NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

In a recent DAILY MAIL I was intrigued to read about Amanda Cable’s near-death experience when her heart stopped during surgery some years ago. It was also interesting to know that scientists have now come up with this theory to explain the phenomenon:

They tell us that these experiences happen when the quantum substances forming the soul ‘leave’ the nervous system and enter the universe. According to the feature ‘Dr Stuart Hameroff, of the University of Arizona, claims the essence of our souls are contained in microtubules within brain cells. These somehow dissipate into the universe if the heart stops – and return if the patient is resuscitated.’

Apparently over 660 readers of the Mail Online commented on Dr Hameroff’s research. Amanda says that as the pragmatic daughter of a surgeon she is not religious and had never believed in an afterlife – always before following her father’s belief that life ends with death. So she never imagined anything as extraordinary or inexplicable as a near-death experience happening to her. 

In agonising pain one day, she was rushed to hospital and found to be suffering an ectopic pregnancy. At the time her daughter, Ruby, and twin sons were enjoying the last day of their summer holiday at a play-camp. 

During a terrible night on morphine for the pain and haemorrhaging internally, Amanda was acutely conscious of tomorrow being Ruby’s first day at her new school. So, sick though she was, she sent her husband home begging him to be there for Ruby.

She next remembers a doctor slapping her face hard and saying “Wake up, stay with me!”  Then another doctor felt the pulse in her neck and said: “She’s tachycardic.” Shortly afterwards, her pulse stopped. 

Amanda thought of her three children, back home asleep, unaware that their Mummy was dying. She describes feeling her entire body being sucked up into a white light above and remembers a wonderful sense of calm, along with a tranquil and warm acceptance of death.

But someone was standing a few feet from her. Expecting to see her grandmother, who had died a few years earlier, she instead saw Ruby – wearing her new school uniform and with her hair tied neatly in bunches.

Amanda had never seen Ruby in her uniform, nor with her hair in bunches. “Come with me, Mummy,” implored the little girl, taking Amanda’s hand and leading her back down the white tunnel. “Hurry!”

There was a gate at the end of the tunnel. Ruby insisted: “Mummy, step through the gate NOW!” As Amanda stepped through, Ruby slammed it shut behind her.

Amanda says that the shock jolted her body – and that she’s sure it was at this moment that the defibrillator pads being used by the medics shocked her heart back into a rhythm.

Waking up in intensive care, she saw a masked doctor leaning over her saying: “You’ve been very sick and are not out of the woods yet. We need your next of kin at your bedside.”

Thinking of little Ruby and her first day at school, Amanda waved him away knowing she’d be OK. Hours later, Ray arrived and brought with him a photo of Ruby he had taken outside the school gates.

Smiling, with her new uniform and shiny shoes on, she had allowed her father to put her hair in bunches for the very first time. Ruby looked exactly as Amanda had seen her in the white tunnel!

Have you ever had a near-death experience? Do share it, if you have!

HEAVEN IS REAL

A few posts ago I wrote about Harvard neurosurgeon Eben Alexander's brilliant book PROOF OF HEAVEN detailing his experience during a seven-day coma. Now, under the heading HEAVEN IS REAL I've read this interesting (and ultimately amusing!) feature by the Daily Mail's Peter McKay:

'Top-selling non-fiction title in the U.S. is PROOF OF HEAVEN: A Doctor's Experience With The Afterlife. Dr Alexander nearly died during a seven-day coma and says it gave him a scientific reason to believe in the continuity of consciousness after death.

Dr Alexander also experienced the love of a God 'who cares for us even more deeply and fiercely than any parent ever loved their child.' I read somewhere that we typically think about our death 40 times a day, including what might happen afterwards. There have been many books on the subject, usually by religious types, but none previously - so far as I am aware - from a neurosurgeon.

Shortly after I came to Fleet Street many moons ago, I remember a London Evening Standard series - commissioned, I think, by its pious, fearful-about-the-hereafter then owner, Lord Beaverbrook - on the question of whether there was life after death.

I can't remember the answer. Just the question, splashed on huge posters attached to the paper's delivery vans: IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH? READ MONDAY'S EVENING STANDARD.'

P.S. If you'd like to read it, PROOF OF HEAVEN is available in My Spiritual Store - by clicking the live link!

UNDERWATER WORLD

We speak of the Underworld, but what about the underwater world? Do you sometimes wonder, like I do, about the world beneath the sea and about its secrets? This world is mostly hidden from us - especially the vast areas that are incalculable fathoms deep.

Yet between the ocean's bed and its surface countless kinds of life not only exist, but thrive.Yes, whether we're talking of plants that grow or creatures that swim, marine life has its own unique universe concealed by and large from our eyes.

But, despite our blindness, we know it is there. Isn't this somewhat similar to our knowledge of an afterlife? Or, if 'knowledge' is too strong a word for you, then maybe 'suspicion' would be closer to your truth. We suspect that there's a heaven though our eyes aren't enabled to see it until after we die.

With limited vision we need either learn to trust or to contain our curiosity until we reach the other side. Meanwhile the existence of the hidden underwater world can perhaps act as an analogy for the after-world that awaits us!

HALLOWEEN - What Does It Mean?

All Hallows Eve (or Halloween, as it is more commonly known) is - according to Bel Mooney, writing in Saturday's Daily Mail - 'about death, mourning, darkness and remembrance. And that, Bel says, 'is why the festival speaks to our innermost selves, even if we don't realize it.'

