Afterlife Adventures Read online

  Afterlife Adventures

  Life After Death Stories

  Real Stories. Real People in the Hereafter.

  Is there Life After Death? Is there Proof?

  What Really Happens Heaven?

  New Ideas on Reincarnation and Rebirth.

  William Fergus Martin

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: How this Book Can Help You

  Chapter 2: What is it Like to Die?

  Chapter 3: Arrivals - The Astral Plane Welcomes You!

  Chapter 4: Afterlife Versus Earth Life

  Chapter 5: Too Good to Be True?

  Chapter 6: The Afterlife in Detail

  Chapter 7: When a Child ‘Dies’

  Chapter 8: Work! What’s That?

  Chapter 9: Earth Bound

  Chapter 10: Lower Spheres and Hell

  Chapter 11: The Higher Spheres

  Chapter 12: How to Have a Good Afterlife

  Chapter 13: Lost in Translation - Afterlife Communication

  Chapter 14: Reincarnation and Rebirth

  Chapter 15: The Big Questions - God, Sin, Religion …

  Chapter 16: Purpose of Life on Earth

  Appendix: Resources and About the Author

  Chapter 1: How this Book Can Help You

  There are a notable number of excellent books about the Afterlife that are currently out of print. Much of this material offers wonderful insights into the Afterlife, yet was written in a style that is too dated for our times. Some of it, particularly the parts that are social commentary, is no longer relevant. This is an attempt to extract useful gems from those books, so they can still fulfill their original purpose: to help break down the barriers between this world and the next; to reduce fear and grief around the issue of ‘death’ and contribute to establishing love and positive expectation in their place.

  Books about the Afterlife can offer real comfort and reassurance that our life on Earth does have a purpose and that we need not fear our exit from this world into the next. This type of material can help us get through the ‘winter’ months, or any time when we are finding life hard going. It helps to know that we can be assured of a happy and meaningful future in the Afterlife - simply by following our natural impulses to do good.

  It might help you to relate to this book if you know a little bit about my own background. I first became deeply interested the Afterlife, and what it’s really like over there, in the late ‘60s, while I was in my teens. I had a Great Uncle, Uncle Jimmy, who I used to visit, and he had a stack of books that he kept in a big cupboard. On investigating, I discovered that these books were all about the Afterlife. The information in them had been transmitted to Mediums by various means, by either those who had passed over, or they were the discoveries of people doing Astral Travel, and so on. I became fascinated with the topic and, with Uncle Jimmy’s encouragement, I started working my way through his stack of books.

  Eventually, I joined a Spiritualist Church in Glasgow, and even joined a Development Circle where aspiring mediums were trained. I ultimately realized that I did not really want to be a Medium and was just going there for the meditations. Possibly for this reason or some other, I never did become a Medium as such. However, I have had a few odd experiences over the years. I once enjoyed a chatty conversation with a friendly old man and then discovered a year later, when I revisited the area, he had in fact died three months before he and I had our chat!

  After my mother died I found some books from Uncle Jimmy’s collection in her house. She must have inherited them when he had died decades before. I started looking for more books on the Afterlife and discovered some of the genre via Ebay, Amazon and Abebooks. However, most of the books I wanted were out of print so the search was hard going. I eventually realized that many of them had been scanned and uploaded onto the Web, in various places, and I could easily get them there – as could anyone who wants to research further.

  Some of the books were truly wonderful, but it took some digging to get to the really good stuff. It also required some understanding of the Afterlife in order to get past the apparent contractions in the overall body of material. Then it dawned on me that a book, which compared different people’s experiences of passing over and what happened to them next, would be really useful. It would help pull out the gems from these old books, and leave out the parts not relevant to a modern audience. It would also help students of the Afterlife to see where to best focus their attention based on the nature of the quotes from different sources. People could better see which books focused on the aspects of the Afterlife that most interested them; family, evolution, relationships, work, leisure and so on.

  Of course, there are many good modern books on the Afterlife. Yet those are usually from one person’s point of view and I want to give a broad multi-person perspective. Also, much of the more recent material is from those who had an NDE (Near Death Experience). As worthy and fascinating as such material is, visiting a place is not the same as living there. I wanted to express the views of those who actually live in the Afterlife as permanent residents.

  Also, an NDE has a particular purpose in a person’s life: usually it is an intense experience, a wake-up call, in order to get them to make a dramatic change in the direction of their life. This is a different process from actually passing over permanently. NDEs can be much more dramatic than the actual process of ‘death’ which the person may hardly even notice till they start to wonder why they feel so good and so healthy. For most people, passing over (which seems to be designed to be reassuring) is fairly mild and mellow in comparison to what people experience in an NDE (which is designed to get people to dramatically change their way of life). There are no hard and fast rules about this, of course, and some NDEs are very mellow and some people have a dramatic experience of arriving in the Afterlife.

