(Continued from Part 3.)
The Full-Life Review: The Trailer
I’ve already written two thorough examinations of the full-life review. Perhaps I can rework those discussions to complete our understanding of the role the soul contract plays in our lives.
There are two kinds of full-life reviews. One happens sometimes during a near-death experience, sometimes immediately before and sometimes immediately after death. It’s like the trailer to the movie. This compact full-life review gives us a sample of the film, but not the whole thing.
The second is more often called “the Judgment,” although it has no relationship to its namesake, which ancients believed happened on the Day of Judgment, whatever that may be. I retain the practice here though of referring to it as the Judgment.
It’s the time when we sit down with our spiritual director and go over the events of our Earth life in detail, seeing how closely we came to our soul contract and considering what to accomplish in our next physical life. Since we won’t have a “next physical life” per se after Ascension, we’re simply rounding out our knowledge here of an essentially lower-dimensional process.
The unnamed teacher of Betty Bethards discussed the relationship between the two reviews.
“All people are given a glimpse of this past life as they cross over. After such time as they are ready to really review it in depth and to learn from the experience, then they are shown it in segments [i.e., as the Judgment].
“But upon first crossing over, your whole life will flash in front of you, much as a drowning man will say he saw his whole life flash in front of him [i.e., the shortened review]. This is true of all people. But only when you’re ready to grow from the knowledge will it be given to you in depth, as your understanding is ready.” (1)
Here T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) undergoes his foreshortened review after being killed in a motorcycle accident. It more or less sneaks up on him, beginning slowly and then moving ever more swiftly.
“At first my mind was entirely occupied with my predicament [of awakening after death] and the past did not concern me, but, as I wandered, now one, now another vision flashed across my mental retina. A ribbon of road, boys on bicycles, my cottage, and soon these discrete memories began to coalesce into a continuous series of past experiences.
“Before long I was racing back along the years faster and faster, helpless to stay the record and obliged to feel as well as to remember as my past unrolled back to the earliest childhood memories, I had come to a stand while this disquieting survey held me and as it checked at the unconsciousness of the infant my own consciousness flickered out. At the very moment of oblivion I gasped with relief and just had time to think: this is really the end.” (2)
Philip Gilbert died in a bicycle accident, as a young man. Immediately after, he experienced the shortened review:
“I lay quiet and pictures came before me of myself as a little boy, and you [Philip is speaking to his mother] always there and my room and its nursery rhyme curtains. But somehow I saw all round, you and me and everyone at once. Then I drifted to my school and to Lausanne – we were in a boat on Lake Geneva that time when your hat blew off. Then I was at sea and in that nightclub at Alex. [Alexandria] – all through my life!” (3)
The Full-Life Review: The Movie
The second full-life review, which is the movie itself rather than the trailer, happens much later, after we’re well-adapted to life on the spirit planes. Known as the Judgment, (4) it consists of a lengthy, detailed examination of our life’s actual events, gleaned from the Akashic records, which is compared to the blueprint, soul contract, or life plan we initially set for ourselves. We see where we achieved our goals and where we didn’t and we usually do so with a guide or counsellor (our spiritual director) assisting us.
Of it, SaLuSa said:
“There is no such thing as getting away with misdeeds, although you may have escaped punishment under Man’s Laws. We talk of your life review when your physical life has ended, when each thought and action is examined with a view to determining how much interference or harm it may have caused another soul. Intent is the factor that indicates whether it may have been accidental or deliberate.” (5)
“Be assured that when you pass over and return to the astral planes, you will clearly understand all facets of your life. You will review your life, and this can be a sobering time when you find out how well you have done where your life plan was concerned.” (6)
Matthew Ward’s description of it is the best I’ve seen so let me reproduce that here:
“Akashic Records contain complete, accurate, trustworthy accounts of all universe-wide happenings within eternity and All That Is. Lifeprints, which are as unique as your fingerprints and more impervious to alteration, form each soul’s records, and each lifeprint is a separate file in the Akashic Records.
“A lifeprint is like a lifelong movie, omitting not a single aspect or instant. The information it contains, which automatically and indelibly is registered in energy form, is every thought, every action, and the consequences of every action throughout the lifetime of the person.
“Every action is registered as the deed itself plus the intent and all feelings associated with it. Not only are the person’s feelings about every action and its results recorded, but the feelings of all the people whose lives were affected by those actions.
