By Lazaris

Several Questions and Answers on Death

From interviews with Lazaris, originally published in Lazaris Interviews, Book II. (this book is out of print)

Q: Lazaris, would you talk to us about death — and can you program to avoid certain realities like the death of one’s parents and oneself?

Lazaris: What about death? The real statement — assumption — behind this question is: Death is bad. And we would ask: Why? What’s wrong with dying? Well, we’re going to talk about some of the problems with dying, but we would ask: What’s wrong with it? You see, you’ve been geared, you’ve been conditioned, to believe that it’s bad, that death is a failure, and that if you die you somehow have failed — unless you live to be … well, very, very old. Even then, people treat it as a failure. ‘Oh, that’s too bad.’ Why? What’s so bad about it?

The world that you go into, the reality that you move into, is far more exciting, we dare say, far more thrilling and far more to your liking than the one you’re dealing with now. Death is something that you do not because you have to, but because you decided to.

Your body is a vehicle. That’s all it is. It’s an illusion. It’s made up of light and sound that is dense enough to be called a body.

When you watch television you see light and sound, and it looks like bodies walking around in your television screen. They aren’t bodies. You know that. When you go to movies and see figures on the big screen, they look like bodies moving around, too, but you know they’re not. You know that’s light and sound in coordination to create illusion.

Well, you’re just a three-dimensional illusion, and that body of yours is a vehicle. Now how would you feel about getting an automobile assigned to you at birth, but you could never get rid of it? You had to keep that same automobile … from birth! Well, even at 16, yes? Think back to the first automobile you had. How would you feel about still having to drive that? … {laughter} … ‘You mean I don’t get to trade this one in?’ No! You have to keep it, and you have to treat it right, and you have to program it to run forever. Would you like that? ‘No, I want to trade it in. I want a newer model!’ Some of you trade them in every two years regardless. Some of you keep them a little longer if you particularly like them, but you always look forward to a new automobile — the new vehicle.

Well, similarly, death is a process of turning in the vehicle, and saying, ‘I’m done with this vehicle. I’m ready either to move on without a vehicle or to get another one.’ So indeed, to program not to die? We would suggest look deeper. Why are you considering death a failure? Why are you considering it bad and wrong? Why are you seeing it as something you never want to do?

Admittedly, you might not want to do it now or next week or next year or whatever, but some time you’re going to want to. You can program to be healthy and to live as long as you desire, to live to be as old as you desire to be, but eventually indeed you will want to die and be ready to die and be eager to do so. Truthfully, it is not inevitable as a ‘rule’ or a ‘law,’ but it is something you will desire … someday.

Also, there is the power of belief. You have been so conditioned to believe that you have to die at a certain age. Some people have a belief that they’re going to die at 50 because their mother, father, brother, and sister all died at age 50, ‘so I’m going to die at age 50.’ And many times they do. Others feel that ‘once I retire and the old ticker stops working so well, you know, there’s not much use in living.’

Some of you who are led totally by your second chakra decide that once you can’t have sex there’s no reason to live, and therefore you go about the process of dying.

You’ve been conditioned to believe that the moment you’re born you begin to die. What a devastating thought, but nonetheless … So there are very high thresholds, and if you really wanted to get over it, you could. Ultimately, you don’t really want to get over that threshold. You will want to die sometime. Eventually you — everyone — will choose to die.

Q: Death. Speak to us of physical death.

Lazaris: Well, it’s a rather interesting concept, you know. You’ve been so afraid of it, and we understand that, certainly so. We understand your fears. We’ve heard you echo them. We’ve heard your call. But we would suggest that, in fact, death ultimately is the healer, as it is the ultimate end of your pain, the ultimate end of your fear, the ultimate end of your frustration in life. We do not encourage you to do it quickly. We do not encourage you to bring it on any sooner than you are fully willing to. But we would suggest that there will come a time, indeed, when each of you will choose to discard this form that you carry.

That discarding is the process called death. Some choose to do it with their eyes closed and pretend they can’t see what’s going on. Others choose to do it with their eyes open, and therefore more consciously select their death.

When you decide to die — by whatever means, early or late in your life — what happens is you slip out of your body, much as you would slip out of a garment at night, and let it fall to the ground and seem lifeless around you. But you, you as the spark that you are, are still alive, still vibrant, still reaching. What do you see before you?

