A body wrapped in yellow cloth lays on the banks of the Bagmati river awaiting to be cremated. The famed Pasupatinath temple in Kathmandu, Nepal, is where many Hindus come to worship and also be cremated along the banks of the river that runs along the temple.

Is there a bigger question one can ask than “where will I go when I die?” Dandapani sets to provide an answer to life’s ultimate question. Listen to the full audio of this episode of Conversations on the Spiritual Path.

Question: I just want to make sure that I’m understanding. I know it’s its going to be a multiple part question but you have mentioned several times today that there is a finite amount of energy, but then it renews itself. You kind of lead us all the way through all the way back to that and then thinking if I only have six months to live what would I do? You started hitting on a reincarnation issue, and so I guess my question to you is that when we die, in your faith and your belief system, does that energy get transposed? Is it an immediate? As a history major I know Patent used to talk about that he believed in reincarnation, so is it that my energy force then somehow immediately upon my death is reincarnated into a new baby that day or is there a delay? Does it carry the same kind of energy that we had positive or negative, in your belief systems?

Dandapani: I think the best way to give you all an overall view of reincarnation, from the view of Hinduism — and Buddhists also believe this because Buddhism came out of Hinduism so they share a lot of common beliefs. What Hindus believe is that we are soul living in a physical body and when the physical body dies it just falls off and the soul continues to live. And we actually function in what’s called the astral body and function in the astral plane. Today I gave the example of the movie Ghost with Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg. Remember the scene in the alleyway where he gets shot and he chases the shooter away and when he comes back what does he see, he sees himself, he sees his wife crying over his dead body and it was only that moment does he realize is he dead. So the physical body falls off and the astral body functions and it was Patrick’s astral body that chased the criminal. So the astral body exists in what is called the astral world which actually functions here now but it exists outside of our visual spectrum. So it exists in a frequency outside our visual spectrum, so if you are psychically developed you can actually see what people term as ghost or people who have passed on.

So when you die your astral body continues to exist and functions in the astral world and you evolve and grow there in the same way that you would have over here. You would probably hang out with other members that have passed away and have retreats and meetings, just as you would function over here till it’s time to reincarnate again. Then you’d reincarnate into the physical world in a male or female body and keep going through the cycle of birth and death.

The energy that you create in this life is carried forward to the next life, whatever actions that you put into place whether positive or negative is regardless. Energy has no discrimination between positive and negative, it’s just energy manifesting at various levels of frequency that then get carried ahead into the astral world and next incarnation as well. The idea is to finally get to a point where you’ve learnt all the lessons that you have learnt and you really don’t have to go back to grade school again and you graduate and then you continue to evolve in the astral world till, in our faith, we believe the soul merges with God.