Yes very well said from Peterson.
Descriptions of the "afterlife"/5th Density
- Thread starter Joe
- Start date
Yes very well said from Peterson.
A few of the things said in this long thread, particularly about how some seemingly insignificant actions disproportionately influence our life recapitulation, as well as the Jordan Peterson Q&A, made me think of the below quotes I found in C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.
whitecoast,
I enjoyed that excerpt from C.S. Lewis. For some reason the only book I have read by him was The Screwtape Letters. I didn't really know that much about him then but I found the book fascinating (now I realize he was Irish and an atheist for awhile but latter converted to Christianity). His The Chronicles of Narnia became popular in some Christian circles (even a film series) and I found that enjoyable too. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe based on the Narnia series might be more familiar and recent.
To someone coming from a Christian background (which was my upbringing) The Screwtape Letters presented a behind the scenes story of what a "Christian" is unknowingly battling. Now I would compare it to the behind the scenes struggle with 4D STS creatures who tempt, attack and drain us until we too become STS and distract us away from anything STO.
The gist of The Screwtape Letters for me was:
I guess I sometimes see the "battle is through you" as if attacks directed by 4D STS beings are very similar to the character Screwtape using subordinates like his nephew Wormwood do battle. I am always hoping that I recognize the battle for what it is and use the knowledge gained here for the protection that only knowledge can provide.
The good part for me was that C.S. Lewis portrayed Wormwood as often inept and failing to succeed so that gave me some hope and maybe still does.
Last edited:
By chance, I came across this account of a Near Death Experience on Youtube, which I found fascinating. Unfortunately, it's in French (or fortunately for the Frenchies ;) ) :
Her experience was quite dramatic and she describes many things in a lot of detail - how it happened, what she saw on the other side, what it was like to come back, etc. She was attacked violently, forced to drink alcohol and raped four years ago in her own house, and it was her attacker who called the emergency services when he thought she was going to die, and tried to make it look like she had attempted to kill herself.
One thing I found interesting is that she says that once out of her body she saw from the ceiling the whole scene of the aggression, and the attacker trying to cover his tracks, but that she was a detached observer, non-judgemental. She understood that her soul wanted to give her a lesson on self-love, to have her see how much she had mistreated and debased herself throughout her life. That's one thing to consider - what sort of experiences we may choose to give ourselves from our Higher Self in order to teach us something we have been too stubborn to learn otherwise!
Before leaving, she also tried to communicate with the doctors regarding the nature of her injuries, and she thinks that a certain nurse did get the message as an intuition, cause she made a certain question to a doctor about it. Then, she lived through the similar experience as described by others: she perceived herself as blue electricity, in an timeless space, had a life review, followed a magnificent light and reached a heavenly garden, where she met her daughter who had died in 1994. She saw an abstract geometrical space that represented 12 areas of her life to work on, things like family, work, consciousness, etc., and other things like going 'for a walk on the Multiverse', and so on.
Another interesting thing is that she came back to her body after making the choice (she had the option to stay there), and for some 3 years she had to deal with the PTSD of the attack, naturally - but at the same time, she had gone through this magnificent reassuring, loving experience in the Great Beyond. It's as if at the body and psychological level, she had to heal that trauma, but at the soul level she still gained something else.
Her experience was quite dramatic and she describes many things in a lot of detail - how it happened, what she saw on the other side, what it was like to come back, etc. She was attacked violently, forced to drink alcohol and raped four years ago in her own house, and it was her attacker who called the emergency services when he thought she was going to die, and tried to make it look like she had attempted to kill herself.
One thing I found interesting is that she says that once out of her body she saw from the ceiling the whole scene of the aggression, and the attacker trying to cover his tracks, but that she was a detached observer, non-judgemental. She understood that her soul wanted to give her a lesson on self-love, to have her see how much she had mistreated and debased herself throughout her life. That's one thing to consider - what sort of experiences we may choose to give ourselves from our Higher Self in order to teach us something we have been too stubborn to learn otherwise!