What? A most glorious light, a most glorious light, and that light attracts you, and that light draws you to it, and you want to reach for that light. You stretch for it, and at a certain point as you are reaching, it draws you in. As you are drawn, you realize how much you are loved by God, by God/Goddess/All That Is, and how capable you are of loving. It is toward this love, this love, this love and light that is God, that you are so drawn.

Q: Do we have the physical chance to come back?

Lazaris: Oh, most definitely you do. After you go through the light, and have this most glorious of celebrations, most definitely you take a bit of a rest, you know? You carry forth with you much of your physical desire, and therefore bodies turn younger and thinner and more athletic and you get, finally, the body that you’ve always wanted, for a bit of time at least.

You go into this wondrous somnambulistic state, half-awake, half- asleep. When you awaken, you look at your life, and you look it over, and review it, to see what you’ve done and what you’ve accomplished — not in a judgmental way, not in a harsh way, but just in an evaluative way.

Then you decide. You see, this power of choice is effective not only in your physical world, but in the world beyond. You decide: Do you want to come back into physical form or do you not? Are you most suited to learn by re-entering this density that you call physicalness, or are you most suited to learn without it?

The choice very clearly is yours, absolutely. There is no referee; there’s no judge. There’s no one there saying, ‘Ah …’ No. You are the one who decides. At times it would seem almost better if someone else did make those choices and decisions, because you are much harsher on yourself than anyone else would be. However, it is always you who chooses and decides.

Q: You’ve described the death experience as passing through a tunnel with the sound of wind rushing in our ears. What happens when you emerge from the tunnel?

Lazaris: Wonderful things! What happens when you die? Well, let’s not belabor it, because we have talked about it frequently. When you die you leave your body behind. You go out of body, and it is a terrifying experience because you believe it is, because you’ve been conditioned to believe it is, because you get close to that brink, and you get scared. What if it’s not there? What if there isn’t a heaven? What if there isn’t a God? What if the existentialists are right, and your body just rots in the ground, and you go into some sort of oblivion?

Nonetheless, you have all these sorts of resistances right at the edge. Therefore, you sort of faint when you leave you body … {laughter} … It’s a trauma, you know?

You’re born in trauma, and you die in trauma, many of you. When you’re born, you’re amazed that you’re confined to this tiny body that doesn’t even work! … {laughter} … And you wonder, ‘Did I sign up for this?’ … {laughter} …

Then you make it work. ‘All right, if this is what I have, I’d better roll up the old sleeves here and get this body to grow and to function and to be able to walk and talk and do both those things all at the same time!’ Then you go on and do other things more sophisticatedly. Then you reach that point of death when you’re finally going to be liberated from this body, and you say, ‘Whoa! Wait a minute! Do I really have to be free of it?’

So when you die, many people ‘faint.’ It just sort of goes to black, yes? Well, very quickly you revive. It lasts whatever length of Earth time. It’s outside of time by that point. But then you revive, and you are drawn to a tunnel of light, clearly so.

At the other end of that tunnel is everybody you want to have be there … all the relatives whom you miss, the ones who died before you … none of the ones you don’t care for. … {laughter} … And since consciousness is multi-dimensional, all those people who are still alive that you would like to have there are there, also. So your kids, your friends, all the ones you left behind are there. It’s a huge celebration, a huge party!

Now some who have a Fundamentalist belief and have fears of maybe going to hell will take a little sidestep, and they’ll go sliding down toward hell, you see? They’ll get right to the edge, and they’ll teeter on the edge, but alas, nobody ever goes! … {laughter} … Some Fundamentalists get very close … {laughter} … not because they belong there, but because they’re so afraid of it that they come right up to the edge and: ‘Whoa! I looked into hell! And I saw the Devil looking back at me! And I commanded the Devil to get out!’ So they have their feared brush with the Devil, and then they go through the light into heaven, where they knew they belonged all along. … {laughter} …

So you go into heaven. You go into this wonderful place that is this huge celebration with everybody you want to be there … including historical people you always wanted to meet. Everyone is there coming to greet you.

