Our Disposable Shell
I noticed a Facebook question recently posed by a concerned young man who heard that cremation meant the soul was also destroyed. One has to wonder where people get such strange ideas!
I considered explaining to him that the physical body is nothing more than a shell, and that once we leave it permanently, we have no further need for it and little or no interest in it, but decided not to pursue it in Facebook where comments are best kept to a reasonable length.
Had I replied, I might have compared our physical body to a diving suit, an absolute necessity if you plan to explore the depths of the ocean, providing a way for us to interact in an environment that we could not access otherwise. They are essential, but once on ground, are totally useless. Well, let’s face it, you’d look pretty damn silly plodding down the main street in heavy and cumbersome diving suit complete with oxygen tanks and flippers, wouldn’t you?
The depths of the ocean are an unnatural environment for humans, and the same might be said about earthly life for our souls, which vibrate at a far higher frequency than earth’s vibration. The REAL you is ethereal and immaterial. It is not equipped for physical life.
When we incarnate into a low-vibratory physical environment such as earth, we need a physical ‘diving suit’ to allow us to interact — not only with each other but also with inanimate objects vibrating at a lower rate. You’d be a long time trying to turn a door handle without a physical hand! We USE a physical body to experience this environment, but we are NOT a physical body. When we return home, we discard that ‘diving suit’ and we’re free again. It probably feels like taking off an uncomfortable pair of shoes after a long day on your feet.
“Aaaahhhhhh, what a relief! I can wiggle my toes again!”
When we finally discard our physical shell, we no longer have any attachment to it. Many ‘experiencers’ are surprised when they look back at their body. When Peggy Raso looked down at the hospital bed from her vantage point near the ceiling, she “saw “a girl down there who looked to be in a great deal of pain. Her lips were blue, she appeared to have a blue moustache, and her hair was wet looking and strung out on the pillow.” Peggy felt sorry for the poor girl. She had no idea the body was her own!
Pamela Reynolds also died in hospital. Well, actually, she was ‘killed’ in order to perform radical brain surgery and then revived after the operation, but that’s a whole other story. (you can read about this and other fascinating cases mentioned here, in my book, Heaven Knows.)
When Pamela looked down and saw her body, she felt nothing. “I knew it was my body,” she stated, “but I was not at all attached to it. I was not that body.
In 2009, Carmel Bell died for 47 minutes. In her book, When All Else Fails, she describes feeling … “no attachment to my body at all. Someone could hack it apart with a chainsaw and I would feel nothing.”
Many ‘experiencers’ are so disinterested, they don’t even bother to view the shell they left behind. One man interviewed by Dr. Raymond Moody for his book, ‘Life After Life’ said: “Oh I knew it was there all right, and I could’ve seen it had I looked, but I didn’t … because I knew I had done my best in life and I was turning my attention now to this other realm of things.”
Some looked, but felt only revulsion. Over a hundred years ago, Kalima (from Hawaii) was repelled as she stood beside herself. “Was that my body?” she wondered. “What a horrid, loathsome thing it was to me now! Must I go and live in that thing again? No,” she decided. “I would not go into it.”
Many others felt the same way. Pamela Reynolds stated: “I was not that body and I for sure did not want to get in it because it looked pretty much like what it was, as in void of life, and I knew it would hurt so I didn’t want to get in.
Carmel Bell recalls: “There was a momentary sense of revulsion at the thought, of stepping back into that ‘thing’ lying there, like the thought of stepping into cold jelly.
However, if it wasn’t ‘their time’, then return they must.
After her NDE in 1931, author and nde-er Leslie Grant Scott wrote : “The effort to return to my body was accompanied by an almost unimaginable sensation of horror and terror. I had left without the slightest struggle. I returned by an almost superhuman effort of will.”
Huffine, who ‘died’ in a plane crash in the 1930’s, was called back to life by a friend. “At the sound of my name,” he later wrote: “I felt as if a strong wire was tugging me back toward my body. I was reluctant to return and continued to look on, experiencing the most complete contentment, but… the pull became stronger each time he called me, and suddenly I was looking up into faces.”
Pamela Reynolds argued with her deceased uncle who was urging her to return before it was too late. She tried to resist, but “the tunnel was pushing and the body was pulling,” she explained. “He pushed me!” Pamela confessed. “He gave me a little help there. It’s taken a long time, but I think I’m ready to forgive him.”
Pamela re-entered her body with a jolt, later describing the sensation as “rather like diving into a pool full of ice water!”
“It hurt!” she added petulantly.
As she came back into her body, the song playing on the operating room radio was Hotel California. It included the line: “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.” Pamela found that most appropriate.
AN INNOCUOUS LITTLE PAPERBACK
My apologies to those who have read this blog … YEARS ago! I was merely trying to make some edits and it took over and re-published itself! I hope that by adding this disclaimer, it doesn’t send out another tonne of emails announcing another new blog. If so, I will simply sit on my hands and deny myself access to my blogsite until I have something new to say. (I really must learn to master WordPress!)
In 1976, an innocuous little paperback created quite a stir when it hit bookshop shelves around the world. Everywhere I looked, people were reading it, or intended to read it, or had recently finished reading it, or were recommending that everyone else read it. People who had already read it would stop strangers who were reading it while travelling on trains or eating lunch in cafes and would enter into animated conversations about it.
This phenomenon had also occurred a few years earlier with a book called Chariots of the Gods by Eric Von Daniken. I was 20 when ‘Chariots’ shot to the bestseller list, and because I didn’t want to be the only person in the world who hadn’t read it, I purchased a copy.
I tried to read it. Whenever I removed the little paperback from my handbag in a public place, gushing strangers would rush up to me and make comments like: “Isn’t it wonderful? It never occurred to me until I read it that instead of apes, our ancestors might have been aliens!” Or they would ask me questions like “Now tell me, honestly, has it or has it not changed all your ideas about religion yet?”