Before leaving, she also tried to communicate with the doctors regarding the nature of her injuries, and she thinks that a certain nurse did get the message as an intuition, cause she made a certain question to a doctor about it. Then, she lived through the similar experience as described by others: she perceived herself as blue electricity, in an timeless space, had a life review, followed a magnificent light and reached a heavenly garden, where she met her daughter who had died in 1994. She saw an abstract geometrical space that represented 12 areas of her life to work on, things like family, work, consciousness, etc., and other things like going 'for a walk on the Multiverse', and so on.
Another interesting thing is that she came back to her body after making the choice (she had the option to stay there), and for some 3 years she had to deal with the PTSD of the attack, naturally - but at the same time, she had gone through this magnificent reassuring, loving experience in the Great Beyond. It's as if at the body and psychological level, she had to heal that trauma, but at the soul level she still gained something else.
A couple weeks ago while at a book store, looking for books mentioned in this thread, I found a book by Raymond Moody called Glimpses of Eternity. The book is about a phenomenon related to the Near Death Experience called the 'Shared Death Experience.' I was only slightly familiar with the term so wasn't aware that the phenomenon included such extraordinary elements as a shared life review and shared out-of-body experience, for example.
A description of the phenomenon from the site, Shared Death Experience:
The following are two accounts of a Shared Death Experience from the book Glimpses of Eternity that I also found listed at the website, People Can Experience Someone Else's Near-Death Experience (the part I quoted below is from the website).
A description of the phenomenon from the site, Shared Death Experience:
The following are two accounts of a Shared Death Experience from the book Glimpses of Eternity that I also found listed at the website, People Can Experience Someone Else's Near-Death Experience (the part I quoted below is from the website).
In relation to this topic, and also the intelligent design topic, I was thinking recently about just how pernicious the materialist/darwinist world view that has been foisted on modern society really is. Materialism, by definition, implies that there is nothing more that physical existence, the physical universe, and that after death there is 'nothing'. I think it's highly likely that that idea - spread widely throughout the population - has a net negative effect on human beings, creating in them a pervasive, if mostly unconscious, (or all the more pernicious because it's unconscious) fear or anxiety about death.
If we consider the 'survival instinct' that all living beings have - which among humans includes an attempt to achieve 'immortality' through procreation - the drive to stay alive and avoid injury and death and to 'continue on' is very strong. We can reasonably assume therefore that the idea that there is 'nothing' after you die, no continuation, is pretty stressful and unpleasant, and may create a tendency in people to block out thoughts about their own mortality by escaping into ever more materialism and materialistic pursuits. Materialistic beliefs create more materialistic thinking and behavior.
In that context, think about the many terror attacks in recent years and the effect they have had on many people around the world. They cause fear and anxiety that may arise from the pointed awareness of our own mortality that such attacks provoke. That, I think, is why you have such an outpouring of anger and demands that "something must be done" in the aftermath of such events, and why politicians use executive power to pass laws that invariably lead to more restrictions on civil freedoms, that the people themselves misguidedly welcome. So the general public response to such attacks may be motivated less by real sympathy for the victims than a visceral fear-based response centered on a sense of their own existential vulnerability.
Imagine, on the other hand, if everyone was more or less convinced of the reality of life after death. How would people then view death, in it's varied manifestations, including terror attacks? If people were aware that the people who were killed really are in a 'better place', and there is no existential harm done, and for that reason no personal existential anxiety was provoked, the response would be very different I think. There could and would be a similar level of justified anger, but for less self-centered reasons that would focus more on rejection of the obvious infringement of the free will of the people who were killed to keep on living. Then again, I think I remember in a session somewhere that it was said that when someone kills someone else, there is always an 'agreement' "at some level" for that to happen. That raises an interesting question about whether or not free will is actually abridged in that kind of scenario, although the session comment may relate only to specific circumstances.
