When I was checking some of the quotes from the book on the web, I came across this site and file, which I believe are some personal pages of Dr. Stafford Betty:
At the beginning of the pptx file, it says:
What follows is taken from my book The Afterlife Unveiled, especially the concluding chapter where typical features of the afterlife are summarized, based on hundreds of accounts published over the last 160 years. These accounts come (allegedly) from spirits communicating through reputable mediums. My novel The Imprisoned Splendor, set in the afterlife, brings to life these features. Published here by special request of my students.
The rest of the document presents 50 items, which, I think, include all of the 33 items shared by Joe from another (newer, I think) book by the author. So, there are 17 others, which can be seen in the file and also shared below with item numbers as sequenced in the file (hope I list them rightly):
6. So natural is the process of dying that many souls do not realize at first they have died. One spirit said, “I groped my way, as if through passages, before I knew I was dead. . . . And even when I saw people that I knew were dead, I thought they were only visions.” That is because the difference in appearance between the physical and the astral body is relatively slight.
7. When spirits first come over, they tend to spend some time in a memory world of their own making. The things they think about seem like vivid realities rather than dreams. They might live with these self-created hallucinations for quite a while before they break free of their trance. Eventually or rapidly most souls, depending on their readiness, leave these hallucinations behind and move into the objectively real world described in No. 1 above.
9. Some spirits describe a phenomenon known as the akashic or etheric records. These records contain the history of the places they cling to. These records “lie layer against layer everywhere.” The spirit of Professor Ian Currie says that the akashic records reveal in detail the pasts of all souls but are kept in a realm far beyond the humbler realms of souls newly come over.
16. Some spirits tell of other inhabited planets. One said, “There are social bonds among the peoples we contacted, just as there are on Earth. There is also evidence of some moral struggle and evolvement among these inhabitants.” This suggests that the divine plan is consistent throughout the universe.
21. The astral world provides opportunities for every wholesome interest or avocation--from science to music to theology to astral architecture to homebuilding. It is a joyful, endlessly fascinating place, full of challenges, for those mature enough to value it.
24. Spirits do not forget their loved ones back on earth, whom they often seek to help with what we might call prayer in reverse or by personal visits. Some spirits enjoy sitting unseen next to their loved ones back on earth, whom they miss just as we sometimes miss each other. Others try to communicate with loved ones back on earth through mediums. Their motive is often to try and convince the loved ones that they are still alive in spirit.
25. Spirits tell us our prayers for them are efficacious and deeply appreciated. If forgotten by their earth friends and family, spirits can experience loneliness. Allan Kardec, founder of Spiritism, wrote, “Prayer . . . is a great source of comfort for the spirit you are praying for. To this spirit, your prayers show that you care, that it is not suffering [remorse] alone. Moreover, your interest could also encourage the afflicted spirit to seriously reconsider its attitude.”
26. Some spirits describe themselves as surrounded by an all-pervasive, penetrating Divine Light, full of understanding and love. One spirit described the Light as feeling like an “atmospheric presence . . . alive with a loving intent that is instantly felt and experienced in a direct manner. . . . There is no mistaking its intent, and again I am struck by the ambiguity of its vastly personal and impersonal aspects.” Spirits do not meet an embodied personal God in the astral world.
27. They celebrate the presence of that Light in powerful rituals involving supremely grand music and displays of light, described in astonishing language. Music seems to be the supreme art of the astral, with most communicators noting its inspirational quality. Painting, dance, theater, and architecture are also prominently mentioned. It’s safe to say that the more refined a person’s aesthetic taste is on earth, the more at home he or she will feel in the higher realms of the astral.
35. There is duration, but nothing like clock-time with its schedules and deadlines. Three months after her death, one spirit wrote, “. . . already my experience of earth and time is fading. I seem to have been here for aeons.” Events in the afterworld, other than those enjoyed during meditative states when one experiences “union with the All,” are sequential. Thus there is time.
36. Spouses, relatives, friends, and former teachers, some from earlier lives, some long forgotten, turn up and may renew old friendships. If two persons linked by love to each other on earth want to continue the relationship after death and are, roughly speaking, spiritual equals, there is nothing stopping them. Ties that were deep don’t disappear with death.
38. The theme of unity is stressed in many accounts. The eminent student of psychical research Robert Crookall wrote after analyzing hundreds of spirit communications: “. . . each has grave responsibilities as his ‘brother’s keeper.’ The physical body, while permitting the development of individuality, facilitating the formation of mental habits and encouraging the development of initiative, tends to hide the fact that we are essentially ‘members one of another.’”
39. Spirits say that all of us have a spirit guardian and guide and that we are wise to seek help. Helping a particular earth inhabitant is a common assignment—a way of serving selflessly—for spirits. We are free to ask their help, though their powers are strictly limited. But spirits sometimes become discouraged when their efforts are “mocked at by those who have become too gross to recognize spirit-power, and too earthy to aspire to spiritual things.”
40. Spirits in the astral meet Christ-like beings, Beings of Light far advanced, teachers who come down from higher worlds to inspire progress toward realms of incomparably greater joy and awareness. These beings are too advanced to communicate to us through a medium. Occasionally they use “relays”—spirits less evolved--to get their message across to us.
45. When a person commits suicide, he sends forth “his spirit alone and friendless into a strange world where no place was yet prepared for it . . . in the end he fell prey to tempters in the spirit, who fastened on him and drove him to his ruin,” according to one spirit. There are warnings against suicide in most channeled literature. Yet there is hope for such a person, especially from missionary spirits. Suicides do not end up in an eternal hell. Some suffer relatively little. There isn’t a single rule that covers all cases.
46. Human dilemmas turn up in the astral just as they do on earth. One spirit, a judge on earth, described a man whose company was desired by both his former wives. Frances Banks, an Anglican nun for 25 of her earth years, told of a Jewish mother riveted by hatred to her Nazi persecutor. It was Banks’s task to pry her loose and teach her to forgive the man. Problem-solving is perhaps as necessary in the astral as on earth.
49. The ultimate future of some spirits is stupendous beyond imagination. Msgr Robert Hugh Benson, a Catholic priest back on earth, was allowed to visit by “special invitation” a realm far higher than his own, and words could not begin to do justice to “such inexpressible beauty.” Benson described his host in the following way: “He looked to be young, to be of eternal youthfulness, but we could feel the countless aeons of time, as it is known on earth, that lay behind him.”
