Amazing story, Don.

I believe that NDEs are the most valid way of getting a look at the other side. 

Your idea about the two mediums is of high merit.  But as it is all second hand, and some mediums like Edwards don't actually have conversations, but see flashed of images or pictures, I'm not sure that you could easily ask the medium to have your dead mom chat with your dead dad, etc. 

I also believe, as I've said before that based on Swedenborg's experience, specific information is likely only to be quickly supplied by the very recently deceased. 

I believe that few mediums will subject themselves to controlled experimentation.  Edwards and a few others have allowed it, but most mediums are not interested in doing so.

A great idea however.

I also like the idea of cross correspondences to test mediums proposed by Frederic Meyers.  This occurs when several different mediums receive pieces of a message which independently mean nothing, but when assembled together yield a coherent message.  It was said that Meyers planned to send different messages, and after death many mediums began to receive strange messages that on their own did not make sense:

http://www.victorzammit.com/book/chapter16.html

I haven't investigated these thoroughly, but it seems that if one could plan, prior to physical death to devise a message and send it through to different mediums in pieces like this, there would be strong evidence that a deceased person was in fact transmitting messages. 


Matthew

To me, Albert Baldeo's NDE makes more sense if we reject the ghost-within-a machine view of the mind-body connection.  It is not that the soul is slowly "tearing" away from its connection "inside" the physical body.  Rather, mind (existing in a monspatial dimension) is gradually becoming more limited in the various ways it uses the physical body like a radio transmitter.

I find it surprising that Don suggests the possibility that mediums allow spirits to speak through them for the sake of a test.

Don, like I, isn't a big fan of this kind of channeling. Too often channelers seem questionable to me. How could mediums insure that only the spirits they want to be a voice piece for end up being the spirits they channel? I figure some well meaning people have channeled deceptive spirits without realizing that this is what they are doing.

My impression is that retrievals are primarily used for "stuck" souls - usually the recently deceased who get caught up in a certain pattern of thinking - who have not sorted themselves willingly into a heaven or a hell. 

True, Bruce has written of visits to Max's hell - a sadist who enjoyed inflicting misery on others - but he did not retrieve Max, but merely observed him. 

The idea is that those in lower spiritual planes can still see us (incarnate humans projecting in the astral), so that if we get their attention, we can refocus it toward an outside helper who they otherwise wouldn't try to see.

Now all this presupposes: A: that the spirit will be interested in engaging us and open minded to refocusing his/her attention so that B: the helper can be recognized.  In order for conditions A and B to be met, the person must be open to being helped and have a desire at some level to change their current condition.

In Bruce's example of Max's hell, Max was in his element, and had no desire to exit the circle of pain he was part of. 

Like may attract like, but I believe that soul retrieval is based on a select group of souls who may be confused or stuck in a thought pattern - in essence they haven't passed through the first stage of death completely to have embraced their true loves (the second stage of death).

I do understand Don's point here; it is a similar argument about "sola fide" or faith alone without works.  The faith alone argument is that some christians believe that salvation can come from faith in God without charity or actions that are coupled with faith.  Others, myself included believe that faith without charity (action) is not true faith and meaningless.   

Likewise for retrievals.  Don lets us ponder; why would an unloving soul be retrieveable from a hell just because we get its attention?  Why would the soul's vibration suddenly turn toward love and then allow that person to get a "get-out-of-hell free" card so speak, without a true process of gradually becoming more loving?

In other words - if a soul is at a lower level of love  - perhaps a spiteful soul - why would a human retriever be able to retrieve it so easily?   My answer - it would not be easy.  Those retrieved are, for the most part stuck in the beginning stage of death, and thus open to the intervention of helpers.


Matthew

Bruce writes that souls in the lower hellish planes can be almost impossible to retrieve.  I come at this issue from 2 perspectives: (1) the New Testament and early second century church teach that retrievals are possible because God' love never permanently abandons anyone after death; (2) in the eloquent words of Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis, the gates of Hell are locked from the inside.  In George Ritchie's amazing NDE, he witnesses loving beings hovering over denizens of a hellish plane, presumably to serve as a positive or restraining influence.    

Many physicists are now theorizing that the world as we know it is actually a virtual reality.  A virtual reality can be defined as a reality in which the users (us) becomes fully immersed in an artificial, three dimensional world that is generated by a computer.  To the users "living" within a VR, the VR appears to be physical because it is the perception of the VR's users that defines the meaning of "physical" within that reality.  The main clue that a reality is virtual is that the users within the VR can never ascertain a physical source or cause for the initial formation of their reality because none can exist. 

In addition, all other realities appear to be non-physical to those within any particular VR.  For example, to those of us living in this world, this reality appears physical, whereas to someone living say in focus 27, this world would appear just as non-physical to them as focus 27 appears to us.

Assuming for the sake of argument that this is true, how would it then effect communication and interaction between beings living in one reality with those living in a different reality?  What would be the implications?

Kathy