Death Without Fear Blog

Fort Hood Pressure Cooker Explodes

Major Nidal Malik Hasan was a perfect storm waiting to happen. And it happened on Thursday, November 5, at Fort Hood, TX, claiming the lives of 13 people and injuring 30, including the shooter who was taken down by a quick-thinking officer, Kimberly Munley, also wounded herself. Hasan, a devout Muslim, had allegedly shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” Arabic for “God is great!” before opening fire in the crowded processing center, where military personnel had gone for flu shots and eyesight exams before deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just like weather events, this kind of storm doesn’t just come out of nowhere, and a senior officer admitted there were several missed warnings:

1. As a Muslim, Hasan believed the U.S. should not be occupying Muslim countries.
   
2. At Walter Reed, he frequently went into pro-Muslim religious rants when treating returning soldiers.
   
3. Hasan was the target of much harassment for being Muslim and wanted out of the Army.
4. The Army command structure was under strong pressure to put as many boots on the ground in war zones as possible, regardless of psychological fitness.
5. He dreaded his upcoming deployment on November 28 because he might have to take the life of other Muslims.
6. As a psychologist himself who dealt with soldiers returning from active duty suffering from post-traumatic stress, he needed close supervision to ensure his ongoing mental stability.
7. His Internet presence included posts about the nobility of suicide, equating it to throwing yourself on a grenade to save your colleagues.

I could go on, but as an Old Soul who can’t walk past an Army recruiting office without cringing, I’ll just register surprise that incidents such as this aren’t weekly events, and applaud the fortitude, loyalty and discipline of the men and women in the Armed Forces.

My interest lies in why 13 souls chose to have their incarnations take an exit point yesterday rather than undergo deployment to war zones or continue to be employed at the base. What was it about their lives that caused their souls to say, “Okay, we’re done here,” and pull the plug? This is puzzling because military service offers unlimited opportunities to souls for their incarnations to experience physical plane drama, hence growth – danger and heroism, tragedy and loss, challenge from bodily injury, etc.

Given this, it’s odd that souls would choose relatively mundane exit points. Of course, the grief of their loved ones will be every bit as real, painful and poignant as if the crossing had occurred on a battlefield.

Often, group crossings such as this are intended by the souls involved to draw attention to something, so maybe the intent of those 13 souls is to make a public statement about the impact of war on the human psyche. After all, President Obama is in the middle of the debate about whether to send more troops into Afghanistan. This incident is critical input to that debate.

Also, this country has just tipped the scale from Young Soul to Mature Soul – the events of 9/11 took care of that – so the nation feels very differently about war than in WWII, when the U.S. was a Late Young Soul country and its enemies were obvious. The U.S. went to war and, of course, prevailed against them, but today, as an Early Mature Soul country with no clear enemies, world events are gray rather than black-and-white.  And in many cases, we are our own worst enemy, as when the CIA pays Arabic operatives who are involved in the very drug war the DEA is trying to stamp out. (Many regard the rush to war led by the trio of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld made many people feel that the ‘axis of evil’ actually ran down Pennsylvania Avenue.)

Of course, we’ll never know why those 13 souls left, but it makes one wonder …

Good Hearts and Common Sense Prevail

Back on September 29, I posted the story of the Ohio couple who had been implanted with another couple’s frozen embryo. Well, that story played out yesterday … and ended well, very well, in fact.

At the St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center in Toledo, Ohio, the woman who had the wrong embryo implanted by a fertility clinic has given birth to a healthy boy. Sean and Carolyn Savage immediately handed the baby to his biological parents, Paul and Shannon Morell, of Troy, Mich.

In a statement, the Savages offered congratulations to the Morells. “At this time, we would like to offer our heartfelt congratulations to the Morell family on the birth of their son. We wish Paul, Shannon, their twin girls and their new baby boy the best, as they move forward with their lives together.”

The Savages asked for privacy, saying, “Our family is going through a very difficult time. We would like to thank people around the world for their support and prayers, and the medical professionals for their care and treatment throughout the pregnancy and delivery.”

The Savages said both couples had unused frozen embryos at a fertility clinic outside Ohio, which transferred the wrong frozen embryo back in February. Ten days after the transfer, a doctor at the clinic called, saying Carolyn was pregnant with someone else’s child. The Morells learned about the mistake a day later, and feared that the other couple would choose abortion, ending the Morells’ chance to have another child. They were relieved to learn that the Savages never considered terminating the pregnancy or trying to fight for custody, and were willing to go to term and hand over the baby without hesitation.

The 40-year-old Carolyn said, “In the beginning, we just knew this was someone else’s child. We didn't know who it was or if they didn't have children and this was their last chance for a child.”

How wonderful that this potential tragedy played out the way it did, with the two couples behaving like true Old Souls, especially the Savages, who seem to have done everything in their power to bring about a smooth transfer. And my heart goes out to Carolyn, who is the real heroine of the story. Due to complications, she can’t get pregnant again, so is planning to use a surrogate mother to bring their remaining embryos to term.

On a final note, we know that everything in our lives is planned carefully before we incarnate. Amazing that the souls involved planned to have this wrinkle in their lives.

What a story the newborn will have to tell when he grows up!

Overload

This post features a great article by Dolly Mae, a friend, client and all-round fun person, and is used with Dolly’s permission (www.dollymae.com):

 

Media Overload

Recently I was overloaded with negative input about potential disasters for the earth, natural and man-made. This overload produced a curious result. I was no longer afraid. I no longer worried. I decided I had little or no voice and even less input. In the face of such overwhelming negative potentials, our only recourse is Love. It was an odd experience, this retreat into a place of expansion and safety.

 

Our Power

Our consciousness is more powerful than any possibility of negativity. Thoughts are real.  We’ve heard this over and over, but what it means here is that our thoughts make our reality. Individually, each of us is responsible for what we think and thus create. Thoughts PLUS emotions create. Our consciousness has more power than any wave, virus, molecule or thought that could be beamed at us, spoken to us or come into our awareness. OUR THOUGHTS CAN CHANGE OUR FUTURE! This is our true power.

 

Overcoming Fear

Mind control, hexes, spells and viruses are no more powerful than the energy you give them.  Years ago, I was ‘professionally hexed’ by a group of people who believed in such things. I always wondered what would happen if I came under the influence of Voodoo type negativity/ curses. At that time I was studying A Course In Miracles, and the lesson that day was, “You already are as God created you; therefore you cannot be added to or subtracted from.”  How perfect! I KNEW, beyond any doubt, that the hexing exercise needed a sender and a receiver.  I was not receiving. My joy at this awareness as the hexing was happening exceeded all bounds and I sent that joy coupled with love to the perpetrators. The next day, each member of that group presented themselves individually asking me how my night was. I was grinning from ear to ear in joy until my cheeks hurt. I looked them in the eye and said it was wonderful and thanked each one. Henceforth that group sought me out, asked my advice and included me in their ‘family.’ It was fascinating. Unable to influence me, they wanted my strength in their group.

 

Viruses and Such

Today we are faced with propaganda fear concerning viruses. Do not get caught up in the debates about the truth or fiction, the source, the intent or the outcome of a possible issue. Strength does not lie in the debate.  Your strength lies in your decision to use your mind to create the reality that is best for you. Remember, you cannot be added to, nor subtracted from. “You already are as God created you.”  So use your fine mind to align with health, wholeness and most of all Love.  All else is fear. Choose which one you wish to give your power to.  The native people say that within each of us is a wolf and a dog. Which one will you feed?

 

Overwhelm

Overwhelm does not mean complacency and giving up because you may feel powerless. Overload can blow the circuits of belief you have in other peoples’ agendas and ideas. Retreat within yourself into that place of power that has always been there. You are the creator of your own beliefs. Do not purchase those of others at great cost to yourself.  You get to decide. You are very powerful.  Feel resonance within and you will know what is truth for you. Throw out what doesn’t resonate.

 

Healing

Healing occurs in a moment. Your consciousness has a huge effect on it, within you or another. If you’ve ever done any healing, you know you need to clear your energy after working with someone. Clear your own energy after hearing negative statements that are fear-based. You can do this by washing your hands consciously, not out of fear but as a sacred cleansing. You can do this using sage, cedar, incense, visualizing yourself in a shower of golden light, using a singing bowl or bell, or any other consciousness lifting method. It is by your intention and thought that clearing and healing occur, not by the ‘accuracy’ of any method.  You cannot do it wrong!  Your consciousness is in control.  If you think you are wrong, you are.  If you think you are right, you are.

 

Surrender to the Master Within

Your surrender to your own power is the key to your own future and to the future of this planet. This is mastery. Nostradamus’ predictions stopped coming true two decades ago.  So too with Edgar Cayce’s predictions. They both said consciousness was the powerful key to shifting any negativity on this planet and in this universe. Our choice is between Love or Fear. If you find yourself in fear, choose again.

Choose Joy.  It’s always an option!

 

Me again. I’m grateful to Dolly for her inspiring words, which can easily be applied to the theme of this blog. Especially, do not buy into the fear-based thoughts on the subject, but dance to your own drum. You get to decide what’s true for you, no one else – not friends or family, not religions, not schools. No one!

When you tap into your Higher-Self, or the Superconscious mind, you discover that well of wisdom calmly residing deep inside your mind, or the clear voice of your soul. Once you find this inner voice, understand it, and listen to it, all your questions are answered. Then, it’s just a matter of trusting it.

And if anyone thinks you’re strange or weird for believing what you do, relish in your weirdness and ask them if the media overload of fear-based beliefs makes them happy.

Bet it doesn’t!

Compelling Evidence from the Other Side

The best evidence for survival of our consciousness upon leaving the physical body comes when a communicator from the Other Side reveals some news that is unknown to the sitters and is confirmed only some time later. Here are two stories that epitomize that evidence.

The first comes from a 1923 book, Guidance from Beyond, by Kate Wingfield, in which she tells of how Sir Edward Marshall Hall (1858-1927), one of Great Britain’s leading barristers, denied all possibility of a future life. Now, Hall had a sister with whom Wingfield was a close personal friend. Wingfield, an automatic writing and trance medium, was staying with the sister when Hall, her brother, paid them a visit. The sister knew of her brother’s disbelief in such things, but asked him to participate in a sitting. Under much protest, Hall agreed.

From his pocket, Hall pulled out a letter which he had received the previous day. He folded up the letter, still in its envelope, and put it in another envelope, which he sealed. There was no writing on the outside of the outer envelope.  He handed it to Wingfield, and said, “Identify the location of the writer.”

In automatic writing, Wingfield wrote: “The writer of that letter is dead.”

This news added to Hall’s skepticism, so he asked, “When and where did the writer die?”

“He died yesterday in South Africa.”

In his account, Hall wrote, “I had mentioned no sex and given no indication of locality, and the answer, though curious, seemed ridiculous. To say that I was puzzled is to put it mildly. This letter, which I had received the previous day was from my brother in South Africa, mailed three weeks earlier. I had not told my sister of this letter and she could not have known of its existence.”

Three weeks after the sitting, Hall received a letter from a clergyman in South Africa dated the day before the sitting that said, “Your brother was found dead in his bed this morning.”

Hall wrote: “I need hardly say that I was staggered at the communication, and I came to the conclusion then, and I still believe, that this message can only have been communicated through Miss Wingfield by some agency outside this sphere. Telepathy, clairvoyance, thought-reading are eliminated absolutely. I was ignorant of the fact that the writer of the letter was at that moment lying dead in South Africa.”

Hall later determined that his brother had died about 36 hours prior to the receipt of the message through Wingfield and the death was unknown to anyone in England until three weeks later, when the second letter was received.

Hall wrapped up his account with, “I was, and am, convinced that there is an existence beyond so-called death, and that there are means of communication between them and us. It is not given to me to see visions or hear voices, or write down messages that are sent. I realize that I am not sufficiently detached from the earthly attraction of life to be allowed myself to pierce the veil. But am I for this reason to say that these things do not exist?”

 

Don’t you love it when a closed mind gets blasted open? The second story takes us back to May 7, 1915 in Dublin, Ireland. Hester Travers Smith, a prominent author and wife of a respected physician, was using a Ouija board along with Lennox Robinson, a world-renowned Irish playwright. They were both blindfolded, and the Rev. Savell Hicks sat between them to copy the letters indicated by the board’s planchette, or traveler.

The first message spelled out: “I am Hugh Lane, all is dark.” Quite a story unfolded, but being blindfolded, Smith and Robinson had no idea as to the message. Eventually, Hicks told them that the communicator was Sir Hugh Lane, director of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, who had relayed that he’d been aboard the Lusitania and had drowned.

Although distressed, they continued the sitting, and Lane told them that there was panic, the life boats were lowered, and the women went first. He was the last to get in an overcrowded life boat, but fell overboard, and lost all memory until he ‘saw a light’ at their sitting. “I did not suffer. I was drowned and felt nothing.” To establish his identity, Lane gave Smith an evidential message about the last time they had met and talked.

Later that evening, the story came out about how the passenger ship had been hit by a German torpedo (the event that took the U.S. into WWI), but none of the sitters had known that, or that Sir Hugh Lane was a passenger on the ship sailing from New York to England. In her 1919 book, Voices from the Void, Smith wrote that she had known Lane had gone to New York, but not that he was returning from New York so soon and was on that particular liner.

Sir William Barrett, professor of physics at the Royal College in Dublin, later tested the Ouija board sittings at Smith’s home, and in his 1917 book, On The Threshold of the Unseen, he explained how two members of the group would sit blindfolded at the board, their fingers lightly touching the board’s traveler, which flew from letter to letter under the direction of a ‘control.’ Sometimes, the traveler moved so rapidly that the recorder had to use shorthand. Once, following a discussion about whether the communicator really was Lane, the latter was so upset that the traveler flew clear off the table.

 

Two great stories that involve information completely unknown to the sitters, so could not have been pulled from the minds of those involved. And the odds of them making such stuff up? Forget it! So, if you have any doubt about surviving your own crossing, forget that, too. What’s true for those two guys is also true for you. Whether you cross over on the Lusitania, the Titanic or an Arctic cruise ship tomorrow, the crossing over business is identical, and hasn't changed in a million years. Survival is just the way it is, so relax and enjoy the journey. Let the destination take care of itself … just the way it’s meant to.

Who Controls Your Mind … Especially about Death?

Are you aware of the thoughts that pass through your mind? Or is your thinking just a habit, with you on autopilot? With most people, their mind is like a child who accepts whatever it sees or hears without judgment … and in doing so, they’ve lost their freedom.

Thoughts and ideas flood at us from the media and the people around us, and we’re hit by about 60,000 a day. This barrage influences the way we think, which means most people let the outside world shape their inside experience.

You might think your thoughts stem from you, but are they really yours? Maybe they’re coming from the outside and you have unconsciously accepted them.  Every time you hear the phrases: “Rest in peace,” or, “Laid to rest” in regards to someone who’s crossed over, and you don’t scoff at the phrases, they may take root a little more each time.

The antidote is to deliberately attend to every thought that enters your mind regarding the subject. This way, you make your mind free rather than a slave to other people's opinions and thoughts. Do not leave your mind open to the thoughts of others, but become aware of the thoughts that enter your mind, and ask yourself, “Do I really believe that?” After due reflection, either accept the thought into your belief system or reject it as ‘other people’s opinions.’ You may be surprised to find out how many of your thoughts come from the outside, so resolve to buy into only those thoughts you select, and reject those that ‘just popped into my head’ from the outside.

The world out there is pretty screwed up on the subject of what happens when we cross over and what the afterlife is like, so train yourself to not accept every thought you encounter on the matter. Arm yourself with a body of knowledge that works for you, and become the master of your mind, not its slave. Do not let other people's opinions (including this one) rule your world view … unless, of course, you consciously choose to.

Doing so will reduce the stress level in your life, and increase your HQ, or Happiness Quotient.

Trust me!

Newspaper Tests

Precognition, i.e., prediction of forthcoming events that could then be verified, was very important in the spiritualist movement. An important technique for this was so-called ‘newspaper tests,’ in which a communicator described a news item that would purportedly appear in a future edition of a published newspaper. The message thus provided was intended in most cases to bring evidence of his identity. The tactics were similar to those of the book tests; until reading the newspaper, the sitter had no idea in what form the message would appear. The tests were designed to show that the information given at Mrs. Leonard’s sittings went beyond the subconscious knowledge of medium or sitter.

Charles Drayton Thomas received these newspaper tests in such quantity that reading them, he said, would weary all but the most determined psychical researcher. Here is one of his simplest examples, given at a sitting December 19, 1919. It was written down just after it was received at 3:10 p.m. and was to be verified in the London Times of the following-day. Thomas writes: Having been directed to the first page and rather more than one-third down column three, I was asked to look to the left where, almost in a line with that spot, would appear my name and a little above it that of my wife ... And within an inch of those names I was to see my wife’s age.

On examining that part of the Times the next day, Thomas saw his first name, Charles, and Clara, his wife’s name, within one inch of one another. Just one and a half inches above their name was the number 51, Clara’s age until one week before when she had had a birthday.

It was Drayton Thomas’ custom to mail a copy of the newspaper tests to the Society for Psychical Research as soon as he received them. He thus documented the fact that the information had been received the day preceding the issue of the paper to which it referred.

In considering the significance of these newspaper tests it is important to know the hour at which they were given. The sitting usually ended by 5:15 p.m., and a copy of the test was mailed to London about 6:00. This was long before the newspaper of the following day had been made up. Thomas ascertained this by visiting the printing office of the Times at 4:30 one afternoon. He was shown the galley trays in which the type for the first three columns of the next day’s paper was placed as soon as it was set. At that time, the trays held barely enough type for one-quarter of a column. As the news copy arrived, it was distributed among the various linotype operators and not again collected into one place until it was set on the type trays late in the evening, and the paper was not made up until still later. Thus, on the afternoon of the day before, no one alive knew exactly what item would be in a certain location on a certain page of the next day’s Times.

Yet time and time again communicators predicted that such and such an assortment of names and data would appear on a certain area of the front page of the next day’s Times. And Drayton Thomas would usually find them there.

The following items came one day for a Dr. Dyson, a medical friend of his. It was purportedly sent by Dyson’s brother, who had successfully communicated before (the prediction appears first, followed by the actual outcome in italics):

·         The first set of tests are for your friend from his spirit communicator whose name is about halfway down the first column of the first page of the Times tomorrow. Exactly halfway down that column appears the name Dyson, which is correct.

·         Very close to it is your friend’s name or one almost similar. Two and a half inches below Dyson is the name St. Andrew’s. Until receiving his comments upon these tests I had been unaware that his second name was Andrews. “Almost similar” – the apostrophe makes the difference.

·         A little below, say three-quarters down, is the name of a place which they have visited together and much enjoyed. Dr. Dyson on inspecting the paper found in this spot a mention of Filey (a coastal resort in Yorkshire), a place where he and his brother had frequently spent vacations together.

