I found an interesting reference thanks to Alyssia, Called Letters from A Dead Man, in which a Judge who lived from 1846-1912 is channeled through automatic writing by an acquaintance, and the letters from different visits are kept and analyzed.

In one letter, I found this interesting exchange about what the spirit of the judge and his spiritual teacher encountered in souls who denied the immortality of the soul and upon passing on entered into a pseudo-death or sleep described by Bruce Moen on this website.  The parallels to Bruce's description are amazing.  But I think this message has the most relevance for those who sink nothingness or annihilation after death.  Here is the letter, reprinted:

From the free E book:   http://www.earthlypursuits.com/LtrLDMan/LDMintro.htm

  LETTER XXXIX

THE DOCTRINE OF DEATH

Many times during the months in which I have been here have I seen men and women lying in a state of unconsciousness more profound than the deepest sleep, their faces expressionless and uninteresting. At first, before I understood the nature of their sleep, I tried as an experiment to awaken one or two of them, and was not successful. In certain cases where my curiosity was aroused, I have returned later, day after day, and found them still lying in the same lethargy.
   "Why," I asked myself, "should any man sleep like that—a sleep so deep that neither the spoken word nor the physical touch could arouse him?"
   One day when the Teacher was with me we passed one of those unconscious men whom I had seen before, had watched, and had striven unsuccessfully to arouse.

   "Who are these people who sleep like that?" I asked the Teacher; and he replied:
   "They are those who in their earth life denied the immortality of the soul after death."
   "How terrible!" I said. "And will they never awaken?"
   "Yes, perhaps centuries, perhaps ages hence, when the irresistible law of rhythm shall draw them out of their sleep into incarnation. For the law of rebirth is one with the law of rhythm."
   "Would it not be possible to awaken one of them, this man, for instance?"
   "You have attempted it, have you not?" the Teacher inquired, with a keen look into my face.
   "Yes," I admitted.
   "And you failed?"
   "Yes."
   We looked at each other for a moment, then I said:
   "Perhaps you, with your greater power and knowledge, could succeed where I have failed."
   He made no answer. His silence fired my interest still farther, and I said eagerly:
   "Will you not try? Will you not awaken this man?"
   "You know not what you ask," he replied.

   "But tell me this," I demanded: "could you awaken him?"
   "Perhaps. But in order to counteract the law which holds him in sleep, the law of the spell he laid upon his own soul when he went out of life demanding unconsciousness and annihilation—in order to counteract that law, I should have to put in operation a law still stronger."
   "And that is?" I asked.
   "Will," he answered, "the potency of will."
   "Could you?"
   "As I said before—perhaps."
   "And will you?"
   "Again I say that you know not what you ask."
   "Will you please explain?" I persisted, "for indeed this seems to me to be one of the most marvellous things which I have seen."
   The face of the Teacher was very grave, as he answered:
   "What good has this man done in the past that I should place myself between him and the law of cause and effect which he has willfully set in operation?"
   "I do not know his past," I said.
   "Then," the Teacher demanded, "will you tell me your reason for asking me to do this thing?"
   "My reason?"

   "Yes. Is it pity for this man’s unfortunate condition, or is it scientific curiosity on your own part?"
   I should gladly been able to say that it was pity for the man’s sad state which moved me so; but one does not juggle with truth or with motives when speaking to such a Teacher, so I admitted that it was scientific curiosity.
   "In that case," he said, "I am justified in using him as a demonstration of the power of the trained will."
   "It will not harm him, will it?"
   "On the contrary. And though he may suffer shock, it will probably be the means of so impressing his mind that never again, even in future lives on earth, can he believe himself, or teach others to believe, that death ends everything. As far as he is concerned, he does not deserve that I should waste upon him so great an amount of energy as will be necessary to arouse him from this sleep, this spell which he laid upon himself ages ago. But if I awaken him, it will be for your sake, ‘that you may believe.’"
   I wish I could describe the scene which took place, so that you could see it with the eyes of your imagination. There lay the man at our feet, his face colourless and expressionless, and above him towered the splendid form of the Teacher, his face beautiful with power, his eyes brilliant with thought.