She continues: 'Even in a secular age, the subconscious mind tunes into the spiritual at this time of year. Children dressed as witches and skeletons and parents laboriously carving out pumpkin lanterns are connecting to our ancestors and enacting the deeper meaning of October 31.

It is not hard to see how the idea of the dying of the light prompts thoughts of death. The Celts believed that on October 31 the border between our world and the 'other' world is especially thin. As plants died away, they believed that revered ancestors reached back through the veil separating them from the living.'

Whatever your beliefs, I wish you a Halloween that's as spooky (or not) as you want it to be!

PROOF OF HEAVEN

Can there be proof of heaven? I think there can, having recently read a very interesting story about a Harvard-educated neurosurgeon – Eben Alexander – who, in common with lots of scientists, used to be a non-believer.

But that was before contracting a rare form of bacterial meningitis, when he fell into a coma lasting seven days. After confounding the doctors who became increasingly convinced that he would never recover, Dr Alexander now claims he was somehow transported to a ‘place of clouds’.

He tells of a beautiful blue-eyed woman answering his unspoken thoughts, of ‘transparent shimmering beings’ gliding over an idyllic landscape – and of an all-powerful divine presence flooding him with intense, unconditional love.

He describes being a ‘speck on a butterfly wing’ along with millions of other butterflies in a swirling ‘river of life and colour’. They fluttered among trees and flowers that exploded into bloom as they passed.

He saw, below him, waterfalls, pools and ‘indescribable colours’, while above him were clouds – ‘big, puffy, pink-white ones showing up sharply against the deep blue-black sky’.

Dr Alexander goes on to describe flocks of ‘transparent, shimmering beings’ making arcs of gold and silver across the sky and incredible hymns and chants reaching him from these beings – ‘higher forms of life’ which he could only conclude were angels.

Throughout, he was acutely conscious of being loved and cherished forever and now remembers being ‘flooded with a vast and crazy sensation of relief.’

There is much, much more to his story, which he has written about in Newsweek and also in his book Proof Of Heaven, to be published next week. I really recommend reading it!

DOG'S GRAVESIDE VIGIL

I recently read an amazing story of a dog's graveside vigil that has lasted (so far) for six years!

It seems that German Shepherd Capitan ran away from home after his master died in 2006. A week after the death, when the dead man's family went to pay their respects, they found Capitan howling by the grave.

The fact that they had never taken the dog to the cemetery made his presence there all the more extraordinary.

Graveyard staff are feeding Capitan and said: "He turned up and started wandering around until he found the tomb. During the day he sometimes has a walk, but at 6 pm sharp he lies on the grave and stays there all night."

Can there be any devotion more potent?

P.S. Incidentally, THE FOREIGNER is due to be FREE on Amazon later today (see right-hand column)!

REFLECTIONS ON DEATH

Where do the reflections in this picture begin and end? Even though I took the photo, I can't answer that question with any degree of certainty. And it seems to me that there are some parallels here to life and death. When life in one dimension ends it begins again in another. We haven't gone anywhere except beyond limited human vision.

We've just shed a skin that has outlived its usefulness. How liberating this must be - especially if that skin had become irrevocably diseased or for some other reason a burden to us! Imagine the freedom of being bodiless and having the ability to be anywhere we want to be, at will - instantly! And we can watch over our loved ones, protecting them and 'telling' them that they haven't lost us. If we tell them often enough, they'll hear us in the end.

Yes, my reflections on death suggest that there's fun ahead!

AVA GARDNER - Did She Carry Through Her Threat?

Here's a snippet about Ava Gardner from Richard Kay's page in yesterday's DAILY MAIL that I simply had to share with you:

'The brilliant biographer, Peter Evans, has died at home in Dulwich, South London. He was 78. Peter, who worked with my late colleague Nigel Dempster, was finishing his latest work, on Ava Gardner, when he had a heart attack. Curiously, he blamed Ava for nearly killing him 22 years ago after she asked him to write her obituary, saying she was about to die. At the time, Peter said: 'I didn't believe her and she ended with the words: "When I go, I'll send you a bolt of lightning."'

Sure enough, days after her death, lightning hit a tree which crashed into Evans's house, missing him by inches. Something they may be able to laugh about on the other side ... '

HENRY FORD - Was He Born Before?

 Henry Ford believed implicitly that in a former lifetime as a soldier he had died at the battle of Gettysburg. The San Francisco Examiner dated 26 August, 1928, quoted him as saying:

 'I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty-six. Religion offered nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilize the experience we collect in one life in the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan. I realized that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more. The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease. If you preserve a record of this conversation, write it so that it puts men's minds at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us.'

Here are some further awesome words of his:

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REBIRTH - Everlasting Souls

I simply love this wisdom from Chrissie Astell's 'Advice From Angels' and think you will too:

'If our souls are everlasting, through many lifetimes, and if we wait in a heavenly place until our rebirth, then we spend most of that time among the angelic realms. Following this thought, perhaps what we see in meditation is a memory. A part of us knows that angelic presence, and a spark of it remains in our hearts for all time.

When we are born, part of our soul - the ego-less, non-physical part - remains in the Heavenly place. The higher self is wiser and purer than our bodily form and has no material attachment. It is possible to connect and ask our higher self for guidance.

When we tap into that wisdom we can also connect with the angel within us. Next time you meet, notice the difference in the energy of your interaction when you allow the angel within to connect with another at a deep soul level.'

FINDING SERENITY

Did you happen to read the other day about the woman who decided not to look in the mirror for a month? She made the decision because she had found herself looking in the mirror (or at her reflection in shop windows) many times a day, despite the fact that doing this tended to depress her.

