Life After Death Experiences. What Happens to Soul After Death

POST - 5

Planes or Lokas

1) Ghost Plane or Preta Loka

A common man who lives for eating, sleeping and gratifying sensual pleasures, goes to the Ghost Plane or Preta Loka after death. He goes into a sleep-like mode immediately after death and wakes up directly into the Preta Loka. The moment he awakes, he feels the hunger and extreme distress of physical and mental body. He wants to eat good food and enjoy sex. But, he can not gratify the same in this plane because he is almost like prisoner living in a jail. We can compare him with a big stone or a fix tree which can not move on its own at all. All desires and cravings actually are in our mind and physical body is just the instrument we use to satisfy it. These prisoners like ghosts do not get food for long durations and they depend on the mercy of others. In many religions, people offer food annually on specific days through their religious places like Temples. Such offerings are actually meant for these Ghosts only. The sufferings of such ghosts may continue for long duration and they are totally dependent on the offerings and worship of their left-out relatives especially the elder son. We do not know about the wrong deeds our ancestors did in their lives. And we do expect all humans to do some serious mistakes in their lives. So, offering food and prayers for ancestors once a year is extremely good for the welfare of, who had left as well as us.

All ghosts or preta will not belong to same category and they can be broadly classified as highly sinful, less sinful and sinful, or ghosts who had also done some good deeds. The ghosts who go to this plane belong to highly sinful category and other ghosts take re-birth after short duration depending on individual deeds or karmas.

2) The Ancestral Plane or Pitri Loka

This plane is nothing but the Moon! Surprised! Though there is no life for humans at Moon but Moon is the abode of our ancestors. In other common language it is also referred as heaven. This is different heaven than what my Indian friends believe in. This plane belongs to the people who do auspicious deeds with the desire of getting name and fame or for any other selfish motives. People live in this plane happily and again take re-birth after enjoying fruits of such benefic deeds.

What happens to such people after death?

There is journey of soul after death and different people undertake different journeys. After death, the subtle body and soul moves up in the air. He or she first experiences the dense smoke and there is no visibility while passing through this smoke. After the smoke starts disappearing, the visibility further reduces instead of improving as the night starts. After passing through the night, they have to experience the dark half fifteen days of Moon ( belonging to ancestors) and southern Sun or Dakshinayan six months (again belonging to ancestors) and finally reach the abode of forefathers also referred as Pitri Loka or Heaven or Moon.

They acquire new brilliant extra-ordinary divine bodies in this abode. They are treated equally to other divine bodies. This path is called as the Pitriyana path or the ancestral path. All the worshipping and offerings done by us easily reach these ancestors and they give us blessings for financial prosperity. Our financial prosperity depends a lot on these ancestors. Our prayers and worshipping to God gives us good health, knowledge and wisdom. I am not stating that worshiping God gives no wealth. But, as far our God is concerned; wealth is at the bottom of priority list.

After enjoying the fruits of good deeds on the Moon, they again begin their journey to come back to this earth or mritu-loka. They come down through the spheres of air and clouds. They easily manage to reach this world along with rain drops. They easily get their food on the way. After they reach the earth, divine forces put them in the womb of a lady for another birth. This category of people has little knowledge about God and divine forces.

I also wish to point out here that our main personality and characteristics do not change much in quick successions. It takes very long time or hundreds and thousands of births to modify ourselves and get closer to almighty. And once a native reaches closer to God, he or she takes re-birth only for accomplishing specific tasks. For examples, we may be aware of many people who had divine powers of God in their childhood itself. Such Saints are the special forces of God which appear in this world or mritu-loka for a specific task. After completing that important task, they just leave this physical body at their own wish and are respectfully taken to other celestial world by divine forces. They never go to such Lokas or never take re-birth excepting to accomplish important objectives of almighty God. Such people have no sensual desires and they live for others.

In the next post, I shall take up the Divine Heaven, Hell i.e. our Earth and other planes.

Rakesh Arora Kuber

Spiritual Advisor and Vedic Astrologer