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Death should be viewed as another stage on the path to Oneness with the universe. Understanding this can help us and help the world – both in this life and the next.
The child of a full-trance medium, Zulma Reyo was never far from the mystical secrets of consciousness. Reaching adulthood in the social, political and artistic ferment of the 50s and 60s, she sought a deeper understanding of the human condition. Her searches took her across the world – from universities in Puerto Rico, New York, and California to institutes in the UK and India. Exposed to ancient knowledge systems from across the ages, she began to teach what she’d learned so she could better understand the wisdom behind it.
Reyo’s teaching career has been explosive. Beginning with private practices in California and New York, she quickly expanded internationally – to Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and throughout Europe. Along the way, she developed the system of Inner Alchemy, a method of 'experiencing the reality of Higher Consciousness not only as an avenue for inner experience but also as a source of direct action in the world'. Her journey has most recently brought her to Mallorca, Spain where she runs the Zulma Reyo School of Consciousness. It is open to students of any nationality interested in pursuing the path to spiritual enlightenment. Emergence of Consciousness is based on the lessons from the course module on death and rebirth.
At some point, we must all face life’s end; that is part of the human condition. But how do we deal with death and the passing from this life to… something else? Many have tried to predict what comes after death: perhaps it is a radical nothingness, an endless sleep, or an awakening into another existence. All we can know for sure is what this life is like for us now. Yet the very fact of experiencing life in the here and now can provide us with a powerful entry into the next phase after this life. How we emerge on the other side, and our approach to that emergence, can be framed and shaped by what we do here in our current reality.
While many of us feel fear, or even rage, at the thought of death and its unknowns, Reyo offers a different approach. Specifically, she proposes to help us evolve these responses and understand the source of these feelings, and how they connect us to others and the world. Reyo advocates what one might call a ‘contemplative’ approach to death, filled with understanding rather than worry, and wisdom rather than anger. It’s an approach that combines her meditative insights with sources of ancient wisdom, including Spanish-language spiritual works, theosophical writings and, especially, the Egyptian, Mayan, and Tibetan Books of the Dead. These texts suggest that how we feel at the point of death directly informs the outcome once we reach ‘the other side’.
When discussing how we 'feel’, in this instance, we mean the enduring feelings of regret or satisfaction when reflecting back on our life as a whole. Reyo believes that, at the moment of death, the events of our lives play as if in a film before us, and our souls are reincarnated based on how we respond to this re-watching experience.
Her suggestion, then, is that we prepare for our deaths in advance by working through feelings of hurt, sorrow and anger so that, when we die, we do so with an understanding of how essential those feelings were in shaping our identity. That’s because – and this is key – knowing and accepting who we truly are will allow us to avoid anxiety surrounding the physical departure from our bodies.
This ‘contemplative’ approach is based on a deeper metaphysics of the soul that Reyo first outlined in her seminal book, Inner Alchemy. In this work, she claimed that we are, essentially, eternal formless Beings, embodied only for a moment in a vast path through spiritual evolution toward Oneness with the universe. Our current state of embodiment is guided by a greater Spirit Self of which we may currently be unaware – but which we can learn about through careful meditation.
This Spirit Self tries to better prepare the personality we inhabit (and the universal community of Spirit Selves of which it is a part) for the evolutionary journey. Hence there are no coincidences: everything in our lives happens for a reason, to shape our personas and prepare the soul for the next stage. In a deep sense, then, we ourselves create the life we experience. By recognising this, we purge ourselves of negative emotions (such as anger, bitterness, and resentment) and thus help our Spirit Selves achieve the true enlightenment they are striving for, even in our current embodied states. Doing so will help us achieve harmony and peace in this life – and the next.
Emergence of Consciousness was written for those who want to think more seriously about death and how we might approach it in a more emotionally aware manner. Perhaps this should include everyone, seeing as we all must die one day. But Reyo’s work is especially suited to those searching for concrete advice on how to prepare for death.
Throughout the work, she provides meditations and exercises to help us process our relationships, memories, and traumas. A large portion of the book is also dedicated to a central writing exercise meant to guide us on this path. It involves composing letters to all those who have significantly influenced our lives – family members, friends, enemies, those we have loved and those we have hurt. These are letters written as if we were dying and provide an opportunity to work through our relationship with the receiver and explain how our interactions with them have shaped us.
The purpose of these letters is not to praise or forgive (though they afford such opportunities), but primarily to gain understanding. If we want to approach death with wisdom, acceptance, and perhaps even joy, we must come to terms with the events of our lives and how they have set the stage for Spirit Self to fulfil its evolution. Ultimately, we must see that death is but a single step in our larger journey towards Oneness.
