What path does a person's soul travel after death? Where does it go and what kind of metamorphoses happen to it? 40 days and hostile entities deceiving the relatives of the deceased - we tried to understand all this together with MIR news …
After death, a person appears before the Pure Light of God and, awakened by this light, can re-evaluate his lived life. When he realizes the most gross mistakes, it often turns out that the soul needs some time to be present in the physical world in order to go through the stage of Purgatory.
Do not take the word "Purgatory" literally. Most often, they talk about traveling around the Earth, necessary to say goodbye to the familiar world, relatives, loved ones, animals, home. This is a pleasant and exciting journey.
It is another matter if in earthly life the deceased was possessed by an irresistible passion, for example, for alcohol. When this person dies, his addictions do not change at all. A terrible passion possesses him with the same strength and even intensifies at first. But, having lost his physical body, thanks to which it was only possible to realize his desires, he must always remain thirsty.
However, fortunately, this is still Purgatory, not hell, not an endless eternity of suffering. It is only a necessary process, the purpose of which is to destroy harmful desires. In the course of time, desire depletes its strength, and then a person passes to the higher life. When desire disappears, a person acquires final freedom and nothing forces him to re-become a slave to bad attachments in the next incarnation, at least if he does not want it.
As a rule, the first stage of Purgatory lasts 9 days, but rarely more than forty. The first stage is followed by the second, when the deceased must forgive his offenders and ask for forgiveness from those for whom he harbors anger. After 9 days, the subtle body is renewed, and the deceased becomes able to communicate with the living through dreams. Often, it is from the 9th to the 40th day that people see deceased relatives, friends and enemies in their dreams. Such dreams are not always remembered, but in this way the deceased can be forgiven and even console those who have been hurt by their departure.
- Is it really necessary to pray for the dead?
- The loss of the custom of praying for the dead is one of the most serious vices of your era. The soul has to make its way to the Upper World without the support of its loved ones.
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What is a prayer for the dead if not an expression of a sincere wish for a good path to the Upper World, which departed before us? These wishes and thoughts are completely real entities, accumulators of spiritual power, delivering this power to this or that person.
Consider how closely this prayer meets the needs of the person who recently passed away. For these words accurately express the most desirable conditions for the deceased: absolute rest, free from any earthly care, ensuring his gradual transition to the Upper Worlds.
Sudden death
It may seem strange, but in some cases death can do more for the development of the human soul than a long life. The so-called "death by accident" is a natural outcome of the life of some people. And yet the Orthodox prayer says: "From sudden death, Lord, deliver us!" There are explanations for this. When a person lives to old age, for the most part his lower desires weaken even before he leaves the physical world, and less remains to be done during the passage of Purgatory.
Dying unexpectedly, in the prime of life, finds himself in a completely different situation. His desires are strong and active, and as a consequence, under other equal circumstances, his Purgatory is likely to be longer. But on the other hand, if he can work out attachments, he will provide himself with much more good karma in his future incarnation.
- The state of the untimely departed to a greater extent depends on the direction in which his consciousness is used to working. If a person is strong-willed, courageous, accustomed to overcome difficulties and control their desires, then desires unsatisfied during life will not be an obstacle. They will be quickly overwhelmed by the new possibilities of the astral body.
In some cases, such a person for a long time plunges into unconsciousness, "pink dreams", and upon awakening, he finds that the flame of desires, for the satisfaction of which a physical body is needed, has extinguished.
Special support is given to the souls of those who die in the line of duty. His future, like everyone else, will depend on how he lived, not how he died, and such a death is a powerful factor in his development. A whole army of invisible helpers - Angels will help him overcome the path from Purgatory to the Upper Worlds.
Needless to say, how the prayers of those who remain on Earth help? I would like you to read with redoubled attention the story of a mother who lost her son during the Chechen military campaign.
I accompanied Mitya to the war, shedding tears. As if I felt that I was seeing my son for the last time. And now, after a couple of months, he began to appear in my dreams. And everything asks: "Mom, pray for me!" I go to church, put candles for health, read prayers to Mother Theotokos. But in an instant I am writing a note, and my hand pulled out by itself: "For peace …" In the morning they call from the military registration and enlistment office: they say, your son died during the execution. And they hung up the phone like I was a leper. I began to pray for the peace of my son's soul. I gave him life, and I have to spend him on the last journey, even if only with my words, my prayers. As 40 days have passed, I have a dream: My Mitya seems to be among the Angels, they are leading him by the arms. He turns to me and says, “Thank you, Mom. Don't worry, now I will keep you."
Shadows
When the stage of Purgatory is over, something like "reincarnation" takes place - the soul throws off that shell of carnal habits and passions that kept it near the earthly plane, and acquires a new, luminous body.
But the lower shell, like the physical body, does not decompose immediately. Moreover, it contains all the reflexes and habits of the deceased, some elements of memory and other imprints of his personality. An ordinary person is enslaved by unsatisfied physical desires, and some of his thoughts and emotions "attach" to the lower body in order to disintegrate with it - just as pain or hunger attaches to the physical body and dies with death. Such a shell is called a "shadow" or "ghost", and the living can come into contact with it - in a dream and even in reality.
This is the origin of the kind of individuals called shadows. This is not a being that has passed into the heavenly plane, but just a shadow that retains its outer forms, memory and some features and is able to pass itself off as the deceased.
The shadow does not deliberately deceive those present, as it is sure of its integrity, but one can imagine the horror and disgust of the friends of the deceased if they knew that instead of the dear lost something appeared to them, something soulless and consisting of a collection of all lower properties.
The main property of her nature is to succumb to all bad influences: separated from the higher "I", it does not contain properties directed towards good, therefore it very easily responds to the calls of sorcerers.
Case from practice
A terrible tragedy happened in the family of Maria Yuryevna: her 18-year-old daughter unexpectedly died of blood poisoning due to some trifling wound. This happened in Voronezh.
About three years later, the younger brother of the deceased, Yuri, suddenly either felt or saw that someone was sitting to his left with his hand on the table. It was a deceased sister. He got up and wanted to approach the girl's ghost, but she disappeared. He managed to notice the expression on her face, her features, and even something that he had never seen before - a bright red scratch on the right side of her face!
Soon after this incident, the deceased sister began to appear to the young man in a dream. This lasted for about a week, and Yuri began to feel serious malaise: loss of strength, headaches, low temperature, lethargy, nausea. A stomach ulcer was suspected, but nothing of the kind was found.
Yuri eventually told his mother about his dreams - and she nearly fainted. Mom accidentally scratched her face with the needle of her brooch while preparing her for the funeral. She powdered the scratch, keeping it a secret from others.
And only when Yuri blessed his room in the hostel and ordered several prayers "For Peace", the phenomena stopped - although the incomprehensible illness lasted for another month.
There is no reliable means of salvation from the appearance of ghosts, except prayer for the deceased. The ghost literally scatters in the pure atmosphere of love.
It is very difficult to do something if a person does not seriously think about the energetic purity of his home - the vibrations of a house where people drink and swear are very attractive to shadows.