We can't mention materialism and darwinsism without mentioning atheists. I asked in a session a while back whether atheists are people who have no ability to conceive of something higher than the material world because there isn't much in the way of anything 'higher' about them, and the answer was 'yes'. Still, I find it hard to believe that atheists don't experience some form of existential dread. I mean they too have a self-preservation instinct, so I'd be surprised if they can contemplate the idea that they are 'nothing' after they die without being a bit concerned about it. Then again, maybe people who are only able to conceive of and therefore 'worship' the material universe find the idea of a non-physical existence more disturbing than the idea that they will cease to exist, and that is the source of atheists strident rejection of an afterlife or anything more than the material universe.
If we consider the 'survival instinct' that all living beings have - which among humans includes an attempt to achieve 'immortality' through procreation - the drive to stay alive and avoid injury and death and to 'continue on' is very strong. We can reasonably assume therefore that the idea that there is 'nothing' after you die, no continuation, is pretty stressful and unpleasant, and may create a tendency in people to block out thoughts about their own mortality by escaping into ever more materialism and materialistic pursuits. Materialistic beliefs create more materialistic thinking and behavior.
In that context, think about the many terror attacks in recent years and the effect they have had on many people around the world. They cause fear and anxiety that may arise from the pointed awareness of our own mortality that such attacks provoke. That, I think, is why you have such an outpouring of anger and demands that "something must be done" in the aftermath of such events, and why politicians use executive power to pass laws that invariably lead to more restrictions on civil freedoms, that the people themselves misguidedly welcome. So the general public response to such attacks may be motivated less by real sympathy for the victims than a visceral fear-based response centered on a sense of their own existential vulnerability.
Imagine, on the other hand, if everyone was more or less convinced of the reality of life after death. How would people then view death, in it's varied manifestations, including terror attacks? If people were aware that the people who were killed really are in a 'better place', and there is no existential harm done, and for that reason no personal existential anxiety was provoked, the response would be very different I think. There could and would be a similar level of justified anger, but for less self-centered reasons that would focus more on rejection of the obvious infringement of the free will of the people who were killed to keep on living. Then again, I think I remember in a session somewhere that it was said that when someone kills someone else, there is always an 'agreement' "at some level" for that to happen. That raises an interesting question about whether or not free will is actually abridged in that kind of scenario, although the session comment may relate only to specific circumstances.
We can't mention materialism and darwinsism without mentioning atheists. I asked in a session a while back whether atheists are people who have no ability to conceive of something higher than the material world because there isn't much in the way of anything 'higher' about them, and the answer was 'yes'. Still, I find it hard to believe that atheists don't experience some form of existential dread. I mean they too have a self-preservation instinct, so I'd be surprised if they can contemplate the idea that they are 'nothing' after they die without being a bit concerned about it. Then again, maybe people who are only able to conceive of and therefore 'worship' the material universe find the idea of a non-physical existence more disturbing than the idea that they will cease to exist, and that is the source of atheists strident rejection of an afterlife or anything more than the material universe.
anka
The Living Force
I think that is precisely the case. I.E. A psychopathic person who can clearly see that other people experience something more than what s/he can understand or feel, is driven to control the situation to the highest possible degree, to climb up the ladder of societal hierarchy to the top so s/he can ultimately dictate what others will think and do because if s/he did not attempt it s/he would have to live with the fact that perhaps there is something more to life but they are not going to get it by any means. Truly terrible feeling, no? And on top of that, they may be recognized as such and get cast off. So they must do everything in order to stop anyone from even expressing an idea, a worldview that would allow for contemplation of something higher than material existence. And they will do so at any cost, especially at the expense of others. No mercy.
I just watched an interview with Peter Fenwick and thought it was very interesting.
A.o. he said that people who are less self-centred will find it easier to let go of life when the time comes, but that guilt will weigh people down and will make it harder for people to give up life.
He also said that you would want to be prepared for death, so you can talk about the phenomena surrounding it.
And according to Fenwick materialists who begin the dying process give up their beliefs in nothingness after death: "they all start looking forward to what's happening to them".
I thought it was fascinating that apparently, some cats and dogs start howling when their humans pass away, clocks (even the modern ones) stop ticking and so on.
Thank you Mariama,
That was a very calm clear and measured presentation. Very easy to listen to . I really enjoyed it.