 

Sitters were particularly struck by the evidence of personal identity given in these newspaper tests. Thomas says: “It is not the case that a number of names are given on the chance that some of them may be appropriate. There is no fishing for names, no vague suggestions such as might be applicable to almost any sitter. My communicator evidences an intimate knowledge of our relations and friends, and succeeds by means of this type of test in introducing numbers of names that had neither been transmitted previously nor mentioned in the hearing of the medium when awake. The impression made upon me has been cumulative and logically compelling. I am convinced that it is no other than my own father who has repeatedly succeeded in giving proof positive of his identity.”

The sitting below was held at 6:20 p.m. on May 7, 1920. Seven tests were given from the first page of the next day’s Times. The result was scored as six correct, one failure:

·         Look near the top of column two on the front page for reference to a neighbor living very close to you. Your father senses that there are two names together which would both refer to these neighbors. You will understand. Four inches from the top of column two appears Birds. A few doors from us reside our friends Mr. and Mrs. Bird. The relevant words ran thus: “Wood of Birds-grove.”

·         Nearly halfway down column two is the name of a man at your Mission. But it struck your father that this name would also apply to someone whom he knew on Earth years ago, although not of the same family. It reminds him of it. For some years I have been attached to the staff of the Leysian Mission, London, and among our oldest workers is a Mr. Mason. Within an inch of the midpoint of the column appears the name Mason: the position was thus foretold with absolute precision. My father knew a minister of this name forty years ago and for some years we were on terms of unusual intimacy with members of his family.

·         In column one, about a quarter of the way down is your father’s name given in connection with a place he knew very well about twenty years ago. Between a quarter and half-way down the column is the name John and one inch above it is Birkdale. My father’s name was John, and Birkdale is the name of the only house he ever owned, a house he bought nearly twenty years before when retiring from active work, and in which he resided until his death.

·         Just underneath and very close is another place he knew. He sensed it was in the south of England, direct south, a good distance from London. He only lived there a short time; it was one of the places of his shortest residence. One inch below the above was Southampton, and as my father had lived at two places near that town, I supposed the indefinite description might be intended to cover the locality. This being much too vague for evidence, I inquired at my next interview if he meant Southampton. The reply was given that it was not right, “Newport was what he intended.” I replied that Newport was not mentioned in the paper, but on returning home discovered a quarter of an inch below Birkdale a name Newbury. Passing this as a failure, and taking no note of the subsequent introduction of Newport, there yet remains the assertion that one of my father’s brief residences had been at Newport. This is quite correct. Such incidental remarks are valuable clues to identity.

·         Lower in the column he saw, or rather sensed, a reference to Ramsgate or that locality. But quite close, within an inch of it, was the name of some people your mother will remember well as having been at Ramsgate. In fact, she had a reminder of them quite lately from someone she met. These three statements proved correct. At the bottom of the column was Herne Bay, which is near Ramsgate, and is where my father sometimes visited. In the same line and within an inch of it is seen the name Joseph, which at once suggested a ministerial friend Joseph Silcox who, after leaving Ramsgate, presently settled at Herne Bay and died there. My mother has frequently met the family since then, and tells me that twelve days before this test she was hearing about them from their minister.

·         Another Ramsgate name is very close also, but this is a name of one still at Ramsgate and in whom your mother would be interested. Here I inquired whether I knew this person. The reply came, “Yes, your mother told you about him.” On referring to the Times next day there was no doubt as to this name, which is in the notice after the foregoing, although at the, top of the second column. May we suppose that it was moved there owing to a few late insertions after these tests were selected? This notice is headed Preston. A gentleman of this name is still prominent in church and temperance work at Ramsgate and was well known to my father. My mother had been speaking to me about him exactly three weeks previously. It will be noted that the wording of the text implies knowledge that while the Joseph family is no longer at Ramsgate, Mr. Preston still resides there.

·         Near the bottom of column one is your Christian name and also the name Thomas, quite close. It was so. Three-quarters down column one, and within four lines of each other, appear Thomas and The Reverend Charles. The general accuracy of position in the above tests deserves notice.

 

So what’s going on here? From Drayton Thomas’ father’s references to ‘seeing’ or ‘sensing’ what would be in the next day’s newspaper (with the layout finalized in the small hours, long after the sitting), it seems he went forward in time to after the paper was actually printed. Then the father wove in some family trivia, which established his identity beyond question.

So the newspaper tests prove survival of consciousness upon crossing over. And they give us a preview of one of the abilities we can look forward to playing with on the Other Side.

Yee-haa!

How Mediumship Works

Talking to our loved ones via a medium is so important to piercing the veil that I’ve often wondered what’s going on when a medium conveys messages to us from the Other Side. I’ve just read a great chapter about this in a book about Mrs. Gladys Leonard (1882-1968).

The four important contributors to a sitting are:

1. Communicator – the person on the Other Side who is sending the messages.
2. Control – the nonphysical being who acts as a bridge between the communicator and the human medium. Using a control avoids the need for communicators and mediums to learn how to work with each other. The control also serves as ‘traffic cop’ to prevent all the communicators bombarding the medium at once.
3. Medium – the living person who receives the messages from the control and speaks them or uses automatic writing. (This is true for a conscious medium. Leonard was a trance medium, with Feda in control.)
4. Sitter – the person who attends the sitting either to ask questions or hear the messages.

How It Works

Back in the hey-day of spiritualism, a sitting would usually open with the medium going into trance and establishing contact with the control. Then the control would describe the communicator to the medium, who passed it along to the sitter, so the latter can establish the identity of the communicator.

Now, the important part of this is that the control has learned how to interact with the medium’s mind, and can drop words and impressions directly into it. Being in trance, the medium’s conscious mind has retreated, leaving the other parts of the mind open to the control’s input. One of the medium’s big challenges is to get out of the way of the control and stay out, and it took Leonard a while to get comfortable with Feda assuming control of her body, mind and vocal cords.

Once the sitter is satisfied that the communicator is who they say they are, the real process can begin … and this is when problems can arise.  First, the communicator needs to convey information clearly to the control, which requires tremendous focus on the part of the former so images and words can be accurately transmitted. Common scenes like children playing with animals are easy to send, but more esoteric images can get scrambled by the communicator or misinterpreted by the control. And names are next to impossible. For example, how would you send ‘Parkinson’ to someone when playing Charades?

The next problem is the frame of reference of the control, which determines how they interpret the messages from the communicator. He or she may jump to a conclusion about what the message means, and thus impress the medium with total garbage, which ticks off the sitter. Feda, Mrs. Leonard’s control, often caused huge problems due to her limited vocabulary and life experience. During times of war, many communicators would be military, who would want to convey concepts way beyond a girl who died in 1800 at age 13, which Feda did. This also limited the complexity of messages, which was a shame because sitters and communicators were often highly intelligent and very well-read.

This limitation was overcome when the communicator was able to dictate the message word-for-word to Feda, who then used Mrs. Leonard’s vocal cords to speak it word-for-word. However, the conditions had to be exactly right for this to work, and it depended on how the medium’s day had gone earlier. On days when it was not possible, Feda relied on interpreting thought-images sent by the communicator, which was sometimes hit-or-miss.

Another problem came when the communicator changed the subject but Feda didn’t pick up on the change and ascribed information about the new topic to the previous topic, so nothing made sense any more. Hours could be wasted as the sitter tried to figure out what was going on and why nothing was fitting together.

The final component in the process is the sitter, who forms a unified field with the medium, control and communicator, so the sitter’s energy is important. Suppose a husband and wife show up for a sitting, and the wife believes in the process but the husband doesn’t. His negativity will either kill any communication, or, if communication actually happens, could reduce its clarity.

When we look at all the variables, it’s a wonder that the process ever worked:

• Communicators may not yet have attained mastery of their energy after crossing over.
• The control simply may not be able to figure out what the communicator is sending, or even understand the words being used, so jumps to a conclusion, any conclusion, just to keep the sitting moving along.
• The medium may have an interest in the subject of a message and inject some personal slant that distorts the meaning.
• The sitter may have firm expectations about what constitutes a ‘hit’ and refuses to accept as valid anything that does not conform to that expectation.
• Some outside entity may disrupt the process out of curiosity or malice.

Despite the frustrations, mediums such as Gladys Leonard and Leonora Piper helped millions of sitters assuage their grief by providing a link to those on the Other Side.

Right on!

Rational Spirituality

The website of Ian Lawton (www.ianlawton.com) is a veritable treasure trove of articles and information about matters spiritual. Ian is the founder of Rational Spirituality, which offers evidence of the soul’s existence and multiple incarnations.  He is the author of several books, including The Big Book of the Soul and The Little Book of the Soul, both of which are great reading.  When you go to his site, the first thing you see is a beautiful presentation that reveals 10 important spiritual principles:

1. The soul survives independent of the physical body. Out-of-body experiencers often bring back verifiable evidence that could only have been gathered by their consciousness when their physical brain was non-functioning. 

2. Souls have many lives, not just one. Past-life regressions often bring up verifiable memories that are so obscure they could not have come from mere guesswork or fraud. However, they do not arise from tapping into some sort of ‘universal memory’ because they are often accompanied by strong emotions or unusual behavior. Also, when people recall their time between lives, or the ‘interlife,’ the evidence confirms the continuation of the individual soul from one life to the next. 

3. Our many lives are not linked by a karmic law of action and reaction. Regression evidence indicates that our successive lives are not governed by a ‘law of action and reaction.’ Instead, the so-called Law of Attraction suggests that we ‘create our own reality’ with free will and personal responsibility through our subconscious thoughts, emotions, attitudes and intentions. 

4. We reincarnate to gather experience so we can grow. We plan our lives usually to provide opportunities to work on lessons we have not yet mastered, and repeating a lesson does not mean we flunked in earlier lives. It just points to another round of detail being mastered. The more difficult the challenges we build in, the more likely it is that we are a more experienced soul striving to accelerate our growth. Newer souls plan simpler, less challenging lifetimes. 

5. The only judgment after death comes from ourselves. The notion of punishment when we cross over is a purely human invention intended to keep the masses under control. It may have stemmed from less-than-positive NDEs designed for ‘course correction’ for those who have strayed from their soul’s plan. 

6. We are responsible for all aspects of our lives because we plan and choose them. Interlife regression suggests that we choose who our parents will be, their circumstances, where they live, who our siblings will be, and the major events in our life. Knowing this prompts us to accept responsibility for our life, because not only did we choose the circumstances, but we also did so for the growth involved. So no putting the blame on others, some deity out there, or just bad luck. 

7. We always have free will to deviate from our life plan. Despite all the planning we put in, we have complete free will to stray from our chosen life path because otherwise, there would be no opportunity for growth. And we continue incarnating until we at the soul level have garnered all the Earth Plane has to offer. After that, we continue experiencing and growing in even higher dimensions, so completing a cycle of Earth lives is just the beginning. 

8. We are all One and all God. God is not a separate entity, but the matrix of all souls, so we are all part of one, interconnected whole. 

9. Soul consciousness is holographic, and represents the part and the whole all at the same time. How do we reconcile the matrix of soul connection with individual soul survival? The principle of holography says that each part contains the whole, yet is clearly distinguishable from it. 

10. The aim of the Source is to experience all that is and all that can be. What is the ultimate point of all this? Why does the universe even exist in the first place? The Source diversifies into the billions of individualized aspects of itself to operate in the various dimensions throughout the universe. As individualized aspects of the Source, we are fulfilling a small part of that objective by gathering experiences available on the physical plane. Imagine a huge jigsaw puzzle and you have some of the pieces. Without the pieces you have, the puzzle would be incomplete. 

Nothing new here to readers of this blog, but Ian’s presentation is beautiful and the accompanying music is gorgeous, so the site is well worth a visit if you have a few minutes to spare.

Amazingly, Not an Exit Point

We hear a lot about freak deaths, but here’s a recent story about a freak survivor. A 57-year-old Ohio guy is gassing up his truck when an out-of-control van hits him hard and knocks him to the ground. The van then hits two gas pumps, knocking them over on top of the guy, pinning him underneath them. The quarter-ton pumps then catch fire as the guy lies trapped beneath them.

If this had happened when no one else was around, it’s is an obituary waiting to happen, but four people then rush up, one carrying a fire extinguisher. While he’s putting the fire out, the other three struggle to pull the guy out from under the pumps. After 30 long seconds, he’s free … amazingly suffering only a few scratches.

Any one of three things could have killed the guy – hit by the van, crushed under the heavy pumps, burned alive by the fire – but it was not his day to die, not an exit point.

Don’t you love it when that happens?

The Strange Case of the Sweat Lodge Deaths

Two people strangely died Thursday evening after being overcome in a crudely built sauna-like sweat lodge during a spiritual cleansing ceremony at Angel Valley Retreat Center, a scenic Arizona resort. Authorities on Saturday identified them as 38-year-old Kirby Brown of Westtown, N.Y. and 40-year-old James Shore of Milwaukee, a director of business development at an Internet marketing company. They had paid between $9,000 and $10,000 to attend.

Nineteen other people were taken to hospitals, suffering from burns, dehydration, respiratory arrest, kidney failure or elevated body temperature. Most were soon released, but one remained in critical condition Saturday. (As a footnote, that person crossed over on October 18, and police announced they are treating all three deaths as homicides.)

Yavapai County Sheriff, Steve Waugh, said Saturday, “Detectives are focusing on self-help author James Arthur Ray and his staff as we try to determine if criminal negligence played a role. Between 55 and 65 people were crowded into the 415-square-foot space during a two-hour period that included various spiritual exercises led by Ray.” Waugh added that Ray refused to speak with authorities and has since left the state.

Brown was an avid surfer and hiker who was excellent physical shape. “She had no pre-existing health conditions that would have kept her from participating in an otherwise safe activity,” said a family spokesman. “That two people died and 19 others became ill indicates that something went horribly wrong.”

Autopsies on Brown and Shore were conducted Friday, but the results weren’t disclosed pending additional tests. Authorities have ruled out carbon monoxide poising as the cause and said participants were highly encouraged but not forced to remain in the sweat lodge for the entire time.

Ray and his staff had built the sweat lodge with a wood frame and covered it with layers of tarps and blankets, Waugh said. The sweat lodge – a structure commonly used by American Indian tribes to cleanse the body and prepare for hunts, ceremonies and other events – was 53 inches high at the center and about 30 inches high around the outer edges.

Joseph Bruchac, author of The Native American Sweat Lodge: History and Legends, said, “The number of participants in the lodge is appalling. If you put people in a restrictive, airtight structure, you are going to use up all the oxygen. If you're doing a sweat, you’re going to use it up that much faster. American Indian sweat lodges typically hold about 12 people and are covered with blankets made of natural materials, such as cotton or wool, so the air flow isn't restricted. I don’t see how the person running that lodge could have been aware of the health and well-being of that many people.”

Owners Michael and Amayra Hamilton had rented the retreat center to Ray for his five-day ‘Spiritual Warrior’ retreat that promised to “absolutely change your life.”

Well, that turned out to be true. A fascinating case of exit points taken … and during a spiritual event, no less.

Way to go!

Update: October 24

Sydney Spencer, a survivor, spoke in a TV interview on 10/21 of the cramped space and sweltering heat, and how people around her were collapsing and vomiting. Mr. Ray, while not physically preventing people from leaving, exhorted them to return to the sweat and tough it out. He said the event was all about pushing people beyond their limits. However, it turns out the physical body does have limits and will push back if over-taxed. The local sheriff's department is treating the case as a triple homicide, and is eager to talk to Mr. Ray.

Crossing Over with Lari and Tony

Would you believe that just outside of fabulous Las Vegas, in the semi-ghost town of Goodsprings, Nevada, where I live (pop. 200), someone is operating a radio station that also streams to the Internet via www.kghost.com? Would you also believe that Lari, the station operator, is a guy with a fascination for metaphysics? Given these two things, it’s probably no surprise that I’m now his regular Wednesday evening guest from 7 – 8 Pacific. We call our show Crossing Over with Lari and Tony, and you can listen by going to the above website and clicking the red “Listen Now” button. (During the day, while he’s at work, the station streams Country music, to which you can listen if you’re into it.)

Lari and I have a blast on our shows but I was saddened on the last show when a caller asked me if I believed in Satan and Hell. Sad that people still live in fear of such ridiculous notions, which would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

Of course, I told him that Satan was just a creation of the medieval Catholic Church in order to justify its existence – “If it wasn’t for the Church looking out for you, Satan would gobble you up.” Same with Hell, conceived to scare the peasants and keep them coming back every Sunday for another shot of salvation. Sad that organized religion is still pandering such arrant nonsense just so the priests can have job security.

It’s true, however, that Level 1 of the Soul Plane does sound a little hellish to me. Imagine being a truly mean, nasty person who crosses over. By the Law of Attraction, you will naturally be drawn to the level of the Soul Plane occupied by people just like you. The bad news for you is that they are all in an ongoing contest to see who can be the meanest, nastiest person on that level. Definitely not a tourist destination. (Read more about this in my book Death Without Fear.)

On the other hand, if you’ve lived by the Golden Rule (treat others as you would be treated) and honored the Four Agreements, you will end up in the idyllic Summerland, so named for its warm climate and perfect blue skies. Here unconditional love rules and even the trees talk to you as you walk by. Sounds like my kinda place!

Sadly the show’s archive system isn’t working yet, so if you can’t go on-line at 7 pm Pacific, you’re out of luck. Pity there isn’t TIVO for the Internet.

Until next time, keep on keepin’ on.

Handbook for the Recently Deceased

A few posts ago, I mentioned the book featured in the movie Beetlejuice, in which Charles and Margaret Maitland (played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) cross over by driving off a covered bridge and drowning. They return to their house and begin living in the attic, where they find a book titled Handbook for the Recently Deceased.  If you haven’t seen the movie, I strongly recommend it as a light-hearted romp through the afterlife. And, of course, Michael Keaton’s character, Betelgeuse, is a riot.

I thought how neat to find a book like that. Pity it doesn’t exist. Then the light bulb went on in my head and the rest is history. And, as promised, I did write it and it’s just about ready to send to my publisher. Of course, the book manifests here on the Earth Plane as a physical object, but on the Soul Plane, it will exist as an Etheric book (or e-book) that a newly crossed person can “grok” in its entirety, to give them a roadmap of what lies ahead for them.

Imagine you’re a newly arrived spirit on the Soul Plane. The book tells you:

• Who you really are – a vast, ancient soul who incarnated into a new human body to become “you” and to live your life to garner growth and experiences on behalf of your soul.
• How you meticulously planned that life, including when and how you would end it and return to the soul plane, or Home.
• The steps you took to leave the Earth Plane, whether slowly through illness or suddenly through accident or murder.
• All the ways you actually might have crossed over, and how easy and painless it was.
• For those left behind, how and why they are hopefully celebrating your time together rather than grieving your loss, ’cos you ain’t lost. You now know exactly where you are.
• About the adjustments you will need to make now that you have arrived on the Soul Plane.
• Wonderful, glowing descriptions of what the Soul Plane is like, and what you have to look forward to.
• And finally, about life over here and how it’s all about creativity, learning, growing and finding neat ways to serve Creation.

