose interest in communicating with the living. Mom is here, looking amazingly great after a forty-year separation! Now we know that everyone else must be fine, and we also know for sure that we will survive our death.

We might have actual glimpses of a post-death reality. It can seem as if a wall of the room has disappeared, and we will see breathtaking natural vistas with lots of greenery and flowers in unearthly colors backed by snow-capped mountains. We might see a beautiful, ethereal city. This sort of gift is more common if we are alert and not medicated, and anecdotally we might add that it seems to happen more readily for young people. There are reports of children dying a century ago from diphtheria and other now-vanquished diseases who would enjoy panoramic vistas for days before their actual deaths.

Life’s Final Frontier: What Happens When You Die?

Our earth-bodies are nested energy bodies. A couple of those energy bodies – including the one that we think of as our material body – are going to die now. But there are several energy bodies that we will be taking with us, and the process of separation can take a while. It begins in our extremities, our hands and our feet, and if we are awake we may feel it happening like tiny threads breaking. Bodily separation doesn’t hurt, nor is it frightening, but does feel funny. Gradually these surviving energy bodies will gather into our chest area and then will leave, either from the chest or through the top of the head. Once out of our material body, our surviving nested energy bodies will re-form into a human shape that is still attached to the material body by what is called the silver cord. Being out of our dying body feels wonderful! Minutes ago we were trapped in a frail and decrepit body, weak and ill and at death’s door. Now suddenly we feel young, healthy, vigorous and joyous! Some of the dying even say that leaving the physical body produces a surge of pleasure.

For our inner energy bodies to travel out of the body during sleep has been routine for our   entire lives. That silver cord has been tough and infinitely stretchy, but it is fraying now. Soon it will disintegrate. While we wait to complete our transition, our energy replica might lie suspended above our physical body, face down, still attached by that silver cord; or else it might sit cross-legged in the air or tip down to stand beside the bed and interact with our deathbed visitors. When it first forms, our energy body is naked. We notice that, and our mind clothes it.

When Does the Separation of Spirit from Body Happen?

The breaking of the silver cord is our moment of dying. Without our support, that material body which has served us so well ceases to breathe, and its heart stops. This is a moment of danger! People we love who are gathered around the bed will realize that we have died, and especially if we are young and our death was unexpected, we may witness agonizing grief. Our instinct will be to focus on the living and try to reassure them that we are fine, but to do that could bring disaster! If we take our attention from our deathbed visitors even briefly, we can lose our ability to perceive them. Stuck there in a limbo outside of time, it is possible for us to become an earthbound ghost for centuries. There are ways to offer help to those who mourn us once we have transitioned to the afterlife levels, but until then they cannot see or hear us. There is nothing that we can do for our living loved ones until after we have completed our transition. How ever hard it is for us to see their pain, we must altogether ignore the living!

Death and Beyond: Understanding What Happens Next

 We have died. The universal fate of all living things has overtaken us as well. And dying has been amazingly easy and happy! There has been no pain and no fear. We have been supported gently through the whole dying process, and as a dead person we feel terrific! We might still worry a bit about the loved ones we are leaving behind, but we feel ourselves to be now young and healthy and joyous and wonderfully enveloped in love. Our deathbed visitors are hugging us, feeling as solid as anyone living, and we are solid as well. Our childhood dog might be jumping up on us or happy-dancing at our feet. We turn away from our deathbed with relief and with anticipation of the wonders to come, and we join those who have come for us in together lifting our spiritual vibration and approaching a glorious new world.