Spiritual Guidance and Spiritual Healing thru Lessons of Love.

Death is a Delusion (From Page 1)

Those looking for validation of such death-bed reunions may be heartened by the experiences of psychic counselor, Mary T. Browne:

I have been at the bedsides of many people shortly before their passing. I always know their time is close when they start telling me they’re seeing people who have previously gone over. Sometimes they’ll have long conversations with their mother, a grandmother, or other loved ones. If you are not familiar with the metaphysical world, it is easy to assume that the ill person is having drug reactions or hallucin-ations. I assure you this is not the case. The spirit body is simply beginning to make the transition. The patient can genuinely see the spirits who are waiting for him… (Browne 9-10).

           My friend, Regina, told me that as she stood at her father’s bedside, he told her that he could see his sister and other relatives waiting for him. At first he indicated that they were too far away to please him. He could tell who they were, and he could see them smiling and gesturing to him, but he could not hear them. There was a landscape painting on the wall opposite his bed, and when he said that his loved ones were waving to him from beneath a tree in a beautiful setting, some medical personnel were certain that he was looking at the painting and hallucinating. However, Regina said that he called the personages by name, and that he described them perfectly, including the habit worn by his sister in a style no longer worn by that order of nuns. As the hour of his death neared, the loved ones drew closer to his bed, until at last Regina’s father told her they were standing in the doorway of his hospital room, waiting for him to join them. He smiled and spoke of how much he had missed them, then he asked Regina to sing to him while they could hear. As she sang his favorite song, her father joined their family on the Other Side. Today when she encounters assurances that her father was confused, Regina just smiles and says that someday the cynics will understand what really happened.

            My mother-in-law stayed her final months with us because she was no longer able to live alone. Laura’s life had required her to be self-sufficient, and she preferred that people think of her as hardworking, skeptical, down-to-earth, and just about anything except emotional or imaginative. For many years, she denied believing in life after death, eventually allowing that it might be possible, but that she couldn’t be sure because there was no proof. Over the years, she had often scoffed at some of the spiritual beliefs my husband and I had shared with her.

About six weeks before she passed, I was at work one morning when she was sitting at the table. My husband was making their breakfast. He could tell that she wanted to share something with him but she was shy about doing so, and not only because of the difficulties she had using the mechanical larynx she was required to use in order to speak.

Finally she blurted, “You’ll prob’ly think I’m nuts. Last night I saw two young girls in my room. I don’t know who they were, but I wasn’t dreaming. I was wide awake.”

My husband knew that none of his mother’s medications were hallucinogenic. He had an idea who the girls might be, and so he continued to cook her eggs as he casually asked her to describe them.

“They were so nice. Very nice girls. Sweet, innocent looking,” she said. She went on to say that one youngster appeared to be about eight years old, and the other around twelve, that both wore floor-length pink dresses, and that they didn’t say anything, just smiled at her. She said their eyes were very kind, and she called them adorable.

My husband recalled a past conversation when his mother had asked him, as if she were joking, “How do I know I won’t be going ‘down there’? I haven’t exactly been a saint, you know!”

Now two discarnate strangers had appeared in her room and put her immediately at ease. Of all the types and ages of strangers who might have approached Laura, perhaps the only kind of people who would not frighten her were young girls. She even felt that she wouldn’t know her own mother, who died when Laura was four years old. She told us more than once that she was afraid of dying “alone in the dark.” In fact, it was that fear that caused us to get a loud bell for her to ring when she needed us during the night. My husband and I are able to joke now, eleven years later, that during that period, and because of that bell, we often found ourselves at mom’s bedside, suctioning her bronchial tubes through the stoma in her throat before we were fully awake and aware of what we were doing.

When her son accepted her vision as factual and told her that he believed the girls were angels or transition guides who would safely guide her Home, Laura’s profound fear of what she knew she would have to endure alone seemed to noticeably decrease.