So, hopefully you now hold no fear about how it will be for you. In fact, you should be thrilled for your future.

The book ends with these words:

“Please remember that as souls, you all co-planned your lives together, including the time and means of your respective crossings back to the soul plane. You all planned it and signed off on it, but, of course, you’ll miss having your loved ones in your new life, so a little nostalgia for them is okay, but hopefully they are not grieving too badly because that holds you both back. Instead, encourage them to celebrate your life and accomplishments, and give thanks for your time together. You’ll all be back in cahoots with each other in no time.

“So, have no fear for yourself as you anticipate the wondrous journey ahead to a new life filled with love and joy. Soon the memories of your limited, worn-out physical body will recede, and it will have as much significance as your second-grade pencil case. After your review, orientation and Welcome Home party, you will look and feel better than you have ever felt since birth, with a whole slew of new senses and faculties, surrounded by the love and warmth of your soul family, and a whole world of new opportunities for growth ahead.”

It will be a while before the book is available through Amazon, but I’m intending to get it printed so you can order direct through my website: www.deathwithoutfear.com.

I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it.

NDE of the Month at IANDS

Today, I was prowling the Internet and landed at the website of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) – www.iands.org. Every month, the site offers “NDE of the Month,” which is always a great read.

Experience entered into the IANDS Archives February 5, 2002:

I was with my partner at the time and we had been going through difficulties. I had felt this strong sense of loss and I felt that something was calling me. I then ended up taking chloroform. I could feel the effects straight away, this creeping relaxing feeling and the sensation of me slipping out of something that felt like prison. I could remember being in the hospital on the ceiling watching all these doctors and nurses attending to me. I could also hear my mum and brother talking to me asking me why this had happened. It felt warm and radiant like someone was with me at this time and they were conveying a feeling of peace and love that was something I had never ever felt before.

In no time I was traveling down this tunnel with beings on either side. It felt like I knew them all and they were talking to me asking me how I am and what had been going on in my life. They also showed me something that I could not recall but it felt familiar. After a while with them I was called towards the light and I felt so overwhelmingly loving, peaceful and knowing. I was asked a series of questions and given information about things by an angel with a staff and dressed in warrior outfit, resembling an African chief and then a decision was made that it was not my time and that I had a mission to fulfill and that I will return. I cannot remember anything after that.

I woke up in the same bed in intensive care and was told that I had died and was kept alive via a ventilator and I had been unconscious for 1 week. Since that time I have had flashbacks and been aware that there are spirit guides around protecting me and guiding me. I also have this strong sense that there was a vision of some sort given to me because it’s like I've been on this sacred mission regarding utilizing this experience to empower people and tell the world about the realms of the spirit and their advice and guidance for the human population, especially with the young people.

 

This account has many of the classic features of the NDE:

1. Being out of body, up high, looking down
2. A sense of being accompanied
3. Feelings of warmth, peace and love
4. Moving through a tunnel, with beings on either side
5. Being embraced by an all-loving Light
6. Meeting someone, in this case a warrior-angel dressed like an African chief
7. Being told you have a mission on Earth and must go back
8. Knowing you have that mission totally changes your life as you begin to execute it.

I strongly recommend checking out the site. The archives alone will keep you busy for months. And you can join the association for regular updates.

The Today Show Rocks! Science Investigates the Near-Death Experience

Two guys, Gary and Randy, worked together delivering furniture for a store, and were told so frequently that they looked so much alike that they could be brothers. Both men knew they were adopted, so those comments got them wondering. When they compared their birth certificates, to their surprise, they discovered they really were brothers. They also knew they had two sisters, also adopted out.

A woman named Joanne read about the brothers and the missing sisters in the local newspaper and realized she was one of the sisters. She showed up at the store and introduced herself. NBC’s Today Show ran with the story on September 23, and the three said they were looking for the missing sister. “She’s called Claire Marie and is aged 39,” Joanne said.

In Florida, the said Claire Marie saw the show and jumped up saying, “Hey, that’s me.” On September 24, the Today show aired the reunion of Claire Marie with her three siblings nationwide, with much hugging and backslapping.

Nice when something good happens on the TV, eh?

Also on the Today Show, this time September 28, anchorwoman Meredith Vieira ran a story about near-death and out-of-body experiences. Cardiac care nurse Karen Tucker said that patients can often describe the resuscitation measures used on them, even while clinically dead. As a result, two hospitals have joined up to explore what happens when we die, and to prove that such post-mortem memories are more than just the brain shutting down. The AWARE (Awareness during Resuscitation) study involves putting images on high shelves to see if people who go out-of-body can see them. Meredith said, “If someone is resuscitated and can describe the images, it’s proof that they were out of their body.”

Now, of course, readers of this blog know this, but remember, this is mainstream TV the subject seriously. How cool is that?

Also, on the MSNBC website for the Today Show, Dr. Sam Parnia, one of the doctors in the AWARE study, wrote a fascinating article. He is a fellow in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Center and author of What Happens When We Die. Here’s part of his article:

For many years colleagues and I have worked to establish a scientific method to study the elusive question of what happens when we die. Although a highly emotive subject that has traditionally been perceived as a subject for philosophical or theological debate, recent advances in medicine have finally enabled a scientific approach to answering this age-old question.

Contrary to popular perception, we now understand that biologically speaking, there is no ‘moment’ that defines ‘death.’ In fact, death is a process that begins when the heart stops beating and the lungs stop breathing, and as a consequence, within a few seconds the brain ceases functioning and enters into a ‘flatline’ state. From this point on, oxygen deprivation leads brain cells into a ‘panic’ state before they incur substantial damage and ultimately die over a period of minutes to hours.

A fascinating question that arises, then, is this: At what point during this process of cell death do we die? When exactly does the human mind and consciousness cease its activity? Is it at the moment the heart stops beating, or is it a few seconds, minutes, or even hours after the process of death has initially begun? Furthermore, what is the relationship between the mind and the brain during the state of clinical death?

After Flatlining
Although many independent studies have shown that the brain reaches a ‘’flatline’ state during clinical death, it has consistently been shown that 10 to 20 percent of people who are revived back to life report some activity of the mind and consciousness in the form of lucid, well-structured thought processes with reasoning and memory formation as well as the ability to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ actual events (which have in some cases been confirmed by hospital staff), raising the intriguing possibility that the mind and consciousness could continue functioning after we have reached the point of death and the brain has ‘flatlined.’

This intriguing possibility will now be tested using images that are strategically placed in specific areas in the hospitals, such that they are visible only by opening the ‘eyes’ and looking down from the ceiling.

What does it hope to prove?
The study intends to provide a scientific understanding of what happens when we die and in particular, what happens to the human mind and consciousness during clinical death.  Recent scientific studies of the brain during cardiac arrest and clinical death have consistently demonstrated a ‘flatline’ brain state, yet 10 to 20 percent of those who are resuscitated back to life people report lucid well-structured thought processes with reasoning and memory formation. In some cases, there have also been reports of the ability to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ precise details relating to events that had occurred during clinical death. If verified through large scale studies, these detailed perceptions may indicate a high level of consciousness in the absence of detectable brain activity during the early part of clinical death, at the very least. The AWARE study aims to determine whether the mind and consciousness can continue to function for a period of time during clinical death or whether the human mind ceases functioning as soon as the heart stops beating and the clinical criteria of death have been met.
Why study what happens when we die?
Traditionally, many of the major questions that mankind has faced have been tackled by philosophy or theology. However, in the last few centuries, science has gradually begun to seek, and has been able to provide to a certain extent, answers to such questions. One of the areas still eluding science’s grasp has been the question of what happens when we die, as well as the nature of the human mind and consciousness and their relationship with the brain.  
From a social perspective, we know that each one of us will one day face our moment of death. Therefore, it is imperative that we provide scientific answers to the question of what happens when we die.  
From a medical point of view, latest discoveries have provided doctors with the ability to push back the boundaries of death and reverse the process of death once it has started. With ever-improving scientific discoveries, we will be able to bring even more people back to life from clinical death. In order for the medical profession to treat its patients more appropriately and to address many of the ethical dilemmas that arise from medical and scientific progress, it is paramount for physicians to be able to provide a scientific understanding of what happens to the brain and body, and more importantly, the human mind and consciousness, during death.

How amazing is this? A medical doctor saying science must weigh in on the debate about death, and that the human mind can operate independently of the brain. Also, the very idea of scientists setting up a large-scale project to study NDEs and OOBEs is outstanding news, for it will remove the topics from anecdotal ‘woo-woo land’ and put them in the scientific literature for mainstream science to absorb.

Nice!

Human Tragedy in the Making: The Great Embryo Mix-up

At the other end of life from the topic this blog normally talks about are some very dramatic turns of fate. In Ohio recently, a woman named Caroline Savage had a baby through in vitro fertilization, but learned that another couple’s eggs had been implanted in her, so in effect, she was having someone else’s child, so she handed the newborn over to the genetic parents, Detroit couple Paul and Shannon Morell. They said in a statement that they would be ‘eternally grateful’ to Carolyn for her decision to give birth to their child despite the clinic's mistake. “It's been a long, difficult journey, and we're thrilled that our family is now complete," the Morells said. "We will be eternally grateful for his guardian angel, Carolyn Savage, and the support of the entire Savage family.”

A happy ending there, but not so elsewhere. In New Orleans, the Ochsner fertility clinic had to shut down when it was discovered that frozen embryos for hundreds of couples had been mislabeled. A spokesperson said there have been no problems to date, but parents naturally want to know if that’s true. Huge legal battles may ensue, as parents seek to force the clinic to conduct expensive DNA tests to prove that their child really is theirs. And what if it’s not? What happens then? Child-swapping that would horribly disrupt families? Or living knowing that they’re raising someone else’s child?

And what about all those thousands of mislabeled embryos? How are they going to be traced back to the genetic couples? And would the couples even trust the clinic to get it right?

Looked at from the perspective of the soul of the incoming soul, every detail is carefully planned, so if a fertilized egg from Couple A is implanted in Couple B, maybe the soul wanted Couple A’s DNA but to be raised by Couple B. If so, the egg mix-up is the perfect outcome. And yes, engineering this is child’s play to us at the soul level. (The next post talks about how the souls and spirit guides involved got four siblings reunited after 50 years of separation. Lot of engineering there.)

However, very few people could go along with this scenario, and most will scream, “My DNA! My baby!” and sue the clinic for millions in ‘pain and suffering.’ I guess sorting that mess out is why judges get paid the big bucks. One thing is for sure. Watching how this drama plays out will be really interesting.

Feel free to comment. What do you think should happen if Couple A discover that their newborn has the DNA of Couple B, but Couple A has formed a bond and doesn’t want to let the baby go. If you were the judge in this case, would you leave the baby with Couple A or order them to hand the child over to Couple B, the genetic parents?

Glad the decision isn’t mine!

Spiritual Conspiracy

The following thought-provoking email is doing the rounds right now, and is presented as is:

On the surface of the world right now, there is war and violence and things seem dark and chaotic. But calmly and quietly, at the same time, something else is happening underground. An inner revolution is taking place and we are being called to a higher Light.

It is a silent revolution, from the inside out, from the ground up. This is a global operation. A spiritual conspiracy! There are sleeper cells in every nation on the planet. You won’t see us on T.V. You won’t read about us in the newspaper. You won’t hear about us on the radio. We don’t seek any glory. We don’t wear any uniform. We come in all shapes and sizes, colors and styles. Most of us work anonymously, quietly, behind the scenes, in every country and culture of the world. In cities big and small, mountains and valleys, farms and villages, tribes and remote islands, you could pass by one of us on the street and not even notice. We go undercover, incognito.

It is of no concern to us who takes the final credit, but simply that the work gets done. Occasionally we spot each other in the street; we give a quiet nod and continue on our way. During the day many of us pretend we have normal jobs, but behind the false storefront in darkness is where the real work takes a place! Some call us the Conscious Army.

We are slowly creating a new world with the power of our thoughts and hearts. We follow, --with passion and joy -- our orders, come from the Central Spiritual Intelligence. We are dropping soft, secret love bombs when no one is looking: poems, hugs, music, photography, movies, kind words, smiles, meditation and prayer, dance, social activism, websites, blogs, and random acts of kindness. We each express ourselves in our own unique ways, with our own unique gifts and talents. “Be the change you want to see in the world!” That is the motto that fills our hearts. We know it is the only way real transformation takes place. We know that quietly and humbly we have the power of all the oceans combined. Our work is slow and meticulous, like the formation of mountains; it is not even visible at first glance, and yet with it, entire tectonic plates shall be moved in the centuries to come!

Love is the new religion of the 21st century. You don’t have to be a highly educated person, or have any exceptional knowledge to understand it; it comes from the intelligence of the heart, embedded in the timeless evolutionary pulse of all human beings. “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Nobody else can do it for you. We are now recruiting. Perhaps you will join us -- or already have. All are welcome! The door is open.

~ Author Unknown

Cool, eh?

Annie Le: One of Life’s Mysteries

On Thursday, September 17, Police arrested Raymond Clark III, 24, a Yale University animal research technician, in the murder of graduate student Annie Le. He appeared in court and was charged with murdering the graduate student in the research building where they both worked.

Le was found dead on Sunday, her body hidden in the basement wall of a building where she worked as a medical researcher, on the day she was to marry her college sweetheart, Columbia University graduate student Jonathan Widawsky. The Connecticut medical examiner said Wednesday that Le died of “traumatic asphyxiation,” or choking. Her body was found on the very day she was to marry.

I never fail to be amazed at the dumb things people do. How could an intelligent guy not know that since he and Le worked in the same lab, often with friction between them, he would be high on the list of suspects, or even at the top of it? Yet he went ahead and took her life.

I know that soul always chooses the time and means of our crossing, but in cases such as Annie Le, the means and timing are a puzzle. But, of course, we know nothing of her soul’s purpose for her incarnation.

In Courageous Souls, Robert Schwartz told the story of a deepsea diver who proposed to his girlfriend and then died on his next dive the day after. The inside story was that these two had spent many lifetimes together but never actually making that commitment, so once he had made the commitment by proposing, the fiancé could leave. Actually being married was never the point.

Still curious about Annie’s inside story but that’s her business.

Handbook for the Newly Deceased

In the movie Beetlejuice, a newly crossed over couple finds themselves in the attic of their old house, where they come across a book titled, Handbook for the Newly Deceased. Now, if such a book existed, what would it contain? Here are some possible chapters:

1. The first chapter may be on working with your greeters, and how to communicate with them using telepathy. It may stress the importance of following them to the Soul Plane so you don’t get lost and become Earth-bound. Also, they can organize a reunion party so you can meet your loved ones who preceded you.
2. Orientation and life review are important tasks worthy of chapter 2. First you’ll need an overview of your local area, what’s going on and who the key players are. Then on to the rules for the life review, such as ‘no beating yourself up.’
3. Then you would need a chapter on how to turn the clock back, so you can regress to the age when you were at your finest. Good information there.
4. Next might be a chapter on how to get around on the Soul Plane. It might stress starting slowly, so you don’t zoom around too quickly and get dizzy or disoriented. As you progress, the chapter will instruct you about how to use thought to cover vast distances and jump to other planets, and how to navigate the Earth Plane using thought. Being still close to the Earth Plane, now would be a good opportunity to visit all the places you never saw but wanted to.
5. Next might be instruction on focusing on who you are, where you are, and how you got there, so your memories serve as your internal compass. At this point, the book may tell you how to find and visit with your loved ones still on Earth, and give them signs that you’re with them and are okay. Hopefully, you worked out a system of signs before you left, such as turning lights on and off, changing TV channels, or sending them butterflies. This chapter could contain a list of do’s and do not’s, such as “Do not scare them,” or, “Do announce your presence by a whiff of your favorite scent or aftershave.”
6. You’re going to need a job and a place to live, and your guides and soul will take care of the arrangements. You’ll need to figure out whether you want to live in a city or in the country, or my choice – on board a boat. And for work, do you want to stay in your Earth profession or learn something new.
7. Finally, a chapter on hobbies and R&R possibilities would end the book on a high note.

Well, you get the idea. But here’s the kicker – I’m actually going to write that book for real. There, I’m now committed.

Quirky idea, eh?

Your Beliefs Determine Your Reality

In Choices in the Afterlife by psychic medium Gretchen Vogel, she remarks that her contactees on the Soul Plane stress the importance of conscious transition so you hit the floor running when you cross over. Of course, this means knowing what to expect during and immediately following your actual transition. This means not slavishly believing what organized religion purports to tell you about what they think will happen – they are the last people to believe.

Having accurate, healthy beliefs is vital, so consult several reliable sources that do not have an agenda and synthesize a set of beliefs that works for you. However, do not subscribe to the “death is oblivion” school, for that will bog you down over there, for it could go like this:

You cross over and find yourself in total sensory deprivation, and think, “I was right. There’s absolutely nothing when you die.” Then, depending on the acuity of your mind, after a few weeks, months or years (there’s no time over there), you wonder, “If death is oblivion, then who is thinking this thought? Feels like me but I don’t exist anymore … yet I’m thinking, so I must exist. And if I still exist, where am I? I must be somewhere, but there can’t be any places in oblivion? I’m so confused.”

After a few more months or years of confusion, you may be contacted by a rescue squad who ask, “Well, are you ready for the truth?”

In the inky blackness of your manufactured ‘oblivion,’ you ask, “Who said that?”

You then hear, “We’re an angelic intervention team, here to take you home. Are you ready to leave yet?”

Finally, your curiosity is piqued and you wake up to the sounds and sights of the Other Side … and you make your grand entrance to the Soul Plane. But it could have been much simpler and easier on you.

Even more corrosive than “death is oblivion” is “death means judgment and punishment” feared by just about every Catholic and many Protestants. Such a fear may paralyze you as you approach your crossing … and it’s all so pointless because the only judging is done by you. And even then, the counsel of elders is on hand to ensure that you’re not too hard on yourself, because they know how difficult Earth lives are. As I’ve said in earlier posts, Earth lives are as hard as it gets anywhere in the Universe, and are like graduation for the most courageous souls in Creation … and that includes you!

Way to go!

The Book Tests: More Unequivocal Proof of Survival

This post is offered not to convince you of the survival of death because you’re already a believer, but to provide you with ammunition when debunkers demand unequivocal proof. This should shut them up.

Drayton Thomas was a prolific metaphysical author in the 1920s, and conducted tests using psychic medium Mrs. Gladys Leonard. Called ‘Book Tests,’ these involved passages in a book of which the medium has no knowledge. Feda, Mrs. Leonard’s control, would relay messages from a communicator on the Other Side through Mrs. Leonard to the sitters who were at home. The message content is a reference to a book at a certain locations in the sitter’s library, plus page, paragraph and sentence information. The sentences are usually significant to the sitters, although Mrs. Leonard may not even know who the sitter is.