You go through this grand celebration, and then you go to sleep. You go into a somnambulistic state that can last in Earth time a few minutes, a few hours, a few years, a few decades. It is like that wondrous period when you wake up in the morning and you get to sleep that extra half-hour — the time when you are half-awake and half- asleep, where you can just snuggle in when it’s chilly, or listen to the birds chirp when it’s a beautiful morning. You enter a somnambulism, a floating, wondrous state.

Then you wake up, and you experience the heaven you anticipated. If you thought that heaven was streets paved with gold, then you’ll find a city with streets paved with gold, angels with harps, and wondrous creatures of this sort, and you’ll play ‘Heaven’ for awhile.

At a certain point you say, ‘Is this all there is?’ Then the walls fall down, and you get down to the serious work of growing, of reviewing the life you experienced, of putting it in context to the other lifetimes you’ve experienced, of going to classes. You talk to friends, you get involved in activities, you do all kinds of things in your process of reviewing.

Ultimately you make another decision: Do I want to go back into the physical? Do I want to pick another lifetime? There’s a broad array of them out there. You decide: ‘I want to learn this. I want to learn that. I want to deal with this, that and the other. That one will do. That lifetime. I’ll take that one.’ Then you’ll create and put the arrangements together to thus re-enter into physical incarnation.

Or you’ll decide: ‘No, I’m done. I don’t need to do any more physical lifetimes. I’m not done growing, but I’ve learned everything that I can learn or want to learn from the Physical Plane.’ Two statements: can learn and want to learn. ‘So I’m going to do my growth without body now, and therefore I’m going to move on.’

That’s what the death experience is like. It’s rather beautiful, it’s rather wonderful, and it’s the ultimate healing. It’s important perhaps to remember that. Death is the ultimate healing. It ends the physical misery. It ends the physical limitation.

Can you ‘learn to transcend death?’ Can you be immortal? Now there are two approaches to immortality. One approach, which we would plainly say is rather adolescent, is the approach to immortality which says you’ve got to keep the same body you have. ‘I want to live to be 200, 300 — I want to live forever in this body.’ Why on Earth would you want to? Why? We are rather amazed by that, just as we are by why you might want to keep the same automobile forever and ever. But we would suggest here some people are attempting that, and quite frankly they won’t succeed. Quite frankly, their belief structures, the importance of giving up the body, and the value of being detached from it are such that they won’t ever succeed at that kind of immortality.

Oh yes, human consciousness is going to be able to live to be 100, 120, 130 years old. That’s not going to be a difficulty in a number of years. Out of a lot of the diseases that are currently operative, one of the byproducts is going to be a tremendous knowledge of longevity, such that people will be able to live to be 100, 120, or 130 — and not by replacing all their organs. More and more people will be living to be that age. That is much more viable, much more possible — but not to live forever.

There is a way to transcend, however, and that way — the adult way, as we call it — is to consciously die, to consciously die. You know, we take you on meditations, right? In those meditations you close your eyes, and you relax, and you lift yourself out of your body. Sometimes you float up and out, and you go here or there.

Well, immortality, in the truest sense of the word, can be accomplished. You can decide ‘today’s a good day to die,’ and lie down and close your eyes. You enter a ‘meditation,’ and your light body stands up, fully conscious, climbs out of your body, and leaves it for good. Now that, we would suggest, is true immortality, where you ‘never die,’ where you never die, because you are fully conscious throughout the entire experience.

The movie ‘Cocoon’ is a movie that appeals to a lot of people because they came close (they didn’t really quite do that, but they came close) to portraying conscious death, immortality, when all these old people decided, and together, at one time, sort of ascended, yes? You can approach death by deciding, ‘Today is a good day to die, and, therefore, I’m going to go to bed tonight, and I’m going to consciously die.’

You can decide not to ‘faint.’

Q: Most of your comments on death seem to be directed toward the one who is dying. Can you offer some insights to the ones who are left here to deal with this phenomenon?

Lazaris: Yes, it is important. Obviously, we do talk primarily about the person who is dying because that’s rather final, in that regard, for many of you, and it’s important to want to know about it.

For those who remain, what’s important is realizing why you are sad. You know, we tell you it’s beautiful, it’s wonderful, it’s a huge party, you experience heaven, no one ever goes to hell, no one ever has a bad time, it’s always wonderful — it’s fantastic! It’s being able to program your reality and get it every time. That’s what you’re shooting for here, right?

