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World Beyond (19) The churches are withholding information about the afterlife. Vale Owen.
Out-of-body and near-death experiences have similar features to the experience of spirit survival after death, apart from the obvious difference that we always return to the physical body. Some of the experiences may be strange or even frightening, if a low level of the spirit world is visited. Not everyone experiences the warmth, love and exhilaration of going into the light of a higher plane or sphere. There are many descriptions of the less pleasant places described by Robert Monroe, and reported by Maurice Rawlings and others. Also, drug-induced travels Beyond give a distorted view of the spiritual realities, with hallucinations and fantastic imaginary events and the appearance of strange entities. These reveries can be dangerous, with the possibility of losing one’s mind completely. The insane asylum used to be the final destination for many such misguided mind travelers.
Dreams are a mixture of fact and fiction. Freud discovered some truths but did not see the spiritual REALITY behind many of his client’s experiences, while Carl Jung and transpersonal psychologists have got nearer the truth. Jung had a transformative near-death experience, and recorded thousands of dreams, and dreamwork is one of the ways to contact the world of spirit during sleep while we are still alive here on earth. Some of us have accurate pre-cognitive dreams, as depicted in the fictional television series “Medium” about Alison Dubois. Such occurrences cannot be willed to order, nor can intuitive, psychic and mediumistic ability be tied down to a specific demand on inhabitants of the spirit world to perform in a certain way. We can sit with the intention of being open to communication, but we have to let spirits themselves decide who will communicate and what will be discussed or materialized. A medium can be clairvoyantly aware in any location, indoors, outside in the street, driving on a highway, or travelling at 33 thousand feet seated in an airliner, or down in a cellar or tunnel; but spirits cannot be conjured up – they will decide if, when and where they will appear, and for what reason.
Many of the clergy have accepted the fact that communication with the after-death world of the spirit is possible, but even so have not committed themselves to teaching their congregations about survival. Like the priest mentioned in the following communication from a former teacher, headmaster of a school in Warwick, England around 1750, they waited for their Church’s endorsement of the belief in survival and the possibility of communication with the Other Side. We are still waiting for such an endorsement from the established churches. We have been waiting over 160 years in modern times, or over three thousand years with regard to our old religions, in spite of a few brave scientists, and some individual priests bravely speaking out, and of course, the dedication of our authentic mediums, whose work and enthusiasm has kept us in touch with the Other Side all these years.
Here is what the headmaster from Warwick has to say about some aspects of the World Beyond. Coming from an Eighteenth Century background, his speech is a little old-fashioned.
"There is, in the Second Sphere [or Plane] from earth, a house where those who are newly come over await their sorting-out, to be forwarded, each with his guide, to the place where best he may be trained in the beginnings of the heavenly life. It is a very interesting Home to visit, for here are to be found together many varied types of character….. They rest quiet and in congenial company for a while until they shed some of the fever and unquiet which they have carried over from earth, and be able to take stock of themselves and their environment with deliberation and more certainty.
One of our band [of rescuers] not long ago went to his Home and sought out a man who had just arrived. On earth he had been a minister of religion, and had read somewhat of what you call psychic matters, and the possibility of speaking one to other between us and you [i.e. spirit communication] as we do at this present [time]. But he was afraid to speak out even though in his own heart he knew it to be true and good. So he did what many of his fellows are doing. He put the matter aside from him. He could find other ways in which to help his fellow-men, [he reasoned] and this other matter might await the time when it was more and more widely understood and accepted of men, and THEN he would be one of the foremost to proclaim what he know, and would not shirk his duty at that time.
But when others came to him and asked him, first, whether it was possible to speak with their dear ones who had died and come over here, and second, whether it were God’s will so to do, he urged them that they be patient until the Church should have tested and sifted and should have issued guidance for those who were of the fold [as to whether communication with the dead were an acceptable practice.]
And while he waited, his time on earth was fulfilled and he was carried over here into this Home where he might rest awhile and come to some decision on what attitude he had assumed on diverse matters of his calling, and of the use he had made of his opportunities [i.e. a life review.] The rescuer, [a lady called Naine], went to the Home and found him walking in a pathway through a wood, a pathway of greensward very beautiful with foliage and flowers and lights and colours and shadow of softer hues, very peaceful and quiet and, at that spot, lonely. For he sought to be alone so he might think more clearly of what was in his mind. She went to him, and he bowed and would have passed on, but she spoke:
NAINE - My friend, it was to you I was sent, to speak with you.
CLERGYMAN - Who sent you to me?
NAINE - The Angel [guide] who has to answer for your life-work while on the earth sphere.
CLERGYMAN - Why should he have to answer for me? Surely every one must answer for his own life and work – isn’t that so?
