Afterlife is a "special kind of tomorrow"

Near-death experiences tell us that the stage of “crossing over”—the temporary realm preceding the full experience of the afterlife—still feels personal. People report seeing their deceased friends and relations, for example. The dying person continues to see the room in which his body lies, and memories and associations keep tying him back to physical existence. The possibility of taking a creative leap has yet to be realized. As long as you continue to feel like the person you were, you can’t experience the unknown.

 

When you are in a physical body your perspective makes physicality real. When you are dreaming at night, the dream state is real. When you are “crossing over,” both waking and dreaming are unreal, and the field of consciousness is real. What causes this change of reality? Vedanta holds that consciousness is convinced by its own creations. Therefore, nothing we can see, hear, and touch, whether in waking, dreaming, or beyond both, is ultimately real. They represent shifting perspectives.

 

To be completely free means waking up from all dreamlike states and reclaiming who you are: the maker of reality. One cannot say that all dying people will achieve this kind of absolute freedom. They may glimpse it only for a fleeting second; they may sense the possibility of breaking away from one dream and yet be seduced into the next one that comes to mind.

 

Consciousness is tied by thousands of threads to old memories, habits, preferences, and relationships. Whenever someone really presses the issue of what happens after we die, my response comes in the form of a question: “Who are you?” You have to know where you are right now, in order to know where you will be tomorrow, and the afterlife is just a special kind of tomorrow.

 Chopra, Deepak. Life After Death (p. 84, 87, 98). Harmony/Rodale. Kindle Edition.