Frankly, I didn’t have any ideas about religion. I didn’t even think about religion. Neither had I seriously considered the possibility that I’d descended from apes, so switching to aliens was hardly a giant leap. Besides, I felt a little intimidated by these people’s profound interpretations of Von Daniken’s findings. Unlike them, I hadn’t “oohed and aahed” my way through the book, pausing occasionally to think “well, well, little green men must really be our ancestors, and doesn’t that now throw a whole new light on our bible’s teachings!”
Frankly, I thought I’d been reading a book about recent archaeological findings!
Seven years passed, and the Von Daniken scenario happened all over again. This time, it wasn’t about Martian ancestors. This time, it was a book about life after death by Dr. Raymond Moody. Dilemma. Should I purchase a copy so I could enter into deep and meaningful conversations with total strangers in public places, or was I now far too mature to need peer-group approval?
The title – Life After Life – suggested another life awaited us after this one. This smacked of reincarnation, and I knew (didn’t everyone?) that reincarnation was total nonsense. Coming back to earth as a sacred cow in India did not excite me.
However, it had recently occurred to me that one day – sooner or later, one way or another – I was going to die! It may seem strange that the inevitability of death could have escaped my attention for 27 years, but it had. As the only child of a mother who was also an only child, and of a father who had deserted us two decades earlier, I wasn’t blessed with an array of elderly aunts and uncles or even ageing second cousins who might have been inclined to demonstrate their mortality for me.
The shocking realization that I was mortal threw me into deep depression. I spent the next few days hugging my knees on the back doorstep, staring into space and demanding answers the universe. What was the purpose of life? Why did we do anything? Why did we learn, love, talk, laugh or cry? What did any of it matter? Why did we accumulate possessions, change jobs, make friends, cook meals, make plans, read books and clean out cupboards? If we were all going to be snuffed out like a candle one day, wasn’t life pointless?
The universe chose to ignore my pleas, so I tried to discuss it with friends and workmates. They left me in no doubt they’d rather be anywhere else, talking to anyone else, about anything else. Some became aggressive and accused me of being morbid. Others pointed out that it was a subject polite people didn’t discuss. A few shuddered and uttered phrases like “ooooh, I don’t want to talk about it! I don’t even want to think about it!” Most simply avoided me.
In 1976, death was a taboo subject, except for those few who quoted biblical references and insisted that the afterlife was reserved for those who had been saved by embracing the one true religion – theirs! When I encountered this reaction, I was the one who politely excused myself.
Desperate for answers, I purchased a copy of Life After Life, took it home, placed it on my bookshelf and eyed it suspiciously. Twelve years later, I finally got around to reading it and wondered what all the fuss had been about. This innocuous little paperback was nothing more than a collection of anecdotes about anonymous people who purportedly told Dr. Moody that they had died and been resuscitated, and that during their “time out” they had travelled through tunnels, encountered bright lights and had reunions with deceased loved ones.
How wonderful would it be if all this was true, but how could I believe accounts from nameless, faceless people? It was far more likely, I decided, that the accounts were all so similar because they had been written by the same person – the author himself. He even stated in the book “I am fully aware that what I have done here does not constitute a scientific study.”
I refused to be “sucked in” by some unknown doctor who had written a sensational book merely to make money, so I spent the next 27 years trying to disprove Dr. Moody’s research.
I failed miserably.
Life After Life has sold more than 13 million copies around the world since 1975. Have you read it? If so, did you embrace it enthusiastically, or dismiss it as nonsense? Did it change your life, or did you use it as a harmless missile one night to silence at a howling cat?
I hope you’ll join me in the coming months as I document my challenge to the universe to “show me the evidence!”
FIRST-HAND ACCOUNTS
Something a little different this time … books by people I often chat with in social media who have written about their own experiences.
Now, confession time … I haven’t read any of them yet (except my own, of course) but they all look so interesting I’ve ear-marked them for future reading.
Writing a book isn’t easy, so I hope some of you take time to support those who shivered through late nights hunched over their keyboards while recording their stories. The covers below are all linked directly to Amazon so if you’d like to check any of them out, it’s a simple click. Once there you can click on the cover again to “look inside” for a free preview of the first few pages!
ANCESTORS & ANGELS
A true story of one ordinary family’s extraordinary experiences with the paranormal. Viewed through the eyes of Jane a very sceptical psychic, who frequently found the joke was on her. Angels, Spirits, Ghosts, Premonitions, Prophetic Dreams, and Psychic Pets. A tale that will uplift and inspire the reader, while at times send shivers down their spine. Who knew the paranormal could be this much fun?
AMAZON REVIEW: …deftly written and a breeze & joy to read. It holds your attention with sharp narrative, witty dialogue, and enough chills spattered about to keep the pages turning.
SAVED BY THE LIGHT OF THE BUDDHA WITHIN
My NDE happened almost 50 years ago when I was struck by lightning while talking on the telephone in my living room. According to the doctors who took care of me at the hospital, it was a miracle that I hadn’t been physically damaged in any way. When I tried telling them about a beautiful ‘Light’ that I’d seen and the magnificent journey that I’d taken through the stars to reach it, none of them could give me an answer as to where I’d been. It was my home doctor who suggested that I’d possibly been momentarily dead, or at least, very close to it. (published June 2020, be the first to write a review!)
THE AFTERLIFE AND BEYOND
If the afterlife is real, what does that mean for our lives? For society? In a second feature book by afterlife and supernatural writer Cyrus Kirkpatrick, these questions are poised as the consequences of an afterlife are explored in relation to subjects from cryogenics to artificial intelligence and the origins of life. In addition, objective evidence for the afterlife is scrutinized, with detailed out-of-body experiences and trips through other realms reported, including helpful information about how we can connect ourselves to other dimensions and reunite with loved ones.
AMAZON REVIEW: After studying this subject for close to 20 years he knows the terrain. The ability to travel out of body that he acquired in 2014 has allowed him to evaluate accounts by others with first hand experiences. Anyone who is interested in a broader view of the world we live in and the world we will visit after our body dies will be interested and probably be challenged by this book.
