For people scared of losing their personalities

[EscapeVelocity]

Great conversation, and I tend to agree with most of CFT's and Stookie's conjectures.

I'd like to add these thoughts: I think much of our present ego/personality does decay or at least diminish significantly when we transition and eventually return to/move closer to our Soul/Source. That doesn't negate the experiences we had, just the mental-emotional baggage that we picked up along the way; and to some degree, our present individuation.

I think it was a book by willy Sutphen that I first came upon the idea of several variations of Soul theory: Are we each individual souls? Are we each just one of many souls under the 'umbrella' of a Group Soul? Is each one of those souls an independent soul or just variations of Me, experiencing different lives/timelines? Or are we somehow related through the Group Soul? Is that Group Soul independent or simply one of many under the guidance of an OverSoul...and so on until finally the Source or the One?

So yes, somewhere along the way I start to have a little trepidation of just how much my present ego/identity survives along the way; on the other hand, I wouldn't mind a little Unity and Wholeness for a change.
My current OBE awareness appears to preclude any fear of total identity loss, but hey, that could be mistaken. Ultimately, there's not much I can do about it. Maybe.

The Buddhist philosophy seems to push towards purifying/cleansing the mind of egoistic desires and wants to the point of creating a Body of Light that one can step into instantly at the moment of death and without suffering a loss of consciousness and by doing so transcend into a higher state of being and transcending the Wheel of Karma/Rebirth. Probably easier said than done.

But just maybe, that's how another soul or soul extension is born or differentiated from the Soul Group? Maybe that's how we ultimately individuate?

And finally, like CFT pondered, what happens at the end? Do we all ultimately assimilate back to the One Source/God; the physical universe contracting down upon itself into an impossibly dense Singularity, only to explode again in another Big Bang? Or forever expanding outward?

[Stookie]

I've read a ton of stuff written and lectured by the Austrian mystic Rudolph Steiner, and while I can't confirm or deny what he taught, it's mind-opening stuff.

His explanation of physical existence is that while physical, we have 4 main parts on 4 main levels (each broken down indefinitely). Physical body on the physical plane, etheric body on the etheric, astral on the astral, and our Ego, which we're to eventually transform. All 4 parts are dependent on each other and constantly work together. He says that while we inhabit the physical, we're pretty much confined to those levels, but through our own development we can transform the Ego, perhaps into what the Buddhists call the Body of Light (as Escape Velocity mentioned). Not until then can we really start to explore beyond the astral and experience "being" our higher selves rather than just as an individual ego.

Perhaps until then, we keep coming back and gathering new information and experiences until we can get it right. I don't know exactly why our higher selves would need this experience, but I suppose that's not something for "I" to know.

One last thing: I've had an experience of viewing my not just my physical life, but the physical plane from "outside", and it was absolutely the most crushing experience I ever had. There was a huge disappointment to see that my life & universe was just a minute infinitesimally small drop in the bucket compared to the infiniteness of consciousness, pretty much not even real, just some simple 20 second dream in comparison. I suppose crushing to my ego. And maybe that's what I was to realize - my life is not "me".

In the end I don't have an answer, just ideas and a load of uncertainty, and that's what keeps me pushing forward and pondering this stuff.