Hi, first post, looking forward to reading some of the experiences/informsation here. I have an open mind about the possibility of an afterlife, but have got more skeptical and less hopeful about it as I go through life.
I am sure I am just repeating some questions that have already been asked, but for example:

an afterlife assumes a soul of some kind, however why should we believe in one? even some major religions don't believe in one or downplay it - for example early Christianity focussed far more of the resurrection of the body in a new, immortal form) than a soul going to Heaven, and some mainstream Christians and other groups like JWs still focus on this. Buddhism also does not believe in a soul. Also just because our parents or birth religion says there is a soul doesn;t make it true (the primary reason why most people believe in one - from childhood we have been told dead loved ones are still alive in Heaven..)

There is increasing proof evidence that the way our "minds" work is directly effected by our brain health/activity. Why shouldn't science eventually show that all consciousness is a product of the brain?

we have no memory of a life before birth (except in very rare cases where children seem to have clear memories of past lives), so why should we assume we go on living after death?

if we have a soul what about animals/insects/microorganisms/plants??? ( and early forms of man) if we all survive then the afterlife will be very crowded...

if we don;t need bodies to enjoy full personalities/consciousness etc then why are we here, with all this incredibly complex physical paraphernalia, subject to illness and accidents and ageing etc and not just enjoying being immortal spirits?

if there is a spirit world or worlds where we go after death either permanently or temporarily, where is it? early Christians clearly thought Heaven was simply "up" (see Jesus ascending into a cloud, for example). we know better

why is it that every time someone seems to announce proof for life after death (NDEs etc) it turns out disappointing? Raymond Moody's latest book was a load of waffle about how NDEs aren't proof of life after death, and are best seen as some sort of entertainment. news of exciting medical backing from an English and a Dutch doctor a few years ago has brought no new studies and the website set up by Dr Sam Parnia has been inactive for the last couple of years

My own experiences of automatic writing and apparently voice channelling a spirit at one stage in my life were distressing rather than helpful and , in retrospect, perhaps just connected with psycological stress I was under  at the time (and a great interest in finding proof of life after death - perhaps something my subconscious tried to fulfill for me in some way) . I no longer see them as proof, just a weird experience I used to have.

Hello Orlando123:

I've never been to a spiritualist Church, so I don't know what they are like. Perhaps readings are hit and miss, partly because of the limited ability of some of the readers. Also, if a person doesn't have a natural connection to a spirit, the lines of communication might not be very clear. Some of the readers might be fakes.

I've found that spirit mesages don't always come through real clear.  I'm often shown typed/printed words.  When this occurs sometimes I'll see an entire page of words, and only the words I need to read stand out so I can read them, even if the other words are printed clear. If you think about it, this is how we always read. Why I am often shown a page of words rather than just the words I need to read, I don't know.

If a person receives written words, it would be easy to get names, even though sometimes they get jumbled a bit. It is hard to understand why some mediums say "I get a name that starts with the letter "J," or whatever letter they receive. It might be because their eyes are open. Mine are closed when I receive written messages. And once again, there is a matter of whether a person has a natural energetic connection to the spirit they communicate with. Whatever the case, I've been shown words that I could verify later on.

Regarding Souls, Buddhism and such, I used to read Buddhism quite a bit and ran accross the no Soul viewpoint. Since then I've opened up to communicating to spirits, and have found in various ways that Souls do in fact exist.  I've found that people who don't believe in Souls often view the matter from a particular intellectual perspective, or from a perspective where they had an experience of beingness without the creative aspect of being, and for whatever reason decided to deny the creative aspect of being. Sometimes they do so because the gurus they listen to often deny manifested existence as nothing but a delusion. Gurus do so in a manner which shows that they don't clearly understand that God exists everywhere, even in that which has been created.  That which has been created is a part of the big divine game plan. If this part of the divine plan didn't exist, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

You're welcome for the reply Orlando. More below within double brackets. I don't know why, but the grey box thing doesn't work out too well for me.

orlando123 wrote on Aug 3^rd, 2007 at 1:20pm:


""When it comes to freewill, I figure just about all of us find out that a path that leads to happiness, peace and love for all, is the best.  This common understanding and purpose eventually directs us in the same direction.

Regarding the hardships we go through, I believe this is clearly known before we incarnate into the physical World. Yet we choose to do so. Must be a pretty good reason.

Regarding individual beings as opposed to One,  I believe oneness can't be judged according to the human everything is separate perspective. The final goal isn't about one being being all alone, nor is it about a bunch of beings being seperate. It is a combination of the two. One and many at the same time. ""

You say:

""When it comes to freewill, I figure just about all of us find out that a path that leads to happiness, peace and love for all, is the best.  This common understanding and purpose eventually directs us in the same direction. 

