| Article 45 - The First Hour |
The first hour after death is the most important and it would be right not to move the body of the person deceased for that one hour. The Tibetans call this period the one of clear light and in the old days, the student would be trained in the yoga of the clear light.
We have seen that the spirit and soul have been pulled like an arrow on the string of the vajra nadi. Where do they go? This cannot be understood in the way we understand space geographically. The scriptures talk of three universes. The first is called Bhu or the physical universe of the five senses. We can also call this the cellular universe with cellular time. Next is Bhuvaha - the unseen astral universe of feelings and sensitivities, of dreams and emotions. This is molecular and just as molecular substances can take any shape, our feelings can take any form, from impure to pure and a whole range from happiness to sadness. Here we have molecular time which is much faster than cellular time. Scientists say that the skin of the physical universe is the speed of light and nothing exists beyond it, so we can but imagine the speed of time in an unseen universe.
Beyond and interpenetrating both the Bhu and the Bhuvaha is the Swaha universe of matter in an electronic form. We can barely visualise the state of matter and the speed of time in this universe. This is an interpenetrating space of pure light.
Our thinking so formatted to time as hours and days that it is very difficult to understand time as energy with speed. We have seen that at the moment of death, the speed of the arrow is the fastest. Thus as soon as the soul and the spirit leave the physical form, they are automatically in Svaha or the universe of light. Here the soul which has an astral form, leaves the spirit or atma and slowly, in three steps, descends to the Bhuvaha or astral universe and begins a fifty-five day sojourn in the dream world. This process happens in the first hour after death.
The light is so powerful that in normal circumstances, we would avoid it just as we close our eyes to headlights at night.