Thank you Mariama. I thought that the whole video was fascinating too. Very comforting in many ways.
Breo
The Living Force
Indeed, Mariama, I second what goyacobol says.
Fenwick's emphasis that being stuck with guilt and attachments of all kinds make the passage rough and tough is such a good reminder for self observation. This and all the many other aspects in this great thread put how to work on self into a "final" perspective concerning wishful thinking.
I also liked a lot that he said that "how to die" should be tought in schools. Maybe future generations will grow up to this awareness.
I wonder if there is a great "sense of humor" hidden in these cosmic laws, eg. materialists are in such a bad place even concerning their personal death. Then they might wake up to the fact that entropy is just another lesson to be learned...?
Tuulikki
Dagobah Resident
This is a fascinating subject and one very close to my heart. There didn't seem to be a time when I did not believe in the spirit world. During the forty years I have spent nursing there have been many occasions when I have been in the company of the dying. Many times I have wanted to reassure them and calm their fears of death by telling them that this was not the end and that they would go into the spirit world and continue their existence. Naturally this would be frowned upon by the authorities and we would not have been allowed to push our beliefs onto others. I have been very tempted though. I could not have nursed if I did not have this belief because death would be all too sad and traumatic to witness.
I saw my own mother's spirit a week after she died and that gave me a wonderful feeling. I also heard my dad calling my name and hers after his death ten years ago. Perhaps he was not able to appear in spirit form. I think she had help though as I saw several lights near her which may have been supplying the energy for her appearance.
I wish everyone could have this knowledge and have the fear of death taken away. It is a very privileged position to be in and I try to pass it on to my family but it falls upon deaf ears mostly. I am quite content to return to the spirit world as long as I can still draw, paint and eat cake.
I saw my own mother's spirit a week after she died and that gave me a wonderful feeling. I also heard my dad calling my name and hers after his death ten years ago. Perhaps he was not able to appear in spirit form. I think she had help though as I saw several lights near her which may have been supplying the energy for her appearance.
I wish everyone could have this knowledge and have the fear of death taken away. It is a very privileged position to be in and I try to pass it on to my family but it falls upon deaf ears mostly. I am quite content to return to the spirit world as long as I can still draw, paint and eat cake.
Yep, creative endeavors continue in the afterlife. That's relieving for me as I seem to have trouble finding time to purse them. Not to brush them off, as I think they are important while still in a physical body too. And eating is optional (I'm supposing cooking too, which I don't really enjoy)!
After finishing this book I listened to his another audiobook The Afterlife Unveiled: What the Dead are Telling Us About Their World and actually found it richer in detail. So here are some interesting excerpts:
As the soul lives in the earth-life, so does it go to spirit-life. Its tastes, its predilections, its habits, its antipathies, they are with it still. It is not changed save in the accident of being freed from the body. The soul that on earth has been low in taste and impure in habit does not change its nature by passing from the earth-sphere, any more than the soul that has been truthful, pure, and progressive becomes base and bad by death.
Socrates is with the advanced spirits, way up in the spheres. We cannot go there, only know that it is a very lovely world. They come to us to teach and inspire, by what you would call scientific philosophy. Progression to the higher spheres depends greatly upon the desire of each person, and also upon the effort to acquire knowledge. The higher one goes the more elevated he is in knowledge and goodness. We are satisfied in this, the second sphere [Summerland], and must stay here as long as we are satisfied.
You might think that death would call them to their senses and unleash spiritual energy that would lead to a quest for enlightenment. In several places Hatch laments that this is not so:
This is not a place where everyone knows everything... far from it. Most souls are nearly as blind as they were in life. Elsewhere he says, I am sorry to say that the person who has a clear idea of the significance of life is about as rare here as on the earth... a man does not suddenly become all-wise by changing the texture of his body. Or again:
«This is a great place in which to grow, if one really wants to grow; though few persons take advantage of its possibilities. Most are content to assimilate the experiences they had on earth … most souls do not demand enough here, any more than they did in life. Tell them to demand more, and the demand will be answered.»