DANCING PAST THE DARK
… the first comprehensive exploration of disturbing NDEs and how people interpret them. Packed with solid information and first-person narratives that, although marked by dismaying and even terrifying features, turn out to have something vital to say about life itself … the author, a longtime researcher of these NDEs, brings study data and years of personal insights to the questions that swirl around the topic, providing a wealth of viewpoints and ways of thinking about the subject.
NDE Researcher PMH Atwater says: “Dancing Past the Dark is what we have all been waiting for. …This book is masterful—a must for any experiencer of a near-death state (no matter what kind)
CONVERSATIONS WITH THE DEAD
… the journey, discovery and acceptance of becoming a psychic medium. This is for all of those individuals who have struggled with or who have yet to accept the paranormal gifts that have been bestowed upon them. Whether it be due to religious or family persecution or the lack of acceptance and understanding by society in general, this book will provide you with the certainty, courage and freedom to be who Creator has called you to be.
AMAZON REVIEW: I found this book both uplifting and enlightening! I laughed, I cried. This woman has had a most difficult life but her strength is to be commended.
THE GIFT OF PAST LIVES
How did two people, living 750 miles apart, end up meeting in this life not just once, but twice? Then, it all started with a simple question, “Do you want to try meditation?” We did start to meditate and discovered a portal to past lives and a whole new path to better living. Our journey has taken us through 29 lives together, as kings, queens, slaves, slave owners, white skinned, black skinned, rich and poor.
AMAZON REVIEW: What an amazing journey! Dave and Carla have traveled so far over many reincarnations and have many insightful life lessons. What an awesome gift they have shared!
HAVE WE LIVED BEFORE
From as far back as I can remember, I always thought that I had lived before. That notion stayed buried within me until more recently I decided to explore those feelings. Through Past Life Regression (PLR) hypnosis I got validation that I had indeed lived before. I then went on to do a Life Between Life hypnotic session which afford me the opportunity of witnessing a Life review and meeting with my Council of Elders. This handbook aims to answer frequently asked questions about death, reincarnation, soul immortality and things spiritual.
AMAZON REVIEW: Fantastic book. It’s to the point and all of what Enos states is the truth. There is no death. Loved it.
HEAVEN KNOWS
In times of grief, fear or despair, haven’t most of us asked: “is there really an afterlife?”When my mother became seriously ill in 1987, I sat on my back doorstep night after night and asked the universe that question. I doubted anyone was listening, yet strangely, my life began to change. Books and people mysteriously found their way to me. Sometimes, events occurred that I later recognized as paranormal, even though I initially dismissed them as such. Over the next 24 years, as I continued to search for evidence, my skeptical mind was regularly challenged. Slowly – and only when I was ready – the answers came!
AMAZON REVIEW: This is really a very beautiful book. I really felt that I was on a journey with the author as she not only came to terms with the eventuality of experiencing her loved ones leaving the Earth Realm, but I learned so much about NDEs in the process. Very touching, awesome book that I know I will read again and again and again.
…. and if you loved ANY of them …
PLEASE don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads.
Heavenly Visitors
“I can see faces in the trees,” my mother confided to the hospice nurse a few days before her own transition in 2011. She had no idea who they were, but she was aware of their presence and felt they were waiting for her.
In The Art of Dying, Dr. Peter Fenwick includes a report by a lady he calls Barbara, that echoes my mother’s experience.
Barbara’s dying mother insisted she could see “people watching over her.” She couldn’t identify them, because they were behind the bushes but she knew they were there to help her if her “head fell forward.”
These seemingly shy visitors re-positioned themselves in the ward a short time later, and by the time Barbara’s mother was close to taking her final breath, they were sitting on her bed.
Who were these people hiding behind the bushes?
Research conducted by Dr. Karlis Osis (and published in 1961 in his Deathbed Observations by Physicians and Nurses) revealed that — of the dying patients who were able to communicate the identity of their visitors — almost seven out of every ten (67%) reported a deceased spouse or a relative – mother, father, child, sibling or other family member.
Usually, it’s one or two family members who come to collect their loved ones, but this wasn’t so for one nurse’s dying aunt. As she sat beside her aunt’s deathbed, she was intrigued that her aunt kept talking to invisible people. She asked who she was speaking to and was promptly told to “respect your elders!”
However, the nurse soon became familiar with all of them …
“Those last few weeks were probably among the BEST times I have ever spent with her. In the middle of the night we would have these family reunions. She regularly chewed my (deceased) grandfather out for one thing or another, and I got to know relatives long since dead.”
Raelene (from Perth, Australia) sat beside her sleeping mother as she approached her transition time. Then, the night before she passed …
“… her eyes suddenly flew open wide, both her arms stretched out above her and she looked intently up into the corner of her lounge room. With tears running down her cheeks and in the voice of a small girl, she suddenly called ‘Daddy!’
Interestingly – but perhaps not surprisingly – Osis’ survey revealed that mothers were the most dedicated greeters, outnumbering fathers five to one. As all good mothers know, when your child needs you then you’re there for them, even if — and maybe especially if — you passed before them.
Spouses came in a close second, according to results of the research. However, one can only hope most spouse reunions are a little more joyous than the one reported by Michelle Spencer from Detroit, Michigan …
“My grandparents didn’t have the best relationship, so when her late husband appeared to my grandmother on her deathbed, she yelled: “I’m not going anywhere with you!”
Hopefully ‘grandad’ recruited another greeter or ‘grandma’ eventually accepted his help, as she died peacefully a short time later.
While most welcomed family members, spouses, deceased friends, other relatives, or occasionally, strangers, Osis’ research revealed that only 2 or less out of 10 saw religious figures. One nurse, however, reported her comatose father waking up and saying: “Well, OK God.”
Presumably, the voice that only he could hear spoke again, because her father then replied: “Well, why not?”