Well, she said that one month on she felt much better. No longer obsessed with her outward appearance, she had tuned into her inner self with the result that she would awaken to face each new day feeling serene instead of stressed.

I think that’s very interesting and that it says a lot about the value we place on the physical, rather than the spiritual, while we inhabit our bodies.

On my Facebook page yesterday I put a picture similar to this one to illustrate feeling stifled by circumstances and unwilling or unable to grow. Here’s a picture that, for me at least, illustrates the kind of freedom and serenity that I believe is available to us all if we look within for solutions instead of externally. Do you agree that looking within is the key to finding serenity?

GIFT OF LIFE

Here's a lovely message from Chrissie Astell's Advice From Angels:

'The gift of life contains no promises, only possibilities. We are called to live our lives with appropriate regard for others. We are interdependent with all things on our wonderful planet. If you sincerely immerse yourself in the service of others you cannot help but be helped yourself. Rather than ask what you can get from life, ask: "How may I serve? What can I contribute? Many blessings are around you everywhere, so don't miss the opportunity to make a difference."

HAUNTED HOUSES

A new series on haunted houses entitled Great British Ghosts is due to start soon on the Yesterday Channel. In last Saturday's WEEKEND magazine reference was made to the Old Courthouse Inn in Great Bromley - a former courthouse (where criminals were tried and often taken straight to the gallows) now run as a B & B pub.

Here's an extract from the article: 'It is haunted by a woman in a maid's uniform and guests have complained of being watched. The pub's ghost has been caught on camera by spirit snapper Ron Bowers. He has taken scores of photographs there, which have shown shapes witnesses claim were not visible to them.

Justice meted out at the Old Courthouse may have been rough but at least it was swift. However, debtors banged up in Derby Gaol languished there for months or years, sometimes driven to suicide or despair. The prison, now a museum run by local historian Richard Felix, also claims to be Britain's most haunted building. Richard says the 'torment and terror of its past lingers in the very fabric' of the building. Visitors to the museum have seen the oak cell doors close on their own, have smelled the scent of roses, felt sick and been pushed and shoved by unseen hands.

At a seance held in the jail, a heavy table pushed a visitor close to a burning fire and Richard has seen a ghost gliding along a corridor. He recalls, "I was on the phone in the office and it was 3.20 pm on a bright afternoon. I was so startled I forgot I was on the phone."

Richard believes the man in black 19th century clothes was the unquiet spirit of George Batty, a rapist hanged in 1825 when the jail closed down, or perhaps the spirit of the jail's last warden, Blyth Simpson, who objects to his successor's presence. Richard says, "He still thinks he runs the place - he resents me terribly."'    

GATEWAY TO PARADISE

Where is your gateway to paradise? Here's one of mine. It's on glorious Dartmoor, between Widdecombe village and the Rugglestone Inn.

For me (and countless others) Dartmoor is paradisaical. I can see it, distantly, from my study window and can be there after a thirty-minute drive. The views on the moor (except when it's clothed in mist) stretch forever, across to high tors, vast swathes of bracken and heather - and ponies galore.

I can go through this gate and feel that I am in heaven already. Are these similar feelings to those we experience when we eventually go from the life we know to the afterlife?

I wouldn't be surprised! And I hugely appreciate the way my spirits lift with every new gateway to paradise I find.

P.S. Just letting you know that all 4 P.G. Glynn novels will be FREE from Amazon.com Kindle Direct this weekend!

ANGELIC VISITATION

Here's a lovely story of an angelic visitation - again from Chrissie Astell's Advice From Angels:

'Ben, aged four, had been very sad since his Daddy had gone away. He hadn't eaten well, couldn't sleep and refused to play with his toys. His mother Sue was beside herself with worry for her son and herself, but had read about the help of angels and came to see me to find out more.

In the week prior to her consultation, Ben came down from his room one evening after he had been put to bed and said: "Mummy, there is a shiny lady in my room all dressed in white who knows who I am. I don't know what she wants but she keeps smiling and talking to me. Mummy, she is SO beautiful."

Following the visit of the 'beautiful white lady', Ben became his normal happy self again, playing, eating and sleeping like a healthy little boy. Do we need to return to innocence to see the angels for ourselves?'

ANGEL GIFTS

Angel gifts come to us in myriad forms. I've recently found some wonderful Angel Cards that I plan to share with you both here and via my Facebook page. Here is the thought (from Chrissie Astell) for today: 'Humans must be known to be loved, angels must be loved to be known.

When we love and are being loved our souls sing. We are nourished and whole. Loving others is easy, but in order to love unconditionally we must first learn to love ourselves. Loving is an expression of kindness, of communicating from the heart and of compassion. Learn to give the gift of love to yourself.

Think of a quality you deeply admire, one you would attribute to an angel. Visualize that quality in the form of a flower bud and in your imagination carry it to your very core. Now look at the flower and admire it, appreciate its perfection. Remembering those qualities, recognise that you, too, have these attributes. Acknowledge and respect yourself for that.

Recognizing that your soul contains perfection, allow yourself to love it. Your soul has the qualities of an angel. As you begin to know yourself, you will learn how to love yourself.'

REINCARNATED?

I’ve just read a feature in today’s DAILY MAIL that set me wondering whether Mozart (or some other musical maestro) has been reincarnated as a little girl in Devon.

Lavinia, who is three years old today, has apparently ‘astounded experts with her first public performance on piano’.