As for hell, Hatch does not describe it as a single place where sinners are lumped together. Instead, there are hells to fit every vice: hells of lust, of avarice, of hatred, of untruthfulness, of anger, of various addictions. But these hells, though full of suffering, are not punitive; rather they exist for spirits who want to be there and who want to express themselves in the sick ways they used to back on earth. Often they do so at our expense. Hatch describes a scene at a bar:
A young man with restless eyes and a troubled face … was leaning on the bar, drinking a glass of some soul-destroying compound. And close to him, taller than he and bending over him, with its repulsive, bloated, ghastly face pressed close to his, as if to smell his whiskey-tainted breath, was one of the most horrible astral beings I have seen in this world since I came out. The hands of the creature … were clutching the young man’s form, one long and naked arm was around his shoulders, the other around his hips. It was literally sucking the liquor-soaked life of its victim, absorbing him, using him, in the successful attempt to enjoy vicariously the passion which death had intensified. But was that a creature in hell? you ask. Yes, for I could look into its mind and see its sufferings. For ever (the words ‘for ever’ may be used of that which seems endless) this entity was doomed to crave and crave and never to be satisfied. And the young man who leaned on the bar in that gilded palace of gin was filled with a nameless horror and sought to leave the place; but the arms of the thing that was now his master clutched him tighter and tighter, the sodden, vaporous cheek was pressed closer to his, the desire of the vampire creature aroused an answering desire in its victim, and the young man demanded another glass.
Broadly speaking, every human being falls under one of three headings. He or she is either Spirit-man, Soul-man, or Animal-man. The Animal-man, probably a majority of the human race during any time period, lives for pleasure. He doesn’t care for the joys of the intellect or the fine arts. He doesn’t read good literature. His appetites are exclusively physical and, as Myers puts it, paltry. There is no danger he will have gotten this far in our book. He is probably not cruel or corrupt; he might be sweet and generous. But his mind and spirit are still slumbering. And when he grows tired of the unchallenging look-alike world of the Third Plane, he desires change:
«Usually, at this point, when longing for a new life with all his being, he desires that it shall be one with the flesh, that it shall be another episode passed in the grosser bodily forms. So he goes downwards; but he descends in order to rise. … During his next incarnation he will probably either enter into the state of the Soul-man, or he will at least be less of an animal, and will seek an existence and follow a life of a higher order than the one he led when previously lodged in the flesh.
On the other hand, I am told that the Animal-man occasionally prefers to enter a material existence on some other planet in which matter may be even denser than any earthly substance. But the Soul-man, as opposed to the Animal-man, when finally bored of the Third Plane, will embark on a very different kind of experience. He or she is now an intelligent, ethically developed soul and will elect to go upward to the next level, the Fourth, not downward for a repeat performance on a dense planet. On the Third level, where familiarity and comfort had the highest priority, one’s ‘astral’ body was usually a replica of one’s earth body.
But it’s not only the greats of the world that AD encounters in the afterlife. At the other end of the spectrum, he finds house pets:
«… all the dogs that we’ve had in our family I can find here – all of them. They are still individualized. However, the dogs that I knew as a boy are no longer here. When I asked why, I was told that they have gone back to the group soul and have added their quota of affection, love, and devotion, to be used again when other dogs come to earth.»
A Group Soul is a number of souls all bound together by one spirit. There are countless Group Souls, each headed and inspired by a single spirit of uncommon power. Each Group Soul might contain as few as 20 souls or as many as a thousand. And there is some unifying interest, for example music, that acts as the thread that binds the group together. Not all groups, however, are conducive to the growth of the souls that make it up. Although every soul is free, a fanatical Buddhist or a very devout Christian may be held within the groove of his earthly beliefs as if held in chains, and such conditions tend to inhibit progress. But most Group Souls significantly quicken progress. Myers is himself a member of one:
The interesting feature of my state here is that I am within a larger mind, and many of my affinities are contained in it. He tells us we will realize how fine and beautiful is this brotherhood within the one being; how it deepens and intensifies existence; how it destroys the cold selfishness so necessary to an earth life.