A few days later she reported seeing the girls again; only this time my husband was with them, standing with his hands around their shoulders. “When the time comes, mom,” he told Laura, “go with these girls. They are the real thing.” My husband has no conscious recollection of how he got into his mother’s vision while he was sleeping, but because of the calming and healing effect it had on his mother’s fear, neither of us doubt that the message originated from her discarnate guardians on the Other Side.

Another famous counselor for dying people has documented not only what her dying patients experienced, but also her own communication with a discarnate woman. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, author of On Death and Dying, reports:

I was at a crossroad. I felt I needed to give up my work with dying patients… I walked out of my last seminar on death and dying towards the elevator. …a woman walked towards me. She said, ‘Dr. Ross, I’m only going to take two minutes of your time…’ One part of me knew this was Mrs. Johnson, a patient of mine who had died and been buried almost a year ago. But I’m a scientist, and I don’t believe in ghosts and spooks! I tried to touch her because she looked kind of transparent . . . not that you could see furniture behind her, but not quite real either. I touched her, and she had feeling to her. She said, ‘I had to come back . . . to tell you not to give up your work on death and dying, not yet. The time is not right. We will help you. You will know when the time is right. Do you promise?’ The last thing I said to her was ‘I promise.’ With that she walked out. No sooner was the door closed, I had to go and see if she was real. I opened the door, and there was not a soul in that long hallway!” (Guggenheim 8)

Many others join Dr. Ross in the experience of being wide-awake when they were visited by someone they knew who had died. In his book Reunions, Dr. Raymond Moody, who also authored Life After Life, tells about meeting his paternal grandmother:

I was sitting alone in a room when a woman simply walked in… my paternal grandmother, who had died some years before. In a very kind and loving way she… addressed me with a nickname that only she had used for me when I was a child… I want to emphasize how completely natural this meeting was… in no way eerie or bizarre. Our meeting was focused entirely on our relationship. We discussed old times, specific incidents from my childhood… she reminded me of several events that I had forgotten. Also she revealed something very personal about my family situation that came as a great surprise… I did hear her voice clearly, the only difference being that there was a crisp, electric quality to it that seemed clearer and louder than her voice before she died. In no way did she appear ‘ghostly’ or transparent during our reunion. She appeared no different from any other person except that she was surrounded by what appeared to be light or an indentation in space, as if she were somehow set off or recessed from the rest of her physical surroundings. For some reason, though, she would not let me give her a hug (Moody 22).

            Popular medium John Edward, currently televised in the nightly show, Crossing Over, writes that before she died of cancer, he and his mother spoke about staying in touch:

Several months later, with my mother’s condition deteriorating rapidly, we had a conversation about reaching each other once she passed to the Other Side. “When I get there, I won’t be gone,” she told me. “I’ll talk to you all the time.”

“Ma, it’s not going to be like that,” I told her. “It won’t be that easy coming through to me because I won’t be able to be objective. I’ll be constantly wondering if I’m wanting it so badly that I’m only imagining it.”

            “I can’t believe you’re not even going to talk to me,” she said.

“It’s not that. It’s that it would be easier for me to believe if it comes through another medium.” (Edward 31)

Evidently, whether incarnate or discarnate, some mothers don’t take kindly to receiving direction from their children on how to behave, because Edward has more to say on the subject:

One day a year or so after my mother died, I was driving to a seminar at a hotel in New York when I felt that my mother was trying to come through. Again, I kept her out. I turned the volume on my radio way up and started singing along. Then, my mother started showing me images of when she was sick, very attention-getting scenes that I had trouble ignoring. Finally I told her, “Don’t talk to me. Talk to Shelley [a friend who is a medium]. Shelley Peck was going to be at the seminar.

When I got to the hotel, I saw another medium, Suzane Northrop… I knew Suzane only casually… but as soon as she saw me, she came right up to me and said, “John, is your mother passed?” I told her she was. “Did she pass of cancer? Cancer of the chest, like lung cancer?” Yes, I told her. “Well, my God, this woman has been yelling at me all the way here. Telling me to tell you don’t you ever, ever tell her not to come through to you like that again… Your mother says to tell you that if she wants to tell you something she’ll tell you herself and not to tell her to go to somebody else...” Needless to say, I have never slammed the door on my mother since then (Edward 77).