To this day, the nurse longs to know what the other half of that conversation was about! Who wouldn’t?
There also appeared to be a very interesting interaction between the ‘visitor’s’ purpose and the time between visit and death. When the ‘visitor’ stated that they had come to take the patient away– which occurred in the majority of cases – death occurred within a few hours.
One nurse related that a female patient was waiting to receive a treatment when she suddenly announced: “I can’t now, Bill’s here to get me.” She died almost instantly. Obviously when the visitor says it’s time to go, then it’s time to go!
On the other hand, Osis observed that when the ‘visitor’ simply came to calm the patient, death did not occur for days or weeks afterward!
This provided the confirmation I needed that my 99-year-old grandmother hadn’t been “losing her marbles” years earlier when she announced that her mother had been regularly visiting her. “We’ve had such lovely chats,” she told us. There had been no mention of a ‘take-away’ purpose.
Admittedly, her old deceased doctor had also popped in once to explain that she was “dead from her head down to her waist and from her feet up to her hips” and that he’d be “back to get her when they met in the middle.” But he didn’t specify when that would be! Or had he?
During an interview on the Skeptico podcast, Dr. Peter Fenwick stated:
“The … visitors tell people that they’re going to be there for them and look after them at a certain time … I’ll be back at 4:00 tomorrow afternoon. Now the person dies at that time. Sometimes they die in the process of greeting somebody.”
Perhaps if we’d questioned my grandmother further instead of feeling uncomfortable about what we believed were merely the ramblings of an old lady, she may have provided us with details of her upcoming journey.
Ah, but if she’d told us that her old doctor arranged to return on Saturday at 2.30pm, would we have understood that 2.30pm Saturday was when she’d commence her heavenly journey? Probably not. Sadly, like most people, we had no knowledge of Nearing Death Awareness at the time.
“Believing they’re delusional,” Callanan and Kelley wrote in their wonderful book, Final Gifts, “most people disregard these important messages and miss a wonderful opportunity.”
One lady, Angela Waller, took advantage of that “wonderful opportunity” and as a result, was fortunate to get a sneak peek into her grandmother’s reunion.
Angela’s grandfather had passed very unexpectedly, and her grandma suffered dementia. “He’d been her caregiver,” Angela explained, “so she was totally lost without him.” Soon afterwards, grandma fell and broke her hip, which led to her rapid decline.
Then, one morning grandma announced that she’d “had a dream.” Her husband had come to take her away. She told Angela that rain was pouring down, but they didn’t care. They just walked around in it, talking and laughing, so excited to be together again.
“Well it hadn’t rained in forever,” recalled Angela, “but the next night there was a really heavy rainstorm … and that was when she passed away, right in the middle of it.
“We all knew he had come to get her.”
The Music of Dying
“Is dying painful?”
That was the question Sir William Osler asked in 1900. To find an answer, he launched himself into four years of systematic research.
Osler – a leading physician of his time and one of the four founding professors of John Hopkins Hospital – studied 486 patients and observed that only 90 of these showed any evidence at all of pain or distress at the time of death.
In a lecture on Science and Immortality in 1909, he claimed: “the great majority gave no sign one way or the other. Like their birth, their death was a sleep and a forgetting.”
It is not known if Dr. Karlis Osis was aware of Osler’s research when he and his team launched a research project on behalf of the American Society for Psychical Research in the 1950’s. Even if they were, they were not particularly interested in that aspect of dying. Their aim was to investigate the psychic and – possibly – paranormal events which occurred as death approached.
“We were mainly looking for emerging trends and patterns which might throw light on the possibility of post-mortem survival,” Osis stated.
This team of intrepid psychologists designed a lengthy questionnaire and sent it to 10,000 general practitioners, hospital staff physicians, interns and nurses in the United States.
They received 640 responses – at least twice as many as expected. The responses detailed observations of 35,000 dying patients and provided 700 accounts of mood elevation, 900 pre-death visions, and 1,300 reports of what Osis termed ‘apparitions’.
However, they were surprised to discover an even more intriguing pattern emerging.
Assuming that as death approached, most people would be in a state of panic, they discovered precisely the opposite. There appeared to be little or no anxiety at the point of death!
Some respondents to Osis’ survey acknowledged that anxiety can initially play a part in the process. “Great anxiety building up for days,” wrote one doctor in the survey response, [but] “that usually disappears one to three hours before death.”
In his academic paper, Deathbed Observations by Physicians and Nurses) Dr. Osis wrote … “Surprisingly enough, fear is not the dominant emotion in dying patients.”
In fact, results indicated that many dying patients actually experienced elation or exaltation shortly before their death. “Their moods were so heightened in some cases,” Osis noted, “that the patient preferred to die into this kind of experience rather than to continue living without it.”
One doctor commented that with many of his dying patients, “there is such a resigned, peaceful, almost happy expression which comes over the patient, it is hard to explain but it leaves me with the feeling that I would not be afraid to die.”
“Apparently there is something,” Karlis Osis wrote in the 1950’s, “…which distinctly changes the dying person’s outlook on death.”
Something? What could possibly make a person elated as they approached death?
Aware that many near-death experiencers report hearing beautiful music as they died, I wondered if this was that “something” that relieved their anxiety. After all, it’s said that music soothes the soul.
In his best-selling book, Life After Life, Dr. Moody included a number of ‘musical’ deaths.
A man remembered hearing “what seemed to be bells tinkling, a long way off as if drifting through the wind,” adding that “they sounded like Japanese wind bells.”
One woman who nearly died from internal bleeding old Moody that at the moment she collapsed, she began to hear “music of some sort, a majestic, really beautiful sort of music.”
I returned to my library of near-death experience books and read them all again, searching for references to musical accompaniments.
I came across an old sailor in Norway who heard it. Resuscitated from the brink of death, he told the doctor: “It was all shining blue ocean and marvelous music.”