  The Afterlife

  What is it like to die? What happens next? Will I meet my loved ones? And so on… These are some of the questions I will endeavor to answer in the following pages. I hope to put your mind at ease and help create hope, and even positive anticipation around the issue of passing over.

  The purpose of this book is to help educate and inform you as to the nature of the Afterlife. I hope to add to the growing body of information available on this fascinating topic. The Afterlife is a vast topic covering as it does many different realms and hugely different experiences. Just as different individual’s views of life here on Earth can vary widely, so too can different individual’s views of the Afterlife vary widely. This creates some apparent contradictions in accounts of Afterlife experience. These ‘contradictions’ are resolved in knowing that each person speaks from their own experience and although what they say is true for them, it is not necessarily true for others. It could also be that they making assumptions based on limited experience, just as people are prone to do during their time on Earth.

  “I think you do not comprehend the difference in the intelligence of spirits, for some have only the conception of spirit life that was theirs when they left the earth. Many are like children and could not intelligently describe the life here. Others tell things that are not true, sometimes in ignorance, sometimes in mischief. Sometimes, the newly arrived spirit may still be impressed by its own earth conceptions, and may send those mistaken views to earth.” — Spirit World and Spirit Life

  The very substance of the Afterlife is, in some places, highly malleable and responsive to human thought and feelings – especially when this is done deliberately. One person’s idea of ‘heaven’ may be very different from another’s and those ideas are likely to change for each person over time. People with ideas that harmonize will tend to be attracted to each other and to a matching environment. Therefore, th
ey may need to actively seek out others with different viewpoints as those around them may mostly reinforce their current perspective, plus their environment will tend to support and reinforce their present views till they are ready to change.

  The Afterlife Changes!

  Since a realm with the level of density as the physical Earth can change and develop, then it is not hard to understand that a more fluid and refined level, such as the Afterlife, will also change and develop too.

  A thousand years ago, the average person entering the Afterlife had little in the way of education, did not know much beyond what they needed in order to undertake simple tasks, lived a relatively narrow life, and maybe not did have much in the way of expectations of something better. In a world such as the Afterlife, shaped by intention and deliberate use of thoughts and feelings, what would such people experience? How would that compare to a modern, well-educated, human? The type of Afterlife experienced by primitive, early-humans would be very different to ours.

  With the level of mental development we now enjoy due to wide spread access to education, modern humans are much better equipped to consciously participate in shaping the environment of the Afterlife than those in olden times. The Afterlife is not static; it is evolving. As the knowledge, education, and social development of human beings change, so too does the Afterlife change - in response to that. This is especially true of those parts closest to the Earth, and even more the case for those parts closest to the most developed areas on Earth.

  In more recent times, one idea of the Afterlife is that it is a place where we experience ‘eternal rest’ and float on a cloud, or some other vague notion. This might appeal to someone who spent their life in backbreaking work as a serf, but it would not work well for most of modern humanity – at least not for very long. (Thought floating on a cloud is still an option for those who want that, till it gets too boring and they want something else). The same goes for the idea of Nirvana as the following quote shows.

  “Well, it has seemed to us to be far more satisfactory to go on developing ourselves, our personality, our individuality, continuously… rather than to strive for a state of calm, an eternity of perfection where one… would have nothing to do but to contemplate one's own bliss.” — Spirit World and Spirit Life

  Ideas about the Afterlife presented by various forms of religion are often thousands of years old and therefore are unlikely to bear any relation to current circumstances. Religious teachings about the Afterlife are often distorted by superstition and by being modified to enhance the position and authority of the leaders of that religion. Such religions assume the Afterlife is static, but that is only an assumption. The idea of a static Afterlife makes no sense when we consider that human development is not static and that people continue to evolve even over there. It is sometimes assumed that ancient writings have more authority than more recent writings, but this is also a false assumption in regards to accuracy about the Afterlife. These older materials do not consider the changeable and dynamic nature of the Afterlife realms and may well be less accurate than new materials.

  Afterlifers (residents of the Afterlife) place a lot of emphasis on the idea that we progress by serving each other; not by self-centeredness. We evolve by engaging with the process of life; not by trying to withdraw permanently from it. Even when an activity is spiritually motivated, it can still be self-centered. One communicator mentions a person they are trying to help break out of a mental shell that he has created for himself.

  "He is strongly hypnotized by his earthly studies and beliefs, and it may be long before he comes out of them. But he will drop these ideas some time. His belief in Nirvana is the most dreary part of it:—an endless inactivity of contemplating…” — Spirit World and Spirit Life

  Based on their religious beliefs, some have a very strong expectation that they will wander in the Afterlife for forty days, or so, then be reborn. They could be setting themselves up to do exactly that, or at least temporarily blocking their own progress over there.