Here is an account of such a test written by Thomas, and published in 1922:

We (Thomas and sitter) had discussed the possibility of audible sound being produced by my communicator to attract our attention at home. He tried, but rarely succeeded in making knocks which might not be attributed to ordinary creaking in floor or furniture. One night, however, I concluded that a special effort had been made and that the result was a definite success; for thrice I heard a loud double knock. I noted the incident and added it to a list of such items kept for reference.

Three days later, at an interview with Mrs. Leonard, Feda greeted me with the assertion that she had succeeded in coming to our house and giving taps there. A few minutes later the following book test was given: “It is in a book behind your study door, the second shelf from the ground, and fifth book from the left. Near the top of page seventeen you will see words which serve to indicate what Feda was attempting to do when knocking in your room. Now that you are aware that it was Feda’s attempt, you will see the unmistakable bearing of these words upon it.”

On returning home I found this book to be a volume of Shakespeare which commences with King Henry VI, and the third line from the top of the indicated page reads, “I will not answer thee with words, but with blows.”

 

Another interesting case was documented by paranormal investigator Mrs. Sidgwick in 1917:

A good book test would exclude ordinary telepathy from the sitter as an explanation, and would make it extremely difficult to suppose that Feda derives her information from any living human being.

A simple book test is given in The Earthen Vessel by Pamela Glenconner. Edward Wyndham Tennant (“Bim”), a son of Lord and Lady Glenconner, who fell in the Battle of the Somme in September, 1916, is the purported communicator.

Lord Glenconner’s chief interest, in the years before the war, was forestry; often in the course of family walks through the woods, he would gloomily say that the young trees were being ruined by “the beetle.”

At a Leonard sitting December 17, 1917 Bim’s brother David and his father were the sitters. Feda said, “Bim now wants to send a message to his father. This book is particularly for his father; underline that, he says. It is the ninth book on the third shelf counting from left to right in the bookcase on the right of the door in the drawing room. Take the title, and turn to page thirty-seven. The ninth book in the shelf indicated is Trees. On page thirty-six, quite at the bottom and reading on to page thirty-seven it reads: ‘Sometimes you will see curious marks in the wood; these are caused by a tunneling beetle, very injurious to the trees …’”

 

There is only one explanation for the uncanny accuracy of Book Tests – that the communicator on the Other Side is the source. Neither the sitter nor medium has any idea of the book passage referred to, so the medium cannot be using ESP on the sitter. And there’s no way the medium could know the text of every book in her sitters’ libraries.

This is similar to double-blind drug tests, where neither participant nor researcher knows whether they are dealing with a placebo or the active drug, so they can’t influence the test outcome.

Because the medium has no idea who the sitters are, they can’t know the contents of their libraries, and is told only the book’s location and page number, there is no chance of mind-reading or prior study. And the people conducting the proceedings are of the highest integrity, such as prominent scientists or members of society, whose reputations would be ruined if found guilty of deceit, so there is no chance of collusion.

Occam’s Razor indicates that Book Tests are what they purport to be – the communicator, who is someone close to the sitter, has survived death, can somehow ‘read’ the contents of books in the sitter’s home, and conveys the reference to a relevant passage to Feda, who relays it through Mrs. Leonard to the sitters, who then go to their library, retrieve the book and read the passage selected by the communicator.

Now that’s cool!

By the way, SCEPCOP (Scientific Committee to Evaluate Pseudo-Skeptical Criticism of the Paranormal) has opened up a Fan Page on Facebook. Here is the page’s blurb:

SCEPCOP is the 1st Coalition of Paranormal Researchers, Investigators, Writers and Intellectuals united to counter and expose the Pseudo-Skepticism movement for their fallacies, misinformation, dismissal, denial, censorship, suppression, bigotry and ridicule toward any evidence, experience or science that challenges orthodoxy or does not fit into a materialistic reductionist paradigm. We do not support every quack claim on the planet, but advocate true skepticism, objectivity, open-mindedness and fairness toward paranormal or unconventional evidence, experience or science. We are the world's first counter-pseudo-skeptic movement providing resources, articles, books, videos and an online community exposing the fallacies and psychology of pseudo-skepticism.

If you have a Facebook account, go to the following site to join:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/SCEPCOP-Coalition-Debunking-Pseudo-Skeptics/132391410979

To join the group itself on Facebook, go to:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=128437788115

And go to the following site for SCEPCOP’s home page. It’s an incredibly rich site, well worth a visit or three:

http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/

Living On Purpose: Life Without Fear

Allison DuBois’ third book, Secrets of the Monarch, makes some excellent points:

 

“First of all, I learned that it’s key not to squander your life, because many who’ve lived feel they missed the point of living by assuming that they’d always have more time. Often this is not the case, so you must make every day count. Also, what you do in life must fulfill you. Many people I’ve brought through in readings feel they should have taken more risks in life and they died unfulfilled because at some point in their life, they started to live the way other people wanted them to. Instead of living from the inside going outward, they lived from the outside going in.”

 

This reminds me of the Irma Bombeck article written just before she crossed, in which she wrote: “If I had my life to live over, I’d sit on the best sofa and use the best china.” If you don’t live to the max, you will have a long time – eternity actually – to regret being overly cautious. Remember, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

 

“Second, how does it affect those around you who love you? Many of the messages from the deceased center around regretting not doing right by their family, so how we affect our family must be considered. When I work a case, it’s unimportant to my kids and my husband whether it is successfully completed or left as unfinished business. They want to spend time with me and I must keep this in perspective, as we all should. So much can be learned from those who lived and died before us, and I know I give great importance to the wisdom of living. I’ve learned to live in the moment, love with all you have, and don’t let others design who you are. You be the artist of you.”

 

I believe it was Marianne Williamson who said, “People will forget what you told them, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” And I love the adage, “Dance like there’s no one watching, and love like you’ll never be hurt.” Like most people, I’ve had my heart broken a few times, but that won’t stop me from going wholeheartedly into my next relationship. You owe your all to your significant other, regardless of whether you’ve been hurt before – that’s just old baggage, so park it in the past and move forward.

 

“I have a lot of men who have passed away who say that they never took the time to truly enjoy their lives, that they worked too much and played too little. So from all of the men I've experienced through readings who died, to all of the living men, don’t forget to live while you can, live life fast-forward. These actions define who you are in life and death.”

 

My ‘work’ is editing and designing metaphysical books, which I love, so is it really work? When you leap out of bed, eager to get editing the current manuscript and feel listless when you’re between jobs, you’re in pretty deep. But yes, balance is essential for mental and emotional health. And we all need to be reminded that the journey is the thing and there are no destinations except the Soul Plane.

 

“When you invest in yourself, you’re telling others that you’re worth it. You’re also nurturing your soul, making it more brilliant. This way, when other quality people enter your life wanting to get to know you, you’re not scrambling to make a mental list of jobs that person needs to do to “fulfill you.” If you're satisfied with who you are to begin with, then you don’t settle for insufficient friendships or doomed relationships just to fill space around you.”

 

This is all about you accepting yourself, approving of yourself, even loving yourself … because if you can’t do these things for you, no one else can, for you’d just deflect their positive energy. Just remember, you deserve the best because you are the best.

 

Rock on!

“Leave Them Kids Alone”

Last night, I watched a Lifetime Movie Network movie called They Come Back about a 10-year-old girl who saw and communicated with a girl who had died in the neighborhood. Sadly, the young medium was locked up and medicated ‘for her own good.’

Psychiatrists who drug people up just because the latter are hearing the voices of those on the Other Side are a menace to us all. Why can’t the ‘white-coats’ accept that there millions  of folk on the Other Side, eager to communicate with people still on the Earth Plane, and will use those who are unknowing mediums. Rather than lock these unsuspecting psychics up in institutions and medicate them to hell and back, why not just train them in mediumistic control, such as teaching them to draw boundaries with those on the Other Side, rather than cower in fear from them or deny they even exist.

We must stop drawing the boundary at our skin and being scared of anything outside of us that we can see.  This to me is the blessing of people such as Sylvia Browne, Allison DuBois, John Edward, James van Praagh and Lisa Williams. These folk can clearly see what most of us can’t see, and act as our eyes and ears into the Soul Plane. And I for one am extremely grateful that they are eager to perform that service. It makes my life a whole lot richer, and provides a larger context in which I can make some sense of life and death.

The fact that these mediums can describe to a T  your deceased loved one who they see standing beside or behind you is, to me, proof of survival. Skeptics (read debunkers) would argue that the medium is just  reading your mind, but what about the times when the medium tells you something you do not know and needs research to confirm? And a future post will talk about the so-called Book Tests, that unequivocally prove survival.

What a narrow, dreary, boring little world the debunkers live in compared to the broad, light-filled, expansive world we live in. And look at the added resources available to us – spirit guides, crossed over loved ones, and the angelic realms, not to mention your own soul.

I’ll take it!

Martial Law and the Swine Flu Vaccine – Part Two

“When the people fear the government, you have tyranny;

when the government fears the people, you have freedom.”

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

—     Thomas Jefferson

—     “Government is not eloquence; it is not reason. Government is ‘force.’
It makes for a dangerous servant and a fearsome master.”

— George Washington

 

“Give me liberty or give me death.”

— Patrick Henry

 

(This blog post is not medical advice. If needed, consult your own physician.)

An earlier post talked about the MA “Pandemic Response Bill 2028” that passed through the state Senate on April 28, 2009. If passed in the House, the bill will enable authorities to do the following in the event that the governor declares an emergency:

·        

·         Require the owner or occupier of premises to permit entry into, and investigation of the premises;

·         Close, direct, and compel the evacuation of, or to decontaminate any building or facility;

·         Decontaminate or destroy any material;

·         Restrict or prohibit assemblages of persons;

·         Control access to any stricken or threatened public area, and the movement of persons and materials within the area;

·         Provide for the safe disposal of infectious waste and human remains, provided that religious, cultural, family, and individual beliefs of the deceased person shall be followed to the extent possible when disposing of human remains, whenever that may be done without endangering the public health;

·         Seize from any source, store, or distribute any anti-toxins, serums, vaccines, immunizing agents, antibiotics, and other pharmaceutical agents or medical supplies located within the commonwealth as may be necessary to respond to the emergency;

·         Require in-state health care providers to assist in vaccination, treatment, examination, or testing of any individual as a condition of the ability to continue to function as a health care provider in the commonwealth.

.

Dr. Mercola’s Comments (www.drmercola.com)  

Dr. Mercola notes that, according to a recent Fox News Poll**, the majority of people in the US now believe the swine flu vaccine may be deadlier than the actual virus. And according to the August 25 issue of the British Medical Journal, more than half of doctors and nurses in public hospitals would also refuse the H1N1 vaccine, due to concerns about side effects and doubts about its efficacy.

 

The Part One post talked about the expected dramatic increase in cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome once the swine flu vaccine campaign begins, due to adjuvants such as squalene, that scramble your immune system so your body starts attacking your own nervous system. Now, German lung specialist Wolfgang Wodarg reports that the swine flu vaccine contains animal cancer cells, which may cause an allergic reaction when injected, and may actually cause cancer.

Even worse, Dr. Blaylock reports that the Baxter swine flu vaccine, called Celvapan, uses cultured cells from the African green monkey, previously implicated for transmitting vaccine-contaminating viruses, including the HIV virus.***

Who Are You Going to Believe?

Dr. Blaylock claims to have reviewed a number of studies on the immune adjuvant squalene, and found that several of the human test studies found it to be very safe. However, upon further investigation, they were all done by the pharmaceutical companies using the adjuvant.

However, a great number of the studies done by independent research facilities all found a strong link between squalene or MF-59 (which contains squalene) and autoimmune diseases.

Dr. Blaylock warns,

“Studies of other immune adjuvants using careful tracer techniques have shown that they routinely enter your brain following vaccination.  What most people do not know, even the doctors who recommend the vaccines, is that most such studies by pharmaceutical companies observe the patients for only one to two weeks following vaccination—these types of reactions may take months or even years to manifest.”

With the medical establishment telling us to: “Reject conspiracy theories about the vaccine’s safety, trust the government, and get your damn vaccine,”  you can download for free the book Horrors of Vaccination Exposed by Charles M. Higgins, written in 1920, and it’s every bit as relevant today as it was when it was first written.

The important thing is not to go into fear about the medical fascists, and to remember that whatever happens is exactly what yoiur soul intends to happen. If that means getting sick or even crossing over, that’s what you planned all those years ago before you were even born.

Just try to keep away from anyone with a needle.

** www.prisonplanet.com/fox-news-poll-majority-think-swine-flu-vaccine-deadlier-than-virus.html

*** http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/dr-russell-blaylock-vaccine-may-be-more-dangerous-than-swine-flu/

**** www.drcarley.com/Horrors_of_Vaccination_Exposed.pdf

Three in Four Americans Believe in the Paranormal

According to a recent Gallup survey, about three in four Americans profess at least one paranormal belief. The most popular is extrasensory perception (ESP), mentioned by 41%, followed closely by a belief in haunted houses (37%). The remaining list of beliefs includes: 32% believe that ghosts, or spirits of dead people, can come back in certain places/situations, 26% believe in clairvoyance, or the power of the mind to know the past and predict the future. 25% believe in astrology’s ability to decode how the position of planets affects people’s lives, and 21% believe in reincarnation and that people can communicate with those on the Other Side. And 9% believe in channeling, i.e., spirit beings can temporarily assume control of the channel’s body. All told, 73% of Americans believe in at least one of the items listed above, while only 27% believe in none of them. (The numbers are similar to a 2001 Gallup survey, where people were split 76% – 24%.)

The “cumulative percent” column shows that 22% (more than one-fifth) believe in five or more items, 32% in at least four items, and 57% (more than half), believe in at least two. Only 1% believes in all 10 items – count me in, but I’m just weird. You, too, probably.

Also, 55% believe in psychic or spiritual healing, i.e., the power of the human mind to heal the body. Amazingly, 42% profess the belief that people are sometimes possessed by the devil. How quaint! And the same number are sure that ETs can and do visit this planet.

Overall, this is encouraging news because for that 73% believing in one item above, that one item is the chink in the dam that could become a huge hole, and then the dam collapses. Then, you’ve got someone firing on all metaphysical cylinders.

So let’s put some fizz in “metafizzics”!

The Other Side Looks Out for Us

I’ve just finished Lisa Williams’ first book, Life Among the Dead, and am delighted to read of how much good psychic mediums such as her do. (I know personally how much my resident psychic, Cheryl, has benefited my life.) It’s a fascinating book that tells of her life, and how she moved to the U.S. and began her TV show on the Lifetime channel.

Many people go through life carrying huge burdens of guilt, sorrow, grief and anger, and one word from a deceased loved one delivered through a medium can lift that burden in a heartbeat. For example, a woman went to Lisa for a reading, and took a friend along. Lisa took one look at the friend and said, “Your father says he’s very sorry.” The friend burst into tears upon hearing her father apologize, and that changed her life for the better.

The most amazing anecdote Lisa tells of in her book concerns the reading for a woman named Jenny, whom Lisa told about a freak accident that would take the life of a young girl, the daughter of a friend. Eighteen months later, Lisa was reading for another woman when a young girl named Lucy showed up from the Other Side. Lucy had been the woman’s daughter and had crossed over in a freak accident. Yes, the two woman were friends and the readings were about the same girl. Lisa was able to tell the mother exactly how the accident happened because Lucy was telling her.

Then Lucy told her mother, “Take care of your ovaries.” Surprised that her daughter even knew the word, the mother initially dismissed this because she’d had a hysterectomy but consulted her doctor anyway. After a few tests, the doctor admitted he’d left one ovary, that it was cancerous, and must be removed immediately to save the woman’s life.

Through Lisa, Lucy than told her mother, “I’m coming back,” but vanished before she could clarify. A year later, the woman returned for another reading but Lucy was nowhere to be found on the Soul Plane. “Apparently she’s no longer there,” Lisa told the mother.

The mother told Lisa, “I came here today to tell Lucy that I’m adopting, and the baby was born a week ago.” At that point, Lisa put two and two together – that Lucy had reincarnated as the adopted baby. How cool is it for the mother to actually know this rather than just suspect it, or hope for it?

What a wonderful service mediums such as Lisa Williams perform … not to mention their counterparts on the Other Side.

Nice work!

“Laid to Rest” Indeed!

Couldn’t pass up this opportunity. The media are peddling out that worn-out and misleading “Laid to Rest” phrase again today, this time for Michael Jackson, 10 weeks after he went Home. Actually, rather than resting in peace, I like to think of him staging the most incredible concerts on the Other Side, accompanied by a huge chorus of angels.

Meanwhile, his earthly remains will be interred today in a $30,000 gold-plated casket entombed in solid concrete 13 stories below ground, and under intense security. Wow! And Gladys Knight will sing a tribute to the King of Pop. The location is Forest Lawn in Glendale, CA, boasting a replica of a 13^th century Italian church. And he’ll be in the company of the old bones of such luminaries as Walt Disney, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart, George Burns and Nat King Cole.

According to Karen Bishop’s newsletter of June 20 (www.emergingearthangels.com), his crossing was carefully timed to coincide with the summer solstice on June 21. Jackson was well-connected to higher energies, with him serving as a bridge between those dimensions and the Earth Plane, transforming and transmitting that energy. He used the solstice to release the massive amount of energy he channeled. This is also why he had great difficulty with the darker energies on the planet and couldn’t understand why people are so cruel to each other. He genuinely loved children for their innocence, but his naïveté cost him when he was unjustly accused of having an improper sexual relationship with a young boy. He really was just the victim of other people’s narrow thinking, greed and political ambition.

Swine Flu Vaccine – Part One

(Sorry this is so long but it’s a complex issue. If you’re bored, skip it. And this does not constitute medical advice.)

A lot of people and organizations that should know better are spreading a lot of fear over this and about the vaccine. Truth is, there’s nothing to fear about the flu but a lot to fear about that vaccine, so if anyone comes at you with a needle, run away. Unfortunately, it may not be that simple. Read on … Whatever the outcome, know that it’s your soul calling the shots, so do not go into fear over the flu or the vaccine – that’s exactly what “they” want you to do, so “they” can control you.

The United States of America is devolving into medical fascism and Massachusetts is leading the way with the passage of a new bill, the “Pandemic Response Bill” 2028, reportedly just passed by the MA state Senate and now awaiting approval in the House. This bill suspends virtually all Constitutional rights of Massachusetts citizens and forces anyone “suspected” of being infected to submit to interrogations, “decontaminations” and vaccines. It also sets fines up to $1,000 per day for anyone who refuses to submit to quarantines, vaccinations, decontamination efforts or to follow any other verbal order by virtually any state-licensed law enforcement or medical personnel. You can read the text yourself at www.mass.gov/legis/bills/senate/186/st02pdf/st02028.pdf, and then keep on reading to learn just how nasty that vaccine truly is.

Swine Flu Shot Linked to Killer Nerve Disease

Concerns have already been raised that the new vaccine has not been sufficiently tested and that the effects, especially on children, are unknown. According to The Daily Mail, the British Health Protection Agency sent letters to 600 neurologists on July 29th, warning them to be on the lookout for cases of Guillain- Barré Syndrome once the swine flu vaccine campaign begins. Why the warning was not sent out to general practitioners, who will be administering the shot, seems an odd choice if public safety is indeed the main concern. This confidential correspondence between the British public health agency and neurologists in the U.K. is the first clue that all is probably not well with this fast-tracked pandemic vaccine.

It tells the neurologists that they must be alert for an increase in a brain disorder called Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) (or Lou Gehrig’s disease), which could be triggered by the vaccine. GBS attacks the lining of the nerves, causing paralysis and the inability to breathe, and can be fatal.

The web site of Dr. Joseph Mercola is where I always turn for the truth about issues such as this (www.mercola.com), and the following is some of what he has to say on the issue and in particular, why GBS causes the body to attack its own nervous system – scary stuff:

Are You Willing to Let Them Experiment on Your Child?

According to a recent report from CNN, the U.S. is set to receive as many as 600 million doses of swine flu vaccine, enough for 300 million Americans.

However, pregnant women, children, and those whose immune systems are already compromised are at great risk to suffer severe side effects from the vaccine, as the adjuvants in the vaccine are designed to reduce your immune function.

Swine Flu Drug of Choice Causes Side Effects in Half of All Children

In the U.K., the hysteria over swine flu led to flu drugs being offered online, without a doctor’s prescription. This is incomprehensible, considering their risk. Tamiflu has already caused one or more side effects in over half of all children who received it!

Although the swine flu has spread across the world it appears to have decreased in severity. The vast majority of cases are very mild, requiring only a few days in bed. In fact, the regular seasonal flu is still far worse, and more deadly, than the swine flu.

How Vaccines Can Cause so Much Harm

The intended effect of a vaccination is to help you build immunity to a potentially harmful organism. However, your body’s immune system is already designed to do this in response to organisms that invade your body naturally.

Most disease-causing organisms enter your body through the mucous membranes of your nose, mouth, pulmonary system or your digestive tract. These mucous membranes have their own immune system that fights off invading organisms at the point of entry, reducing or even eliminating the need for activation of your body’s immune system. A vaccination, however, delivers either live or attenuated (dead) viruses directly into your tissues and blood stream through injection, completely bypassing your body’s first line of defense. And when combined with an immune adjuvant, your body’s immune system kicks into high gear in response to the vaccination. If your immune system is too weak to deal with the assault, severe side effects can occur.

Injecting organisms into your body to provoke immunity is contrary to nature, and vaccination carries enormous potential to do serious damage to your health. When ingested, the vaccine adjuvant squalene is actually recognized by your immune system as an oil molecule native to your body. It has antioxidant properties and is found throughout your nervous system and brain.

The difference between “good” and “bad” squalene is the route by which it enters your body. Injection is an abnormal route of entry which incites your immune system to attack all the squalene in your body, not just the vaccine adjuvant. As a result, your immune system will attempt to destroy the molecule wherever it finds it, including in places where it occurs naturally, and where it is vital to the health of your nervous system. (For more information about squalene, and the hazards it poses when included in flu shots, please review my recent special report on the topic: Swine Flu is NOT the Problem -- It is the Vaccine that May Harm or Kill You. Squalene is proving to be among the worst of the worst in terms of immune adjuvants. We know at least two of the swine flu vaccines under development by drug companies will contain the oil-based adjuvant squalene. Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline are producing those vaccines, and it’s probably just the tip of the iceberg because on July 13, the WHO swine flu pandemic briefing note states: “In view of the anticipated limited vaccine availability at global level and the potential need to protect against "drifted" strains of virus, SAGE recommended that promoting production and use of vaccines such as those that are formulated with oil-in-water adjuvants and live attenuated influenza vaccines was important.”

Translation: WHO is now specifically recommending the production and use of vaccines containing oil-based adjuvants. The handwriting is on the wall -- H1N1 vaccines will almost certainly contain the squalene adjuvant.)

In the Meantime, Consider Vitamin D As It Prevents Seasonal Flu

Just last week I reported on Canada’s decision to investigate the role of vitamin D in protection against the swine flu. This is great, but there is already overwhelming evidence showing that your vitamin D levels play a significant role in your likelihood of getting the flu. Vitamin D has been a hot research topic these past few years, and has been shown to have remarkable impact on nearly every single disease studied.

Four 2009 studies show an inverse association between respiratory tract infections and vitamin D levels. That is, the higher your vitamin D level, the lower your risk of contracting colds, flu, and other respiratory tract infections: A 2007 study suggests higher vitamin D status enhances your immunity to microbial infections. They found that subjects with vitamin D deficiency had significantly more days of absence from work due to respiratory infection than did control subjects.

A 2009 study on vitamin D deficiency in newborns with acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) confirmed a strong, positive correlation between newborns’ and mother’s vitamin D levels. Over 87 percent of all newborns and over 67 percent of all mothers had vitamin D levels lower than 20 ng/ml, which is a severe deficiency state.

Newborns with vitamin D deficiency appear to have an increased risk of developing ALRI, and since the child’s vitamin D level strongly correlates with its mother’s, the researchers recommend that all mothers’ optimize their vitamin D levels during pregnancy, especially in the winter months, to safeguard their baby’s health.

Granted, so far none of the research has focused on vitamin D’s impact on pandemic flu. If your body has never been exposed to the antigens there is chance that vitamin D might not be enough. However, there’s no evidence suggesting that vitamin D supplementation would cause you any harm or make your illness any worse. On the contrary, if you are coming down with flu-like symptoms and have not supplemented with vitamin D, Dr. Cannell, one of the world’s leading vitamin D experts, recommends taking 50,000 IU’s a day for three days to treat the acute infection. Some researchers, including Dr. Cannell, believe the dose could even be as high as 1,000 units per pound of body weight for three days.

Ultimately, your best bet is to maintain healthy levels of vitamin D around 60 ng/ml year-round. Please note that this is far higher than most doctors will refer to as “normal.” Rather it is the optimal level you’ll want to maintain for disease prevention.

 

Still with me after all that medical talk? The bottom line is: Avoid that vaccine like the plague. Instead, you could go natural and use Miracle Mineral Solution and/or food-grade hydrogen peroxide. And there’s a new herpes treatment that’s an all-herbal antiviral supplement called Aeura (see www.aeura.com for details). It seems to go after all viruses, including the flu virus.

And if you’re thinking, “My higher self has got it handled,” remember that your higher self may be counting on you reading and acting on this, so I suggest you use muscle-testing to see if these are good alternatives to the swine flue vaccine.

Be well.

Arthur Ford, Psychic Medium

[The following account of Houdini is excerpted from my book Death Without Fear, and is a continuation of the previous post, so please read that first.]

The Great Houdini was probably the most virulent debunker of all time. Hungarian immigrant Harry Houdini (1874 – 1926), the renowned escapologist, was also the arch-skeptic of the spiritualist movement. Just before his death in 1926, he and his wife, Bess, arranged a coded message that he would try to get to her from the other side … if the afterlife was for real. After he crossed over, his wife did the rounds of mediums until, in 1929, the famous medium Arthur Ford, pastor of the First Spiritualist Church of New York, successfully received the message from Houdini. It took, Ford said, ten sittings over several months before the ten-word message was complete: “Rosabelle, answer, tell, pray, answer, look, tell, answer, answer, tell.”

When two church members presented the code to Bess, they saw a look of shock and asked if the words made sense to her. They did; it was the secret code she and her husband had used on stage, and known only by them. The two visitors arranged for Reverend Ford to hold a sitting in her home.

Two days later, Bess was lying on the sofa as Arthur Ford, sitting blindfolded with a handkerchief, went into a trance. As witnesses looked on, he spoke the words he’d written in the note, “Rosabelle, answer, tell, pray, answer, look, tell, answer, answer, tell,” in a strange voice which he said was Houdini’s.

Ford asked her, “Does what I said make sense to you?” She said it did.

Then Ford went on: “Thank you, sweetheart. Now tell the witnesses what ‘Rosabelle’ means.” Then softly Bess began to sing,

Rosabelle, sweet Rosabelle,

I love you more than I can tell.

Over me you cast a spell.

I love you my sweet Rosabelle.

Through Ford, Houdini explained what this song meant to him and Bess – that Rosabelle was his own private and intimate pet name for Bess. He then went on: “The strange words of the message are the cues from the Houdini vaudeville mind-reading act. Each word or pair of words stood for a letter of the alphabet. They spell “Believe.”

Continuing, Houdini said, “The message I want to send back to my wife is: ‘ROSABELLE, BELIEVE!’”

Fletcher, Ford’s control, then asked Mrs. Houdini, “Is this right?”

“Yes,” she replied with great feeling.

In conclusion, Fletcher relayed Houdini’s final words. “‘Tell the whole world that Harry Houdini still lives and will prove it a thousand times and more.’ He is pretty excited. He says, ‘I was perfectly honest and sincere in trying to disprove survival, though I resorted to tricks to prove my point for the simple reason that I did not believe communication was true, but I did no more than seemed justifiable. I am now sincere in sending this through in my desire to undo. Tell all those who lost faith because of my mistake to lay hold again of hope, and to live with the knowledge that life is continuous. That is my message to the world, through my wife and through this instrument.’”

Houdini closed the sitting with: “Rosabelle, sweet Rosabelle, BELIEVE! Spare no time or money to undo the attitude of doubt I had on earth. Teach the truth to those who’ve lost the faith, my sweetheart. Tell the world there is no death.”

Mrs. Houdini signed the affirmation (reproduced below) as to what happened, and it was witnessed by three people of the highest integrity: Harry R. Zander, representative of the United Press; Mrs. Minnie Chester, life-long friend of Mrs. Houdini and John W. Stafford, associate editor of Scientific American.

On the next day, January 9, 1930, the headline: “Widow Communes with Houdini!” showed up all around the world. Oddly, this story dominated the newspapers of the day, but today, it has retreated to become just a footnote in the spiritual history books.

 

In 1958, journalist Ruth Montgomery met Arthur Ford when he was giving a lecture. She interviewed him as a skeptical reporter, but their meeting changed her entire life. He taught her automatic writing, and urged her to begin writing books about life after death, which she did prolifically.

As the result of a bad car accident, Ford developed morphine addiction and then alcoholism, and died in 1971 aged 74. However, he soon began working with Ruth to continue his work from the soul plane, and became a major guide in her dealings with ‘the other side,’ publicized in her many books. For example, in Herald of the New Age written in 1986, Ford told Ruth, “The purpose of the book is to clear out the minds of those who still cling to mistaken ideas about the beyond. We are the co-creators with God of what we find for ourselves here. Ruth, we want you to wake the people up to the importance of this towering truth. They, with their thoughts, are not only creating the pattern of their future lives, but their own heaven or hell.”

With her control, Lily, she wrote A Search for the Truth (1967), Here and Hereafter (1968) and Companions Along the Way (1970). Then Arthur Ford showed up in 1971 after crossing over, resulting in A World Beyond: A Startling Message from the Eminent Psychic Arthur Ford from Beyond the Grave.

They then went on as a team to write Born to Heal (1973), Companions Along the Way (1974), The World Before (1976), Strangers Among Us (1978), Threshold to Tomorrow (1983), Aliens Among Us (1985), Herald of a New Age (1986) and The World to Come (1999). She crossed in June, 2001, and some people profess to be receiving messages from her, but none of those books are breakaway successes.

As we saw in the previous post, this is a classic case of how a top-notch medium crosses over and immediately becomes the control to an outstanding medium. The important thing, however, is not how it happened but that it happened at all! That is the payoff – that Arthur Ford went straight from being Ruth’s Earth Plane mentor to Soul Plane mentor without missing a beat. And their relationship across the veil lasted 30 years until she herself crossed over.

How cool is that?

Allison DuBois, Psychic Medium

I’m currently reading yet another fascinating book, We Are Their Heaven, by Allison DuBois, the inspiration for the TV show Medium. The book contains dozens of accounts of sittings she’s done for clients over the years, but what makes this book special and unique is that it also includes accounts by the sitters, talking about how accurate was the information in the sitting, so we get both sides of the story. (It would have been even more fascinating to have had accounts from those on the Other Side. Are you listening, Allison?)

One such story involves a Mark Ireland, his father, Richard, who was arguably this country’s most famous psychic medium of the last 50 years, and Mark’s son, Brandon, who crossed over in January, 2004, suffering an asthma attack while hiking. A few months later, Mark had a sitting with Allison, and Brandon showed up with enough evidential material to convince his dad that it really was his son. Then Mark’s father came in and stole the show, with tons more evidence, so there were three generations in that sitting. It’s heartwarming that Richard had taken his grandson under his wing immediately on the latter’s crossing, and how they both showed up together. Cool.

Mark Ireland has created the web site http://drrichardireland.com/ to commemorate the memories of his father, Richard, and his son, Brandon (see http://drrichardireland.com/bio.html for the father and http://drrichardireland.com/brandon.html for the son). Mark has also written the book Soul Shift that talks about his eventful life. (I’ve just ordered the book and will blog about it in a few weeks.) On Mark’s web site page dealing with his book, we read: “Richard was a famous psychic medium who counseled celebrities, appeared on television programs, gave lectures, and demonstrated his abilities worldwide. Richard Ireland's activities even included classified government research work involving psychic phenomena.”

    

The above photos show Richard with Mae West, and Brandon. On the web site page titled “Richard’s Message,” Mark wrote, “If Richard Ireland had any single message that he wanted to share with the world, it was that, ‘There is no death and there are no dead.’”

In her book, Allison remarks on how much easier it is to work with those on the Soul Plane who were psychics while on Earth. Otherwise, she adds, “It’s like pulling mud through a colander.” This reminds me of the story of Arthur Ford, who brought in Houdini’s Secret Code for his wife after crossing, and when Ford crossed over, he became control for psychic medium Ruth Montgomery. The next post tells that fascinating story.

When Is Life Not Life?

Turning to the other end of the Earth experience, on August 27, NBC’s Today show raised an interesting question. When a couple trying to get pregnant uses in vitro fertilization, what happens to the unused frozen embryos if a couple no longer needs them or gets divorced? The options are:

1. Freeze indefinitely. But if divorce happens, a custody battle could ensue.
2. Donate to another couple anonymously. In this case, genetically identical kids would be born to strangers, so someone could end up marrying their own brother or sister without knowing it. Interesting.
3. Allow the embryos to thaw and discard. This option and the next one may present an ethical dilemma for some people. Is an embryo alive? Is discarding one the same as murder?
4. Donate to research.

To answer that question, we need to know what an embryo is. Basically, it’s a fertilized egg with the potential for become a live birth … if it implants in uterus. Once that implantation happens, the woman is pregnant. But is that life yet?

No, not until the soul who has the spirit agreement with the parents shows up, deems that the fetus is viable, and starts interacting with it, usually in the 3^rd or 4^th month. To me, once a soul fragment shows up to claim a body, then if the pregnancy should terminate for any reason, that soul fragment would continue its existence on the Soul Plane. And THAT to me is the definition of life, often called the ‘quickening.’ So an embryo is a loooooong way from being alive.

This means that first trimester abortion is not murder. By my definition, until the soul shows up, the fetus is just tissue, so abortion is a bit like having your tonsils or appendix removed. No biggie.

What’s your opinion?

Yikes! A Lesson from ... Geese?

If you’ve ever seen geese heading south for the winter, you’ll have seen them flying along in a V-formation. Know why? First, it conserves their energy. Each bird flies slightly above the bird in front of him, resulting in a reduction of wind resistance. And as each bird flaps its wings, it creates uplift for the bird immediately following. By flying in a V-formation, the flock almost doubles its flying range compared with if each bird flew by itself. When the lead goose gets tired, it rotates back in the set and another goose moves up to fly point. If a goose gets tired and falls out of formation, two other geese fall out with that goose and follow it down so that after a rest, the three can make their own little V-formation.

This is a wonderful example of love and compassion in the animal kingdom. In the same way, if someone is grieving a loss, we can be the wind under their wings, and offer whatever support they need. And who knows? Maybe one day, the roles will be reversed and they’ll be the wind under yours.

When someone is grieving, many times they need to talk their feelings out. They don’t need you to ‘fix’ them but just listen as they emote about their loss. Conversely, if the person in grief is bottling their emotions up, offer to be a sounding board and give them permission, in fact, encourage them, to talk their grief out. Talking grief out is good therapy because it keeps the bereaved close to their loved one who crossed

Now, not everyone is comfortable listening about death, but the other person may really need it. Think what’s going on for them, having just lost a loved one or beloved pet and are probably a mess, so reach out and give them a lift. After all, just like the geese, we’re all in this together, and it’s the combined energy of all of us that keeps us flying.

Spread those wings!

Big Brother and Big Pharm Are Looking Out For You … Not

(A little off-topic but I have to do this)

The CDC and FDA recently proclaimed that the side effects of the HPV vaccine Gardasil are about what they expected. Adverse effects (including a whopping 32 deaths!), they say, are right in line with other vaccines. So this particular vaccine is only killing the same number of people other vaccines do. Well that’s okay then.

According to the August 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, there’s an alarming rate of side-effects such as fainting and blood clots. And the accompanying editorial that says the vaccine's benefit to women is “uncertain.” And then consider the shocking fact that the rate of cervical cancer in the United States is actually lower (at 3.0 cases per 100,000) than the incidence of adverse effects from the very vaccine that's supposed to protect against it (4.3 per 100,000 doses).

The same issue of JAMA also reveals the shady marketing practices used to push the vaccine. Medical associations receive Big Pharma payoffs for “educational campaigns,” and politicians are paid off to mandate that schools require the vaccine. The American College Health Association (ACHA), the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology (ASCCP), and the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists (SGO) all accepted money from Merck and then subsequently promoted the vaccine using practically the same strategy as Merck's marketing department. Merck paid $199,000 to the ACHA, $300,000 to the ASCCP, and $250,000 to the SGO. Of course, this is a fraction of the cost of even one TV commercial for Gardasil. So, for less than $1 million, three medical associations peddled away their reputations and legitimacy. But who really pays? The young women of America.

Want more? During the Vioxx class action hearings, we learned that Merck paid the publishing house Elsevier (owner of The Lancet and over 500 other medical and scientific titles) to create six fake journals made to look like scientific journals that were strongly favorable to Merck in their articles.  At the height of the Vioxx controversy, Merck’s professed corporate policy was to “seek out [dissenting doctors] and destroy them where they live.” 

Nice. Be careful out there. It gets worse.

Half of Kids Given Flu Drug Have Side Effects

More than half of children taking the swine flu drug Tamiflu experience side effects such as nausea and vomiting. Studies of 103 children showed that over 50% percent had one or more side effects from the medication. The most common side effect was nausea (29 percent), followed by stomach pain or cramps (20 percent) and problems sleeping (12 percent). Other effects include vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, dizziness, fatigue, coughs, convulsions, delirium or delusions, and death. Almost one in five had a “neuropsychiatric side effect,” such as inability to think clearly, nightmares and “behaving strangely.”

Tamiflu is not very effective and it’s certainly not safe either. In fact, Japan actually bans Tamiflu for children in 2007 because of the steep risks.

So, let me get this right. Tamiflu is a drug that can kill you, is banned in Japan, has side effects worse than the flu itself, costs over $100 a dose and at best gives you only a few hours of symptom relief. And there’s growing evidence that the H1N1 flu strain is becoming resistant to it. Who are the winners here, then? Only two – Big Pharm, of course, which is raking in billions for something that just doesn’t work. And a shadowy group of people who want to control us by generating a lot of fear, first fear of the flu itself, and second, fear of the vaccine and its ugly components. So, ignore the fear and stay away from that shot.

What Can You Do?

Boost your immune health and fight off flu viruses naturally. And here’s how:

1.       Get plenty of Vitamin D. Optimizing your vitamin D levels is one of the absolute best strategies for avoiding infections of ALL kinds. And don’t forget the sunlight.

2.       Eat healthy. Sugar impedes your immune system, so avoid it  like the plague.

3.       Rest and dump stress. If your body is overly fatigued, it will be harder for it to fight the flu. And stress knocks out your immune system, making you less able to fight off the flu and other illness.

4.       Wash your hands often, and use those disinfectant wipes at the supermarkets.

 

Be well.

The Kennedy Gang Together Again

Ted Kennedy accomplished more than anyone else in recent history for causes that Americans care about: fighting poverty, health care reform, women’s rights and civil rights. So is his work over? My guess is that it’s just beginning.

Brother Joseph left first in WWII when his plane exploded. Then John was assassinated in 1963 in Dallas and Robert in 1968 in Los Angeles. And Ted crossed on August 26, aged 77, and the only brother to die of natural causes. The four Kennedy brothers are all together on the Other Side, and may well end up as a team over there working with us down here. So, how does that work? For answers, we turn to Msgr. Benson and the books he channeled from the Other Side during 1947 to 1953. (You can acquire these remarkable books from my site www.deathwithoutfear.com. During his guided tour through the various areas of the Soul Plane, he was told repeatedly of how specialists over there work with those on the Earth Plane.

For example, spirit doctors research new cures and medical procedures, and visit Earth Plane doctors while the latter are asleep. When they wake up, they just ‘know’ something new. Or a skilled surgeon who crosses over may guide the hands of younger surgeons during delicate operations.

In the field of science, Other Side scientists such as Thomas Edison continue their work and have all manner of new stuff for us. When they decide that we have the wisdom to not weaponize any new technology and kill each other off, they will drop the idea into Earth Plane scientists’ heads.

Now while on the Earth Plane, the four Kennedys were all about making the world a better place, and I see crossing over making no difference at all. And there plenty of ways they could continue their work:

• Influencing corrupt politicians to straighten up by having their conscience tweaked, or failing that, make sure the corruption is exposed.  
• If the four feel that, say, a Senate vote should go a certain way, they could ‘adjust the thinking’ of the senators.
• Drop new ideas or ways of doing things into the minds of receptive lawmakers.
• Warn of impending crises, be they political, financial, or natural.

One thing is for sure. Whatever they do, there will be no element of self-interest in their contribution. From the Other Side, there is only altruism and service to others for the highest good, whether at the level of the individual, the nation or even the planet.

Service to others, both those on the Soul Plane and those on the Earth Plane is one of the big three activities. The other two are learning and growing in the many Halls of Learning and universities, and fun and relaxation. So as for “Being laid to rest,” forget it. We’re way too busy for that.

And how about that line several miles long of people who showed up to file by the flag-draped casket containing a dead body “to pay their respects.” Ignoring the man’s spirit while focusing on his worn-out, broken-down, discarded physical body seems pretty pointless to me, but they feel they have to do it for some reason. Oh well.

But for now, I just honor a man who left this world a better place than he found it, and was the first to admit that he was not without flaws … just like the rest of us.

Right on, Ted.

Jumping Marilyn Monroe’s Bones

Here’s a crazy story that tells you it’s the August silly season and the news industry is desperate for something to write about.

When Marilyn Monroe died of a drug overdose ruled a “probable suicide” (yeah, right … can anyone say ‘FBI hit’) at the age of 36 in 1962, she was interred in a crypt at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village (see photo below). Marilyn’s upstairs neighbor is one Richard Poncher, who bought the crypt in 1982 from Yankee star player Joe DiMaggio during his divorce from Monroe. The Yankee Clipper had planned to have his bones buried on top of Monroe's bones … at least until their romance turned sour. When Poncher crossed over in 1986, he stipulated that he be buried face down, so he could gaze down at the film star for all eternity. (Incidentally, in 1992, Hugh Heffner of Playboy fame bought the crypt just to the left of Marilyn for $75,000, saying, “Spending eternity next to Marilyn is just too sweet to pass up.”)

However, Poncher’s widow, Elsie, is now strapped for cash and put the crypt up for auction on eBay, starting bidding at $500,000. Bidding closed on August 24, topping out at a staggering $4.6 million. (As per their policy, eBay will not disclose the identity of the winner.) So, poor Mr. Poncher won’t get his dying wish of eternity, and is probably turning in his grave about now, so to speak.

Now regular readers of this blog will know what I’m going to say next. Ridiculous! Outrageous! Idiotic! Why would anyone pay $4.6 million to park their old bones above Marilyn Monroe’s old bones, which neither of them will have any contact with after their crossing. That money could do some real good instead if given to, say, a no-kill animal shelter.

Yes, I know we’re dealing with young souls here, and they don’t know any better, but two things bother me about this story: (1) such over-identification with the physical body is unhealthy and will really cause problems in later years when the body begins to look its age and start to fail, and (2) people using a large sum of money frivolously are missing a great opportunity to do some real good, and will regret it when they have their life review.

How do I know we’re talking about young souls here? Because other soul ages have different focuses than making pots of money. Baby Souls are still learning their way around the Earth Plane, so haven’t gotten their game together yet. Mature Souls focus on emotional expression, so their lives look like soap operas, and Old Souls are either too tired to too jaded to bother amassing a fortune, even though we could if we wished. That leaves Young Souls, whose motto is, “He who dies with the most toys wins,” and many of them end up with more money than God, such as Donald Trump and Aristotle Onassis.

Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox … at least for now, but I’ll be back!

The Kennedy Gang Together Again

Ted Kennedy accomplished more than anyone else in recent history for causes that Americans care about: fighting poverty, health care reform, women’s rights and civil rights. So is his work over? My guess is that it’s just beginning.

Brother Joseph left first in WWII when his plane exploded. Then John was assassinated in 1963 in Dallas and Robert in 1968 in Los Angeles. And Ted crossed on August 26, aged 77, and the only brother to die of natural causes. The four Kennedy brothers are all together on the Other Side, and may well end up as a team over there working with us down here. So, how does that work? For answers, we turn to Msgr. Benson and the books he channeled from the Other Side during 1947 to 1953. (You can acquire these remarkable books from my site www.deathwithoutfear.com. During his guided tour through the various areas of the Soul Plane, he was told repeatedly of how specialists over there work with those on the Earth Plane.

For example, spirit doctors research new cures and medical procedures, and visit Earth Plane doctors while the latter are asleep. When they wake up, they just ‘know’ something new. Or a skilled surgeon who crosses over may guide the hands of younger surgeons during delicate operations.

In the field of science, Other Side scientists such as Thomas Edison continue their work and have all manner of new stuff for us. When they decide that we have the wisdom to not weaponize any new technology and kill each other off, they will drop the idea into Earth Plane scientists’ heads.

Now while on the Earth Plane, the four Kennedys were all about making the world a better place, and I see crossing over making no difference at all. And there plenty of ways they could continue their work:

• Influencing corrupt politicians to straighten up by having their conscience tweaked, or failing that, make sure the corruption is exposed.  
• If the four feel that, say, a Senate vote should go a certain way, they could ‘adjust the thinking’ of the senators.
• Drop new ideas or ways of doing things into the minds of receptive lawmakers.
• Warn of impending crises, be they political, financial, or natural.

One thing is for sure. Whatever they do, there will be no element of self-interest in their contribution. From the Other Side, there is only altruism and service to others for the highest good, whether at the level of the individual, the nation or even the planet.

Service to others, both those on the Soul Plane and those on the Earth Plane is one of the big three activities. The other two are learning and growing in the many Halls of Learning and universities, and fun and relaxation. So as for “Being laid to rest,” forget it. We’re way too busy for that.

And how about that line several miles long of people who showed up to file by the flag-draped casket containing a dead body “to pay their respects.” Ignoring the man’s spirit while focusing on his worn-out, broken-down, discarded physical body seems pretty pointless to me, but they feel they have to do it for some reason. Oh well.

But for now, I just honor a man who left this world a better place than he found it, and was the first to admit that he was not without flaws … just like the rest of us.

Right on, Ted.

Reincarnational Waves

The previous post discussed an interesting phenomenon where a group of souls put down incarnations at the same time in history to play out a ‘big theme’ of some kind, such as Lincoln’s assassination. And we saw how the same group of souls came together again a century later to play out Kennedy’s assassination.

A few years ago, when I lived in Lake Elsinore in Southern California, I read a book titled Mission to Millboro and got to know the author, Marge Reider, who lived close by me. Marge is a hypnotherapist and found that several of her local clients were regressing to a Civil War lifetime where they lived in Millboro, Virginia, which was behind Confederate lines. They’d worked on an underground railroad that smuggled Union soldiers and escaped slaves to safety in the North.

As soon as word got out in Lake Elsinore, more people came forward, saying, “Me, too.” Pretty soon, Marge had assembled quite a large group of railroad workers. She organized a trip to Millboro, and documented in the sequel, Return to Millboro. Both books are great reads and I totally recommend them.

Then, to her surprise, Marge discovered that the Millboro lifetimes weren’t the first time the group had been together. Back around 300 AD, a band of Celts fled Scotland to Ireland to escape slaughter by the Roman Army. The history books actually confirm that such an event actually happened.

The important thing about these waves is that not only do we plan our lives individually but every century or so, we also gang up with dozens or hundreds of other souls to play out a big theme. It may be small, such as the Millboro railroad, or huge such as the Renaissance. Either way, the key word is ‘plan.’ Your life isn’t just happening to you – you planned it in meticulous detail. Having done that, your job now is to live it to the full. It’s essential that you ‘live on purpose,’ which is impossible if you don’t even know your soul’s purpose, so you need to figure out what that is. And if that means consulting a psychic to talk to your guides or higher self, go for it. (For the one I use, go to www.cheryljjohnson.com.)

Otherwise, you may cross over and kick yourself for not knowing your soul’s purpose in coming down here, but got lost or didn’t realize how incredibly close you came pulling it off and making that life a total success.  

So you know what you’ve gotta do!

Reincarnation in the White House: Part Two

(The previous post talks about the strong linkages between the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy, and postulates that they are incarnations of the same soul. The source for this current source disagrees. I suggest you read Part One first to get the background.)

This post uses excerpts from Alive 5 Times, by Allen Eastman, and on which I worked in 2003. The previous post looked at a web site that listed the similarities between the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy, and the site jumped to the conclusion that they were incarnations of the same soul, whereas Eastman’s research reveals a very different truth:

Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865) to Charles Lindbergh (1902 – 1974)

In 1865, unlike today, many people strongly disliked Pres. Abraham Lincoln. Some newspapers caricatured him as being ugly and ungainly. Tired of the constant criticism and bickering, the soul who was Lincoln dreamed of a pleasanter future … and he got one. Reincarnating as the boyishly handsome Charles Lindbergh, he achieved life-long fame and the love of millions of people. As such, he received a well-deserved reward for a very difficult lifetime as Lincoln.

Col. Samuel Cox to John F. Kennedy (1917 – 1963)

Most people remember Pres. Kennedy’s civil rights record as one of supporting African-Americans. Such was not the case in his previous incarnation. As Col. Samuel Cox, a wealthy Maryland plantation owner, he supported secession and slavery, and acted as a secret agent for the South.

Very upset with Lincoln’s policies on slavery, Col. Cox became one of the leaders who supported the plot to kidnap Lincoln but was not aware of the plans to assassinate him. Col. Cox was accused of helping Booth escape into Virginia and was briefly jailed.

In order to balance the karmic events that he had set into motion, Col. Cox reincarnated as John F. Kennedy to experience assassination first-hand. Oddly enough, Thomas Jones, Col. Cox’s relative, reincarnated as H.L. Hunt, Kennedy’s adversary, in order to play out a revised version of their old karmic drama of ‘How to kill a President.’ They held ‘starring roles’ in both of those dramas.

Andrew Johnson to Lyndon Johnson

The soul who was Andrew Johnson reincarnated later as Lyndon Johnson. We find some striking similarities between the lives of the two men. Contemporaries accused both men of having been a part of each respective assassination and of organizing the cover-ups that followed. Both were tactless and impatient, and both were one-term presidents. Because Andrew Johnson was not accepted or effective as president, he was driven from office. Deeply resentful, he wanted another try at it. As Lyndon Johnson, he was effective but, as before, was not well liked or fully accepted. He was driven from office by his Vietnam policies.

Channeled sources indicated that both men had advance knowledge of the impending plot and ‘looked the other way’ in order to further their own self-interests in becoming president. Choosing to undertake some very unusual and difficult lessons, this soul experienced becoming president twice through assassination.

Mary Lincoln (1818 – 1882) to Jacqueline Kennedy (1929 – 1994)

In 1865, Mary Todd Lincoln, sitting an arm’s length away when Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater, cradled the dying president in her arms. In an odd repeat of history, during her next lifetime as Jacqueline Kennedy, she also cradled President Kennedy, dying after he was shot in Dealey Plaza.

In addition, as Mary Lincoln, she was considered homely and socially ill at ease. Because of the criticism of others, she developed the desire to be beautiful, well-bred, and well-thought-of. Her desire was fulfilled as the gracious Jacqueline Kennedy.

Mary Todd Lincoln became very distraught after Lincoln’s death. Never recovering from the incident, she was hospitalized in an asylum near the end of her life. On the other hand, the same soul, as Jackie, became a role model for others who looked up to her for her handling of the difficult and traumatic events in her life.

Eastman’s book lists about 20 more souls who were players in both assassinations, including Allan Pinkerton, head of the detective agency investigating the Lincoln assassination incarnating as J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI for decades.

So, we have two sources delineating the similarities between the two cases, which are truly amazing, but arriving at different conclusions. Which one is right? Having edited Alive 5 Times and knowing how rigorous the author was in relying on three sources for everything he wrote, my money is on him. And intuitively, it just ‘feels’ right.

This may be an example of an ‘incarnational wave,’ whereby dozens or hundreds of souls participate in a defining moment in history, and decide to incarnate together again a few centuries later for another moment. So they take the script down off the shelf, dust it off, and tweak it to include new stuff such as the advent of television and motor vehicles.

Another wave I’m familiar with occurred recently in Southern California, and is the subject of the next post.

Until, play nice with each other. And please, weigh in with your opinion as to which of the two versions is most likely.

Reincarnation in the White House: Part One

This post and the next are about a fascinating topic – the eerie similarities between the assassinations of two presidents: Lincoln and Kennedy. The posts draw on two separate sources that draw very different conclusions about Lincoln and Kennedy and their reincarnation links.

The first source is a web site that discusses the notion that the same soul incarnated both as Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy (www.near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation08.html). The site offers about a dozen pages of similarities between the two men and their deaths that are quite thought-provoking.

For example, both studied law, served in the military, captained boats, were elected to Congress in ’46, and were elected president in ’60. Lincoln had a close friend named William Graham and Kennedy had Billy Graham. Lincoln’s private secretary was named John and Kennedy’s secretary was named Lincoln. Both were related to the Attorney-General of the day, and were friends with an Illinois Democrat named Adlai Stevenson.

Both were assassinated in public in the company of another couple. Both assassins were known by all three of their names, were both born in ’39, and were in their mid-twenties at the time. Booth ran from Ford’s Theater (where the concession operator was named Burroughs) to a warehouse, whereas Oswald ran from the book warehouse to a theater (where a man named Burroughs operated the concession stand).

 

Both spouses married as 24-yeear-old brunettes from prominent families. Both were known for chic dress sense, and spoke French fluently, and cradled their dying husbands in their arms. (The next post contradicts this by saying Mary Lincoln was homely and socially awkward.)

The above just scratches the surface, so see the website for more. I’ve encountered this scenario before. A few years ago, I worked on a book titled Alive 5 Times by Allen Eastman. It details five historic lifetimes the author’s soul lived, including a Native American girl caught in the big 1700 tsunami in the Pacific Northwest and Confederate soldier killed by General Custer at Appomattox. While researching the chapter dealing with the latter, the author encountered some fascinating material about the eerie similarities between the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations, and supports the notion that the two are strongly linked psychically. The next post will go into this in more depth but Eastman comes to a very different conclusion about who incarnated as who by refuting the Lincoln/Kennedy soul link.

Knowing Who You Are Could Save Your Life

The previous post titled Kyle’s Story told of how cruel kids can be to other kids who may be slightly different. Here’s a story of how they can also be cruel to themselves.

At age 13, Katie began the practice of ‘cutting,’ and carved the words stupid, filthy, worthless, fat, and inadequate into her body to reflect how she felt about herself. She even had the word ‘worthless’ tattooed onto her chest. But when she poured boiling water over her body and had to be hospitalized, she realized she’d gone too far.

Katie’s story will be featured in the September issue of 17 Magazine, and a recent poll of its readers revealed that over one half of them had deliberately harmed themselves. Amazingly, these are attractive young women, but they feel under such pressure to be ‘perfect’ that they feel inadequate and seek to punish themselves for being ‘imperfect.’ Many admit to feeling numb and cut just to feel something. Princess Diana is the most notable cutter, especially when her relationship with Prince Charles was at its lowest ebb.

It affects women and girls more than males because they tend to internalize their pain at not living up to their high expectations of themselves. And where do these expectations come from? Women’s and girls’ magazines that portray airbrushed perfection, leading to shame at not looking like that. In fact, today (August 14), NBC’s Today show took Self magazine to task for having their lead article talking about being okay with your body, but airbrushed about 100 pounds off the pop star they featured on the front cover. The managing editor justified this by saying that the singer had looked like that at one time. The reason body acceptance is so important is that body rejection can lead to suicide among teenage girls, so parents should take cutting seriously as a symptom of that.

One of the things I see as a root cause of cutting is low self-esteem, one of the cornerstones of which is knowing who you are and liking, if not loving, that person you are. So where do you go to find out who you truly are? Well, there are three places kids should not go:

1. Organized religions, for to them, you’re a worthless, miserable sinner, and should grovel before their gods and hope they will forgive you for even existing.
2. Madison Avenue and their magazines, portraying all those airbrushed models with their perfect skin, teeth and hair.
3. Their peer groups, for they are just as scared as you are, and you’re all raising the bar on each other, so of course you all fail the tests.

You go to the one source who knows exactly who you are and loves you unconditionally, because it created you – your own soul. So how do you communicate with your soul? If you don’t feel up to direct conversation, use a good psychic as a go-between. (My psychic, Cheryl, gives readings by phone, so you don’t need to come to Las Vegas, although why not? (Go to www.cheryljjohnson.com.)

However you learn of your own magnificence, once you do, self-love is inevitable, and you couldn’t possibly carve up the flesh of someone you love.

Let’s face it … an Earth plane life is as hard as it gets, and you win just by showing up down here. You’re already a hero in the eyes of the Soul Plane, so look there for feedback on how you’re doing, not to your peer group, who will give you a hard time just so they can feel superior. But they’re just whistling past the graveyard.

If you’re a parent, you could show this post to your children, because what they go through every day at school is nothing like what we went through. It’s vital that your kids – all kids, in fact – know how magnificent they are at the soul level (which is perfect) as opposed to the personality level, which may be a work-in-progress. And it’s vital that they get in touch with their soul level and let it guide their lives. Whenever I am faced with a major decision, I always ask for such guidance through my psychic, or if I come to a conscious decision, I always ask if it’s in alignment with the life plan I made before incarnating.

Finally, it’s vital that kids (and all of us, in fact) stop looking outside for approval and acceptance, and approve and accept themselves. After all, their opinion is the only one that matters. Looking outside for acceptance and approval can lead to cutting, and maybe even suicide … and that is never an option in soul’s plan.

It’s tough being a kid today, so here’s to you!

As a postscript to this post added on August 24, the August issue of Glamour Magazine scored huge kudos by publishing the following real photo of a real woman – model Lizzie Miller. You can see the page yourself at: www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/2009/08/what-everyone-but-you-sees-about-your-body.

Photographer Athena Chang says: "When you focus on the body parts you love, your ‘flaws’ fade away.”She adds,“I shoot nudes, and looking at a roll of film frame by frame, I can literally see the moment when a subject has forgotten about what she considers her problem areas. She’s stopped slouching, rounding her shoulders or even posing. To help her get to that point, I ask what she’s most proud of—her arms, legs, breasts, whatever—and I shoot it. Then we look at those shots together and, more often than not, when she sees them, she comes up with other things she likes. Of course, you don’t need to take nude photos to start feeling better. Look in the mirror and focus your eyes and thoughts on what you like. Do this once a day and you’ll be amazed at how your ‘flaws’ become a tiny portion of your beautiful whole.”

 

 

 

So What Does It All Mean?

The dozen or so previous posts have discussed the hey-day of the Spiritualist Movement, and how completely convincing is the evidence brought in by the truly great mediums such as Leonora Piper, Gladys Leonard and Eileen Garrett.

The posts have also established that whether something happened in 1909 or 2009 doesn’t matter – it’s still relevant today because the nature of the Soul Plane doesn’t change, nor our means of getting there. If you crossed over on the Titanic or fell overboard today on a cruise to Alaska, crossing over is the same basic process. So what was true back then is just as true today.

So what does this all mean to your day-to-day life? It means that our loved ones on the Other Side are around us a lot (while respecting our privacy, of course). Thus they are intimately involved in our lives and therefore on call when we need help. And they can pull off miracles, as we saw in the post about how the deceased mother of John and Carolyn brought them together after decades of separation (see the post A Medium’s Puzzle Solved).

So, if you’re missing loved ones who are on the Other Side, you can go through your day confident that they can see, hear and love you, even though their bodies are vibrating at too high a frequency for you to see them. Talk to them as you go about your day, and watch for synchronicities in your life that tell you they’re at work.

If you’ve lost a parent, know he or she is over there, enjoying health, vigor and youthfulness, as they age-regress to when they were at their peak. Or if you’ve lost a child, know he or she is being well cared for either by relatives already over there or in a special children’s village, where they will age-progress until they too are at their peak, where they will stop and wait for you.

So have no fear about them. And forget grieving, for that’s self-indulgent and really does your loved one a great disservice by holding them down so they can’t get on with their learning and growth … which by the way is the really big deal over there. Every time you go into grief down here, it’s like a bucket of iced water dumped on their head … so you both then feel bad. Life is too short for you to waste it in grief, so celebrate the time you had together instead. You’ll both feel a whole lot better.

And if you’re in the least bit worried about your crossing, forget that too, for there’s nothing to worry about. (However, if you’re a serial killer or child abductor, be afraid. Be very afraid because it won’t go well for you over there … at least initially, until you’ve done some serious review and healing. ’Nuf said.) But if you’re a regular Joe or Jane, who tries to live by the Golden Rule and do some good down here, things will go well for you on the Soul Plane, and you’ll kick yourself for each second spent in fear.

Got the picture? It’s all good!

Debunking the Debunkers: Part Five

Here is the very biased entry about Allison DuBois (who I mentioned in the previous post) from Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. Let’s take a look at an excerpt:

 “Allison DuBois (born January 24, 1972) is a self-proclaimed medium. DuBois has claimed she uses her psychic abilities to help law enforcement agencies across the United States solve crimes. Her alleged powers as a medium were tested by Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona. Skeptics doubt that she has any supernatural abilities.”

Note the pejorative terms, ‘self-proclaimed’ and ‘alleged.’ Note also that in Wikipedia, we can follow the link to the word ‘skeptic’ and read, “Skeptics do not assert that unusual claims should be automatically rejected out of hand on a priori grounds. Rather they argue that claims of paranormal or anomalous phenomena should be critically examined and that such claims would require extraordinary evidence in their favor before they could be accepted as having validity.” These folk are not skeptics but pseudo-skeptics, who do not even bother to investigate, but just remark, “I don’t believe it so it’s not true.”

I would like to hear what the pseudo-skeptics would say about the previous post that talks about a middle-aged brother and sister who had been estranged for decades and “by coincidence” just happened to arrange back-to-back sittings with the same medium. What are the odds of that happening, especially when the brother had to drive to Florida from New York, where there are lots of mediums he could have seen?

I have a friend who has started seeing small lights moving around her home. She used to use the word ‘amazing’ to describe such phenomena, but I’ve gotten her into the habit of saying, “Amazing is the new normal.” With that level of acceptance, the lights are now a routine part of her life and respond with jerky movements when she talks to or telepaths with to them.

Welcome to the new normal! Bring it on!

A Medium’s Puzzle Solved

I’m currently reading Suzanne Giesemann’s book The Priest and the Medium in which she tells the true story of psychic medium B. Anne Gehman, and her account of an incident in Anne’s life is highly relevant to this blog, since it shows how busy we are on the Other Side.

One day, a woman named Carolyn called Anne to set up an appointment for a sitting as soon as possible. Anne had just had a cancellation for that afternoon, so she said, “Sure, two o’clock today.”

Carolyn showed up, along with a friend named Sarah who also wanted a session. Anne said she had a 3 pm appointment, but would see Sarah after that.

In Carolyn’s session, her mother came in, who Anne identified by the name ‘Dot,’ short for Dorothy. After a few more relatives dropped by, Carolyn asked, “Do you see my brother Jack?”

Anne probed the Soul Plane looking for Jack but got nothing, so she told Carolyn that her brother was still alive. Next, Anne was shown a red-painted Victoriana house, which Carolyn identified as her childhood home.

At the end of the session, Carolyn and Sarah went off to wait on the porch while Anne saw her 3 pm client, a middle-aged guy named John, who had driven down to Florida from New York just to see her. What happened in the reading really puzzled Anne. Carolyn’s mother, Dot, and the other relatives from Carolyn’s reading showed up again. Then she saw the same Victorian house. Anne wondered what they were doing by hanging around John.

Out of the blue, John said, “I’m hoping you can help me find my sister. I’ve spent years looking for her.” Suddenly, it all came together for Anne – the same relatives and same house – and a brother and sister both looking for each other.

“Come with me,” Anne said, leading John to where Carolyn and Sarah waited. “Carolyn, meet your brother,” she said. Predictably, big hugs, and lots of tears and smiles ensued.

What’s truly amazing about this story is the mother getting her two estranged kids together. First, she had to: (1) get son John in New York to hear about Anne in Florida, and (2) impel him to have a sitting with her even though it meant the long drive from New York. That alone was a huge accomplishment.

Next, she had to impel daughter Carolyn to want a sitting with Anne, who lived in the next town. Now we come to the true finesse. She had to get the 2 pm client to cancel and get Carolyn to call almost immediately to grab that spot before anyone else got it. And, she had to get Carolyn to bring Sarah along, so that they would have to hang around until 4 pm, while John had his session.

After all that, the business of actually showing up in the siblings’ sessions was anticlimactic … and a snap with such a gifted medium as Anne.

All in a day’s work on the Soul Plane, but it makes a mockery of the phrase: “Rest in Peace.” With 24/7 daylight and no need for sleep, the Afterlife is anything but restful.

Neat story, eh? Kinda heartwarming. And imagine the mother’s joy at reuniting her estranged children.

(BTW, love the book. Reckon it’s time for you to take another to the Amazon. The Foreword is written by Allison Dubois, of NBC’s Medium fame, and the subject of the next post.)

Debunking the Debunkers: Part Four

In 1983, when our children had only 10 vaccine injections before attending school, the incidence of autism was 1 in 10,000. Today, kids have 24 shots by their first birthday and 36 by school age, and the incidence is 1 in 150. In England, with its more aggressive shot schedule, it’s a staggering 1 in 58.

The reason? The so-called adjuvants (immune system irritants) such as squalene cause the body to attack itself, and preservatives such as mercury and aluminum wipe out a child’s immune system. While there is a mountain of evidence linking these substances with autism, the drug companies are deaf to it and steadfastly claim no proven link, while backed up by their FDA lapdog. Meanwhile, they quote from their own studies that they bought and paid for, corruptly showing no relationship between shots and autism, leaving them free to make huge profits by poisoning our children when they are at their most vulnerable. (Note that squalene is perfectly safe when processed through the digestive system, but an autoimmune system disaster when injected directly into the body because it triggers the body into attacking its own tissues.)

This is almost a perfect parallel with proving survival of death. Through mediums such as Leonora Piper, Eileen Garrett, and Gladys Leonard, the evidence for survival is overwhelming, but the debunkers dismiss it as ‘anecdotal,’ and not replicable by others. How stupid! A sitting with a medium is an event where the energies at play will never, ever be repeated. That moment in time for sitters, medium and ‘visitors,’ and their combination of energy in that time/space, is unique and non-repeatable.

Now ask the debunkers for their evidence that we do not survive death and watch their reaction – evasion, changing the subject, personal attacks on you and your integrity, and the blanket denial, “I don’t believe it’s possible, so it isn’t.” That’s the nonsense the Catholic Church used for centuries to deny the truth that Earth orbits the Sun, but in the end, Galileo’s assertion became scientific fact and the Church became irrelevant.

Same with plate tectonics. When Alfred Wegener first proposed the idea in 1912, he and his idea were laughed down by senior academics, who would have to revise what they were teaching. However, those new to the field and without any vested interest saw the obvious truth in it and over a generation, it became scientific fact.

Well, expect this to happen with survival, but hopefully, it won’t take a generation, otherwise millions will continue to cross over in fear. Fortunately, there are lots of us ‘voices in the wilderness’ banging on the drum of, “Yes, we survive death, so what are you going to do about it, because once you know about it, you must prepare for it. You can’t unknow this stuff.”

So, you embark on learning everything you can about crossing over and life on the Other Side. Almost all the books I reference from the Golden Century of Spiritualism (1850 – 1950) are out there on the Internet, so just Google the title. For example, I did this recently, and it’s a great story.

In 1903, an Englishman named W. T. Stead was a great medium and had an American friend named Julia who crossed over. Julia began using Stead’s mediumship to dictate letters to her best friend, another American woman named Ellen. Stead would use automatic writing to bring in Julia’s letters and then mail them to Ellen. In 1909, Stead published the letters, fascinating accounts of Julia’s life on the Soul Plane, in a book titled Letters from Julia. To find the book, I Googled “Letters from Julia” and hit pay dirt – a downloadable PDF, which I reformatted into a Word document.

As a footnote to this story, in 1912, the 63-year-old Stead was headed for the U.S. on business and chose to enjoy the maiden voyage of a new luxury liner – the Titanic! After his crossing, he in turn started channeling back through mediums, including one named Pardoe Woodman.

Ironically, Stead had had two premonitions about shipping disasters. In 1886, he published an article titled How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic, by a Survivor, where a steamer collides with another ship, with high loss of life due to lack of lifeboats. Stead wrote “This is exactly what might take place and will take place if liners are sent to sea short of boats.” In 1892, he published a story called From the Old World to the New, in which a passenger liner,the Majestic, rescues survivors of another ship that collided with an iceberg.

Mediumship Today

Have you ever wondered why mediumship today is a pale reflection of mediumship in the century 1850 – 1950, the period covered by the last dozen posts or so? Why isn’t anyone today writing material of the caliber of Monsignor Benson, who dictated six full-length books through medium Anthony Borgia between 1947 and 1954? (See my web site: www.deathwithoutfear.com to find out all about him and his books.)

In the Epilogue to The Articulate Dead, Michael Tymn suggests some possible reasons:

1. Developing mediumship takes time and patience. The group that ended up channeling Patience Worth experimented with a Ouija board for 11 months before making contact. And Gladys Leonard had 26 unproductive sittings before getting anything. Today, many of us would try to channel for an hour and then go on to the next thing.
2. The mass psyche is less settled nowadays, as we contend with input from the Internet, iPhones, Blackberries, etc., and the fast pace of life, compared with a century ago, when life was simpler, with fewer distractions.
3. It might seem that humans are more spiritual and in tune with the New Age than a century ago, but back then, people were a lot more accepting of contact with the Other Side.

The story of escape artist Harry Houdini illustrates Tymn’s third point. Before his death, Houdini and his wife devised a coded message that only the two of them knew. After his crossing, he successfully transmitted the code back to her through a psychic medium to prove his survival, and the news was a major headline in most every newspaper around the world. Would that happen today?

When Monsignor Benson crossed over in 1914, he realized with horror that the books he’d written condemning mediumship as ‘the work of the devil’ were completely wrong. He wanted to channel a retraction through a medium but his greeter told him that such communication would be dismissed as the very work of the devil he once denounced. His Catholic audience just wasn’t ready to hear that. In fact, he had to wait an entire generation and two World Wars before the world was ready.

As for Tymn’s book as a whole, it’s a definite must-read. You may already know of some the cases, but there are some pretty amazing new ones. Also, I enjoy his journalistic style – straightforward and to the point. So you know what to do next … can anyone say amazon dot com.

Spirit World Corrects the Earth Plane

The Rev. Stainton Moses was a minister of the Church of England and a harsh critic of spiritual phenomena, until one day, some friends dragged him to a sitting in 1889. A deceased friend of his showed up with enough evidential material to make Moses’ beliefs about survival do a one-eighty.

He soon realized that he was a psychic medium and began automatic writing, with an entity calling himself The Doctor as his control. (A control is like a traffic cop on the other side and keeps the spirits in order.) Later, he would work with very high beings called Rector and Imperator, who incarnated in biblical times as the prophet Malachi.

One day as an experiment, Moses asked the Rector to go to a book on his shelves and read a passage. At random, Moses said, “The last paragraph on page 94 of the last book on the second shelf.”Rector quoted the passage as, “I will curtly prove, by a short historical narrative, that popery is a novelty, and has gradually arisen or grown up since the primitive and pure time of Christianity, not only since the apostolic age, but ever since the lamentable union of church and the state by Constantine.”

Moses checked the book and read that exact same passage except Rector used the word ‘account’ instead of ‘narrative.’ When Moses questioned this, Rector replied that the author had meant to use the word ‘account.’ This reminds me of the guided tour Monsignor Benson received, courtesy of Edwin, his greeter (see earlier posts for more on greeters), of the various Halls on the Soul Plane. The Halls contain the originals of all the Earth Plane artwork and books, not merely copies. Once the artist’s soul has created the original, it’s up to the Earth Plane artist to reproduce it down here, and errors often occur in translation.

So, imagine Moses’ initial skepticism about survival and having it overturned in that first sitting, so he ‘got’ the whole survival of death thing. Think how it would change your life. Suddenly, your isolated little life becomes just one pearl on a string of lifetimes, as you learn that your soul has had dozens, if not hundreds, of lifetimes just like yours, so suddenly you’re part of a much larger whole.

And then you learn you’re down here to gather experience on behalf of your soul, who’s gathering it on behalf of the Creator of All That Is. How cool is that?

[For much more information about the many concepts in this post, see my book Death Without Fear, and my web site www.deathwithoutfear.com]

Knowing Who You Are Could Save Your Life

The previous post titled Kyle’s Story told of how cruel kids can be to other kids who may be slightly different. Here’s a story of how they can also be cruel to themselves.

At age 13, Katie began the practice of ‘cutting,’ and carved the words stupid, filthy, worthless, fat, and inadequate into her body to reflect how she felt about herself. She even had the word ‘worthless’ tattooed onto her chest. But when she poured boiling water over her body and had to be hospitalized, she realized she’d gone too far.

Katie’s story will be featured in the September issue of 17 Magazine, and a recent poll of its readers revealed that over one half of them had deliberately harmed themselves. Amazingly, these are attractive young women, but they feel under such pressure to be ‘perfect’ that they feel inadequate and seek to punish themselves for being ‘imperfect.’ Many admit to feeling numb and cut just to feel something. Princess Diana is the most notable cutter, especially when her relationship with Prince Charles was at its lowest ebb.

It affects women and girls more than males because they tend to internalize their pain at not living up to their high expectations of themselves. And where do these expectations come from? Women’s and girls’ magazines that portray airbrushed perfection, leading to shame at not looking like that. In fact, today (August 14), NBC’s Today show took Self magazine to task for having their lead article talking about being okay with your body, but airbrushed about 100 pounds off the pop star they featured on the front cover. The managing editor justified this by saying that the singer had looked like that at one time. The reason body acceptance is so important is that body rejection can lead to suicide among teenage girls, so parents should take cutting seriously as a symptom of that.

One of the things I see as a root cause of cutting is low self-esteem, one of the cornerstones of which is knowing who you are and liking, if not loving, that person you are. So where do you go to find out who you truly are? Well, there are three places kids should not go:

1. Organized religions, for to them, you’re a worthless, miserable sinner, and should grovel before their gods and hope they will forgive you for even existing.
2. Madison Avenue and their magazines, portraying all those airbrushed models with their perfect skin, teeth and hair.
3. Their peer groups, for they are just as scared as you are, and you’re all raising the bar on each other, so of course you all fail the tests.

You go to the one source who knows exactly who you are and loves you unconditionally, because it created you – your own soul. So how do you communicate with your soul? If you don’t feel up to direct conversation, use a good psychic as a go-between. (My psychic, Cheryl, gives readings by phone, so you don’t need to come to Las Vegas, although why not? (Go to www.cheryljjohnson.com.)

