I think much of what my last couple of years have been about is increasing my understanding of end-of-life issues as they relate to the final transition and what that means in the context of the current life. I wrote some time ago about death being simply the giving up of the physical body as the soul once again returns to the astral plane where those of us who still have to liberate from the material plane stay until being reborn once again. Wordsworth says it beautifully in this excerpt from “Imitations of Immortality” –

“Our birth is but a sleep and forgetting,

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,

Hath had elsewhere, its setting

And cometh from afar.

Not in entire forgetfulness

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come,

From God who is our home.”

I realize that most people (especially in the Western world) think of birth as the beginning of one life only—a life that ends in death of the body and the soul or spirit going to “heaven.” I’ve found that even those who believe in reincarnation tend to look at life from the point of view of where they sit now, i.e., in the material plane, following a birth (from the astral) and at some point a return to that astral plane, that we refer to as death from the viewpoint of the material world.

As I pondered this passage from Wordsworth’s poem I not only intellectually understood what he was saying, but also emotionally understood the concept that our birth into this life, and this life itself, is the “dream” that most of us normally think is “reality,” and that the astral plane or “heaven” is, instead, the “reality.” For as Wordsworth also points out, our soul has set somewhere else. In other words, it “sets” into the astral at the point we call “death” here in the physical, or material, world. And yet, on that other side of the veil, the “setting” of our soul from the material world becomes the birth into the astral world, or ‘heaven.” And back and forth, back and forth, we go: Our souls transition from one form in one reality to another form in another reality and back again, over and over, until we become liberated from this plane of existence. I found this a simple and beautiful way to explain reincarnation as it’s taught in the Bhagavad Gita.

I have a special love of poetry and have for years considered it the language of the soul, and this stanza, I think, reflects that in a way that even the explanations of the Gita cannot. I can understand Paramahansa Yogananda’s translation and explanation of the Gita – as much as possible for any of us since it actually takes years to grasp it’s true meaning even WITH the explanation of a master. So adding the understanding of a poet adds another layer to the explanation as well as the understanding. To me, it brings a deep down soul understanding, a feel for what this evolutionary cycle of death and rebirth is rather than just an intellectual understanding.

Wordsworth’s words can—if I close my eyes and ponder them—actually carry me into that other world, even if briefly. These sweet and gentle words can sooth the soul that’s about to embark on another leg of the journey and help it realize that it, too, is but a ‘dream,’ but one that points to our immortality and our home in God.