Q. How important is the actual time of death to the Ego?
A. When the silver cord is loosened in the heart and man has been released from his dense body, a moment of the highest importance comes to the Ego, that of previewing the life just ended, and a great deal of the value of the past life depends upon how much attention the Spirit can give to this matter.
Q. How does this relate to the bereaved?
A. It cannot be too seriously impressed upon the relatives of a dying person that it is a great crime against the departing person to give expression to loud grief and lamentations which naturally would distract the Ego from its concentration on the panorama it now reviews.
Q. How would stimulants affect the situation?
A. It is also a crime against the dying to administer stimulants which have the effect of forcing the higher vehicles back into the dense body with a jerk, thus imparting a great shock to the man. It is no torture to pass out but it as torture to be dragged back to endure further suffering.
Q. Is there evidence to support this statement?
A. Some who have passed out told investigators that they had, in that way, been kept dying for hours and had prayed that their relatives would cease their mistaken kindness and let them die.
Q. What is the process involved in retrospection at death?
A. When the man is freed from the dense body, which was the heaviest clog upon his spiritual power (like the heavy mitten on the hand of a musician), his spiritual power comes in some measure and he is able to read the pictures in the negative pole of the reflecting ether of his vital body, which is the seat of the sub-conscious memory.
Q. What order do these pictures follow?
A. The whole of his past life passes before his sight like a panorama, the events being presented in reverse order. The incidents of the days immediately preceding death come first and so on back through manhood or womanhood to youth, childhood, and infancy. Everything is remembered.
Q. How does this affect the individual?
A. The man stands as a spectator before this panorama of his past life. He sees the pictures as they pass and impress themselves upon his higher vehicles, but he has no feeling about them at this time. That is reserved until the time when he enters into the Desire World, which is the world of feeling and emotion. At present he is only in the Etheric Region of the Physical World.
Q. How long does this retrospection last?
A. This panorama lasts from a few hours to several days, depending upon the length of time the man could keep awake, if necessary.
Q. To what might this be likened?
A. This feature of life after death is similar to that which takes place
when one is drowning or falling from a height. In such cases the vital body
also leaves the dense body and the man sees his life in a flash because he
loses consciousness at once. Of course the silver cord is not broken or there
could be no resuscitation.
— Ref: The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception
— Rays from the Rose Cross Magazine, January, 1980, p. 23