The feature continues: ‘Lavinia had been learning to play for only six weeks before she stepped out to perform before a 200-strong audience at a local church hall on the outskirts of Plymouth.

By that stage she had been to only eight lessons. Her teacher, Matej Lehocky, who studied at the prestigious Prague Conservatory of Music and learned to play when he was four, agreed to tutor her after realising she was exceptionally bright and clearly keen to learn. She loves listening to classical music and occasionally asks him to play for her. Bizet’s Carmen is her current favourite.

“She is so mature for her age that you forget you’ve got a two-year-old sitting there with you,” he said. “It’s as if she is five or six. What she has is something exceptional. Her hand-eye co-ordination is remarkable. She can play Old MacDonald Had A Farm using both hands at once. I think in about eight months’ time she will be able to sit a Grade One exam. I can’t recall anyone doing that at the age of three.”

Lavinia was nicknamed Little Miss Mozart after performing at the concert (although Mozart is thought to have been nearly four when he first started to play a clavichord keyboard). Neither of her parents plays an instrument but she became interested in music after getting a toy piano for Christmas.

Playing at the age of three is not unique but is extremely rare – as is Lavinia’s progress and confidence. Shown video footage of her playing John Holmes, chief examiner of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, said she showed ‘exciting potential with her piano playing skills and has clearly made excellent progress in her first two months.’’

Well, do you think – as I do – that this is possibly a case of a musical maestro reincarnated?

SOUL TREASURES

Where do you go for your soul treasures? I find mine in all kinds of places - both expected and unexpected. Certainly Nature never fails to deliver wonders that both inspire and awe me.

Find them too in stillness and silence, or in beautiful music, or the written word. I often delve into Dr Wayne W Dyer's Everyday Wisdom, where I discover little gems such as this one: 'Treasure your physical being as a vehicle that houses your soul. Once you have the inner way, the outer way will follow.'

THE POWER OF NOW

How much attention do we pay to the power of now?

I have an acquaintance who is forever talking about her death. Not especially with a sense of dread - more one of relish. It seems to be almost her favorite topic and has been for years. She has her funeral planned down to the last detail and talks about it to anyone who will listen.

This all seems very sad to me, as in constantly looking ahead to her eventual death she is forgetting to live. She certainly isn't living in the now, as Eckhart Tolle so unforgettably recommends in his international bestseller THE POWER OF NOW.

Living in the present is the best way to live, but how many of us achieve this? Eckhart tells us we can free ourselves from our minds by 'watching the thinker' - listening to the voice in our head and being there as the witnessing presence. In this way we gradually separate our deeper self from our thought process. And we can release ourselves from our known past as well as from fears of our unknown future.

We can simply be - finding joy in each moment and knowing that our 'now' is all that truly counts.  

THOUGHTS ON DEATH

I've just been reading some of Nora Ephron's thoughts on death in an extract from her book I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK, published in today's DAILY MAIL. Nora, who died on Tuesday aged 71, was, of course, the award-winning screenwriter whose credits include WHEN HARRY MET SALLY and SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE.

It was thanks to her that my daughter won a luxury long weekend in New York (and took me with her!) a few years ago. How did that happen? One Saturday morning there was a quiz about WHEN HARRY MET SALLY on Capital Radio and Caroline rang in (it being her all-time favorite film back then), answered all the questions correctly - and WON first prize.

So I was sad to learn of Nora's death, but loved reading these thoughts of hers as she faced her own mortality: 'As for instructions for my funeral, I suppose I could come up with a few. For example, if there's a reception afterward, I know what sort of food I would like served: those little finger sandwiches from this place on Lexington Avenue called William Poll. And champagne would be nice. I love champagne. It's so festive.

But otherwise, I don't have a clue. I haven't even worked out whether I want to be buried or cremated - largely because I've always worried that cremation in some way lowers your chances of being reincarnated. (If there is such a thing.) (Which I know there isn't.) (And yet ... )

In a few minutes I will have finished writing this piece, and I will go back to life itself. Squirrels have made a hole in the roof, and we don't quite know what to do about it. Soon it will rain; we should probably take the cushions inside. I need more bath oil.

And that reminds me to say something about bath oil. I use this bath oil I happen to love. It's called Dr Hauschka's lemon bath. It costs about £15 a bottle, which is enough for about two weeks of baths if you follow the instructions. The instructions say one capful per bath. But a capful gets you nowhere. A capful is not enough. I have known this for a long time.

But if the events of the last few years have taught me anything, it's that I'm going to feel like an idiot if I die tomorrow and I skimped on bath oil today.

So I use quite a lot of bath oil. More than you could ever imagine. After I take a bath, my bathtub is as dangerous as an oil slick. But thanks to the bath oil, I'm as smooth as silk.

I'm going out to buy more, right now. Goodbye.'

FINDING DIVINE BLISS

How do we set about finding divine bliss? In at least one previous blog post I've mentioned James van Praagh's bestselling book TALKING TO HEAVEN (available via my Spiritual Store). Now I'd like to share with you his thoughts on meditation:

'It gives one solace to know that in a cold, disheartening world, where tragedy and intolerance appear to dominate, and the reasonable and rational self is nothing but a dream, a refuge exists where love stands supreme. It is a world of unlimited potential intermingled with divine bliss. This world of delight is available to everyone who chooses to open that door. Where is this place of contentment and love? This domain of peace is found in SILENCE. It is the silence of being ... just being. For it is in the golden silence of our own selves that the divine is found.

