Wake Up

Beyond the Veil: Why We Die

• Douglas James Cottrell PhD • Season 2 • Episode 6

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Death fascinates and frightens us, yet Dr. Douglas James Cottrell offers a refreshingly hopeful perspective: we don't fear being dead as much as how we'll die. This profound distinction sets the tone for an exploration of mortality that transcends typical doom-and-gloom conversations.

Our physical existence, Dr. Douglas explains, is merely temporary—Earth is our "boarding school," not our permanent home. Each lifetime serves as a developmental stage in our soul's journey toward becoming "fully realized beings." Like trading in worn shoes for new ones, death simply marks the transition to our next experience, chosen by our souls for specific learning opportunities.

The soul's progression follows a natural educational pattern—from kindergarten through university—with each life building upon lessons from previous incarnations. What we experience as fate and destiny operates alongside our free will, much like how a letter's purpose guides its content while allowing freedom in vocabulary and structure. This elegant balance explains how our lives can feel both predetermined and chosen simultaneously.

Most remarkably, Dr. Douglas reveals that love is the only emotion that transcends physical death. While we shed all other emotions with our bodies, love continues, pointing to our ultimate destination—a realm of unconditional love without worry, fear, pain, or loneliness. This understanding transforms death from something to fear into a graduation worthy of celebration.

That small dash between birth and death dates on a tombstone represents our opportunity to live meaningfully despite our temporary nature. Dr. Douglas encourages us to honor our physical vessels while recognizing their impermanence—to worship our bodies while understanding they're just vehicles for spiritual growth. By embracing this perspective, we can approach both life and death with greater purpose, gratitude, and peace.

Ready to transform your understanding of life's greatest mystery? Subscribe now and join our community of seekers exploring consciousness, spirituality, and what truly matters in this brief, beautiful human experience.

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Announcer:

Welcome to Wake Up with Dr Douglas James Cottrell, your source for helpful information, advice and tips to live your life in a mindful way in this increasingly chaotic world. For over four decades, Dr Douglas has been teaching people how to develop their intuition and live their lives in a conscious way. His news and views of the world tomorrow, today, are always informative and revealing. And now here's your host, Dr Douglas James Cottrell.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Welcome to the Wake Up, the broadcast where curiosity leads to deeper understanding. I'm your host, Douglas James Cottrell, and my good friend and co-host Les Hubert is here with me, along with editor Jack Bialik, as we delve into the fascinating realms of life, metaphysics, spirituality and the pressing questions that shape our world.

Les Hubert:

We're going to talk a little bit about death. The question is, why must we die? Death seems to be very depressing, since you can only die slowly or for natural causes. But how can we live in a positive way with this unavoidable end in mind?

Douglas James Cottrell:

Well, it's how you live your life, and by that I mean if you live a good and decent life, you have a good death. Everybody says they're not afraid to die. You talk to those people that are full of faith and they are absolute. They are good, god-fearing, as they say, faithful people, and moral and just and upstanding people. They're not afraid to die. What they're afraid of is how they're going to die. And so everybody comes to that moment in life where you rationalize how you're going to die. You hope that it's not going to be painful, you hope that you're not going to have a lingering sickness. That is terrible to die. And so part of the question is: I don't mind the concept of being dead because I know I'm going to live again, I know my soul lives forever and so therefore, it's okay. I'm going to live my life the best way I can, and when I get to the end of my life, knowing that it's coming, I will try to do the best I can with the time I have. Or I'll try to have the best life I have. Or, in circumstances where people are born with difficulties, their life is shortened. Then they say, there must be a reason or a purpose for this, and I'm going to try to make the attempt to be the best I can at what I have. And so each of us goes through life, with our burdens, our difficulties, our crosses to bear, if you will, and we attempt to live the best life we can. The purpose of life, however, is to restart the cycle all over again. You know, it's like this is kindergarten, primary grades, high school, university, and so we have to go through these developmental times in our soul's purpose to get to university and graduate as a person who is aware, who's self-aware, who becomes realized, self-realized and then fully realized. And a fully realized being is someone that has a soul-like consciousness in a physical form or body. Another name for that is an avatar.

