A process of subtraction

I want to describe to you what cannot easily be described in sensory terms, so rather than adding characteristic after characteristic, we will at first proceed by a process of subtraction – and that is one description of how life does it, when we die to the 3D and awaken to the non-3D.

So, there I am on my deathbed. First I lost the power to communicate with the 3D world. This is important, as it begins to re-orient us. We communicate [during life], expecting or anyway hoping for some response. This orients us outward, toward the perceived “other” in the 3D world. When that communication is shut down, we reorient. An analogy might be, sleep. While we sleep, we do not expect to channel our communication toward a perceived-as-separate world that can be accessed only by means of the physical senses. We let that world fall away – or, you might say, we forget it is there. That is the first stage of dying to the 3D, too. We forget the 3D world is there.

Notice, I am not talking about the stages of going from health to death, I’m not describing the process of physical death. I’m describing the process of awakening to the larger world. The re-orientation is a big change The 3D world disappears. It is forgotten. Memory may remain, and dream and fantasy, all needing to be sorted out, but just as in dreams, your awareness is on your end of the communication, not on input from, or output to, a perceived 3D world.

These are simple concepts, and I hope people won’t complicate them by parsing my words too finely. You lose the ability to connect with the “outside” world, you cease to intend to or expect to, and in reorienting you find that your awareness is now upon a world at first consisting entirely of your own mental  constructions.

“You find” doesn’t mean you are aware of the change, though.

No, very much not. Perhaps I should say “it happens,” or “behind your back.” That is a good point. You are not aware of the scene changing, any more than you are when you dream.

So, with the 3D gone, your natural orientation toward it gone, you are more in the world you have experienced in dreams than in any solid stable mental structure. And this, you see, is why what you do in life matters in this regard. Your mental habits may make the transition easier or harder, and will in any case shape it.

I don’t mean to imply that the purpose of life is to assure a smooth transition! That would be like saying the purpose of eating a meal is to make it easier to wash the dishes afterwards. But it does have that effect, and you might as well know it.

I see no point in trying to describe the various worlds people will find that they have, in effect, created for themselves. Let’s stick to what Rita experienced, because Rita is the closest experience I have.

You tend to think of me as Rita now in the non-3D, and so I am, but that isn’t all I am, and therefore it isn’t quite what I am. But our shared Rita experience is the bridge between us, so it is convenient to funnel the communication through that part of me.

So my world constricted, expanded, changed focus. Death turns the knob of the microscope and the plane that had been clear and obvious becomes hazy or non-existent, and other things swim into view.

The world I opened up to, or that filled my consciousness, of course changed as I went along. It unfolded in stages. That’s just the nature of progression, first a little, then more, then before you know it you are in new territory, then you start remembering it, then you are in your new home.

The first stage came when I was still defining myself as Rita. And, see, here is where you are going to have to loosen, without discarding, that analogy to dreaming. Unlike dreaming, or like lucid dreaming in this one respect –.you don’t lose consciousness of yourself as actor or spectator. You are as aware of yourself as experiencer as you ever were aware of yourself as experiencer in waking 3D life. So, it isn’t fantasy and it isn’t mental nor emotional free-flow association either. It could be described as life coming at you, same as always, only now it is entirely subjective and not disguised as “objective” in the sense of being somehow or somewhat disconnected from you.

I heard you saying that with the senses no longer orienting us to life, we still experience ourselves as a consciousness at the center of whatever we experience. Things keep happening, apparently on their own, following some law we don’t necessarily know about, just following their own nature, whatever that may be.

That’s right. That is the first stage after the senses are gone. We still define ourselves as we were, but it looks like the scenery had changed, and then the rules of the game. But that’s for next time. Thanks for your co-operation – you, and anyone reading this. We’re all in this enterprise together.

— From Awakening From the 3D World, available from publisher Rainbow Ridge Books (https://www.rainbowridgebooks.com) or from other booksellers.