When we center ourselves and listen to that still small voice within, we are tapping into the silence of being.  This self-knowingness can be utilized in every aspect of life to ripen and enrich every experience. So many people go through their daily lives in search of their purpose for living. They bemoan their fate and suffer so. If they would just take a simple moment to stop and listen to their inner voice, they would begin to open themselves up to a level of indefatigable understanding. But how do we get to this SILENCE? How do we tap into our inner knowingness? How do we discern our inner voice? The answer to these questions, and the best way I know, is through meditation.

What is meditation? Simply, meditation is a focus of consciousness from one state of being to another. In essence, we turn off the outside, everyday world and tune in to, or become aware of, our inside world. When we sit in silence and begin to focus our attention inwardly, the awareness of self is strengthened and the spiritual dimensions of the soul are revealed ... '

I strongly recommend that you read TALKING TO HEAVEN and find out more about finding divine bliss and about a medium's message of life after death from James van Praagh direct. As for actual guided meditations that I can wholeheartedly suggest - here are some that I use and love: MEDITATIONS.

AFTER A DEATH - Animal Help

In his bestselling book TALKING TO HEAVEN, James Van Praagh tells us this inspiring story:

'Animals are often used by spirit. Many times spirit beings can influence a bird or small animal to come by us to get our attention in some way. It is another sign of their nearness to us. A good friend of mine died in February. I went to New York, which was buried under two feet of snow, to visit her outdoor crypt.

I had trouble locating it when suddenly a truck pulled up and a groundskeeper stepped out. "You're staring right at it," he said. I thanked him, and he went back to his truck and drove away. I thought it strange that he just happened to come by at that very moment. After he left, I looked up to her niche and next to it, a bright blue jay perched itself on the branch of a tree. Mind you, it was very cold with snow everywhere. I didn't think it so unusual until later that afternoon when I visited her husband, Jack, at their home.

I walked in the door and Jack's first words were, "If you want anything of Connie's, please take it." I turned my head to the right and there on a shelf was a glass bluebird staring back at me.'

DEATH

On my Facebook page a month or so ago, I gave a short extract about death from Kahlil Gibran's THE PROPHET. It has now occurred to me that you might like to see the extract in its entirety. So here it is:

'Then Almitra spoke, saying, We would ask now of death. And he said:

You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light. If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond; And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity. Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honor. Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king? Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered? Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, than shall you truly dance.'

 The Prophet is now obtainable from My Spiritual Store ...

LIFE AFTER LIFE

In his brilliant book LIFE AFTER LIFE Dr Raymond Moody tells us:

‘What is perhaps the most incredible common element in the accounts I have studied, and is certainly the element which has the most profound effect upon the individual, is the encounter with a very bright light. Typically, at its first appearance this light is dim, but it rapidly gets brighter until it reaches an unearthly brilliance. Yet, even though this light (usually said to be white or "clear") is of an indescribable brilliance, many make the specific point that it does not in any way hurt their eyes, or dazzle them, or keep them from seeing other things around them (perhaps because at this point they don't have physical "eyes" to be dazzled).

Despite the light's unusual manifestation, however, not one person has expressed any doubt whatsoever that it was a being, a being of light. Not only that, it is a personal being. It has a very definite personality. The love and the warmth that emanate from this being to the dying person are utterly beyond words, and he feels completely surrounded by it and taken up in it, completely at ease and accepted in the presence of this being. He senses an irresistible magnetic attraction to this light. He is ineluctably drawn to it.

Interestingly, while the above description of the being of light is utterly invariable, the identification of the being varies from individual to individual and seems to be largely a function of the religious background, training, or beliefs of the person involved. Thus, most of those who are Christians in training or belief identify the light as Christ and sometimes draw Biblical parallels in support of their interpretation.

A Jewish man and woman identified the light as an "angel." It was clear, though, in both cases, that the subjects did not mean to imply that the being had wings, played a harp, or even had a human shape or appearance. There was only the light. What each was trying to get across was that they took the being to be an emissary, or a guide. A man who had had no religious beliefs or training at all prior to his experience simply identified what he saw as "a being of light." The same label was used by one lady of the Christian faith, who apparently did not feel any compulsion at all to call it the "Christ."

Shortly after its appearance, the being begins to communicate with the person who is passing over. Notably, this communication is of the same direct kind which we encountered earlier in the description of how a person in the spiritual body may "pick up the thoughts" of those around him. For, here again, people claim that they did not hear any physical voice or sounds coming from the being, nor did they respond to the being through audible sounds. Rather, it is reported that direct, unimpeded transfer of thoughts takes place, and in such a clear way that there is no possibility whatsoever either of misunderstanding or of lying to the light.

Furthermore, this unimpeded exchange does not even take place in the native language of the person. Yet, he understands perfectly and is instantaneously aware. He cannot even translate the thoughts and exchanges that took place while he was near death into the human language which he must speak now, after his resuscitation.

The next step of the experience clearly illustrates the difficulty of translating from this unspoken language ... ‘

(To find Dr Moody's book LIFE AFTER LIFE - just click the live link in my opening sentence!) 

LIFE AFTER DEATH

Do you often look, as I do, at Nature's gifts to us and marvel over all the evidence we see around us of life after death?

Plants and trees that seem to die in winter return to life in the spring. Flowers wither, but will bloom again on a new stem.

We are surely no different. I was just reading a feature about Britain's most accurate medium, Gordon Smith, who has written the book 'Intuitive Studies: A Complete Course In Mediumship'.

When Gordon was seven or eight a friend of his mother's passed him on the street and stopped for a chat. But when he told his Mum about this she became very upset - because the man in question had died the previous week!