   "Can you not see," asked the Teacher, "a faint light surrounding this seemingly lifeless figure?"
   "Yes, but the light is very faint indeed."
   "Nevertheless," said the Teacher, "that light is far less faint than is this weak soul’s hold upon the eternal truth. But where you see only a pale light around the recumbent form, I see in that light many pictures of the soul’s past. I see that he not only denied the immortality of the soul’s consciousness, but that he taught his doctrine of death to other men and made them even as himself. Truly he does not deserve that I should try to awaken him!"
   "Yet you will do it?"
   "Yes, I will do it."
   I regret that I am not permitted to tell you by what form of words and by what acts my Teacher succeeded, after a mighty effort, in arousing that man from his self-imposed imitation of annihilation. I realised as never before—not only the personal power of the Teacher, but the irresistible power of a trained and directed will.
   I thought of that scene recorded in the New Testament, where Jesus said to the dead man in the tomb, "Lazarus, come forth!"

   "The soul of man is immortal," declared the Teacher, looking fixedly into the shrinking eyes of the awakened man and holding them by his will.
   "The soul of man is immortal," he repeated. Then in a tone of command:
   "Stand up!"
   The man struggled to his feet. Though his body was light as a feather, as are all our bodies here, I could see that his slumbering energy was still almost too dormant to permit of that really slight exertion.
   "You live," declared the Teacher. "You have passed through death, and you live. Do not dare to deny that you live. You cannot deny it."
   "But I do not believe––" began the man, his stubborn materialism still challenging the truth of his own existence, his memory surviving the ordeal through which he had passed. This last surprised me more than anything else. But after a moment’s stupefaction I understood that it was the power of the Teacher’s mental picture of the astral records round this soul which had forced those memories to awaken.
   "Sit down between us two," said the Teacher to the newly aroused man, "and let us reason together. You thought yourself a great reasoner, did you not, when you walked the earth as So-and-so?"

   "I did."
   "You see that you were mistaken in your reasoning," the Teacher went on, "for you certainly passed through death, and you are now alive."
   "But where am I?" He looked about him in a bewildered way. "Where am I, and who are you?"
   "You are in eternity," replied the Teacher, "where you always have been and always will be."
   "And you?"
   "I am one who knows the workings of the Law."
   "What law?"
   "The law of rhythm, which drives the soul into and out of gross matter, as it drives the tides of the ocean into flood and ebb, and the consciousness of man into sleeping and waking."
   "And it was you who awakened me? Are you, then, this law of rhythm?"
   The Teacher smiled.
   "I am not the law," he said, "but I am bound by it, even as you, save as I am temporarily able to transcend it by my will—again, even as you."

   I caught my breath at the profundity of this simple answer, but the man seemed not to observe its significance. Even as he! Why, this man by his misdirected will had been able temporarily to transcend the law of immortality, even as the Teacher by his wisely directed will transcended the mortal in himself! My soul sang within me at this glimpse of the godlike possibilities of the human mind.
   "How long have I been asleep?" demanded the man
   "In what year did you die?" the Teacher asked.
   "In the year 1817."
   "And the present year is known, according to the Christian calendar, as the year 1912. You have lain in a death-like sleep for ninety-five years."
   "And was it really you who awakened me?"
   "Yes."
   "Why did you do it?"
   "Because it suited my good pleasure," was the Teacher’s rather stern reply. "It was not because you deserved to be awakened."
   "And how long would I have slept if you had not aroused me?"

   "I cannot say. Probably until those who had started even with you had left you far behind on the road of evolving life. Perhaps for centuries, perhaps for ages."
   "You have taken a responsibility upon yourself," said the man.
   "You do not need to remind me of that," replied the Teacher. "I weighed in my own mind the full responsibility and decided to assume it for a purpose of my own. For will is free."
   "Yet you overpowered my will."
   "I did; but by my own more potent will, more potent because wisely directed and backed by a greater energy."
   "And what are you going to do with me?"
   "I am going to assume the responsibility of your training."
   "My training?"
   "Yes."
   "And you will make things easy for me?"
   "On the contrary, I shall make things very hard for you; but you cannot escape my teaching."
   "Shall you instruct me personally?"
   "Personally in the sense that I will place you under the instruction of an advanced pupil of my own."
   "Who? This man here?" he pointed to me.
   "No. He is better occupied. I will take you to your teacher presently."