You are indeed an optimist! I would like to think everyone is moving in that direction, but i am not 100% sure. I do think that there are some positive things in that respect in the modern world though - better communication and education etc has led to somewhat less hatred and ignorance and somewhat more mutual understanding and harmony perhaps. I hope things continue in that direction, even though there is still very much that is wrong with the world

You said:
""Even though I communicate to spirits, I don't work as a medium. I didn't always have the ability. Through much energetic work, meditation, and getting rid of limiting psychological issues and belief systems, I developed the ability.  I mainly speak to my spirit guidance. Other spirits also show up at times.  I've received information numerous times that can only be explained by spirit contact. I have no doubt that I communicate with spirits on a regular basis.""

I see, thank you, that's intersting. I would say if you feel you have recieved genuinely useful information and that the whole experience is overwhelmingly positive then that is great.

As I said before - taken from a "believers"point of view -  i had the experience of , for want of a better word, being possesssed or overshadowed or something by a spirit who was most unhappy, who I believed I first contacted in a ouijaboard session with friends. I believed I then made contact with him while doodling on a pad and he started moving the pen. After much experimenting with asking questions in my head and getting answers written by my hand moving (which got out of hand, so I could hardly write normally without my hand wanting to go off and do something else)  I later started getting odd muscle movements in my throat and diaphragm and later still found one day when I was relaxed the "spirit" used my voice to say things to me. When I thought things had gone too far (he was getting aggressive and unpleasant) I tried to get him to go by visiting an exorcist (Anglican) and later a couple of spiritualist mediums. By this point I found I could relax and let him take me over completely, although I would still be conscious and observing what he said and did using my body. I also found I could get into a fram of mind where I could listen insiode my head anbd could hear him saying things to me that way - which I quickly stopped experimenting with. He was there, all the time, for several years and I later just aimed to block him out and not experiment.  In retrospect I think it's perhaps more likely he was just a figment of my imagination/subconscious as I learned nothing very evidential from him to prove he was the person he said he was and some of his own concerns/worries in life had been similar to some of my own. Also the fact he was just there all the time, rather than "coming through" occasionally seems odd. He ought to have had better things to do.. i tried occasionally to get into a peaceful frame of mind and see if I could get some message from a spirit who would have something beautiful and instructive to say, but it wasn;t successful. If occasionally I thought it had worked it seemed like it was just the same entity eventually.

Hi Orlando-
I used to be totally skeptical - well, 80% anyhow. I was trained as a psychoanalyst and after 7 years of internship I set up a private practice in hypnoanalysis (because it's 300X faster) and immediately got a woman who was afraid of water due to a past life in which she had drowned. Scared hell out of me. Then I got into studying how it all works and became a bit more comfortable. Skepticism is appropriate, but when you need the facts they come, like it or not.

The idea of a "soul" carries a vast amount of social freight. For the moment, let's call it the "persona", meaning whatever it is that you are. Then there's no dubt that it exists. But it is not a material or quasi-material thing like your left shoe.

The essence of life is motion. We only perceive that which changes, and if you fixate your vision, your visual field will grey out and you'll start hallucinating by projecting inner noise. This is one approach to meditation, called trataka, usually using a candle as a focal point. So long as there is a means by which the persona interacts with incoming stimulii, then it is "alive" in the simplest manner. The nature of sensations and suchlike probably varies - I once projected (OBE) into a rolled up window shade and felt kinda layered and circular, but was aware and could make decisions.

The nature of the persona is not in the physical animal, because you can cut off or otherwise destroy major chunks of the animal and still have the persona. Transplants don't seem to carry other people's "souls" into their new bodies - some debate on what they actually do, however.

When we include all the details, it appears as if your persona was caused way back at Event One, although the path is to complex to easily decipher. Meanwhile all the world in which you live has been interacting with you, lifetime after lifetime. Those interactions extend the motion and activity of the persona into the outer universe as a dynamic factor that creates changes.

The world in which we live has been redefined by quantum mechanics who point out that most of it is empty space, and the rest looks a lot like patterns of information (eg Archibald Wheeler).  By the time that physicists were done, the world was changed into a collection of variations of process, structure and relationship - usually expressed as momentum, mass and extension. To create a "thing" all we need to do is use the right process on the proper structure so that the resultant has the proper relationships. For example, beat the eggs into a fry pan to make an omelette.

The "place" into which we go seems to not be a place, but simply a less restricted collection of the same structures, the same processes and the same relationships as we see in everyday life. However, as a process (but NOT a thing - Buddhist anatta doctrine) your energy can be superposed on top of any other energy with which it is compatible.  We thus drop a specific body to take on the general embodiment (which is essentially the "body of God" if analyzed to the extreme). The "you" in human terms remains in the activities and energies put into the world - and thus which come back as conditions on your re-entry called karmas.