Thanks to his mother's reaction, Gordon learned to keep quiet about his subsequent experiences - until his early 20s, when a friend's brother died in a house fire.  At 3 am he appeared in Gordon's bedroom, but had vanished through the floorboards before Gordon could speak. It turned out the next morning that he had died at that exact time.

I find nothing strange in such manifestations of life after death. It seems to me an absolutely natural process that our spirit lives on when we leave our flesh.

GHOSTS

This rich Elizabethan merchant's house, built around 1575, is now the Totnes Museum. When run as a tea shop, pre-1958, its owner maintained that it had two ghosts - a man and a woman.  And I gather from Bob Mann's excellent little book The Ghosts Of Totnes that just before the close of the 1992 season a teenaged boy ran down the stairs in 'a very shocked condition' after seeing a ghostly figure in the reconstructed Victorian grocer's shop - where someone else also said she was aware of a 'presence'.

Ghosts do seem to frequent Totnes, don't they? Maybe one of these days I'll see the ghost of Mary Wesley, who once lived just beyond my garden boundary.  If I do, I'll be sure to tell you!

GHOSTLY PRESENCE

For many years it seems that there was a ghostly presence in the Old Forge - possibly the oldest building in Bridgetown, near Totnes, being around 600 years old.  Now a hotel, the Old Forge was formerly a wheelwright’s shop, a smithy, a coach building works and a hay barn.  It even has a small lock-up that once accommodated offenders waiting for the magistrate holding court in an upstairs room!

It’s thought, in fact, that there were once two ghosts – one being a welcoming elderly lady in the lounge, the other an entity named ‘Harry’ believed to have been the last blacksmith to work there.

Some hotel guests back in the 1980s repeatedly heard ‘blacksmith’ sounds coming from the smithy at night.  Oddly, only guests heard these.  They were never heard by the then hotel owners, Peter and Jeannie Allnutt, who had revived the smithy via a successful wrought iron business.

Then one day a titled lady arrived with a ceremonial sword that needed repairing.  As its handle was richly bejeweled Peter was uncertain how to do the repair without melting the jewels, so he shelved it temporarily.  However, before long he found that he knew exactly what to do – and it was his firm belief that this knowledge had come to him directly from Harry as he couldn’t imagine where else it had come from.

Subsequently he felt this ghostly presence regularly, guiding him in his work, right up until 1991 – after which Peter, all too conscious by then of Harry’s absence, came to believe that he was now trusted to work on his own in the forge that had meant so much to its former owner. 

 

GHOSTLY ACTIVITY

It seems that a building doesn't need to be incredibly old for there to be ghostly activity within. Here's a picture of 'King Bill', a Totnes pub and commercial hotel that was first built in 1830 (when William IV ascended the throne) - then rebuilt in 1902.

Apparently Jackie and Ron Hodder, who were landlords there until 1988, grew accustomed to the activities of an entity they called 'Bill' - who, as well as playing with lights, jamming doors and moving things around, once pulled someone from their bed!

'Bill' was thought to have once been a cook at the hotel who died in an upstairs room.  Some visitors staying at the pub in 1979 actually met and talked with him. In an attic room they found an old man who complained to them about the music sounds coming up from the bar - and it transpired that this man was 'Bill'!

SPIRITUAL SYMBOL

 Soon after I met Djoser, my spirit guide, a dear friend asked me if I could ask him about her spiritual symbol. I’d told Yvonne mine and she was intrigued to know what hers was like.

So I asked Djoser who, speaking mind to mind, told (and showed) me that her symbol was a peacock. Although I passed his information on to Yvonne, I was a little worried (being new to this whole process) as to whether I had ‘heard’ Djoser correctly.  The last thing – obviously - I ever wanted to do was mislead anyone.

That afternoon, walking Sam - my Bearded Collie - in unfamiliar woods, I heard the weirdest sound. Unable to make out its source, I tensed while wondering where and what it came from. Sam tensed too and looked bemused.

We walked on, treading watchfully when the somewhat strident screech sounded again. Then we entered a clearing and right before our startled eyes there appeared a peacock, spreading its amazing tail in exactly the way Djoser had ‘shown’ me earlier that day.

Things didn’t end there! We now found ourselves in the grounds of a large house – with several peacocks strolling around. I gazed in awe at their beautiful eye-marked tail-feathers and told Djoser I’d never doubt him again.

All the same, he saw fit to give me some extra emphasis a few days later, after my daughter asked to know her spiritual symbol. But that story can wait for my next post …   

HAUNTED INN

A group of us had lunch yesterday at a haunted inn.  The Kingsbridge is the oldest inn in Totnes, dating back in parts to the fourteenth century, and apparently has long been the scene of  apparitions and strange occurrences.

We sat in a room with incredibly thick walls and the landlord identified the one between us and the bar as being the reputed 'resting place' of a seventeenth century barmaid.  Mary Brown, so the story goes, was seduced and subsequently murdered by the landlord of her day before being buried in the wall!

Her ghost, it seems, only ever shows itself to women (maybe because she was treated so appallingly by a man?) and over the years the figure of a tall, dark-haired woman has frequently been seen by various people - standing at the bar and gliding through to the kitchen, where the chef and waiting staff grew quite used to seeing her.

Disappointingly, we didn't see Mary - but we did enjoy our delicious meal! 

RESCUED BY ANGELS?

Back in 1992 I read a newspaper story about a Mrs Dorothea Sargent, who was staying with her sister, Mary, in Iowa.  They were driving along a country back road when their car had a puncture.