   "And what will he show me?"
   "The panorama of immortality. And when you have learned the lesson so that you can never forget nor escape it, you will have to go back to the earth and teach it to others; you will have to convert as many men to the truth of immortality as you have in the past deluded and misled by your false doctrines of materialism and death."
   "And what if I refuse? You have said that will is free."
   "Do you refuse?"
   "No, but what if I had?"
   "Then, instead of growing and developing under the law of action and reaction, which in the East they call karma, you would have been its victim."
   "I do not understand you."
   "He is indeed a wise man," said the Teacher, "who understands the law of karma, which is also the law of cause and effect. But come. I will now take you to your new instructor."
   Then, leaving me alone, the Teacher and his charge disappeared into the grey distance.
   I remained there a long time, pondering what I had seen and heard.


Much thanks to Alyssia for this reference,


Doc

Chum,

The quote about not following the teacher's path and becoming Karma's victim meant that the law of cause and effect would catch him whether he believed in immortality or not.  If he used his own will to deny our immortal existence, he would lie perhaps for centuries in a suspended animation/sleep as Bruce described encountering - however, the teacher was saying that with the rhythms and tides of Karma, eventualy, he would have to wake up and be reborn - if centuries had elapsed, there is no telling what kind of shape his mind or understanding would be in. 

So he could deny the existence of the immortal soul and through force of will feign annihlation for centuries, only to be drawn back into the world later, and in worse shape, or he could acknowledge the immortality of the soul and work to understand himself and the universe.

I too felt the teacher was unusally harsh, imposing his will, but there are many heavenly societies, and in this may have been one of those "tough love" societies. 


Doc

Hi Matthew I thought it was very interesting and i feel that this can happen as if someone beleives so much that death is the end and that our thoughts go with us at death ,then it would be hard for them to wake up.

My friend told me that her dad who came through this medium said that he woke up in a beautiful garden after he died and i read somewhere once that some spirits sleep longer than others in this garden,its called i think The Garden of Rest and my friends dad said through this medium,that this is where we go when we die The garden of rest and  while spirits sleep all there loved ones who died before them visit them,so when they finally wake,they help to explain to the spirit that they are now in the spirit world.

Love and God bless  Love Juditha

Hi just popping in to say happy birthday to Gemini and I’ve noticed this link.  You couldn’t get anything more glum could you?!  It has the most unloving attitude about it – first sign of incorrectness.

Not many people think about the afterlife – it is only crazy nuts like us!  They may ponder it for a bit but carry on with their normal day to day life.  This is healthy – it is life – does this mean they all are going to end up in a state like this?  Hardly I say.

Chum lad you grizzly bear you – you are an old soul shown by your strong Will.  You’d be amazed at how great you really are in the afterlife.

Chum, never let anyone judge you.  Trust in yourself and trust in the Universal Law which is Love.  You know your heart better then anyone it goes beyond thoughts and ponderings.  Love is with you more than you can imagine.

Hi Doc-
My reading was that the expressive mode probably followed the judge's own personality. After a lifetime of issuing judgements and declaring the Law, it would be reasonable to have a siprit guide who used the same communicative mode, since this would most easily fit the judge's own nature.

Aside from that, we have a fairly large tradition involving Limbo - the place where souls go to wait a spiritual awakening, or Sheol, the place where the souls of the dead are collected, presumably to await the Messiah. The prevailing doctrines generally state that these are places in which nothing happens. This is essentially a socially defined BST.

Swedenborg's account of souls arriving in the "afterlife" as a sort of crowd that sorts itself out according to levels of development, attitudes and interests would fit the same idea in the sense that Limbo would be the inert end of the spectrum, while the energetic ascension of the saints etc toward God would fit the opposite end.

I recall a patient who was more on the order of Chumley's personality. We had done a regression in order to deal with something about her dissatisfaction with her present lifestyle, and in the process we looked at a life a century or so back. She had died of cancer in Barcelona, and looking back, she saw that her husband was terribly upset with grief over her passing. Rather than simply closing her eyes, or whatever, she began to scream, "Who's in chrge here? I want to file a complaint! ..." which went on fairly loudly for some time, until a helpful spirit came to her and began explaining how things worked. This was definitely neither Heaven nor Hell, but an Upper Astral stopping place that I'd equate to Sheol. In much the same way, Bruce's account of "Max's Hell" tends to follow Swedenborg's expectations of a place where people put themselves to struggle with issues.