Douglas James Cottrell:

And so, we all aim to get to the highest level. But why we die is the same as why are we born. Why do we come here? Well, we don't belong here. This is not our home. This is our away from home school. It's boarding school. It's a place we exist temporarily. It's something to allow us to embellish ourselves, to gain consciousness, to make our soul better, to gain great knowledge and to have great understanding, so that we can be perfected, so that we can become a fully realized soul.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So the short answer to this one is the reason we die is because it's in the cards. We've chosen when we're going to be born. We chose what we're going to do in life. You know all the possibilities, our pattern of life, what we're going to attempt to accomplish, what we're going to repent, fix up, overcome or experience. You know the pendulum swings the opposite way from one life to another. One life you've been a really mean person. Next life you're a savior of people, or somewhere in the middle you learn the difference between -- that really hurts, so I won't do that. I'll intend to, I'll give good. So the pendulum swings back and forth to these extremes.

Douglas James Cottrell:

I know I'm being simplistic about that, but at the end of a lifetime you've met what the soul has decided it wished to experience, because your free will and free choice is a soul consciousness, free will and free choice. My good friend Alan Spraggett came up with the analogy where, if you want to know what the purpose of life is or what the difference between destiny and fate is and free will and free choice is, is to understand it as when you sit down to write a letter. In your mind, you have the intention of the letter. That's your destiny, that's your fate, to write that letter with the thoughts and the purpose of what's going to be put into the letter. Free will and free choice allows you to pick the vocabulary, the grammar, the sentence structure, the paragraphs, the length of the story, the periods, punctuation, etc. That's your free will.

Douglas James Cottrell:

However, you're fulfilling your fate. So, as you enter into the world, it's a finite thing. You want to discover from A right through the alphabet to the end, and you want to know all the things in between. Sometimes you accomplish everything. Sometimes you get cut off halfway. Next time you come back, you pick up where you left off and you continue to the end of the alphabet, so to speak.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So why must we die? Well, we don't belong here. This is a terrible place to be. I know people are saying: Douglas, what's the matter with you? This is wonderful. You know, I go to parties, I exercise, I have money. You know, I love to go surfing. I have people that love me. Okay, but this is all temporary. Temporary. And all the sages and the saints tell us that life is an illusion. First time I heard that I went, you're crazy, this is me. Look, I can hit myself, so yes I'm here for sure. But no, it's not. The life that we know is an illusion. It's a pretend existence compared to the one from where we came and to where we want to go. Okay, so see yourself not as a physical body subject to the weaknesses of the flesh, to all the temptations of the flesh, to all the vulnerabilities of life, and see yourself as a beam of light, a sphere of light, lightning, electricity, which is something I compare as an analogy of God. God is everywhere, like electricity is. God is both a thunderbolt and it's the light in our lamps, and it's also the light that comes off our fingers. You know, when you touch the switch on the wall and you get that little jolt of static, that's electricity, that's inside of you. So electricity and lightning are all, in a very simplistic way, examples of God being everywhere.

Douglas James Cottrell:

That's what our real life is: to be light, or something like light that we call a soul. A soul consciousness, a soul understanding, is completely different to this physical life. Only in this world do we have emotion. Except for one, all other emotions are left behind. They are shed as the clay is shed when we die. That emotion that carries on is love, the only one. Wow. And as we understand love, and we get to understand unconditional love, we get to be loving in a spiritual sense, in order to come back to that place where only love exists unconditionally.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Oh, okay.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So in order to get there, we have to wear out a few pairs of shoes along the way, and each life can be looked like a pair of shoes: brand new, shiny, wonderful, a little hard to get used to them, you know. They squeak, they give you little sores on your feet, but after they become comfortable, and they're oh so comfortable, and then one day you have to throw them away because they're worn out. You grieve over losing your favorite shoes, but from a soul's perspective it's like: okay, that was interesting. What's next? I think I'll try a pair of those Oxfords. No, maybe I'll try one of those Nikes I hear about. You know some other kind of shoe? I'll even try the sandals. What the heck? You know. I'm being a little humorous and simplistic about it but, the soul chooses exactly what it wants to experience next.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So why must we die? One, we don't belong here. Two, this is a temporary sojourn. Three, it's the soul's purpose as to came in this place, found out all we needed to find out and continued on our way. Because it's just like a sidetrack, it's a way station, and that's why we have to keep on keeping on. And only way we can keep on is what? The soul jumps out of the body and carries on, and so no soul in the body, what happens? The life of the body is gone. There's no vitality of the soul, and I have a theory about crib deaths, which is that babies die unexpectedly for no reason -- infants, newborns more exactly -- because the soul hasn't entered into the body to give it that life. If you look at the biblical sense, it was God breathed through the nostrils and there was life. Well, I take that to mean the soul didn't come into the body, breath through the nostrils of the physical form, and therefore the body expires.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Now could be right, could be wrong. hat sure there's people who know more than I, can probably correct me or add to it or whatever. But if you take it from a basis of understanding why we die, then it's like, okay, don't get caught up and think that this comfortable pair of shoes is it. It's not. There is a better pair of shoes, a better life, a better experience coming that is so amazingly pleasurable of on being wrapped up in unconditional love. Think of it: it no worries, no fears, no pain, no loneliness, nothing but love. Whoa, surrounded by love. What an amazing . feeling Can you remember when you were a little child, wrapped up in a blanket and mommy and daddy were looking over you and all the relatives came and peeked down the edge and scared the heck out of you, and And whose who's big two Two inches away from yours? Oh my !, But but you were nice and to warm war, when but it was happening. I can remember people who had that experience. They can remember these people coming to stick in their face, far away from the that baby's nose, nose and scaring the daylights out of the baby because, oh my god, I was there zero, I was having a ball and somebody... anyway anyway

Douglas James Cottrell:

Anyway to answer the question question, it's simply, uh, the idea that, if you take the analogy of a pair of shoes, don't get too comfortable with this life but be grateful for it. Worship your life, be grateful for it, praise your body from the tip of your toes to the top of your head. Once in a while, sit there and say, you know, big toes, I love you. You know, heart, I am so grateful. You know ears, you're wonderful. My hands are great. Praise yourself, worship yourself, talk to yourself, honor yourself. Wake up, because this is the only body you have. Take care of it. I know we all don't. t's used to play football, I used to play hockey up until I was 57, and I beat myself up. Well, guess what? You pay me then or you pay me now. So you beat your body up, you're going to pay later, guaranteed, there's that balance. It's karma. You know it's out there, you can't help it.

Douglas James Cottrell:

So my friend Les that sort of in a very basic understanding is why we must die. Nothing is forever and it is ordained that we come into the world made of clay, we exist for a while and we carry on. What you do between the birthday, the year you were born and the birth year, that you die on your tombstone, is a little dash. Wiser people than I have referred to that as what did you do in that dash between the time you were born and the time you died?

Les Hubert:

Excellent. Well, thank you, Doug, that was great.

Douglas James Cottrell:

Okay, my friend, until next time, everybody. I'm your host, Douglas James Cottrell, and this is my good friend Les Hubert, wishing you peace and prosperity.

Announcer:

Thank you very much for listening to Wake Up. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe so you'll be notified when a new episode is posted, and we'd greatly appreciate your review of our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts to let others know about the great content we're producing. For more about Dr Douglas' self-development classes, books and other related products, please visit his website douglasjamescottrell. com. Until next time, we wish you all of God's blessings: health, wealth and peace of mind.