Neither sister knew how to change a tyre so, with no house nearby, they sat in their car hoping for another motorist to appear.

Shortly after they had resigned themselves to a possibly long wait, a car appeared seemingly from nowhere and pulled in behind them.  Three fair-haired men in white suits emerged and offered to change the punctured tyre.

Having difficulty in fixing the scissor jack in place, one of the young men lay full length on the road to position it and Dorothea scolded him for soiling his lovely suit.  But he said there was no problem – and, when he stood up again, despite the road being greasy and slick after a day’s rain, she saw that his suit was not at all stained.

After quickly changing the tyre, the young men – refusing to accept any payment – drove away.  That is to say, their vehicle travelled about fifty yards down the long empty road stretching between the twilit winter fields and then began to shimmer as if liquefying.

The shimmer became brighter, rendering the car virtually transparent, before in a final pulse of brilliant light, it vanished altogether.

My question now is, do you share Dorothea’s and Mary’s belief that they were rescued by angels?  Apparently there were dozens of similar sightings across the USA around that time – and the ‘angels’ were always young, white men dressed in pale clothes that never became dirty or creased.

They only ever changed tyres – and never accepted payment.  Well, angels wouldn’t expect to be paid, would they?

FUTURE LIVES

How is it possible to remember future lives? I wrote yesterday about Jenny Cockell’s well remembered past life as Mary Sutton in Malahide.  Now I’d like to share with you Jenny’s vision of a future life.

When she first experienced such a vision she felt she had two selves – herself and a two-year-old Asian girl, Nadia, who will live in Eastern Nepal around 2040.  Jenny said (in an interview with Seth Linder of the DAILY MAIL back in 1996): “I remembered Mary, but this felt like Nadia was remembering me.  It felt alive, as if I were being touched by a future existence.”

Gradually, through visions and with the help of hypnosis, Jenny fleshed out details of Nadia’s life in a village set on a mountainous hillside.  Under progression (rather than regression), as she was taken slowly forward in time, Jenny was able to describe her marriage to good-looking Ghunta and the wedding cart they travelled in.

She also experienced the emotion Nadia felt on the death of her three-year-old daughter – “a sense of resignation similar to that felt with Mary’s stillborn child” (whose brief existence Mary’s eldest child had confirmed).

Jenny then drew a temple with a pointed roof and described two groups of priests dressed in dark and light robes.  These details proved promising as she later discovered that the temple she had drawn was typical, while the two differently dressed priests also exist in an area where both Hinduism and Buddhism are practised.

When her hypnotherapist, Jim Alexander, took her forward to the age of 40 she had the shock of discovering nothing there, as Nadia had died.

However, as the hypnosis sessions progressed, Jenny encountered two further lives – one as Janice Thorpe, ‘a plump technician in her 30s’ on a field trip to South America in 2228 working for Unichem, collecting rain forest samples with a ‘syringe-like tool’ for medical uses.

The major problem, according to Janice, was infertility caused by the chemical pollution that had been at its worst during our present era – leading to a dramatic reduction in the world’s population.  On land, where there were tight controls, the situation was all right but the sea remained toxic.

Air quality was good, however.  There was minimal conflict and the third world war had clearly never materialised.  Life expectancy remained in the 80s.  When asked for the major scientific breakthrough of the last century, Janice described a laser used on living tissue to show cell abnormalities.  She also mentioned a solar treatment for breaking down blood clots and said that fuel was from some kind of fermented spirit.

There were social changes too.  Maybe due to infertility, couples did not marry or even stay together for long.

Janice, living in Jersey, described herself as a shopaholic and said there was no need to enter the shops in her local mall as the goods were demonstrated on screens outside.

Jenny’s last ‘life’ was as Sheryl, a ‘bright, happy’ 15-year-old Californian in the year 2285’.  Her parents weren’t married or living together and she herself had no wish for a lasting relationship.

At twenty-three she worked from home, using a computer console linked to independent agencies.  Her one-storey home was open plan, with surfaces that were plasticized, pleasant to touch and easy to clean.

She wore comfortable, loose clothes in a cotton-like fabric - practical but flattering – and was aware of something (perhaps a watch or communicator of some sort) on her wrist.  Energy was from solar and other renewable sources and, again, the diminished population was evident.  However, this seemed ‘a confident and cohesive society and a time of hope and enthusiasm’ said Jenny ...

So – was she describing actual future lives?  Given that physicists are now questioning our linear concept of time, I leave it to you to decide!

PAST LIVES

Is it possible to remember past lives? I certainly think it is – especially after recently re-reading Jenny Cockell’s account of a life she once lived in Malahide, near Dublin.

Right from early childhood Jenny had had ‘memories’ of being an Irishwoman named Mary Sutton, who died in the 1930s.  And she was haunted by a recurring dream of dying after giving birth to her eighth child, plus the guilt of leaving them behind.

As an adult she travelled from her home in Northamptonshire to Malahide, where she finally found the ruins of Mary’s cottage and her children’s baptism records.

Jenny’s bestselling book Yesterday’s Children describes how over the next two years she not only tracked down the five surviving children – who, though much older than Jenny, accepted her as their ‘mother’ – but also reunited the scattered siblings for the first time since Mary’s death.

Seth Linder, writing back in 1996 in the Daily Mail, described himself as one of the many sceptics who – after investigating the evidence and questioning Jenny’s ‘children’ – was forced to admit that her bizarre explanation seemed to be the only possible one.  She really had been Mary Sutton!