So actually, where we go is nowhere in particular. I call it the Spirit World for lack of a better term. You arived in the physical because prior events shaped circumstances until you were more or less squeezed out of the Cosmic Toothpaste Tube into a body. After death you go back to the unlimited state and can advance into oneness with God to the degree that your development allows.

And if you don't like the idea of a God, also a term with a lot of freight, you can envision the same concept as what St Thomas Aquinas called the "Uncaused Cause" - same thing. (This sense of a Creator is abstract as opposed to some big guy in the sky, and is essentially in accord with Buddhist anatta doctine. To my mind, the role of Creator is immanent and statistical, being best expressed by thermodynamics. But, as Neitsche said, "If man were triangular, God would be a triangle.")

hope ths clarifies a bit
dave

Orlando:

I'm not able to say for certain what happened below.  Ouija boards have a bad reputation. Hardly seems like a way to make contact with spirits who represent the light.  Perhaps this is one of the things Seth/Jane Roberts (I'm not a fan) accomplished. Gave people the impression it is okay to play around with Ouija boards when it isn't.

I had this out of body experience one time. I was near the entrance way of a lower realm.  I felt completely safe because I knew the spirits within it couldn't get out.  Not unless they asked for help. As soon as the experience ended the thought came to me, sometimes they find their way out when people do things such as play around with ouija boards. I've also heard that automatic writing isn't a good thing to play around with. I don't know the details.

I have received lots of useful information and lots of help from the spirit guidance I am in contact with them. My guidance often communicates to me when I am in an expanded state of meditation.  Even though I receive thoughts and hear voices,  I mostly receive messages through symbolic visual images and short waking dreams (also asleep dreams). I have never heard them communicate to me with my voice.

I've had a number of experiences which have told me that Christ is in fact a spiritual reality, and a key part of the spiritual welfare of mankind. These experiences occurred to me after I was closed to the idea, because of how fundamentalism turned me off to Christianity.

Unfriendly spirits also visit me occasionally. They approach me in a very hostile manner. But they have never been able to harm me. I usually tell them to go to the light. If we choose to live according love and light, I don't believe an unfriendly spirit can gain an upper hand.

orlando123 wrote on Aug 3^rd, 2007 at 2:40pm:

Hi - I feel like some of your remarks are a little bit judgmental. I agree now that ouija baords are a bad idea, but I didn't experiment with any bad attitude, I just wanted guidance and evidence about the meaning of life and if there was an afterlife etc. Your words could imply that I lacked an attitude of love and light and almost deliberately allowed an angry and unhappy entity to have an influence over me, which was not the case. However I was not in an espcially happy and stable time in my life at the time, which could also have an effect i guess.

I tried to get this spirit, if that's what it was, to "go into the light" but he wasn't interested.

However, i suppose that, in the long run, he has not "got the upper hand".

Are you opposed per se to the idea of what I suppose you would call trance mediumship (even though I was conscious) where the spirit speaks through you? I am unsure how common a phenonenon it is, especially the kind I experienced, where it is not just "inspired speaking" of some kind but you actualy relax and let the spirit use your body/vocal chords etc and don;t know what you will say.

When you say negative spirits approach you sometimes, do you mean it's a sensation you get, or you see images, or you hear voices? Anyway, thanks for the extra info on your own experiences. What type of meditation methods do you use?

So you think everything is tending towards some big final goal? Could it not be that everything is cyclical/goes on for ever? If things did come to an end and all was "one"again with no creation, then wouln;t the "one"get bored again!?

I agree that I don;t really like religious systems which suggest all creation is some "mistake""illusion"etc. Equally ones that say don;t enjoy the sensual pleasures of the world etc because it's all a distraction from spiritual truth. i think it can all be good, although positive ways of enjoying the senses etc usually have their negative sides too if over-indlged or perverted in some way.

I was going to ask if you think humans play some special role, but you answered that. So, assuming you believe in evolution etc, do you think it was all part of a plan that we should become unususually sentive and complex etc?/do you think our "souls"and spiritual journey are completely different from other beings? If so at what time in our evolution did this occur? Where do you draw the line between humans and animals - i mean I understand that animal behaviour study now suggests some animals can use tools, some can learn quite complex sign language, they can feel emotions, some (eg elephants) even seem to honour their dead and some display altruism, even to creatures outside their species group (I read an article describing this in relation to chimpanzees acting altruistically towards a human in a study, I believe). Things seem to have got more complicated since Descartes used to claim animals were just like machines and had no soul.


recoverer wrote on Aug 3^rd, 2007 at 3:37pm: