The following is from a book I have been perusing from time to time called 'When did you ever become less by dying' by Stafford Betty. There are various chapters including: death bed visions, NDEs, apparitions, Poltergeists, spirit attachments etc. The following is from the chapter titled: 'spirit communication through mediums' and it is a distillation by the author of all of the common points in the accounts of the 'afterlife' and what it is like from various 'dead dudes' (through mediums). I thought I'd share it here since I found it interesting and because it touches on many points made in the Cs sessions. It also seems to suggest that, while these descriptions are likely of '5D', there appears to be different levels there also, and perhaps the bulk of the descriptions here are of a fairly 'low level realm' or maybe that experienced by new arrivals or something.
1. The afterworld is not some fantastic vision of infinity where souls are locked in poses of permanent rapture gazing at the face of God. And no one floasts on a cloud while playing a harp. Rather it is a place with landscapes and seas and houses and cities reminiscent of our own world - a material world, but of higher vibration insensible to us earthlings. There are gardens, universities, libraries, and hospices for the newly dead - but no factories, fire stations, sanitary landfills or smokestacks. There are no dirty jobs to do. "We have no traffic, and our roads are covered with the thickest and greenest grass, as soft to the feet as a bad of fresh moss. It is on these that we walk", says Msgr. Hugh Benson. All accounts describe a world of exquisite natural beauty.
2. The afterworld begins at the earth’s surface and extends outward. Earth is the nucleus of the entire world system that the spirits describe. Many spirit communicators tell us that their world “envelopes and interpenetrates the physical world.”
3. Spirit realms vary from culture to culture. We should not expect the Eskimo’s afterworld to look like the Maori’s. Nor should we expect Sunni and Sh’ia Muslims to be living comfortably side by side in the same sector of the afterworld. Physical violence is not possible in the afterlife, but old habits of mutual suspicion and animosity don’t disappear just because we die.
4. Earth’s slow vibrations dumb down our ability to sense the presence of spirit, including the Divine. A quickened vibration, such as we find in the afterworld, or what we shall call the astral, greatly increases one’s sensitivity to spirit. The Divine is no closer to the astral world than to our own, but spirits can discern or intuit the Divine more cleanly.
5. The newly “dead” are thoroughly themselves when they pass. Their personalities and habits and character, for better or worse, are completely intact. Once the physical body dies, the inner body quite naturally becomes the outer—as a snake’s inner skin becomes the outer skin once it sheds the old. There is nothing miraculous about the process of surviving death.
6. The Afterworld is a broad-based society of every conceivable kind of person, most of them flawed and incomplete in some way or another. Many are no more motivated to “grow their souls” than they were back on earth. According to one spirit, “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.” But many are determined to advance and do so.
7. Most spirits mention some kind of Judgment. One spirit wrote that the Judgment “consists in being able to see ourselves as we are, and by no stretch of imagination being able to avoid seeing it. It is a Judgment of God on us [lesser selves] through our Higher Selves. No other person could be so just a Judge as we ourselves can be when facing the truth. For many it is a terrible hour.” None of these spirits speaks of an inquisitor deity sitting on a throne.
8. Astral beings have fewer limitations. They can communicate telepathically and with much greater precision than through the cumbersome medium of speech. They can move from place to place by willing to be at their destination, though they can walk if they want to. Their minds are sharper, their emotions more acutely felt, both positive and negative. They see and hear as before, but in a more intense way.
9. Because experience is heightened, pain as well as pleasure is intensified, and sometimes the pain is acute. It comes from an awakened awareness of all the pain inflicted on others by one’s cruel or insensitive actions or words, which are now experienced as one’s own. It is not surprising that spirits urge us again and again to seek and offer forgiveness before we die, not wait until after.
10. The afterworld is composed of astral or etheric matter, which is “largely malleable by thought,” as one spirit put it. Another stated that it could be “manipulated with infinite ease.”
11. The old or decrepit or injured bodies left behind at passing do not have to follow spirits into the next world. The physical leg that was shortened by polio can be instantly restored to normal size. The damaged brain no longer need cage the spirit. The wrinkled old body can be young again in its astral vigor.
12. Spirits greatly respect time spent on earth. One says, “Your world is the hardest school of your round of experiences. Prizes won here are won for eternity. The very density of the material in which you work makes the overcoming of it a finer conquest. . . . Experience on your planet is a unique opportunity and a privilege. . . . Make the best of every opportunity. A strenuous life on earth is of immense value.”
13. The Creator places souls in the difficult environment of earth because He (She, It) loves them. He wants to see them grow in wisdom, love, and power. He knows that the only way to bring out the best in a soul is to challenge it, in the same way that a good teacher challenges her students. Soul-building, or character development, is the whole point of our sojourn, both on earth and beyond, say the spirits. The use we make of our free will is absolutely crucial to our progress at all levels.
14. No one is “saved” by faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior, as Protestant Christianity teaches, and deathbed conversions have no impact on the quality of life in the world to come. Character alone counts, not beliefs. Good atheists are not disadvantaged, though they are not likely to remain atheists once they come over! (
) Correct beliefs are helpful insofar as they encourage good lives. And they often do.
15. Spirits are not allowed to overreach in the astral. They cannot enter a vibration or cross a boundary they are not ready for. There is justice in where they end up at death. According to their character, they gravitate to their rightful place. They can move ahead only when they are changed enough to do so.
16. Many spirits had ambitious plans for self-improvement before they descended into flesh, but the density of earth’s matter, including their own dense brain, caused them to forget what they came for. Subject to material concepts, they lost their way. They died only to discover to their disappointment that they mostly failed to accomplish the goal they had set for themselves. But for many of them it's ok, for there has been much growth in unpremeditated ways.
17. Many astral inhabitants maintain a lively interest in the events of earth and long to help it progress. They claim that many or even most of earth’s most brilliant achievements were inspired by spirits telepathically projecting their ideas.
18. Physical danger does not exist in the astral. Neither does physical illness. Eating is optional and sleep unnecessary. The calls of nature do not even get a mention. Spirits may retain their outward appearance, but the inner composition of their bodies (their organs) is of no consequence and (from what I can deduce) altered.
19. There are hellish regions in the astral, and large populations that make their home there. What is sometimes referred to as the Shadow Lands is a vast world of many conditions. The landscapes vary from sordid city neighborhoods to parched, gray scrubland to dark, lifeless deserts. The vivid clarity of higher realms is missing. Instead there is a dull overcast. Temporarily lost or confused or stubbornly unrepentant souls populate these regions.
20. “Missionary spirits” minister to souls in the Shadow Lands. Residents can free themselves if they are willing to face up humbly to their errors and crimes and repent them. Some do; and most, perhaps all, will eventually. But many jeer at their would-be helpers and seem to prefer their dull or chaotic lives over the challenges of higher worlds they are frightened of.
21. No spirit is condemned forever to the dark regions. But God will never interfere with our free will. Acting through higher spirits seeking to lead the “stumblers” out of their self-imposed exile, God will invite tirelessly, but will never force. One gets the impression that, at least for the moment, many spirits actually prefer their dimmed-down world to the higher Light-filled worlds they were created for, and that someday they will choose to enter.
22. The worst of these spirits aggressively seek to harm vulnerable humans on earth. Other spirits are enslaved to their addictions and become earthbound. For example, an earthbound spirit who was an alcoholic is still pestered by the craving for alcohol. So he hangs around bars on earth and “drinks through” other alcoholics he temporarily possesses, making it all the more difficult for his victim to conquer the habit. Spirits surround us, and they are not all our friends.
23. There are three basic ways to progress in the afterworld: admitting defects in one’s character, service to others, and yearning for higher states. Service to others demands effort, work, sacrifice. Nowhere do the spirits describe a deity who requires us to flatter or glorify him with our prayers. That is not the way to progress.
24. There are no rigid creeds or magical beliefs that souls have to accept. Whether you are a Baptist or a Catholic or a Mormon or a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Muslim or an Anglican is of no importance. Many of earth’s favorite religious dogmas are off the mark anyway, and the sooner they are forgotten, the better. Experience in the afterworld will generate, as a matter of course, a more enlightened set of beliefs that will better reflect the way things really are than any of earth’s theologies.
25. There are no masks in the astral. You cannot hide from others what you are: the quality of light shining forth from your body tells all. One spirit tells us that our negative thoughts “go around like big, heavy, sluggish pieces of material – like mud or oil slicks.” Even the house a spirit lives in reflects his spiritual stature. These facts can be humiliating at first, but it spurs many spirits on to a greater effort to improve themselves.
26. Many spirits are members of large spirit families, or “Group Souls,” that await them when they pass. They feel as if they have come home when they are received by the familiar group. One spirit tells us that souls in a Group are “part of ourselves. Their connection with us is deeper and far more permanent than mere earth contacts could make it.”
27. As spirits progress in the next world, they eventually slough off their astral body, just as they sloughed off their gross body at physical death. Then they operate out of a spiritual body of lesser density with a greater capacity for joy and awareness. One spirit described this as a “thinning out” process: “Beyond here, matter becomes more ethereal and bodies thin out into a visible presence of light and flame.”
28. Spirits are not naked, but clothed. Astral clothing is fashioned by the mind, usually without any conscious effort. Clothes are actually part of the astral body. Crookall tells us that a spirit’s clothes “automatically reflect his character because they are part of the total self—part, in fact, of the subtle body that automatically responds to his habitual thoughts and feelings.” There are no clothes closets in the astral.
29. Children of all ages are raised in the afterworld. They are not magically transformed into adults just because they died prematurely. One of the noblest professions in the astral is nurturing and educating spirit orphans. Great numbers of spirits are engaged in this satisfying form of work.
30. Many spirits continue to observe the man-made forms of religion they practiced on earth until they discover a deeper, fuller spirituality “purged of every trace of meaningless creed, of doctrines and dogmas,” as one spirit put it. Some say they have seen Jesus. AD Mattson, a Lutheran theologian on earth, says that each of us will see Jesus, if we want to, as we think of him. Presumably that would hold true of other religious savior figures.
31. Spirits enjoy hobbies, knitting being one of them. “Do not be shocked. Did you fancy that a lifelong habit could be laid aside in a moment?” said one spirit. There is plenty of time in the astral. Boredom and even homesickness for earth are mentioned in these accounts. I have read only one account of spirits enjoying ball sports - probably because it would be too easy to control the flight of the ball with one’s mind, and there wouldn’t be much challenge.
32. Pets are often mentioned by spirits. “It is perfectly true that all the dogs that we’ve had in our family I can find here,” said one spirit. “They are still individualized.” But dogs no longer loved “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.”
33. What about reincarnation? According to Mattson, the Lutheran theologian, “It’s an interesting fact that most persons grow faster spiritually while incarnate. The incarnate energy is denser. Your period of incarnation on the physical plane is thus a very important period of education. 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 return for a series of incarnations.”
1. The afterworld is not some fantastic vision of infinity where souls are locked in poses of permanent rapture gazing at the face of God. And no one floasts on a cloud while playing a harp. Rather it is a place with landscapes and seas and houses and cities reminiscent of our own world - a material world, but of higher vibration insensible to us earthlings. There are gardens, universities, libraries, and hospices for the newly dead - but no factories, fire stations, sanitary landfills or smokestacks. There are no dirty jobs to do. "We have no traffic, and our roads are covered with the thickest and greenest grass, as soft to the feet as a bad of fresh moss. It is on these that we walk", says Msgr. Hugh Benson. All accounts describe a world of exquisite natural beauty.
2. The afterworld begins at the earth’s surface and extends outward. Earth is the nucleus of the entire world system that the spirits describe. Many spirit communicators tell us that their world “envelopes and interpenetrates the physical world.”
3. Spirit realms vary from culture to culture. We should not expect the Eskimo’s afterworld to look like the Maori’s. Nor should we expect Sunni and Sh’ia Muslims to be living comfortably side by side in the same sector of the afterworld. Physical violence is not possible in the afterlife, but old habits of mutual suspicion and animosity don’t disappear just because we die.
4. Earth’s slow vibrations dumb down our ability to sense the presence of spirit, including the Divine. A quickened vibration, such as we find in the afterworld, or what we shall call the astral, greatly increases one’s sensitivity to spirit. The Divine is no closer to the astral world than to our own, but spirits can discern or intuit the Divine more cleanly.
5. The newly “dead” are thoroughly themselves when they pass. Their personalities and habits and character, for better or worse, are completely intact. Once the physical body dies, the inner body quite naturally becomes the outer—as a snake’s inner skin becomes the outer skin once it sheds the old. There is nothing miraculous about the process of surviving death.
6. The Afterworld is a broad-based society of every conceivable kind of person, most of them flawed and incomplete in some way or another. Many are no more motivated to “grow their souls” than they were back on earth. According to one spirit, “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.” But many are determined to advance and do so.
7. Most spirits mention some kind of Judgment. One spirit wrote that the Judgment “consists in being able to see ourselves as we are, and by no stretch of imagination being able to avoid seeing it. It is a Judgment of God on us [lesser selves] through our Higher Selves. No other person could be so just a Judge as we ourselves can be when facing the truth. For many it is a terrible hour.” None of these spirits speaks of an inquisitor deity sitting on a throne.
8. Astral beings have fewer limitations. They can communicate telepathically and with much greater precision than through the cumbersome medium of speech. They can move from place to place by willing to be at their destination, though they can walk if they want to. Their minds are sharper, their emotions more acutely felt, both positive and negative. They see and hear as before, but in a more intense way.
9. Because experience is heightened, pain as well as pleasure is intensified, and sometimes the pain is acute. It comes from an awakened awareness of all the pain inflicted on others by one’s cruel or insensitive actions or words, which are now experienced as one’s own. It is not surprising that spirits urge us again and again to seek and offer forgiveness before we die, not wait until after.
10. The afterworld is composed of astral or etheric matter, which is “largely malleable by thought,” as one spirit put it. Another stated that it could be “manipulated with infinite ease.”
11. The old or decrepit or injured bodies left behind at passing do not have to follow spirits into the next world. The physical leg that was shortened by polio can be instantly restored to normal size. The damaged brain no longer need cage the spirit. The wrinkled old body can be young again in its astral vigor.
12. Spirits greatly respect time spent on earth. One says, “Your world is the hardest school of your round of experiences. Prizes won here are won for eternity. The very density of the material in which you work makes the overcoming of it a finer conquest. . . . Experience on your planet is a unique opportunity and a privilege. . . . Make the best of every opportunity. A strenuous life on earth is of immense value.”
13. The Creator places souls in the difficult environment of earth because He (She, It) loves them. He wants to see them grow in wisdom, love, and power. He knows that the only way to bring out the best in a soul is to challenge it, in the same way that a good teacher challenges her students. Soul-building, or character development, is the whole point of our sojourn, both on earth and beyond, say the spirits. The use we make of our free will is absolutely crucial to our progress at all levels.
14. No one is “saved” by faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior, as Protestant Christianity teaches, and deathbed conversions have no impact on the quality of life in the world to come. Character alone counts, not beliefs. Good atheists are not disadvantaged, though they are not likely to remain atheists once they come over! (
) Correct beliefs are helpful insofar as they encourage good lives. And they often do.15. Spirits are not allowed to overreach in the astral. They cannot enter a vibration or cross a boundary they are not ready for. There is justice in where they end up at death. According to their character, they gravitate to their rightful place. They can move ahead only when they are changed enough to do so.
16. Many spirits had ambitious plans for self-improvement before they descended into flesh, but the density of earth’s matter, including their own dense brain, caused them to forget what they came for. Subject to material concepts, they lost their way. They died only to discover to their disappointment that they mostly failed to accomplish the goal they had set for themselves. But for many of them it's ok, for there has been much growth in unpremeditated ways.
17. Many astral inhabitants maintain a lively interest in the events of earth and long to help it progress. They claim that many or even most of earth’s most brilliant achievements were inspired by spirits telepathically projecting their ideas.
18. Physical danger does not exist in the astral. Neither does physical illness. Eating is optional and sleep unnecessary. The calls of nature do not even get a mention. Spirits may retain their outward appearance, but the inner composition of their bodies (their organs) is of no consequence and (from what I can deduce) altered.
19. There are hellish regions in the astral, and large populations that make their home there. What is sometimes referred to as the Shadow Lands is a vast world of many conditions. The landscapes vary from sordid city neighborhoods to parched, gray scrubland to dark, lifeless deserts. The vivid clarity of higher realms is missing. Instead there is a dull overcast. Temporarily lost or confused or stubbornly unrepentant souls populate these regions.
20. “Missionary spirits” minister to souls in the Shadow Lands. Residents can free themselves if they are willing to face up humbly to their errors and crimes and repent them. Some do; and most, perhaps all, will eventually. But many jeer at their would-be helpers and seem to prefer their dull or chaotic lives over the challenges of higher worlds they are frightened of.
21. No spirit is condemned forever to the dark regions. But God will never interfere with our free will. Acting through higher spirits seeking to lead the “stumblers” out of their self-imposed exile, God will invite tirelessly, but will never force. One gets the impression that, at least for the moment, many spirits actually prefer their dimmed-down world to the higher Light-filled worlds they were created for, and that someday they will choose to enter.
22. The worst of these spirits aggressively seek to harm vulnerable humans on earth. Other spirits are enslaved to their addictions and become earthbound. For example, an earthbound spirit who was an alcoholic is still pestered by the craving for alcohol. So he hangs around bars on earth and “drinks through” other alcoholics he temporarily possesses, making it all the more difficult for his victim to conquer the habit. Spirits surround us, and they are not all our friends.
23. There are three basic ways to progress in the afterworld: admitting defects in one’s character, service to others, and yearning for higher states. Service to others demands effort, work, sacrifice. Nowhere do the spirits describe a deity who requires us to flatter or glorify him with our prayers. That is not the way to progress.
24. There are no rigid creeds or magical beliefs that souls have to accept. Whether you are a Baptist or a Catholic or a Mormon or a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Muslim or an Anglican is of no importance. Many of earth’s favorite religious dogmas are off the mark anyway, and the sooner they are forgotten, the better. Experience in the afterworld will generate, as a matter of course, a more enlightened set of beliefs that will better reflect the way things really are than any of earth’s theologies.
25. There are no masks in the astral. You cannot hide from others what you are: the quality of light shining forth from your body tells all. One spirit tells us that our negative thoughts “go around like big, heavy, sluggish pieces of material – like mud or oil slicks.” Even the house a spirit lives in reflects his spiritual stature. These facts can be humiliating at first, but it spurs many spirits on to a greater effort to improve themselves.
26. Many spirits are members of large spirit families, or “Group Souls,” that await them when they pass. They feel as if they have come home when they are received by the familiar group. One spirit tells us that souls in a Group are “part of ourselves. Their connection with us is deeper and far more permanent than mere earth contacts could make it.”
27. As spirits progress in the next world, they eventually slough off their astral body, just as they sloughed off their gross body at physical death. Then they operate out of a spiritual body of lesser density with a greater capacity for joy and awareness. One spirit described this as a “thinning out” process: “Beyond here, matter becomes more ethereal and bodies thin out into a visible presence of light and flame.”
28. Spirits are not naked, but clothed. Astral clothing is fashioned by the mind, usually without any conscious effort. Clothes are actually part of the astral body. Crookall tells us that a spirit’s clothes “automatically reflect his character because they are part of the total self—part, in fact, of the subtle body that automatically responds to his habitual thoughts and feelings.” There are no clothes closets in the astral.
29. Children of all ages are raised in the afterworld. They are not magically transformed into adults just because they died prematurely. One of the noblest professions in the astral is nurturing and educating spirit orphans. Great numbers of spirits are engaged in this satisfying form of work.
30. Many spirits continue to observe the man-made forms of religion they practiced on earth until they discover a deeper, fuller spirituality “purged of every trace of meaningless creed, of doctrines and dogmas,” as one spirit put it. Some say they have seen Jesus. AD Mattson, a Lutheran theologian on earth, says that each of us will see Jesus, if we want to, as we think of him. Presumably that would hold true of other religious savior figures.
31. Spirits enjoy hobbies, knitting being one of them. “Do not be shocked. Did you fancy that a lifelong habit could be laid aside in a moment?” said one spirit. There is plenty of time in the astral. Boredom and even homesickness for earth are mentioned in these accounts. I have read only one account of spirits enjoying ball sports - probably because it would be too easy to control the flight of the ball with one’s mind, and there wouldn’t be much challenge.
32. Pets are often mentioned by spirits. “It is perfectly true that all the dogs that we’ve had in our family I can find here,” said one spirit. “They are still individualized.” But dogs no longer loved “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.”
33. What about reincarnation? According to Mattson, the Lutheran theologian, “It’s an interesting fact that most persons grow faster spiritually while incarnate. The incarnate energy is denser. Your period of incarnation on the physical plane is thus a very important period of education. 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 return for a series of incarnations.”
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