Journey to Astral Heavens
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 7 years before Aug 23, 2018
MiBeloved 7 years ago
Those who are practicing kundalini yoga, should plan to continue doing so after leaving the body. Recently within the last month, I was teaching some persons on the astral planes. These are people who are deceased and who failed in their last human body to practice yoga. They had heard about it and never did take up the practice, which is perhaps because of peer pressure. Now finding themselves in the astral world without any social pressure, they are free to practice.
These were persons who saw me practicing over 40 years ago. They remember me just because of the strange practices of yoga which I used to do in the neighborhood where they lived. Just about 4 months ago, these persons were led to me in the astral world by another person who does not practice but who found my name on the internet. This person is still using a physical body but does not practice.
Sometimes students ask me if I could determine their situation in the astral world after death of their present bodies. The answer is that your general state of mind at the time of departure from the body will determine where you will go and what you will be able to do. Note the use of the word general. If I remove that word, then the statement will be incorrect because it is not your state of mind at the time of departure from the body but your general consciousness-profile at that time.
For purposes of yoga, especially kriya and brahma yoga, going to an astral paradise after death is not an objective. It might happen, who knows? But it is not the objective because if it happens, then it means that the yogi has just delayed his progression. In the book I am now translating, the Anu Gita, this is explained nicely where a siddha tells Kashyapa that people who go to the astral heavens must again resume creature existence as soon as the energy of their cumulative pious merits are used up.
Suppose you work for a large company, which has a commission package which includes a holiday in Tahiti or the Bahamas with all pleasures and amenities in the deal. So at the end of the fiscal year, they add up your commissions and inform you that you have a two month holiday in Tahiti.
That will be based on your commission package. Now once you get to Tahiti, you might be having such a wonderful time that you forget that there is a time limit. But your employers will not forget and so at the end of the two months, you will have to return to work as usual. If you refuse and insist on staying in Tahiti forever, you will find that you are forcibly put on an aircraft back to your city.
Going to the heavenly paradises in the astral world is like that. The problem with it though is that when you get back to the human level you may or may not get into a human womb. If you do, then your problems are still not over since you may not remember to resume yoga practice. Your parents might be disinclined from that and so you might have to wait until you get out of parental control, to take up the practice.
This is why I tell students that the best plan is to set in your psyche the idea and tendency to continue yoga in the hereafter and not to focus on being in an astral paradise.
I have gone to the astral paradises many times and in addition I have been visited by beings from those places. These places are beyond a student yogi’s ability to resist. Or stated flatly the pleasure experienced there is such that one will become addicted to it and one’s yoga practice will not be remembered.
Just as with a human body, if you are exposed to sex indulgence, it operates an irresistible pull, the heavenly worlds in the astral regions are at least 100 times more alluring in all respects, not just the sexual one.
Some people feel that there should be a set procedure, something definite which will take place after the death of the body. These persons have the traditional religious mentality which is that such and such will happen because I did such and such in my religion on earth.
However in kriya yoga, there is no concern with that because the status one achieves in the hereafter will be based on the general disposition during life, not on a religious belief. For a yogi the best thing to do is to set your mind on practicing after you leave the body. This is effective if your astral form is already habituated to practicing before you leave the physical one for good. The value of this approach is that it gives you the opportunity to meet with advanced yogis after death. In their association you can determine what to do next.
The persons whom I am instructing on the astral planes, found the bhastrika breath infusion to be wonderful and easy. In their physical bodies they would have found it be difficult since their bodies were not very flexible. In addition one of these persons who had an astral body which resembled an 80 years of physical form., experienced that that astral form was so invigorated by just one session of the practice, that the form dropped 40 years of senility and looked like a 40 years old human body.
This proves that one can continue the practice on the astral planes. The other option to go to the heavenly paradises in the astral world is not a very attractive one since it involves ceasing practice and getting involved in heavenly pleasures which are more intense than anything we encounter in an earthly body.
The higher astral heavens are not an exclusive spiritual domain but it is the most fabulous existence one may have in the subtle material existence. It is extra-ordinary but it is not liberation from the material world. It is being in a nice part of the world.
The spiritual dimensions are completely different from these astral heavens and those are the place to aim for but to be practical one should see the continuation of yoga practice on the astral planes as the immediate objective, and transfer to the spiritual places as the final achievement. There is no sense is thinking on and on about being at the top of a ladder if you cannot even put your foot on the first rung.