NAINE - That is surely so. Yet, to our sorrow, we know that it is not the whole of the matter. For nothing you do or leave undone ends with yourself alone. He who had you in charge [your guide] made effort, time and again, for your welfare, and in part succeeded, but not in whole. And now the earth period has been closed for you, he has to sum up your life, and answer for his charge of you, to his joy and also to his sorrow.
CLERGYMAN - This seems hardly fair to my mind. It is not my idea of justice that another should suffer one’s failures.
NAINE - And yet, that is what you taught the people yonder [his congregation on earth]. Not all you said of it was true, and yet it was true in part. For do we not share joy on behalf of another’s joy, and shall we not also share in his sorrowing? This your guide does for you even now. He both joys and sorrows over you.
CLERGYMAN - Please explain.
NAINE - He has joy in that you did good work, in charity, for your heart was much bathed in love for God and man. He sorrows for you in that you did not do what you taught.. For you were not willing to endure men’s scorn and disapproval and do what you thought right. You valued the praise of men more than God’s praise, and hoped to be able one day to buy more cheaply your reward for having spread light upon the darkness. By not acting when you should have done, the time for which you waited was the time when your help would no longer be needed, and the fight all but won by others of more courage, while you stood with the onlookers.
CLERGYMAN - But what is your reason for coming to me at all?
NAINE - Because your guide sent me. He is unable to come until you have mastered and acknowledged the various elements which made up your earth life in their true values and appraisal.
CLERGYMAN - I see, partly at least. Thank you. I have been in a cloud all this time. I came here, away from the others, to try to understand it all better. You have said some pretty straight things to me. Perhaps you will tell me how I am to begin.
NAINE - That is my mission here and now. I was to probe your mind, to make you look inward and if you showed any will to progress, I was to give you a message. This willingness you have now shown, not very heartily, however. This is the message from your guide, who awaits you to lead you on, when you have trained yourself a little more.
You are requested to take up your quarters in a home, which I will show you, in the First Sphere. From there you will, from time to time, visit the earth plane and help those there in their communication with their [deceased] friends in spirit here in these spheres [planes] of light and also aid them in speaking comfort and encouragement to those who are in the darker spheres, that they may progress into the light and peace [of higher Evolution] There are even among those to whom you ministered several who are trying to do this good work for those in anguish, and also to give and to get gladness by their speaking with their loved ones here. They sought your guidance in this matter and you had no courage to give it to them. Go and help them now, and, when you are able to make known to them your personality, unsay what you then said, or say what you lacked courage then to tell them. In this you shall have some shame, but they will have much joy and will deal very kindly with you, for they have scented already that fragrance of love from realms higher and brighter than this in which you have been resting. But the choice is still for you. Go or go not, as your heart inclines you.
The clergyman stood with bowed head, silent for a long time, while Naine waited. He fought out his struggle, and it was no little one for such as he. And then he failed to come to any decision, but said he would think it over in all its bearings and decide later on. So his old failing of fear and hesitation clung to him like a mantle and hindered the freedom of his going forward even when he should have done. And Naine returned to her own sphere, not able to carry back with her the joyful answer for which she came. When I last heard, he had still not come to any decision. It cannot be finished until he decides of his own free will to do what he has to do. There are many who visit your séances and communion masses [to try to get in touch with loved ones] who are such as he, or very like him.
There is a reason why a woman was sent to one such as himself, to reason with a minister of Theology on his conduct and life-work. The woman was his young sister who died in childhood, which he grew up into manhood. He had loved the little one very well, and had be been all=attuned to the higher part in him, he would have known her again, for all her beautiful and glowing maturity of womanhood, having grown up in spirit. But his eyes were holden and his sight dimmed, and so she went away unknown.
When we come to speak with you, as we are doing, there is between us and that sphere in which our normal habitat lies a life-line, as we may so call it. It has taken some time in the fashioning of it, but it is well worth labour we have given for its construction. When we first descended into these realms we had to be very gradual in our descent. We had to travel slowly downward from sphere to sphere and, as we came, we evolved in ourselves that condition of progress in spirit which is suitable to the environing conditions of each sphere through which our journey lay.
Thus traveling to and fro we made many times, and each time we made the journey it became easier for us to readjust ourselves constitutionally and we were able to move more quickly from state to state than at first was possible to us. And now we may come and go almost with that ease with which we travel from one place to another in the sphere in which our dwelling is. So that to come from there to you we count not time at all, for we come on the instant by one continuous effort of transposition instead of several repeated efforts as we approached each self-conditioned sphere. Thus have we established the life-line of which we spoke, and which we use in descending hither and in ascending yonder from time to time."
Reviewed and condensed from “Ministry of Heaven: Life Beyond the Veil, volume III” communications received through The Rev. G. Vale Owen in 1917 – 1918. The Greater World Association Trust. London, 1922.
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