  Even those religions, which teach that ‘All is change’ don’t seem to consider that the Afterlife is subject to change too! For one thing, the Astral Plane, especially the parts closest to the Earth, is heavily influenced by events on Earth, so there is always a correlation between changes on the Earth and changes in those parts of the Afterlife. Many modern humans have experience of using their mind to think and plan in business and in life. We have also traveled more widely than even the very rich of olden times and have wider experience of different cultures. Our ideas of ‘heaven’ have changed considerably. The Afterlife spheres closest to Earth change in response to changes in our unconscious expectations, changes in social developments here, and the effect of our deliberate and conscious use of thought to shape the environment after we pass over.

  Does an Eastern-trained monk offering teachings about the Afterlife, based on very old materials, know what he is taking about, or are is he offering outdated superstitions? It seems very likely that, if he goes beyond the moral principles of his religion and tries to describe specifics of the Afterlife, he will be sorely inaccurate. Religious beliefs tend to get encrusted with superstitions no matter how pure the teaching to start with. Part of adapting to the Afterlife is to let go of these superstitions.

  “Heaven is wide and infinite in its possibilities. There are souls who do not come into realization of this life for a long time. Many seem to [cling to] the teachings, thoughts and tendencies of their earth lives, even when they are guided into better ones.” — Life Here and Hereafter

  It make no sense for a Westerner to throw off the doubtful elements of the religious traditions they have grown up with to then thoughtlessly absorb all the doubtful elements of some, more exotic looking, Eastern religion instead. The desire for some form of ‘certainty’ is one of the things that can trap us in superstition rather than knowledge. All religious teachings are at best a ‘working hypothesis’ till we prove them in our own experience. This also goes for more modern esoteric teachings such as Theosophy and the like. Having too strong an investment in any particular way of thinking about the Afterlife, no matter what its source, is unwise. It is better to keep an open mind and allow for the Afterlife to be much more varied, and considerably more enjoyable, than we can possibly imagine.

  It is interesting to note the even those Eastern religions that claim to have a body of teachings about the development of psychic powers are still presenting outdated views of the Afterlife. Perhaps they can’t get past their own expectations based on the old superstitions they were taught, or perhaps any psychics among them dare not contradict such teachings – out of fear of their religion’s hierarchy - even when they do discover something different.

  Some of this old Eastern material about life over there may seem just plain weird to modern Western minds (and perhaps to modern Eastern minds too): it does not meet our needs as it was not shaped by those needs. One thing we need is more up-to-date information, better matched to our evolving capacities, to get a truer picture of what the Afterlife is actually like.

  The beliefs of some religions about the nature of the Afterlife, if strongly held, can hold the person back when they pass over as those thoughts can have a reality there. Rigid ideas create a mental shell that the person’s Guides, Helpers and loved ones cannot penetrate – as they have to respect the person’s free will. Some of the religious ideas about the Afterlife are seriously contradicted by those Afterlifers who have come back to relate their actual experiences. Even totally wrong ideas do no harm if lightly held, or the person is open-minded. However, if people become ‘certain’ about such ideas, they take on a ‘reality’ for them on passing over and reaching a realm where their thoughts are so powerfully creative. Certainty needs to be based on experience and knowledge; not on assumptions, no matter the source of those assumptions.

  What is the Afterlife?

  The Afterlife is a range of realms, levels, or spheres (depending on the word you prefer) that we go to
when we pass through physical death. It seems to go on into infinity as the Afterlife realms eventually overlap those of other planets and solar systems, and so on.

  Afterlifers tell us that our life on Earth is only temporary and the real life is over where they are. They say that we have a very limited perspective (as they had also) when in a physical body and most things fall into place much better once we return to our natural state and our natural home over there. They essentially say that we are evolving beings and that our evolution as individuals includes a temporary, short-term dip into physical experience and then carries on in the more permanent reality that we regain when we let go of the physical body.

  The different levels or sphere of the Afterlife reflect that state of consciousness of the inhabitants. In simple terms, the kind and the compassionate are attracted to each other and create an environment of beauty and harmony. The cruel and malicious are also attracted to each other and create an environment of ugliness and disharmony. Those in-between the extremes create suitably matching environments. It is poetic justice that rhymes with common sense!

  Afterlifers say that they experience God as a very real presence, to the extent that they want to experience that. Yet, they also say that it is natural law that creates ‘heaven’ or ‘hell’ and is due to the way that like-attracts-like. Anyone who wants to change their state to a better one needs to change their attitude - and this may include making amends for harm they have done to others. There is much coming and going between those in different parts of the Afterlife, and often those from Higher Realms will visit to help and advise those on the realms lower than themselves.

  Differences Between the Astral Plane and the Spiritual Plane?

  The Astral Plane is part of the Afterlife, but only a tiny part of it. The Astral Plane is the emotional body of Planet Earth. It is the place where everyone goes initially when they pass over. It is also where people can work out long-held longings, desires, fantasies and wishes. Some do not stay, and only pass through, as their spiritual aspiration carries them onwards straight into the Spiritual Planes. Others spend a short, or long, time on the Astral Plane depending on their needs and wants.