So, B-Man, there is definitely a place for those who fight and kick to make The System behave properly.  Maybe Jerry Fallwell could team up with you?

However, you'll have to work fast, as the Pope seems to be in the process of abolishing all the various afterlife refuges. Purgatory has already been repossessed by the cosmic real estate vendors, and Limbo is sure to go next - maybe they're going to use it for an inter-astral expressway (as in Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy) - so that the trip from heaven to hell can be ten minutes faster. 

dave

What we can call the worlds of willing and feeling change after death in a different way.  The distinction between feeling life and will-life that exists from birth to death is no longer at all relevant after death.  There is a present in the soul after death like a willing or desiring feeling-life, or a will-life that is wholly imbued with feeling.  Feeling is more similar to one’s experience of willing.  The soul, besides developing self-awareness in the way described, now begins to experience itself through an empowering and strengthening of its life of willed feeling and feeling-imbued will. 

This creates an inner life which is immeasurably more intense than the inner life of the soul when it lives within the body.  After his thoughts have receded, the human being inhabits his inner world for a long time, for decades even, experiencing it as his principle world. His inner world becomes so mighty that he must (must an expression which is not really correct for the life after death) direct his attention towards the willed feeling and feeling imbued will which streams up within him.

For years this felt willing and willed feeling looks back upon its earthly life.  The human soul feels, after death, something like a longing, like a turning back towards what was offered like a longing, like a turning back towards what was offered by its previous life.  For every life can be seen to have offered far more possibilities of experience than the human being in fact took advantage of.

When the human being passes through the Gate of Death, he has the longing and the will to relive everything of which he feels ‘You should have experienced this’.  In particular the soul has intense inner experiences of what it feels it should have done.  What the soul owes to other people, the harm it has done to others, all this appears as an intense feeling of deficient love, of which we are not at all aware in the life between birth and death.

Years go by after death during which the soul is occupied in gradually separating, unbinding itself from the context of its last life.  During this time, we are not, however, sundered from the experiences of our previous life.  We remain connected to the people whom we have left, whom we have loved.  Our connection with them is sustained by the feelings and affinities which we developed towards them in life; we are connected to them also in a roundabout way as a result of what ife offered and failed to offer us.

It is necessary to express these things in a metaphorical terms.  It is quite possible to remain in connection, after death, with people who one was close to during life, but only through an emotional affinity which one had with them then.  An intense connection is formed as a result of such affinity.  After death one lives together with the living; but also with those who have already died with whom one had a connection during life.

This is how one must imagine the life after death, which continues in this way for years.  Then the time comes when we emancipate ourself from what is merely a strengthened inner life.  Then it seems that gradually beings arise from the spiritual environment, which belong to the spiritual world in the same way that beings of the physical world – minerals, plants, animals and the physical nature of human beings – belong to our sensory, physical world.  In other words, we grow beyond ourself into a spiritual world but we grow into the spiritual environment in a way that gives us a quite different feeling for it from the feeling we have in our body towards the world of sense-phenomena.  This needs to be described at great length but one important part will be described.  We see the objects of the outer world through our eyes when light falls upon them from a source of light; we are aware of them because they are illumined by such a source.

When we leave behind the condition of feeling back towards our last earthly life and begin to grow into an objective condition of the spiritual world, then we have this experience: ‘In your last life you let ripen in you something like inner light, inner strength of soul; this gives you now, increasingly, the possibility of looking upon and perceiving the outer world of spiritual beings and processes, and living among them.’

Whereas we can experience the period previously described as a time of separation and emancipation of the soul from the connection with its past life, we now experience that in the inmost depth of the feeling-will and willed-feeling an inner light has ripened in the inner world – an inner world achieved over many years – just as, within the blossom, a seed is ripened.  By means of this inner light, which we radiate, like strength, the processes and beings of the outer spiritual world become visible to us.  Then we know that if we had not developed this inner light, everything in the spiritual world would remained dark, would not have been perceived.

