A Yogi Learns about Astral Worlds from his Dead Guru

 

One of the most valuable pieces of life counsel in Autobiography of a Yogi comes from the author's guru, Sri Yukteswar: “Forget the past. The past lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until anchored in the Divine. Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now.” This is said to have been Paramahansa Yogananda's favorite passage in his book.

Though his whole life practice had prepared him for death, Sri Yukteswar was nervous as the moment approached. While talking to Yogananda about his impending death, the guru "trembled like a frightened child". The great yoga teacher Patanjali wrote that "attachment to bodily residence, springing up of its own nature, is present in slight degree even in great saints." Before his last days, Sri Yukteswar, in similar vein, often compared a human approaching death to a "long-caged bird" that "hesitates to leave its accustomed home when the door is opened."

After burying his master, Yogananda grieved and meditated in the Regent hotel, a classic pile in the city of Bombay, now called Mumbai. One afternoon he saw an immense golden glow rise above the buildings across the street. It took the form of Lord Krishma.

A week later, sitting on his bed on the third floor of the hotel at three o'clock in the afternoon on June 19, 1936, Yogananda saw a golden light flower inside the room. In this "beatific light" Yogananda found his room transformed into "a strange world". Sri Yukteswar, appeared before him in "flesh and blood form". His guru assured him, "I am in truth resurrected-not on earth but on an astral planet."

Yukteswar proceeded to give a detailed account of the geography and physics of the astral worlds, the causal realm beyond the astral, and the higher realm where forms dissolve into a sea of light. This fills chapter 43 of Autobiography of a Yogi, and is of perennial interest. Some key revelations:

* "Astral beings dematerialize or materialize their forms at will. All astral beings are free to assume any form, and can easily commune together."

* "The recently physically disembodied being arrives in an astral family through invitation, drawn by similar mental and spiritual tendencies."

* "The span of life in the astral world is much longer than on earth. A normal advanced astral being's average life period is from five hundred to one thousand years,." 

* There are multitudes of astral realms, from astral prisons where the evil dead are confined to gated communities for the holy evolved like the one where Yukteswar said he had taken up residence. The residency status of the population of the astral worlds ranges from "temporary visitor" - someone who has not worked off earthly karma and will need to go through reincarnation, maybe again and again and again - to "long-term resident", who will eventually be able to doff their astral body and ascend to a home on the higher causal plane - to "savior", someone not obliged to remain on the astral (and not required to reincarnate on earth) who stays to help others on this level.  

* Astral beings "have the privilege of costuming themselves at will with new, colorful, astrally materialized bodies. Just as worldly men don new array for gala events, so astral beings find occasions to bedeck themselves in specially designed forms."

* "Friends of other lives easily recognize one another in the astral world."

* "The intuition of astral beings pierces through the veil and observes human activities on earth, but man cannot view the astral world unless his sixth sense is somewhat developed."

* "The advanced beings on Hiranyaloka [a higher astral realm] remain mostly awake in ecstasy during the long astral day and night, helping to work out intricate problems of cosmic government and the redemption of prodigal sons, earthbound souls. When the Hiranyaloka beings sleep, they have occasional dreamlike astral visions."

* "The undeveloped man must undergo countless earthly and astral and causal incarnations in order to emerge from his three bodies. A master who achieves this final freedom may elect to return to earth as a prophet to bring other human beings back to God, or like myself he may choose to reside in the astral cosmos."

Picture: "Astral Seminar in Bombay" (c) Robert Moss