Dorothy, who survived death while confined within an iron lung as a result of Polio heard it too. “Soothing, minor chord music came from an unseen orchestra,” she told Nurse Virginia Randall after being resuscitated.
On temporarily being returned to life, John from Philadelphia reported to Dr. Martin Sampson that he heard the most peaceful music all around him. “I knew I was dead,” John said, “but I wasn’t afraid. Then the music stopped, and you were leaning over me.” John died again soon afterwards and could not be revived.
In The Waiting World I read about one young woman who was visiting her dying grandmother. When she entered the room, it appeared that her beloved was gone, but her grandmother roused up and appeared quite annoyed because she was still in this life. She said she had already “seen over the wall” and announced that she had heard music, like “a great symphony of voices more lovely than earth could give.”
In the same book, I found a report by Dr. Sloan who attended 2-year-old Florence Repp. As Florence lay dying in her grandmother’s arms, she suddenly exclaimed “Mommom, moosic! Moosic! Don’t you hear the moosic?” “No dear, I didn’t hear any music replied the grandmother, but the girl didn’t want to miss hearing it. “Shush Mommom, moosic! They’re playing up there,” she said as she pointed upward. She died almost instantly.
Elizabeth Yates wrote about a friend’s description of his wife’s death the night before. “It was so beautiful,” he told her. “I was sitting beside her bed … when she turned to me and said “Can you hear it?”
“Hear what?” he asked. “The music,” she said, “The music, Listen!” Her face was aglow, her eyes were shining and she raised her head from the pillow as if to hear it better.
The woman’s husband was aware that the music was not for him, but he recognized what joy it was giving her by the light in her face.
“When her head slipped back on the pillow,” he recalled, “I would not have done anything to keep her from hearing that glorious music forever.
DREAMS OR VISIONS?
Dear Heaven Knows friends …
It’s been 20 months since I last posted, and a few of you have contacted me to ask why. I sincerely apologize.
I began writing book 2 (about deathbed visions) last year, but halfway through it, life somehow got in the way.
I also took a few months off to write a fun book about my travels in 1969/70.
Yesterday: A Baby Boomer’s Rite of Passage, was published in April 2019.
Then, when I reviewed what I’d written for book 2 of Heaven Knows, I began to wonder if there’d be sufficient interest in the subject of deathbed visions. It’s all very well to read about people dying temporarily and returning to share their amazing stories …. but dying permanently? Would that be more threatening than comforting to readers?
Well, I’ll leave it to you. Please let me know if you find this aspect of afterlife research interesting. In the meantime, I’ll continue with book 3 (which may become book 2) and post a few deathbed vision blogs along the way.
“Do all people hallucinate when they’re close to dying?” I blurted out as I strolled beside Georgina in the park one sunny day.
Georgie had been a good friend for many years. As a hospice nurse, she regularly sat beside patients as they made their transitions. I had consulted her occasionally on medical matters while writing Heaven Knows, but for ethical reasons we never discussed her experiences with end-of-life patients.
Now, I had a personal reason to risk breaking that unspoken agreement. A few months earlier, my 99 year old grandmother had experienced a ghostly stream of visitors in the days leading up to her passing.
Her mother moved into Room 7 of the nursing home and regularly visited her for chats.
Her nephew, who died as an infant 70 years earlier, had “grown into such a lovely young man.”
Her trusted old doctor from half a century ago came to diagnose her, and she casually repeated his words to us: “He said I was dead from my head down to my chest, and from my feet up to my hips, and that when they meet in the middle he’ll come back for me.”
Perhaps if she’d been drifting in and out of a coma, slurring her words, muttering and whispering incomprehensible phrases, I might have assumed she had confused her dreams with reality. But she wasn’t rambling incoherently. Each time she told us about her latest visit, she was watching cricket on her portable TV or flicking through a magazine searching for a photo she wanted to share.
Then she mentioned our new dog!
Nikki, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, had been rescued from a disinterested owner, and because my grandmother had adored our previous dog, Muffin, we’d decided not to tell her about our new acquisition. Yet, on our visit to her nursing home a few days after bringing Nikki home, she remarked: “Oh I do love your new little black and white dog, she’s so sweet.”
That was the real kicker! How could she possibly know that? My research into near death experiences had also dealt with out-of body states. Now I wondered … was my grandmother’s connection to her physical body becoming so tentative that she could leave it at will and visit us at home?
I needed a calm, logical discussion on the subject with someone who could help me sort out the “yes, no, maybe, absolutely, nonsense, probably, certainly, perhaps, no way” thoughts that were swirling around inside my tired brain.
Do all people hallucinate when they’re close to dying?”
Georgie stopped mid-stride and indicated a bench where we could continue our discussion in comfort. We sat down and silently breathed in the warmth of the spring sunshine.
Then she said “At least a quarter of the patients I’ve been with when they died have talked about seeing … something.”
Something? I wasn’t sure I wanted her to elaborate. Fortunately, she continued without my prompting.
“They usually see people they’ve loved, those who loved them. People they think they’ve lost.”
I smiled. “Yes, Nan said her mother moved into the nursing home a few weeks before she passed! Imagine that!” I laughed, trying to appear nonchalant. “Poor darling,” I prattled on, not wanting to reveal my dilemma too early. “I mean, gosh, her mother would have been over a hundred and thirty!”
I had expected Georgie to laugh along with me, but she stunned me with what she said next. “I have no doubt your great grandmother did move into the nursing home!”
I saw no glimmer of humor in her face.
“We usually know when someone’s about to die” she continued. “When they start talking to people we can’t see, we know it’s going to be soon. Sometimes they talk without words – you know – mouth moving, hands waving. Sometimes they call out or reach for something – or someone. Sometimes they just look wide-eyed, smile and nod.”
“So you’re saying that this happens to everyone as they die?
“Not everyone,” Georgie said, “but I’d say most people who die naturally have deathbed visions in the last few days.”
“Die naturally? What does that mean? Is there an un-natural way to die?