You are not sad when you die. Why would you be sad when they die? Because you’re going to miss the person. You’re not really sad they’re dyin
as much as you’re sad they’re leaving.

You think about a friend. You’ve had a lifelong friend, and they come and announce that they’re moving to Hong Kong. You’re going to be sad. Now imagine they say, ‘I’m going to move to Hong Kong, and I’m never going to write, I’m never going to telephone, and you’ll never see me again.’ Of course, you’re going to be very sad.

Death is an intensification of that, an exponential of that, because they’re going away. From your perspective they’re never going to come back. You’re not absolutely sure where or to what they are going.

You can hear our words, but, hey, you’ve kind of got to experience it to know it’s real. And what if we’re wrong? That’s more than sad. That’s scary.

And so when someone dies, there is a natural sense of loss, a natural sense of missing them. You’re not really mourning that they are dead. You’re mourning that you are alone, that you got left behind.

We would also suggest that many times you’re angry. ‘How dare they leave me! How dare they leave me!’ Particularly a loved one. You’re married to someone, or you’ve been with someone for lots of years as a friend, as a partner, and they up and left. They didn’t consult you. They just did it on their own, and you’re angry.

But, you see, you’re not supposed to be angry. You wonder: ‘Isn’t that a terrible thing to say? I’m so angry at them for dying. Oh, that’s terrible!’ So, therefore, you convert it to another feeling. You feel guilty, you feel bad, you feel this wave of unidentified feeling.

What’s important around death is to realize that no matter how much you understand what it’s like, you are going to feel sad. Don’t deny your feeling. No matter how much you understand it, you are going to be angry, just as you’d be angry at a friend who applied for a transfer and is going to move thousands of miles away without telling you. You go over to their house one day and they’re gone, or they’re packing, on the way out the door. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.

You’re going to be angry. You’re going to feel hurt. You’re going to feel betrayed. You’re going to feel fear.

The thing that is important for the living: When someone dies, let yourself mourn. Don’t do a metaphysical ‘better than’: ‘Well, I know what death is like, and I know this, and I know that, and I’m not going to mourn.’ Mourn. Cry. Wail. Thrash about. Get angry. Get hurt. Feel the betrayal. Feel the sadness. Feel the hurt. Feel the remorse. Feel the loss and the loneliness. Feel it, and feel it intensely. Don’t drag it out. Don’t spend a year or two. Feel it intensely. Don’t hold yourself back. When you can feel it intensely, you can release it. You can release it.

If you feel it in a mediocre way, then you’ll drag it out, and when you think you’re past it, it’ll bubble up again, and you’ll feel it all over again. It can go on for years and years and years. If you refuse to feel it at all … ‘I refuse to deal with it’ … you have to numb yourself out. Therefore, you shut down, and you will shut down other parts of yourself as well.

When someone dies, feel the full range of emotion, and let yourself feel that full range as intensely as you can. Take a day off from work if you need to. Take some time away. Don’t be ‘big’ about it. Be emotional about it!

Recently, a dear friend of the staff had an auto accident. The staff realized that she could well have been killed. In fact, when one looked at the automobile, it was amazing, truly a miracle that she wasn’t. She came out with six broken ribs. That’s all. More damage was done at the hospital than in the accident, as a matter of fact. … {laugher} …

But it hit everybody: She could have died. As metaphysical as everybody is, that realization was a real scary and very sad thought. Everybody knows that when people do start dying eventually — and they’re going to — that it’s going to be something very difficult to deal with.

But the way to deal with it is to feel it. Feel it. All the range of it. You’re going to be angry at God for taking them. You’re going to be angry at the world for whatever they died of. You want to strike out at that world. Well, do it in a way that’s appropriate. Feel it as intensely and as fully as you possibly can, for that’s how you get it out of you and release it.

Be done with it. Then when it’s all done, you can sit around and talk more philosophically about what’s it like to be dead.

We deal with alot of people who obviously are dealing with death. We deal with a lot of people dying. We tell them what it’s like and describe it to them, and we are there for them if they so desire, and work with them over the hump, as it were.

It is a sadness, there’s no question, because you’re lonely and left behind, and that’s sad. So understand what you’re really mourning. You’re mourning your loss, not their gain. If you can put it in that perspective, it is much easier to deal with.

With love and peace …
Lazaris