The strength required to overcome our connection with the previous life is like an inner power of light.  At this point a power of soul awakens for which there is really no expression in the ordinary world.  In order to express what the human being experiences as a strength emanating from himself and illuminating the spiritual environment, I would say: it is like a creative activity of will, permeated by intense feeling.  We feel ourself to be a creative part of the universe, through which the spiritual world streams.  And we have the feeling: ‘By knowing yourself to be a creative part of the universe you can now feel and knowingly experience the spiritual world.’  Thus we experience what can be called ‘soulhood’ after death, as we grow out into what approaches us with more and more fullness and clarity.

Well, I’ll stop here – this being an outline of the first stages of life beyond death and needs further study for the student of spiritual research.

However, to summarise and get back to one memories which how we saw in the beginning disappeared;  one experiences the spiritual realms for very many, many years in various degrees in the planetary spheres where one is creating a new body for incarnation; there then comes an urge to bring to fruitation ones experience in the spheres into a new life and this is brought upon by thinking about ones memories.  And in order to ‘catch up’ with one’s memories the soul is born again in the Earth and here the soul’s memories are regained.

However, once we are here the totality of our memories are not perceived as a `movie' but one lives the totality of these memories embodied in the soul in the new life. This being an accumulation of these memories and may be called intuition. Intuition is the accumulation of experience manifested into form. With this our Oversoul, our
spiritual counterpart, is the accumulation of experience.

A brief summary of-  ‘Life beyond Death’ selected lectures by Rudolf Steiner given between 1913 and 1924 in Berlin, Dornach, Christiania, Berne, Stuttgart, Leipzig, Bergen, Dusseldorf and Nuremberg.

There's something about the below that puzzles me.

Why wouldn't a stuck spirit respond to the presence of Christ if he appeared to them? Myself during my night heaven in experience, and others during NDEs, had no problem letting go of our preconceived ideas when we experience truth at a level that goes beyond this physical World.

I have a theory about this. It is more a matter of how open a spirit is to love, than what it believes. Even though I was an atheist an the time of my night in heaven experience, I still had a good heart. In fact, it was because of my good heart I had a problem with Christianity. I found it hard to believe in a God who punishes his children and sends them to hell for all of eternity (later I found there is a much wiser and sensible way to consider what Christ is about) .

If a spirit is insulated from love because of fear, or it relishes the idea of seeing "sinners" punished for all eternity, perhaps this causes it to be closed when a being of light tries to reach out to it with unconditional love.




gordon phinn wrote on May 29^th, 2007 at 11:36pm:

Gordon:

My post was intended for you and whoever else is interested.

Relating to what you wrote, I have an aunt who has been a Catholic throughout her life. For a couple of years Jehova Witnesses were visiting her on a regular basis. She'd state that I'll always be a Catholic, yet she'd make Jehova Witness like statements such as: "After we die, we stay asleep until Christ comes and wakes us up." Of course this concerned me. I shared an article with her which showed how Jehova Witnesses have lost a lot of followers through out the years because their prophecies of a second coming of Christ and Armagedon have been repeatedly wrong.

The above is a case of going to sleep because of one's belief. But what if one doesn't believe that you go to sleep? The following puzzles me. Some people suggest that spirits are attracted to other deceased members of the sect they belonged to. Where does the first deceased member go to if there aren't any members who died before them? Wouldn't a being like Christ meet such a spirit and explain how things really are? If this spirit is open to love at all, it will be able to tell that Christ isn't being deceptive.  Plus on the spirit level communication is more of a telepathic thing. Where is the room for lying?

When a second member of a group dies, one would think they would be greeted by the rescued member who died before he or she, or perhaps Christ. Perhaps both.

I believe that sometimes people go way overboard when they speak of Christians getting stuck in some belief system.  Some people seem to suggest that Christians always get stuck in a belief system after they die. The suggestion is that people aren't rewarded for their faith in God and Christ, and Christ and their deceased loved ones won't help them out right away. Many NDEs and my experience show that spirits can be helped right away. If a person calls out for the help of Christ after they die, this should be enough. Perhaps there are some exceptions. I doubt such cases are the norm.