“Well, I mean if you die suddenly you probably don’t have one, or at least you don’t have time to have one. People who are dosed up with medication don’t usually have them. They often have weird hallucinations, but they’re very different. And of course, people who are comatose don’t.”
“Although,” she added, as though considering it for the first time, “I suppose they might. It’s just that no-one gets to hear about it.
We sat in thoughtful silence for a while, then she said: “But you know what?”
“What?” I asked, feeling a little silly now for trying to sound so dismissive.
“They’re never afraid! I mean, if you were lying in bed and suddenly someone who died fifty years ago walked into the room, wouldn’t you get a fright?”
I thought about the night my beloved dog, Muffin, had jumped on my bed a few weeks after her passing. I’d seen her clearly and noticed how much younger and stronger she looked compared to the fat old dog whose head I had tearfully stroked as the vet prepared the lethal injection.
Strangely, I hadn’t been the slightest bit afraid when I felt the bed move and peered over the bedspread to see her standing there, enthusiastically wagging her tail.
Actually, I’d been excited – once I realized what I’d seen. But I wasn’t ready to share that with Georgie, or anyone for that matter. Not yet.
“Well, I guess no-one really wants to see a ghost!” I shrugged. “But … do you really believe these people see real people and it’s not just some trick of their dying brain?”
“No, I don’t believe it,” she smiled. “I know it. You can tell by the way their faces light up. They become calm and peaceful, even if they were afraid a few minutes before! And sometimes, they even see someone they don’t even know has died!”
Feeling more confidant, I told her more about my grandmother’s visitors, and she nodded knowingly. “I asked her doctor about it,” I added, “and he said they were just hallucinations.”
“Doctors!” she laughed, waving her hand dismissively. “Most of them don’t have a clue what happens. When a patient’s close to dying and there’s nothing more they can do, most doctors consider it a failure and they disappear. It’s us who sit with them and hold their hands and help them through it. It’s us who hear about their regrets and listen to their confessions. And we also get to eavesdrop on their other conversations – the ones not meant for us.”
Reaching into her handbag, Georgie retrieved a pen and notebook, scribbled something on it, then gave me a peck on the cheek as she handed me the page.
“Here, see if you can find these books. I think you’ll find them interesting. Got to fly. We’ll catch up again soon!”
I thought my research to find evidence for the afterlife was done and dusted.
Now I had an entirely new focus. I was off and running again.
HEAVEN KNOWS
is available through AMAZON or your favorite on-line bookseller
THE GREAT SOUL TRIAL
An eccentric miner – who very few people even noticed – may have accomplished as much to advance the progress of research into survival of death as Dr. Moody achieved when he wrote Life After Life.
James Kidd was a reclusive prospector and miner who lived in a ramshackle hut on the edge of a small town in Arizona. He was so poor that he had to borrow a pick when he went out searching for minerals. He kept mostly to himself and often disappeared for long periods, so his failure to return in 1949 initially caused no alarm. It was only when his rent became due that police launched an investigation. Failing to find his body or evidence of foul play, he was eventually declared dead.
Several years passed before tax commissioner Geraldine Swift received a report from a stock brokerage firm addressed to Kidd’s estate and referring to $18,000 worth of stock belonging to him.
Intrigued, Swift made further investigations and discovered over $174,000 – a hefty sum in the 1950’s –invested in Kidd’s name in various banks and brokerage firms!
As Kidd had no living relatives, this appeared to be a nice windfall for the state treasury. The state treasury, however, were in for a big disappointment.
Swift was determined to learn more about the enigma that was Kidd. Fifteen years after his presumed death, she located his safety deposit box in the underground vault of a bank. Inside, she found a scrap of paper covered in scrawled handwriting.
The grammar and punctuation were poor, some words were misspelt, and the handwriting was untidy, but this single piece of paper would spark the strangest court case ever known!
This is my first and only will and is dated on the second day in January 1946. I have no heirs have not been married in my life after all my funeral expenses have been paid and one hundred dollars to some preacher of the hospital to say fare well at my grave sell all my property which is all in cash and stocks with E F Hutton Co Pheonix some in safety box, and have this balance money to go in a research or some scientific proof of a soul of the human body which leaves at death. I think in time their can be a Photograph of soul leaving the human at death. James Kidd.
A court case was launched to determine if the unwitnessed and poorly-written document was valid. Word got out, and the judge was overwhelmed by more than 4,000 letters from people all over the world insisting they could prove the existence of the soul and should thereby inherit Kidd’s fortune.
Throughout the next 3 years, lawyers argued back and forth about the will’s legitimacy, and it was finally declared valid in 1967.
Now the real fun began! How should this money be used to satisfy the contents of Kidd’s will?
One hundred and thirty three petitioners packed the courtroom to stake their claim. These included a man who announced that visitors from outer space had confided the secret of the soul to him, and a woman who declared that the spirit of Kidd had materialized in her bedroom.
Although Kidd had no family, this didn’t stop an endless line of people purporting to be relatives. Two elderly Canadians claimed him as their long-lost brother. One woman presented herself as his widow. Two sisters insisted they were his daughters.
In the midst of all this wrangling, Judge Myers received an intriguing typewritten letter in which the writer expressed amusement at all the bickering, adding that he hoped that these funds would eventually find their way into worthy hands.
The letter was signed “Quite Alive, James Kidd.”
The true identity of this letter-writer was never established. If he was still alive, Kidd would have been about 88, so it’s possible the letter was genuine. I find it amusing to imagine the reclusive Kidd standing silently on the sidelines, a hint of amusement on his weather-beaten old face and a mischievous glint in his eye as he watched total strangers claiming to be long-lost family members and squabbling over their claim to his fortune.
Once the crackpots had been dealt with, Judge Myers considered testimonies from those representing various parapsychology groups.
The Great Soul Trial, as it came to be known, ran for 3 months and the money was awarded to the Barrow Neurological Institute of Phoenix, even though they freely admitted they had no idea how to go about locating the soul.