Of special interest is the economy of the Group Soul. Each soul is so privy to the experiences of its fellows that the lessons normally learned only by a succession of many reincarnations can be speeded up. It works like this:
… what the Buddhists would call the karma I had brought with me from a previous life is, very frequently, not that of my life, but of the life of the soul [in my group] that preceded me by many years on earth and left for me a pattern which made my life. I, too, wove a pattern for another of my group during my earthly career. We are all of us distinct, though we are influenced by others of our community on the various planes of being.
Myers tells us he will not reincarnate. The surrogate experiences of his brothers and sisters, which he feels with as much intensity as if he were the actor, are teaching him all the remaining lessons of earth needed for his advancement.
The Sixth Plane {density?} is even more nebulous. The bodies of spirits at this level are formless white light, and pure reason reigns supreme. Emotion and passion, as known to men, are absent. White light represents the perfect equanimity of pure thought. Such equanimity becomes the possession of the souls who enter this last rich kingdom of experience. … They are capable of living now … as the pure thought of their Creator. They have joined the Immortals.
The Seventh (and last) Plane {density?} – which Myers refers to simply as Out Yonder – is the end game, the final purpose, and no longer counts as a realm of creaturely experience. Without a body of any kind, you merge with the Great Source and reign in the great calm of eternity. Yet you still exist as an individual [and] are wholly aware of the imagination of God. So you are aware of the whole history of the earth from Alpha to Omega. Equally all planetary existence is yours. Everything created is contained within that imagination, and you … know it and hold it. An eon of spiritual evolution is usually required before taking this final step: Only a very few pass out Yonder during the life of the earth. A certain number of souls attain to the sixth state, but remain in it or, in exceptional cases for a lofty purpose, descend again into matter. They are not strong enough to make the great leap into timelessness, they are not yet perfect.
What exactly is the Infinite’s plan for us? Myers states it early on:
«The purpose of existence may be summed up in a phrase – the evolution of mind in matter that varies in degree and kind – so that mind develops through manifestation, and in an ever-expanding universe ever increases in power and gains thereby the true conception of reality. The myriad thoughts of God, those spirits which inform with life all material forms, are the lowest manifestation of God, and must learn to become God-like – to become an effective part of the Whole.»
But why do souls reincarnate? AD is clear on the point, and what he says is the classic answer we hear from other communicators:
«It’s an interesting fact that most persons grow faster spiritually while incarnate. The incarnate energy is denser. That makes it more possible for you, while embodied in flesh on earth, to take hold of a particular problem area and shape it into a more constructive pattern. Your period of incarnation on the physical plane is thus a very important period of education. It contributes to your own spiritual evolution and that of all humanity. You can elect not to return, and many do, after they have achieved a certain spiritual development. But the physical plane is a ‘school’ for learning and development, and so most souls do desire to return for a series of incarnations.»
You might think there is no place for science in the spirit world, but this is not so. Scientists are plentiful, and much of their time is spent trying to understand better the incredibly complex laws of their own new world. Others seek to transmit (telepathically) to earth the discoveries they have made that will help it. Benson claims that the earth world has the spirit world to thank for all the major scientific discoveries that have been made throughout the centuries. In fact the spirit world is far ahead of earth, so far that certain discoveries are withheld until a time that they would not be misused by unscrupulous people.
As the soul lives in the earth-life, so does it go to spirit-life. Its tastes, its predilections, its habits, its antipathies, they are with it still. It is not changed save in the accident of being freed from the body. The soul that on earth has been low in taste and impure in habit does not change its nature by passing from the earth-sphere, any more than the soul that has been truthful, pure, and progressive becomes base and bad by death.
Socrates is with the advanced spirits, way up in the spheres. We cannot go there, only know that it is a very lovely world. They come to us to teach and inspire, by what you would call scientific philosophy. Progression to the higher spheres depends greatly upon the desire of each person, and also upon the effort to acquire knowledge. The higher one goes the more elevated he is in knowledge and goodness. We are satisfied in this, the second sphere [Summerland], and must stay here as long as we are satisfied.
