The Luminous Energy Field
In order to talk about the journey with death it helps to understand the Luminous Energy Field.
We all posses a Luminous Energy Field, or an aura of energy and light that surrounds our physical body and informs it. Imagine you are surrounded by a translucent bubble of light that 
extends about the width of your outstretched arms and down into the earth about a foot. Just above your skin streams of golden light shimmer and flow through the acupuncture meridians.
The luminous body has a flow to it. As well as flowing around the body to the right there is also a continuous motion up through the core of your body and down into the earth about as far as your hands can reach out and then back in and up again. The Luminous Body also has an inner and outer edge.
The Luminous Energy Field is a reservoir of vital force -- a sea of living energy as indispensable to our health as the oxygen and nutrients carried by the bloodstream. These are the energies of the Luminous Energy Field, the purest and most precious fuel for life. When the vital reserves in the Luminous Energy Field are depleted through illness, environmental pollutants, or stress, we suffer disease. We can ensure our health and vitality and extend our active, healthy years by replenishing this essential fuel. Through time the Luminous Energy Field can become clouded or heavy from unprocessed emotions. If there is unfinished business or unresolved issues and the luminous energy field is murky or heavy, the death process can become prolonged. The steps to the Death Rites show how to cleanse the Luminous Energy Field through the chakra system so it becomes light and can glow again. (see Cleansing Chakras)
Indian and Tibetan mystics who documented the existence of the Luminous Energy Field thousands of years ago described it as an aura or halo around the physical body. In the East mandalas depict the Buddha enveloped by blue and gold bands of fire. In the West, Christ and the Apostles are shown with luminous halos around them. In the mystical literature the Apostle Thomas is said to have glowed with the same radiance as Christ. Native American legends speak of persons who shimmered in the night as if lit by an inner fire. The Andean storytellers recall the ruler Pachacutek, considered to be a Child of the Sun, who sparkled with the light of the dawn.
At the time of death the soul prepares for its great journey home. When the brain shuts down the electromagnetic field, which is created by the central nervous system, dissolves. The Luminous Energy Field which is the essence or soul of the individual then begins to disengage from the body. If all proceeds smoothly it gathers into an egg shaped orb and contains the other seven chakras and travels through the axis of the luminous body to become one with Spirit again. This occurs very quickly once the Luminous Energy Field disengages from the physical body.
The Luminous Energy Field squeezes through a portal created by its central axis, called the torus, like a doughnut squeezing through its own hole. This is the dark passageways that people who have had a near-death experience report traveling through as they journey back home. According to the Eastern scriptures, the aperture through which the soul leaves the body is what indicates the course of its journey after death. The soul of one who has become united with the supreme Consciousness in this life passes out through a tiny aperture in the crown of the head. To exit through that, one becomes immortal.