A world of energy rather than physical matter made of vibrations of light and color, where most physical beings go after death and before reincarnating. It is also full of astral beings, and is hundreds of times larger and more beautiful and joyous than the physical world.
Humans visiting the astral world after death easily recognize their loved ones from their most recent and past lives. Because we have loved so many throughout our lifetimes, the astral being learns to love all equally as children of God.
Visitors to the astral world dwell there for a longer or shorter period in accordance with their physical karma, which draws them back to earth within a specified time. Beings with unredeemed earthly karma are not permitted after astral death to go to the high causal sphere of cosmic ideas, but must shuttle to and fro from the physical and astral worlds only.
Normal or long-established residents of the astral universe, on the other hand, are those who, freed forever from all material longings, need return no more to the gross vibrations of earth. Such beings have only astral and causal karma to work out. At astral death these beings pass to the infinitely finer and more delicate causal world. Shedding the thought-form of the causal body at the end of a certain span, determined by cosmic law, these advanced beings then return to a high astral planet, reborn in a new astral body to work out their unredeemed astral karma. (1)
- ↩ Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramhansa Yogananda. Chapter 43, “The Resurrection of Sri Yukteswar.”
