Life Beyond Death - Yogi Philosophy

Yet another excellent book I read on the subject of death and from a perspective of the yogi philosophy. I am trying to put down what I understood because frankly I have never read a book which talks to you at such a high level.

The main premise is that there is no death. That which we call death is nothing but the "other side" of life.
Death is nothing but the destruction of one form of life to building of a new one. What I found interesting and it was something I always thought about all along - the concept of heaven and hell - I always questioned the existence of heaven as a place where u go if u were righteous otherwise u land up in hell ... but I never really had a chance to explore this further until I read this book. Think about it, how can you be punished forever for such a small amount of time spent on earth. The yogi philosophers almost mock at this concept.
Anyways don’t want to criticize any faith or their beliefs, after all they are just beliefs right?

So these oriental occultist mentions about the idea of several planes of existence. A plane is not a place but instead it is a state. These astral planes are the most important element in understanding their take on life beyond death. So like I was saying the astral planes have several levels, the lower level beings ones which are still connected to earth and all its desires and wants , while the highest one being when u have completed removed all the sheaths of these desires and have attained pure spiritualism. After a person dies on earth so to speak his soul goes into a slumber. this is akin to a child resting in his mother’s stomach for 9 months before he starts his new life. So while the soul is in its slumber it tried to distance itself to the earthly desires. these maybe his loved ones, some duty which remained unfulfilled or anything. When the soul finally wakes up depending on how much away he is from his desires he wakes up on one of the astral planes. And as and when he becomes spiritually more active he moves upwards in the astral plane. A soul can move down on an astral plane to help other souls achieve spiritualism but a soul on a lower plane can never move upwards unless it has achieved a higher level of spiritualism.
That is the reason these occultist say that you should never call a soul down on earth because all you are doing is hurting the soul by getting it closer to earthly desires. All that he has achieved is almost lost and he back on a lower astral plane.

Another aspect of this philosophy that struck me really well is that after death you most likely meet the people you love. you might not get up from your slumber and meet that person but since the beliefs, ideas, state of mind of people who love each other are akin ... you would most certainly land up on the same astral plane. Moreover that person can always come down to a lower plane to help you achieve the desirable.

There are a lot of other concepts which were interesting when they talk about the astral religious expressions, the occupation, the companionship, the communication on the astral plane. Finally it talks about rebirth.
in spite of removing many of the sheaths of earthly desires, if there still persists some hint of these desires the soul then goes into its second slumber and when it wakes up finds itself in a new body, it reincarnates.

Such is the take of death - sorry "other side" of life by the oriental occultist and I found this philosophy very interesting.