This caused a sensation. Several parapsychology groups banded together to appeal the decision, which led to a further 5 years of legal wrangling.
The American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) put their case forward:
“We present the hypothesis that some part of the human personality indeed is capable of operating outside the living body … and that it may continue to exist after the brain processes have ceased and the organism is decayed.”
In 1972 – 23 years after Kidd’s disappearance and 8 years after the discovery of his will – the original ruling was overturned.
Due to accrued interest, Kidd’s fortune was now worth $270,000. The court awarded two-thirds of it to the ASPR, and the remaining third to the Psychical Research Foundation.
As an esteemed member of the ASPR, Dr. Karlis Osis had much-needed funding for a planned multicultural study of deathbed visions. He joined forces with colleague Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson and together they designed a research program aimed at collecting deathbed data through surveys of physicians and nurses in India and the U.S.
Kidd’s legacy, however, was worth far more than dollar bills.
James Kidd’s will captured the attention and imagination of people around the world. The court battles throughout the 1960’s were sufficiently newsworthy to ensure that the international media kept the public well informed on their progress.
As a result, people began to openly discuss the possibilities these trials suggested.
Was there more to us than just the physical body?
Could science really prove the validity of the soul?
Did the afterlife really exist?
The time was now ripe for many people to begin the process of questioning long-held assumptions.
Was it a coincidence that a mere three years later, the public eagerly embraced Dr. Moody’s ground-breaking book, Life After Life?
Two years later, in 1977, Drs. Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson detailed their research on deathbed visions in India and America in their book, At The Hour of Death.
It is said that everyone’s life has a purpose. While James Kidd may not have made a big impact on the world while he lived, his death – and the note he scrawled 3 years earlier – certainly helped to open more than a few minds.
THE MUSICAL MEDIUM
… an organised group of musicians who have departed from your world are attempting to establish a precept for humanity, i.e. that physical death is a transition from one state of consciousness to another wherein one retains one’s individuality. (Franz Liszt, 1970)
Rosemary Brown might be described as having been as normal as anyone could be.
Well, apart from the fact that she regularly entertained long-deceased people in her home!
As a child, Rosemary presumed everyone saw ‘dead people’. They were always quite solid, and for young Rosemary it was easy to confuse them with living people. She recalled one occasion when she woke to see the figure of a very tall man standing beside her bed and thought it was a burglar. She was terrified, but as she sat up the figure vanished. She shrugged and thought “oh it’s only another old ghost,” then turned over and went back to sleep.
When she was seven, a very old man with long white hair and wearing what Rosemary thought was a long black dress (she later learned that it was a priest’s cassock) appeared beside her bed and told her that when he had been in this world, he had been a composer and pianist. Rosemary had no idea who this old man was, but she remembered him because he was the only ‘ghost’ to have spoken to her.
“When you grow up I will come back and give you music,” he told her.
Over forty years later, Franz Liszt kept his promise.
Those forty years had not been easy for Rosemary. An only child, she was born in Clapham – an inner suburb of London – on 27 July 1916, and grew up in humble circumstances. The family’s income had barely met their basic needs. As a young teen, she had begged her parents for piano lessons, but funds didn’t stretch to such luxuries. Undaunted, she tried to teach herself on the old piano inherited from her grandparents. It had a few dud keys and was kept in a big drafty sitting room, so in winter her fingers were so cold and stiff she could hardly move them. She persisted for a year, then ran errands to earn enough money to pay for 2 terms of lessons.
As if the family’s circumstances were not sufficiently dire, world war 2 meant six years of rations, while sirens sent everyone running to the nearest bomb shelter, hoping their home would still be standing when the all clear siren sounded. When her father died before the war ended, life became even more difficult.
In 1951, at the age of 36, Rosemary married widower Charles Brown and produced two children. Alas, Charles was often unwell and unable to work. At one time, Rosemary even tried to sell the old piano to make ends meet, but could find no-one to buy it. She was later to understand why she was meant to keep it.
Although she regularly brought through highly evidential messages for Charles from his previously deceased wife, it’s interesting to note that during these lean years it never occurred to her to offer private readings to help make ends meet, although she did conduct a few later in life.
In 1960, Rosemary’s mother died, and the following year, after just 9 years of marriage, Charles also succumbed to his illness, leaving Rosemary penniless and with two children to raise. She found work as a cleaner at the local school, but not long after starting, she slipped in the school cafeteria and broke two ribs.
One day while recuperating, she was tinkling at the piano when suddenly, Franz Liszt appeared. He slipped his hands over hers as though his were a pair of gloves, and she found herself playing music she’d never heard before.
After several sessions, he began to speak. “I have come to fulfill my promise.” He reminded her. “Do you remember me coming to see you all those years ago when you were a little girl?”
She remembered, and commented that he looked so much younger now.
Liszt began talking more after that, and she would sit and listen intently as he spoke about the music he was giving her. She wished she could write the compositions down so others could hear them, but her musical education was limited and she knew that remembering and sorting out the correct notes on the keyboard would be far too difficult.
Nothing, it seems, was too difficult for Franz Liszt. By 1964 he had devised a way to dictate his music so she could write it down. It was a slow and painstaking process as both were learning how to do it and looking for the best way to communicate the music.
Liszt warned her, however, that if she agreed to do this work, she would be subjected to a great deal of ridicule, jealousy, and harsh skepticism. He told her that people would try to exploit her and attempt to suppress the music.
Rosemary was undaunted and unhesitatingly agreed to continue.
Liszt was to become the organizer and leader of a group of famous composers – Chopin, Schubert, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Schumann, Debussy, Greig, Berlioz, Rachmaninov, Monteverdi – all of whom began visiting Rosemary regularly to dictate their new music to her.
Over the many years until her own death, these celebrated composers dictated over 500 pieces of music.