            Melvin Morse, author of Closer to the Light, in which he writes about the near-death experiences of children, takes a philosophical stance to explain communication directed by the other side:

Perhaps it all comes down to the words of psychotherapist Carl Jung, who said, “We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we comprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of the truth”(Morse 212).

            Since the invention of the camera, there have been photographs of discarnate beings who present the way they looked when physical. There have also been many pictures developed that show strange light effects not explainable as camera defects or improper photography. In 1997, my coworker, Jen, showed me a Polaroid picture she had taken at a special function at her Lancaster County Methodist church the Sunday before. In the picture with Jen and her husband stood a semi-transparent image of a solemn-faced woman who appeared to be in her forties. Jen swore it was not a double exposure and that this woman was not present at the gathering. Her assertion was not hard to accept, because the woman was dressed in a plain dress similar to those worn by Mennonite women.

            In 1987, my husband and I first discovered that some of the photographs we take contain images of discarnate beings. We have, for example, a photograph we took at the Iowa grave of my maternal grandmother, Leone, who died in 1918 at the age of nineteen years. The photo shows Leone’s face on the windshield of the rental car that we drove to the cemetery. Since I have photographs of Leone that were taken during her life on earth, we compared them to the photo at her grave. It is the same face.

            We also have a photograph of my husband’s ICU nurse, Christine, whom we both met in 1979, a few months before her death. Another photo, one that I always carry with me, is of my beloved soulmate and teacher guide, Standing Tall Among the Trees. Standing Tall knows that I would never have been sure that I did not invent him had he not given me such irrefutable proof.

            Shortly after we were told that my one of my husband’s guides, together with that guide’s soulmate, had taken in a seven-year-old African-American girl named Rebeccah, who was murdered by her mother’s boyfriend, we received an extremely clear photograph of that sweet little girl. She is clothed in a little girl’s white “Sunday” type dress, with a halo of white flowers or light crowning her head.

            We also have a photograph of Jennifer, our daughter, who was born on the other side after an early miscarriage in 1970. The picture isn’t nearly as clear as we’d like it to be, but we can see that Jennifer presents as having the same fair skin and hair coloring and high cheekbones as her brother Terry. Apparently, this is how she would have looked had she been born into a physical life.

            Humans are not the only animals that live on after physical death. Several years after our dog Fred died, we received his spirit photograph. Author Brad Steiger used this picture, along with a photo of Fred alive on earth, to accompany a chapter he devoted to our experience in his 1995 book, Man and Dog:

Patricia commented that she had always said… that [if] there were no animals in heaven, she didn’t want to go there. “Now, thanks… especially to the loving concern of our beloved Frederick Aloysius Xavier—I not only want to go there, I know that when our lessons here on Earth are completed, we will only be returned to our beloved Home—and that our Fred will be waiting there to welcome us! (Steiger-Dog 151).

            Mabel Chimnery of Ipswich, Suffolk, is another of the many people who received photographs from the spirit world. On March 22, 1959, she took pictures of her mother’s grave, then turned and took the last photo on the roll, her husband sitting in their automobile. When the photographs were developed, she found that the last picture, which is printed in the book, Photographing the Spirit World, Images from Beyond the Spectrum, clearly shows her incarnate husband in the front seat and her discarnate mother in the back seat (Permutt 178).

            There are available to avid researchers a multitude of photos of discarnate beings, a plethora of communications through mediums or dreams, and a huge number of all sorts of other signs and assurances. What many people need before they’re able to believe in life after death, though, is a walking, talking, apparently breathing, visit from the deceased loved one. These, too, are available in amazing abundance. In Hello From Heaven! we read about Ann, the manager of a retail store in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Her son, Justin, 18, tried to rescue his younger brother, Bobby, 17, while they were swimming, and both boys drowned. Anne reported:

It was 9:00 on a Saturday morning about a year later. I was in the kitchen putting some dishes in the dishwasher. All of a sudden, I felt there was someone in the room with me. When I turned, Bobby was standing there leaning on the refrigerator! He looked very healthy and happy. He looked so solid and so real that it seemed I could have touched him. There was a bright light where he was standing… He gave me the most wonderful smile I have ever seen. I knew his smile was saying, “We are both fine. We’re all right. Just get on with things and be at peace with yourself” (Guggenheim 85).

