Eternity
When all images have disappeared at the subtle level, the dying person arrives at eternity. Eternity is the source of the soul. The rishis say that at last illusions have ended and reality begins.
The fact that we cant see eternity while were alive, as it extends in all directions around us, is a limitation the rishis strove to overcome.
The more boundless your vision, the more real you are.
As inspiring as this sounds, it also makes us uneasy, for we are used to living inside boundaries. As you get closer to eternity, you wont experience being dead or alive. You wont be male or female. A moment will be the same as a century, and before will merge with after.
Eternity gives you more freedom than the mind can conceive. The absence of images means you dont need images anymore. The absence of loved ones means you dont need relationships anymore. You are back at your source, but with a difference. Youve experienced it all. Creation has shown you everything.
The mind we possess now may recoil, thinking that this must be the ultimate nightmare. But the rishis, who called this stage Moksha, or liberation, celebrated it. Only the liberated soul can choose anything. There is no tug up or down, and the whole mechanism of pleasure and pain grinds to a halt.
What would it feel like to find yourself free? Boundless? Nameless? If you try to apply any word to the eternal soul good, holy, loving, truthful the rishis respond with netti, the Sanskrit word for not that.
In fact, in some schools of Vedanta, the spiritual path is called netti, netti, by which you keep repeating not this, not this, until by a process of stripping away you arrive at essence. Thats also what the afterlife journey is about. The dying person realizes, step-by-step, This used to be me, but its not anymore.
Adapted from Life After Death: The Burden of Proof, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2006).