“After the soul has recovered stability from the previous lifetime and is nourished spiritually and psychically, it is completely aware of its cumulative soul. It is this cumulative soul, with its collective wisdom and knowledge and spiritual growth of all personage lifetimes, that reviews the lifeprint. 
“The reviewing process is felt exactly as those feelings were experienced not only by the person, but all the people who were affected by his every action. So you can see that it is quite an experience!” (7)
At times, the Judgment can be painful but it’s always educational and helps us to complete with our most recent life. After it, we may choose to do some work on the other side to repair some of the mistakes we’ve made. But once we’ve carried out the review and repair work, we usually move on from our connection with our last life.
For many people, the Judgment takes place on the First Subplane of the Mental Plane, which we know as the first subplane of the Fifth Dimension. (8) For a very few, it takes place on the Astral Plane, which we know as the Fourth Dimension.
Following the Judgment, we pass through what many spirit communicators call the “Second Death.” (9) Many readers will associate the “second death” with Jesus’s statement: “He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.” (10)
This use of the term is not equivalent to spirit’s use of the term.
Jesus means to say that, if a person overcomes and transcends (“kills”) the ego, they won’t be hurt by the death of the body. The first death is the ego death; the second death is bodily death.
But the Second Death on the spirit side of life involves the shedding of the astral body, leaving us in the mental body – what we know as our light body or merkabah.
The Second Death happens after the Judgement and actually sees the traveller move from the first subplane of the Mental Plane to the second. But in actuality it completes the leaving of the Astral, the first subplane of the Mental Plane being much like a vestibule. (11)
Having said that, when we ascend, our Ascension is an entirely novel development in creation because for the first time we won’t be shedding the body. We’ll transform our physical bodies from carbon-based to crystalline-based. This has never been done before.
Moreover, our Ascension, I’m led to believe, won’t involve a Judgment, as with the transition from the Fourth to the Fifth Dimensions on the spirit side of life.
The full-life review was the occasion on which we assessed how well we accomplished the provisions of our soul contract. We arrived at our life’s plan before birth in concert with our spiritual directors; we responded to the experiences it brought us in our physical life, most often not suspecting the process we were engaged in; and then we saw how we did in the full-life review that followed our transition to the spirit world.
That sequence of events will change upon Ascension. No more will we shed the body in an episode similar to what “death” has been like for us so far. When we wish to change our bodies, we will will ourselves a new one. In that respect, Ascension represents moksha or liberation from the physical round of birth and death. It ends karma and it ends the practice, I think, of the full-life review.
Footnotes
(1) Unnamed spirit teacher through Betty Bethards, medium, There is No Death. Novato, CA: Inner Light Foundation, 1976; c1975, 11.
(2) T.E. Lawrence through Jane Sherwood, medium, Post-Mortem Journal. Communications from T.E. Lawrence. London: Spearman, 1964, 16.
(3) Philip Gilbert in Philip Gilbert through Alice Gilbert, medium, Philip in Two Worlds. London: Andrew Dakers, 1948, 89.
(4) See “The Judgment” at https://www.angelfire.com/space2/light11/nmh/judge1.html
(5) SaLuSa, Dec. 16, 2009, at https://www.treeofthegoldenlight.com/First_Contact/Channeled_Messages_by_Mike_Quinsey.htm.
(6) SaLuSa, Apr. 3, 2009.
(7) Matthew Ward, Matthew, Tell Me About Heaven. A Firsthand Description of the Afterlife. Camas, WA: Matthew Books, 2009; c2001, 191-4.
(8) In the afterlife, we move up the dimensional ladder, but, without the Ascension we’re now experiencing, we cannot stay in the higher dimensions. We must return to the Earth Plane or Third Dimension in our next incarnation until such time as we achieve Sahaja Samadhi and with it liberation from physical birth and death. All that will pass away with Ascension.
(9) See “The Second Death” at https://www.angelfire.com/space2/light11/nmh/second-death1.html
(10) Revelation 2:11. The saying is similar to an Eastern one: “Die before you die.” Die to the ego before the body dies and you will be enlightened. The ego does not actually die but the masters used the metaphor of death to indicate transcendence over the ego.
(11) The first subplane of the Mental Plane is regarded as not the Mental Plane proper, but more of a vestibule. The second subplane is regarded as the Mental Plane proper.