If you find this surprising (or even unbelievable) then you might be still more surprised when in my next post I move on from remembering past lives to ‘remembering’ future lives …

LOVE BEYOND LIFE

 

My Spiritual Store

I wrote last about love beyond death.  What about love beyond life? I am now nearing the end of James van Praagh’s Talking To Heaven, where he speaks of making contact with the spiritual realms ourselves.

He explains how this physical world is just one of many dimensions, as is our solar system, and how the human being is just one among many species.  He adds that the spirit world is not limited to ‘an area in the clouds out of our reach’.  Rather, it is intermingled within our own world.

We need to have the ‘right’ reasons for developing our inner skills with a view to contacting our loved ones, as there’s no room for self-indulgence in spirit – only for selfless love.  Love, James tells us, is the strongest component in bringing us closer to spirit.

Only if we want to advance ourselves spiritually and in turn enlighten others by making contact and exploring the spiritual realms are our motivations correct.

I think Talking To Heaven is brilliant – which is why I’ve included it among the books and music in my Spiritual Store!

LOVE BEYOND DEATH

Love beyond death?  Yes, definitely!  Love cannot die, for we are so much more than the product of coupling between a man and a woman.  Our bodies result from that union, but our souls do not.  They are of divine origin – reaching us from our Source when we are born and returning there when we die.  Or so it seems to me (and countless others).

Once we have fulfilled our earthly purpose our physical remains enter our grave, while our spiritual essence is freed from the body that had restricted it. How thrilling that sense of freedom must be, especially if latterly our body was exhausted and maybe diseased!  Imagine no longer being weighed down by it and how we must rejoice in our weightlessness!

Imagine too the joy of discovering our immortality.  We’ve ‘died’, but are not dead.  Life continues, except on a different level, now that we’ve learned the lessons we were on earth to learn.

There will be new lessons (and new births), but not yet.  For now we can rest, remembering all that we’ve learned and holding fast to the love that we gave and earned.  We don’t forget our loved ones, any more than they forget us.  Love is eternal as well as being an integral part of our souls as we grow both in wisdom and in compassion on our path to perfection.  It grows with us and has infinite capacity.  And one of the wonders of so-called ‘death’ is that we can continue to watch over our loved ones while we wait for them eventually to join us in heaven.

Love beyond death?  You bet! 

FAMOUS BELIEVERS IN REINCARNATION … (continuing)

I don’t know about you – but I’m finding it fascinating to discover just how many famous believers in reincarnation there were (and are)!  Here are a few more such believers, starting with a former British Prime Minister:

David Lloyd George: "The conventional heaven with its angels perpetually singing etc nearly drove me mad in my youth and made me an atheist for ten years. My opinion is that we shall be reincarnated."

George Harrison: "Friends are all souls that we've known in other lives. We're drawn to each other. Even if I have only known them a day, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to wait till I have known them for two years, because anyway, we must have met somewhere before, you know."

Henry David Thoreau: "Why should we be startled by death? Life is a constant putting off of the mortal coil - coat, cuticle, flesh and bones, all old clothes."

Carl Jung: "My life often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and no end. I had the feeling that I was an historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing. I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not yet able to answer; that I had been born again because I had not fulfilled the task given to me."

Koran: "God generates beings, and sends them back over and over again, till they return to Him."

Socrates: "I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence."

Rudyard Kipling: “They will come back–come back again–as long as the red earth rolls. He never wasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think He would squander souls?”

Balzac: "All human beings go through a previous life.  Who knows how many fleshly forms the heir of heaven occupies before he can be brought to understand the value of that silence and solitude of spiritual worlds?"

Somerset Maugham: "Has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil of the world? If the evils we suffer are the result of sins committed in our past lives, we can bear them with resignation and hope that if in this one we strive toward virtue our future lives will be less afflicted.”

Thomas Edison: “The only survival I can conceive is to start a new Earth cycle again.”

William Butler Yeats: “Many times man lives and dies...”

Kahlil Gibran: “A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”

Plotinus (Greek philosopher & founder of Neo-Platonism, 204-270): "Thus a man, once a ruler, will be made a slave because he abused his power and because the fall is to his future good. Those that have money will be made poor -- and to the good poverty is no hindrance. Those that have unjustly killed are killed in turn, unjustly as regards the murderer but justly as regards the victim, and those that are to suffer are thrown into the path of those that administer the merited treatment. It is not an accident that makes a man a slave; no one is a prisoner by chance; every bodily outrage has its due cause. The man once did what he now suffers. A man that murders his mother will become a woman and be murdered by a son; a man that wrongs a woman will become a woman, to be wronged."

Gustav Mahler: "We all return. It is this certainty that gives meaning to life and it does not make the slightest difference whether or not in a later incarnation we remember the former life. What counts is not the individual and his comfort, but the great aspiration to the perfect and the pure which goes on in each incarnation."

Rudolf Steiner: (Austrian philosopher and spiritualist, 1861-1925) claimed in his book Reincarnation & Karma to have gained many mystical insights into the mysteries of life and the afterlife. "Thoughts that deny reincarnation are transformed in the next life into an inner unreality, an inner emptiness of life; this inner unreality and emptiness are experienced as torment, as disharmony."

Finally (at least for now!):

Pythagoras

According to Pythagorean teaching, the soul survives physical death. After a series of reincarnations, each one following a period of psychic cleansing in spiritual environments, the soul becomes free eternally from the cycle of reincarnations.

There – I hope you agree that my most recent posts have given a good cross-section of famous believers in reincarnation?