LAZARIS
Several Questions and Answers on Death

{From interviews with Lazaris, originally published in Lazaris
Interviews, Book II.}




                              Death


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
being 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 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 to 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, you 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 no 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 on 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 dying 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



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