You might think that death would call them to their senses and unleash spiritual energy that would lead to a quest for enlightenment. In several places Hatch laments that this is not so:
This is not a place where everyone knows everything... far from it. Most souls are nearly as blind as they were in life. Elsewhere he says, I am sorry to say that the person who has a clear idea of the significance of life is about as rare here as on the earth... a man does not suddenly become all-wise by changing the texture of his body. Or again:
«This is a great place in which to grow, if one really wants to grow; though few persons take advantage of its possibilities. Most are content to assimilate the experiences they had on earth … most souls do not demand enough here, any more than they did in life. Tell them to demand more, and the demand will be answered.»
As for hell, Hatch does not describe it as a single place where sinners are lumped together. Instead, there are hells to fit every vice: hells of lust, of avarice, of hatred, of untruthfulness, of anger, of various addictions. But these hells, though full of suffering, are not punitive; rather they exist for spirits who want to be there and who want to express themselves in the sick ways they used to back on earth. Often they do so at our expense. Hatch describes a scene at a bar:
A young man with restless eyes and a troubled face … was leaning on the bar, drinking a glass of some soul-destroying compound. And close to him, taller than he and bending over him, with its repulsive, bloated, ghastly face pressed close to his, as if to smell his whiskey-tainted breath, was one of the most horrible astral beings I have seen in this world since I came out. The hands of the creature … were clutching the young man’s form, one long and naked arm was around his shoulders, the other around his hips. It was literally sucking the liquor-soaked life of its victim, absorbing him, using him, in the successful attempt to enjoy vicariously the passion which death had intensified. But was that a creature in hell? you ask. Yes, for I could look into its mind and see its sufferings. For ever (the words ‘for ever’ may be used of that which seems endless) this entity was doomed to crave and crave and never to be satisfied. And the young man who leaned on the bar in that gilded palace of gin was filled with a nameless horror and sought to leave the place; but the arms of the thing that was now his master clutched him tighter and tighter, the sodden, vaporous cheek was pressed closer to his, the desire of the vampire creature aroused an answering desire in its victim, and the young man demanded another glass.
Broadly speaking, every human being falls under one of three headings. He or she is either Spirit-man, Soul-man, or Animal-man. The Animal-man, probably a majority of the human race during any time period, lives for pleasure. He doesn’t care for the joys of the intellect or the fine arts. He doesn’t read good literature. His appetites are exclusively physical and, as Myers puts it, paltry. There is no danger he will have gotten this far in our book. He is probably not cruel or corrupt; he might be sweet and generous. But his mind and spirit are still slumbering. And when he grows tired of the unchallenging look-alike world of the Third Plane, he desires change:
«Usually, at this point, when longing for a new life with all his being, he desires that it shall be one with the flesh, that it shall be another episode passed in the grosser bodily forms. So he goes downwards; but he descends in order to rise. … During his next incarnation he will probably either enter into the state of the Soul-man, or he will at least be less of an animal, and will seek an existence and follow a life of a higher order than the one he led when previously lodged in the flesh.
On the other hand, I am told that the Animal-man occasionally prefers to enter a material existence on some other planet in which matter may be even denser than any earthly substance. But the Soul-man, as opposed to the Animal-man, when finally bored of the Third Plane, will embark on a very different kind of experience. He or she is now an intelligent, ethically developed soul and will elect to go upward to the next level, the Fourth, not downward for a repeat performance on a dense planet. On the Third level, where familiarity and comfort had the highest priority, one’s ‘astral’ body was usually a replica of one’s earth body.
But it’s not only the greats of the world that AD encounters in the afterlife. At the other end of the spectrum, he finds house pets:
«… all the dogs that we’ve had in our family I can find here – all of them. They are still individualized. However, the dogs that I knew as a boy are no longer here. When I asked why, I was told that they have gone back to the group soul and have added their quota of affection, love, and devotion, to be used again when other dogs come to earth.»
