Another aspect to be noted here is that these lower plane souls spend but little time in the disembodied state, and are strongly attracted by the material life, the consequence being that they are filled with a great desire to reincarnate, and generally spend but little time between two incarnations.
Of course, when they are reborn, they are attracted to parents of the same tendencies, so that the surroundings in their new earth — life will correspond very closely to those of their old one. These crude and undeveloped souls progress but slowly, making very little advance in each life, and having to undergo repeated and frequent incarnations in order to make even a little progress.
Smoking and consuming alcohol also poisons the astral body and delays one’s progress in the astral world. The effect of excessive tobacco smoking on the astral body after death is remarkable. The poison so fills the astral body that it stiffens under its influence and is unable to work properly or to move freely. One is as though paralysed, able to speak, yet debarred from movement, and almost entirely cut off from higher influences. When the poisoned part of the astral body wears away, one emerges from the unpleasant predicament. This is similar to when one is drunk and one loses one’s presence of mind, but after sound sleep one again emerges into a state of clear consciousness. Coarse food and drink tend to produce a coarse mental body. Flesh foods, alcohol, and tobacco are harmful to physical, astral and mental bodies. The same applies to nearly all drugs.
When a drug such as opium is taken in order to relieve great pain, it should be taken as sparingly as possible. One who knows how to do it can remove the evil effect of opium from the mental and astral bodies after it has done its work upon the physical. Furthermore, a body fed on flesh and alcohol is especially liable to be thrown out of health by the opening up of the higher consciousness; nervous diseases, in fact, are partly due to the fact that the higher consciousness is trying to express itself through bodies clogged with flesh products and poisoned by alcohol. The astral body changes its particles, just as does the physical body, but there is nothing to correspond to eating and digesting food. The astral particles which fall away are replaced by others from the surrounding atmosphere.
The purely physical cravings of hunger and thirst no longer exist there. The desire of the glutton to gratify the sensation of taste and that of the alcoholic to experience the feelings which result from consumption of alcohol, being both astral, still persist and may cause great suffering owing to the absence of the physical body through which alone they can be satisfied.
This article Is taken from The book ‘Life Beyond Death’ By Anil Sharma