In 1968, the BBC interviewed Rosemary, then produced a documentary about her. Shortly afterwards, she was offered a recording contract with Philips. (Thanks to Sandra Champlain, host of You Don’t Die podcast, here is a link to the documentary): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mX477Zo7otg
The LP subsequently produced by Philips – A Musical Séance – described each composition as having been “inspired” by the named composers – Chopin, Liszt, Beethoven, Schubert, DeBussy, Brahms, Grieg and Schumann.
As Liszt warned, Rosemary Brown was subjected to much criticism and skepticism. As she often pointed out, she would need to be a musical genius to have written all these pieces – and all in very different but easily recognizable styles.
However, she has also received accolades from those with ears highly attuned to the styles of the great composers. British composer Richard Rodney Bennett once told how he had been having trouble with a composition of his own. “Mrs. Brown passed along Debussy’s recommendation,” he commented. “It worked!”
“If she is a fake, she is a brilliant one,” Bennett added in an interview for Time magazine, “and must have had years of training. Some (of the music) is marvellous. I couldn’t have faked the Beethoven!”
Rosemary Brown did not have ‘years of training’, nor was she brilliant. During the time she worked with the composers, she was a reclusive, middle-aged housewife who worked part-time as a cleaning lady.
Why did these composers feel the need to bring new musical compositions to the world anyway? Didn’t we have enough music already?
“There is more in all this than perhaps meets the eye,” British conductor Sir Henry Wood stated in 1970, 26 years after his death. He was speaking through the mediumship of Leslie Flint. “It’s not only the music we are interested in … we are anxious to change if we can your world; change the thoughts of man. By the efforts of many souls here, we should be able to bring man to a greater realization and understanding of the purpose of life.”
Rosemary Brown died on November 16th, 2001, aged 85. No doubt she now has a far greater understanding of the purpose of life – at least the purpose of her own life!
Watch Rosemary working at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=474216996284669
This amazing medium’s legacy not only included over 500 compositions dictated to her by a crowd of long-deceased composers, she also wrote 3 wonderful books …
MORE AFTERLIFE MOVIES
other NDE movies and AFTERLIFE movies
This is one of my all-time favorites! After a plane crash, a young therapist, Claire, is assigned by her mentor to counsel the flight’s five survivors, who begin to open up and share their recollections of the incident. But one by one, these survivors begin to mysteriously disappear. Claire becomes determined to uncover the truth … no matter the consequences. But the truth is far more than she bargained for. A compelling and thought-provoking movie.
The Discovery is a grim movie, to be sure. It’s about a scientist (played by Robert Redford) who uncovers scientific proof that there really is an afterlife, but this revelation prompts many to take their own lives. Some loved this movie, some were bored with it (including me for a while as it does tend to get bogged down due to its jumps between past, present and future) but I felt the final scene brought it all together beautifully and made it worth the effort.
Who HASN’T seen The Sixth Sense? When it first came out in 1999 (wow, that long ago?) everyone was talking about it and saying “don’t give away the ending, it’s such a surprise!” So I rushed out to watch it, and I confess, I predicted what I thought was the ending within the first 5 minutes, but knew there had to be a bigger twist than I expected. There wasn’t, so to me it was a bit of a let-down. But when I watched it again years later, I enjoyed it far more because I wasn’t trying to figure out what the twist would be, and I appreciated it far more. It’s a classic ‘afterlife’ movie.
The ending to THIS one, however, I didn’t anticipate! A woman (played by Nicole Kidman) lives in a darkened old house with her two photosensitive children and becomes convinced that her family home is haunted. I thought it was going to be just one of your run-of-the-mill haunted house movies. How wrong I was. Loved it!
Sorry, but I confess that I just didn’t get this one. Perhaps it’s my sense of humor – or lack of. It certainly falls within the category of afterlife – in fact, it’s a “life review” movie. Yuppie Daniel Miller is killed in a car accident and goes to Judgment City where he must prove in a courtroom-style process that he successfully overcame his fears. Written, directed and starring Albert Brooks (and Meryl Streep). If you love Brooks’ work, then you’ll probably love this movie. I just hope it’s not how it works in real life … er, I mean in real death!
This is a thriller about a young girl who was murdered and who watches over her family – and her killer – from purgatory. She must weigh her desire for vengeance against her desire for her family to heal. It’s a little slow and may not be a movie to watch so much for the story-line as for the experience. It didn’t get rave reviews from most viewers, but it’s a hauntingly beautiful and thought-provoking movie.
Now, here are two “oldies-but-goodies”. (Stairway to Heaven was made in 1946.) Peter Carter’s plane crashes. It was his time to die … but ‘they’ couldn’t find him in the fog. By the time they do, his life has changed, and he must plead his case in heaven. Sounds a little like “Defending Your Life”, but this one isn’t a comedy. However, it IS a bit soppy, as old movies often were. A nice romantic one for a rainy Sunday afternoon.
I searched high and low for this 1944 movie for many years and believe me, it wasn’t easy! I remembered seeing it so long ago but couldn’t remember its title or even who was in it! But I eventually tracked it down and loved it all over again. It’s about passengers on an ocean liner who can’t recall how they got on board or where they’re going, but it soon becomes apparent that they all have something in common. Now this is how I intend to travel to the other side!
(Be reminded: old movies can be a big soppy!)
I still have so many more movies to share with you, so I’ll put another collection up in a few months. In the meantime, if you want to go back and check out those I’ve already mentioned months ago on this blog, you can find them at:
NDE movies and AFTERLIFE movies
I’d be really interested to hear your opinions on the movies listed – did you love something I didn’t enjoy, or didn’t enjoy something I loved? Please feel free to share your thoughts with me and this blog’s other readers through the comments box.
In the meantime, I want to thank all those who have written such lovely reviews on Amazon about my book, Heaven Knows, and encourage those of you who have read and enjoyed it (or even if you didn’t enjoy it) to write a review. My purpose for writing the book was to help those who are grieving or living in fear of death, and reviews always help potential buyers make a decision.
Cheers, SandyC
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