The Passage Beyond

At the moment of death, the passage into the next life is a nearly impenetrable mystery. Published accounts of near-death experiences by people who have been resuscitated from clinical death may give a clue. They report passing through a tunnel into another world, meeting a being of light, and feeling great warmth and accepting love. While these people did not, by definition, die, they may have experienced the first stage of the passage. Who can know how it ends?

What can be known with some certainty is that there is survival after death. In fact, many people who die do not at first realize that they are dead, as they continue to experience themselves as conscious, sentient beings.

Physical death is but a transition to a higher stage of existence. It is the putting on of a new body, like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Father Moon calls it a second birth, by analogy to the birth of an infant who must leave the comfortable world of the womb. As the womb nourished the fetus until birth, when it is destroyed and the baby leaves it for life on the earth, the physical body nourishes the soul until death, when it expires and the soul departs for life in the spirit world. Hence there are three stages of life: in the water-world of the womb, in the air-world of earthly existence, and in the spirit world where we breathe an atmosphere of love.

Therefore, death is not something to be feared. On the other side it is celebrated as the soul’s birthday. The chief issue is whether we have adequately prepared our soul with the spiritual faculties to exist comfortably in that world. There, nothing matters but one’s ability to love.