A Group Soul is a number of souls all bound together by one spirit. There are countless Group Souls, each headed and inspired by a single spirit of uncommon power. Each Group Soul might contain as few as 20 souls or as many as a thousand. And there is some unifying interest, for example music, that acts as the thread that binds the group together. Not all groups, however, are conducive to the growth of the souls that make it up. Although every soul is free, a fanatical Buddhist or a very devout Christian may be held within the groove of his earthly beliefs as if held in chains, and such conditions tend to inhibit progress. But most Group Souls significantly quicken progress. Myers is himself a member of one:
The interesting feature of my state here is that I am within a larger mind, and many of my affinities are contained in it. He tells us we will realize how fine and beautiful is this brotherhood within the one being; how it deepens and intensifies existence; how it destroys the cold selfishness so necessary to an earth life.
Of special interest is the economy of the Group Soul. Each soul is so privy to the experiences of its fellows that the lessons normally learned only by a succession of many reincarnations can be speeded up. It works like this:
… what the Buddhists would call the karma I had brought with me from a previous life is, very frequently, not that of my life, but of the life of the soul [in my group] that preceded me by many years on earth and left for me a pattern which made my life. I, too, wove a pattern for another of my group during my earthly career. We are all of us distinct, though we are influenced by others of our community on the various planes of being.
Myers tells us he will not reincarnate. The surrogate experiences of his brothers and sisters, which he feels with as much intensity as if he were the actor, are teaching him all the remaining lessons of earth needed for his advancement.
The Sixth Plane {density?} is even more nebulous. The bodies of spirits at this level are formless white light, and pure reason reigns supreme. Emotion and passion, as known to men, are absent. White light represents the perfect equanimity of pure thought. Such equanimity becomes the possession of the souls who enter this last rich kingdom of experience. … They are capable of living now … as the pure thought of their Creator. They have joined the Immortals.
The Seventh (and last) Plane {density?} – which Myers refers to simply as Out Yonder – is the end game, the final purpose, and no longer counts as a realm of creaturely experience. Without a body of any kind, you merge with the Great Source and reign in the great calm of eternity. Yet you still exist as an individual [and] are wholly aware of the imagination of God. So you are aware of the whole history of the earth from Alpha to Omega. Equally all planetary existence is yours. Everything created is contained within that imagination, and you … know it and hold it. An eon of spiritual evolution is usually required before taking this final step: Only a very few pass out Yonder during the life of the earth. A certain number of souls attain to the sixth state, but remain in it or, in exceptional cases for a lofty purpose, descend again into matter. They are not strong enough to make the great leap into timelessness, they are not yet perfect.
What exactly is the Infinite’s plan for us? Myers states it early on:
«The purpose of existence may be summed up in a phrase – the evolution of mind in matter that varies in degree and kind – so that mind develops through manifestation, and in an ever-expanding universe ever increases in power and gains thereby the true conception of reality. The myriad thoughts of God, those spirits which inform with life all material forms, are the lowest manifestation of God, and must learn to become God-like – to become an effective part of the Whole.»
But why do souls reincarnate? AD is clear on the point, and what he says is the classic answer we hear from other communicators:
«It’s an interesting fact that most persons grow faster spiritually while incarnate. The incarnate energy is denser. That makes it more possible for you, while embodied in flesh on earth, to take hold of a particular problem area and shape it into a more constructive pattern. Your period of incarnation on the physical plane is thus a very important period of education. It contributes to your own spiritual evolution and that of all humanity. You can elect not to return, and many do, after they have achieved a certain spiritual development. But the physical plane is a ‘school’ for learning and development, and so most souls do desire to return for a series of incarnations.»
You might think there is no place for science in the spirit world, but this is not so. Scientists are plentiful, and much of their time is spent trying to understand better the incredibly complex laws of their own new world. Others seek to transmit (telepathically) to earth the discoveries they have made that will help it. Benson claims that the earth world has the spirit world to thank for all the major scientific discoveries that have been made throughout the centuries. In fact the spirit world is far ahead of earth, so far that certain discoveries are withheld until a time that they would not be misused by unscrupulous people.