However you learn of your own magnificence, once you do, self-love is inevitable, and you couldn’t possibly carve up the flesh of someone you love.

Let’s face it … an Earth plane life is as hard as it gets, and you win just by showing up down here. You’re already a hero in the eyes of the Soul Plane, so look there for feedback on how you’re doing, not to your peer group, who will give you a hard time just so they can feel superior. But they’re just whistling past the graveyard.

If you’re a parent, you could show this post to your children, because what they go through every day at school is nothing like what we went through. It’s vital that your kids – all kids, in fact – know how magnificent they are at the soul level (which is perfect) as opposed to the personality level, which may be a work-in-progress. And it’s vital that they get in touch with their soul level and let it guide their lives. Whenever I am faced with a major decision, I always ask for such guidance through my psychic, or if I come to a conscious decision, I always ask if it’s in alignment with the life plan I made before incarnating.

Finally, it’s vital that kids (and all of us, in fact) stop looking outside for approval and acceptance, and approve and accept themselves. After all, their opinion is the only one that matters. Looking outside for acceptance and approval can lead to cutting, and maybe even suicide … and that is never an option in soul’s plan.

It’s tough being a kid today, so here’s to you!

As a postscript to this post added on August 24, the August issue of Glamour Magazine scored huge kudos by publishing the following real photo of a real woman – model Lizzie Miller. You can see the page yourself at: www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/2009/08/what-everyone-but-you-sees-about-your-body.

Photographer Athena Chang says: "When you focus on the body parts you love, your ‘flaws’ fade away.”She adds,“I shoot nudes, and looking at a roll of film frame by frame, I can literally see the moment when a subject has forgotten about what she considers her problem areas. She’s stopped slouching, rounding her shoulders or even posing. To help her get to that point, I ask what she’s most proud of—her arms, legs, breasts, whatever—and I shoot it. Then we look at those shots together and, more often than not, when she sees them, she comes up with other things she likes. Of course, you don’t need to take nude photos to start feeling better. Look in the mirror and focus your eyes and thoughts on what you like. Do this once a day and you’ll be amazed at how your ‘flaws’ become a tiny portion of your beautiful whole.”

 

 

 

Kyle's Story

 

The following story recently circulated on the Internet, but without naming the author. I reproduce it as is:

 

One day, when I was a freshman in high school, I saw a kid from my class was walking home from school. His name was Kyle. It looked like he was carrying all of his books. I thought to myself, Why would anyone bring home all his books on a Friday? He must really be a nerd.

I had quite a weekend planned (parties and a football game with my friends), so I shrugged my shoulders and went on. As I was walking, I saw a bunch of kids running toward him. They knocked all his books out of his arms and pushed him so he landed in the dirt. His glasses went flying, and landed in the grass about ten feet from him.

He looked up and I saw a terrible sadness in his eyes. My heart went out to him, so I jogged over to him as he crawled around looking for his glasses, and I saw a tear in his eye. As I handed him his glasses, I said, “Those guys are jerks. They really should get lives.”

He looked at me and said, “Hey, thanks,” with a big smile on his face. It was one of those smiles that showed real gratitude.

I helped him pick up his books, and asked him where he lived. As it turned out, he lived near me, so I asked him why I had never seen him before. He said he’d gone to a private school until now. I would have never hung out with a private school kid before. We talked all the way home, and I carried some of his books. He turned out to be a pretty cool kid, so I asked him if he wanted to play a little football with my friends, and he said yes. We hung out all weekend and the more I got to know Kyle, the more I liked him, and my friends thought the same of him.

Monday morning came, and there was Kyle with the huge stack of books again. I stopped him and said, “Boy, you’re gonna build some serious muscles with this pile of books everyday!” He just laughed and handed me half the books.

Over the next four years, Kyle and I became best friends. When we were seniors, we began to think about college. Kyle decided on Georgetown and I was going to Duke. I knew we would always be friends, and that the miles would never be a problem. He was going to be a doctor and I was going for business on a football scholarship.

Kyle was valedictorian of our class. I teased him all the time about being a nerd. He had to prepare a speech for graduation. I was so glad it wasn't me having to get up there and speak. On Graduation Day, Kyle looked great. He was one of those guys who really found himself during high school. He’d filled out and actually looked good in glasses. He’d had more dates than I had and all the girls loved him. Boy, sometimes I was jealous! Today was one of those days. I could see that he was nervous about his speech so, I smacked him on the back and said, “Hey, big guy, you'll be great!” He looked at me with one of those looks (the really grateful one) and smiled. “Thanks,” he said.

As he started his speech, he cleared his throat, and began. “Graduation is a time to thank those who helped you make it through those tough years – your parents, your teachers, your siblings, maybe a coach … but mostly your friends. I am here to tell all of you that being a friend to someone is the best gift you can give them. I’m going to tell you a story.”

I just looked at my friend with disbelief as he told the story of first day we met. He had planned to kill himself over that weekend. He talked of how he had cleaned out his locker so his Mom wouldn't have to do it later and was carrying all his stuff home. He looked hard at me and gave me a little smile. “Thankfully, I was saved. My friend saved me from doing the unspeakable …”

I heard the gasp go through the crowd as this handsome, popular boy told us all about his weakest moment. His mom and dad looked at me, smiling that same grateful smile. Not until that moment did I realize its depth.

Never underestimate the power of your actions. With one small gesture, you can change a person’s life … for better or for worse. We have all chosen to be in each others’ lives to impact one another in some way. Look for the spirit of love in everyone; it’s a wonderful reflection.

As a reader of this blog, you’re privy to information about life, death and life-after-death that only a tiny percentage of the population has, which, like the author above, puts you in a perfect position to help others. If someone you know is facing their own crossing or that of a loved one, you can put your knowledge to good use by offering gentle reassurance. If they have a limited understanding (courtesy of organized religion), you can gently help them transcend it without flat-out denying their beliefs. “There might be a little more going on here than your beliefs are allowing you to see” would gently test their openness to your larger perspective.

You’ve been given your current perspective for a reason … for we are our brothers’ keepers in this regard. But if they are adamantly closed, a hug and a shoulder to cry on always work.

Big hugs.

Why Does Communication Take So Long to Begin?

People often wonder why it takes loved ones so long to begin communicating with the Earth Plane after their crossing. The reason is that folk often find themselves in a disorienting ‘fog’ on arrival on the Soul Plane, until they can develop their ‘psychic senses.’ This applies even to experienced researchers such as Frederic Myers and Richard Hodgson, whom we’ve already met in previous posts.

In February, 1901, Sir Oliver Lodge had a sitting with medium Rosalie Thompson soon after Myers’ crossing. The latter managed to say, “Lodge, it is not as easy as I thought in my impatience.” He then admitted to being confused, saying that the Earth Plane was ‘a misty picture’ to him, and that he had memory difficulties. Nelly, the medium’s control, reassured Lodge that Myers regaining his full faculties would take time but that, of course, it would happen.

In fact, it took over two years (in Earth time) until September, 1903, and started slowly with automatic writing. He then became very prolific and creative, masterminding the art of cross-correspondences, whereby he’d break a message into three or four pieces and deliver each piece through a different medium. On its own, each piece made little or no sense, but once assembled, the meaning was clear. Cross-correspondences are important as absolute proof that the source of the message is an intelligent being on the Soul Plane, and not the product of the medium’s mind or ESP.

Imagine psychic #1 tells you, “Your deceased uncle asked me to tell you a letter will arrive tomorrow.” Then psychic #2 tells you, “Your deceased uncle asked me to tell you the letter contains a key.” Then psychic #3 tells you, “Your deceased uncle asked me to say to you ‘Grand Central Station.’” Well, the letter arrives, containing a key with a number on it. So you go to the station, find the locker and take out a briefcase, which to your delight contains bricks of $100 bills. Now that’s the stuff of cross-correspondences, and you know the psychics couldn’t have made up those messages – they could only have come from one source.

Dr. Richard Hodgson, the arch-skeptic hired to debunk Mrs. Piper and ended up being her most ardent supporter, showed up in one of her sittings on December 28, 1905, just 8 days after crossing at the age of 50, and, after some effort, managed to get her to write his name. At another sitting 10 days later, he said he was finding communicating and operating Piper’s body extremely difficult. However, by January 23, 1906, he’d mastered the art and was using her voice to talk to Professor William James and his wife.

George Pellew, who came through Leonora Piper three weeks after crossing at age 32 reported being limited in what he could do, and that he felt ‘dull’ in his new environs. However, he soon got the hang of being on the Soul Plane and later became Mrs. Piper’s control – not bad for someone who had major doubts about survival.

The prize, however, goes to Sir William Barrett, who crossed on May 26, 1925 aged 80 and by June 5, had contacted Mrs. Gladys Leonard. On July 26, Lady Barrett had her first sitting with Leonard, and her husband told her, “Life is far more wonderful than I can ever tell you, beyond anything I ever hoped for; it exceeds all my expectations.” Ten days is a very fast turnaround from Earth plane to Soul Plane … and to be so lucid.

The bottom line is that even if you know what to expect when you cross over, that’s no guarantee that you’ll hit the ground running on the Other Side. However, you’re off to a much better start than someone from the ‘Death is oblivion’ school, who may need a couple of centuries (in Earth years) to accept that: (1) he’s still very much alive, and (2) he can interact with the Earth Plane.

How quickly you ‘get going’ on the Soul Plane depends on your belief system and what you expect to happen. But it also depends on the fluidity of your consciousness. If you can go into a trance easily or meditate deeply, you’ll be in great shape on crossing over because you already have the tools you’ll need to communicate, manifest and travel around – the three main activities on the Soul Plane.

The best accounts of life and activities over there come from Monsignor Benson, who crossed over in 1914 and worked as a greeter until beginning to write a series of six fascinating books starting in 1947. Being a Catholic priest when he crossed, he cringed at the books and sermons he’d inflicted on the world, and two of the books are all about denouncing orthodox religion. The other four are the straight skinny about the afterlife. They are out of print, but I’ve resurrected them and now make them available as a PDF e-book that you can print out (see www.deathwithoutfear.com/benson_books.htm).

Living in Victorian England, Benson’s language is quaint and charming, at least to another Brit, and it’s the best information I’ve come across  – at least until I get over there and can channel my own books back at ya. Until then, reckon I’ll just blog at ya!

In the Year 1909 …

 

The previous post talked about the year 1909 in relation to the year 2009, and how what was true about the survival of death back then is just as true today because nothing has changed in the crossing over business and how we channel those on the Other Side. But in other areas, what a difference a century makes!  Here are some statistics for the year 1909 :

·         The average life expectancy was  47 years, compared with today’s 78 years.

·         Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub, and only 8 percent had a telephone.

·         There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads in the US.

·         The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

·         The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

·         The average wage in 1909 was 22 cents per hour.

·         Most women washed their hair only once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

·         The population of Las Vegas , Nevada, was only 30, but Goodsprings boasted about 1,000 people. Today, Vegas has almost two million and Goodsprings is down to 200.

·         Only 6 percent of all Americans graduated from high school, and one out of every 5 adults couldn't read or write.

·         Heroin and morphine were legally available over the counter at the local corner drugstores, with pharmacists saying, ‘Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health!’ Tell that to the DEA when they come calling.

·         The five leading causes of death were (notice cancer didn’t even make the cut):

1. Pneumonia and influenza

2. Tuberculosis

3. Diarrhea

4. Heart disease  

5. Stroke

 

On the other hand, the many distinguished scientists on both sides of the Atlantic studying paranormal phenomena totally legitimized the public reality of the afterlife and survival of death. There was no ‘giggle factor’ or rolling of the eyes heavenward when people talked about the paranormal. With a genuine psychic medium on every corner, people had access to the insights and wisdom of those on the Other Side. The absence of fear about crossing over and the afterlife made for a healthier psyche. And the purpose of this blog is to return us to that state of acceptance. It is hugely reassuring to know that not only will you survive the big bugaboo but also that what happens afterwards is a monumental blast beyond your imagining.

Slowly, we New Age activists are turning around the juggernaut of public opinion towards death. Roper Polls reflect the growing acceptance of the paranormal, and most people I meet have had some kind of weird encounter that defies a materialist explanation.

Segue to yesterday’s Death Without Fear Radio show, with intuitive Sonia Novick as my guest. See www.tinyurl.com/mn2o9p for the show archive, www.tinyurl.com/oh79y3 for the September 13 show, and www.sonianovick.com for Sonia’s storefront. She talked about her two NDEs and how she didn’t want to come back but an entourage of Beings of Light made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. (Listen to the archive to find out what it was.)

The bottom line, of course, was that she did come back, without a trace of fear of crossing over and the unswerving support of that entourage, whom she now channels and calls The Avatars. Like me, she also does a radio show on which I’ve been a guest (see her web site for details).

We ended the show by agreeing that when our time comes to cross over, our reaction will be, “Bring it on!” Meanwhile, we are both striving to reestablish the peace of mind enjoyed by most people a century ago of, “Of course we survive death! How could we not?”

A century ago? Try several millennia ago, when thinkers such as Plato fully accepted survival and reincarnation as ‘just the way it is.’  Of course, it was organized religion that screwed everything up and stole our peace of mind in order to control us.

’Twas ever thus!

Debunking the Debunkers – Part Three

If you took my advice and bought Michael Tymn’s excellent book The Articulate Dead, you’ll find yourself treated to ‘the best of the best’ in terms of proof of the survival of death.

Today, we have the TV psychic mediums such as Sylvia Browne, Lisa Williams, John Edward, James Van Praagh and George Anderson, who consistently prove survival to their respective audiences. What the typical TV watcher may not know is that during the hey-day of the spiritualist movement (1850 – 1950), some of the top mediums were investigated by some of the top scientists of the day such as Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Barrett and Frederic Myers, and found to be beyond reproach and totally genuine. To them, psychic giants such as Leonora Piper and Gladys Leonard really did what they claimed – they talked to dead people, who, of course, were very much alive and not in the least bit ‘dead’; they just didn’t happen to have physical bodies. (These two mediums were featured in the previous two posts.)

Today’s debunkers may try to dismiss this history as ‘old hat,’ and therefore unworthy of consideration. But current debunkers are intellectual pygmies compared with those scientific giants of yesteryear. And back then, everything was meticulously documented and recorded in the annals of the Society for Psychical Research, the official investigative body.

All the above topflight scientists initially approached the subject as skeptics, and all were soon turned around, became believers and started attending sittings regularly. Now that’s true skepticism – you begin your research full of doubt and uncertainty, with no initial position, and are open-minded enough that what you learn makes you a believer, removing all doubt.

So, bottom line: Just because something incontrovertible happened in 1909 rather than 2009 does not justify tossing it out as ‘old and therefore irrelevant.’ And knowing the caliber of those investigating the phenomena back then, we can be even more certain of their veracity and the inescapable conclusions they point to: (1) we do survive physical death and, (2) we can and do communicate with those still on the Earth plane.

Of course, pseudo-skeptics (i.e., kneejerk debunkers) will dismiss even the best evidence, and that’s bad news for them. We know better – the truth that 100 years ago, researchers were ‘climbing up the shorts’ of those who claimed to be mediums and, while they did find some frauds, they also found most completely genuine, and often over decades with no hint of deception.

Way to go!

Now I need some feedback. The last few posts have absolutely proved beyond doubt that we survive crossing over and can communicate back with those still in bodies. Case closed. What kinds of new posts do you all want to read? You can comment or contact me privately at tjpublish@aol.com.

Gladys Osborne Leonard: the ‘British White Crow’

The previous post was about Mrs. Leonora Piper, the so-called ‘American White Crow,’ so read that post first for the ‘crow’ explanation. Almost a generation after Piper, along came Leonard, bringing yet more watertight evidence of survival.

On September 25, 1915, Lady Lodge, the wife of radio pioneer Sir Oliver Lodge, was having a routine sitting with Leonard when son Raymond showed up in the reading and said, “Tell father I have met some friends of his.” She then offered the name of “Myers,” a long-standing friend of Lodge and a fellow paranormal investigator.

With Raymond off in France fighting in World War I, this was not good news, so Lodge arranged a sitting, remaining anonymous. Raymond showed up again and told his father that he’d met his old friend Frederic Myers.

Leonard had first discovered her ability in 1910, when her control showed up in a table-tipping sitting. Called Feda, she revealed she was Leonard’s great-great-grandmother, and was there because of a ‘great happening’ that would soon occur – an apparent reference to WWI.

In a sitting Lady Lodge had on September 27 with a psychic medium by the name of Peters, Raymond mentioned a group photo taken three weeks before his crossing, and she mentioned it to her husband.

On December 3, at Lodge's next sitting with Piper, he asked about the photo and Raymond described it in detail, even down to the fact that an officer behind him was resting his arm on Raymond’s shoulder. On December 6, Lodge wrote to a fellow researcher, giving the details his son had given him, for later confirmation when the photo actually arrived. Also on December 6, Lady Lodge found a reference in Raymond's diary dated August 24, recording that the photo had been taken that day, three weeks before his crossing on September 14.

When the photo arrived in the mail on December 7, it was exactly as Raymond had described it. This is excellent evidence of survival, due to the fact that word of the photo came first through one medium and then the detail came through another, with dazzling accuracy.This was cast-iron proof that: (1) Raymond survived his crossing and, (2) it really was him communicating with his father through Leonard. In the photo, Raymond is in the front row, second from the right, with another officer resting his arm on Raymond’s shoulder exactly as described. (See photo below.)

 

Lodge then got Lionel, one of Raymond’s brothers, to have an anonymous sitting, at which Feda spilled the beans and announced that Raymond was there. He told Lionel that he was a greeter, assisting new arrivals who had crossed over. (Considering that WWI resulted in 16 million military and civilian deaths, greeters were kept very busy. The first day of the Battle of the Somme in France, July 1, 1916 was the worst day for fatalities – 19,240 cross-overs in just one day.)

Because death can come so quickly in wartime, one the greeter’s biggest problem is convincing fatalities that they really have crossed over, which had also been Raymond’s initial experience. He also confirmed that you “gravitate to the place you are fitted for,” and that there’s no judge or jury – you just ‘gravitate.’

Lodge tested Leonard thoroughly and was rewarded with information that he himself didn’t know, so Leonard was obviously not reading his mind (a common debunker claim) and private things about the family that Leonard couldn’t possibly have known or researched, so that ruled out another major debunker objection. By the end of 1916, over a 12-month period, Sir Oliver Lodge had amassed so much evidential material from the conversations with his son that he declared, “;The number of more or less convincing proofs which we have obtained is by this time very great. Taking them all together, every ground of suspicion or doubt seems, to the family, to be now removed. … I am as convinced of continued existence on the other side of death as I am of existence here.”

Great coming from one of the most astute minds of his day. So, yes, we do survive death and we do communicate back to those still in physical bodies.

Case closed.