In another incident recorded by the Guggenheims, an architect from New Mexico named Gordon was standing at the casket of his elderly friend when he heard her speak to him in a comforting way, telling him that his tears were okay. Looking up, her saw her smiling at him from across the room. He noticed that she was wearing a different dress than the one that was on her body in the casket (88).

Yet another testimony comes from Eve, whose husband had been a career Master Sergeant in the Marine Corps before dying from the effects of Agent Orange. After her father died, their daughter started drinking so heavily that Eve felt she had no choice but to put her into a recovery facility. Nevertheless, she was extremely distraught about doing so. Obviously aware of how upset she was, her husband appeared in full dress uniform and not only assured her that she had done the right thing for their daughter, but that the girl would be all right (91).

In Guardian Angels and Spirit Guides, it is neither angel nor guide that Margaret Glasson says came to her rescue two years after her husband died. Alone in her living room, she heard her 3-year-old daughter whimpering, and then noticed a trash can clattering in the alley. She peeked out the window, and saw a man in the shadows of the alley, so she called the police, then went to her daughter’s room. When she opened the bedroom door, she discovered her deceased husband bent over their daughter singing her a lullaby. The police officer who came to the door after catching the criminal told Margaret that the man was wanted for breaking into homes and assaulting women and children. The criminal told the police that he hadn’t yet gone into the home because he saw a big man standing over the child’s bed and decided to wait awhile to see if he would leave (Steiger 32).

            When Sylvia Browne was eighteen, she had an extra passenger on a ride before her grand-mother’s funeral: her grandmother.

Despite everything Grandma Ada… had taught me… my grandmother’s love, inspiration, and unwavering support seemed gone forever. I couldn’t see or hear or feel her around me, and I felt empty and alone. I was in a haze as the family began gathering… my boyfriend, Joe… gently guided me out of the house for a quiet ride in his car. I can still hear the deliberate lack of alarm in Joe’s voice when he finally broke the silence, ‘Sylvia… I don’t want to frighten you, but… your grandmother is in the back seat.’ I didn’t turn around right away. I just sat there for a long moment, and very gradually I could sense her presence and faintly detect the smell of the subtle lavender scent she always wore. I let my eyes move to the rearview mirror and caught my breath at the sight of Grandma Ada, in her favorite blue dress, peaceful, healthy, and smiling at me. I quickly turned to face her and reach for her. But in that instant, she was gone (Browne 47).

Computer systems operator, Tanya, from Texas, found that her friend Gina, left just as suddenly after her visit:

I was on a layover at the Atlanta airport… sitting in the airport lounge reading, when I smelled White Shoulders, the cologne that Gina had always worn. I looked up, and there she was, sitting at the table with me! She looked relaxed and as pretty as she always did… I said, “Gina, what are you doing here?” She smiled and said, “I came to see you.” When I looked down, her hand was on top of mine for a brief moment. Her hand was solid and very warm. I was a little choked for words, and she said, “Just relax. I want you to be happy, and I want you to stop worrying and feeling so badly about my death. I’m fine. I’m not going to visit you again, so I want you to make sure you get all your affairs in order.” Then, in the blink of an eye, she was gone, and I sat there absolutely dumbfounded. When Gina died so suddenly, her affairs were in complete disarray. Maybe that was the lesson she wanted me to learn. (Guggenheim 96-97).

According to Harold Sherman, Wilma Plimpton communicated with her husband for her own needs as well as out of love for him.

Wilma told her husband, A.J., a year or so later after he had established two-way communication with her, that she had been trying to tell him she was still alive, and knew what was going on… [She told him] she was almost overwhelmed by the emotional pull of [his] grief upon her… she felt she had to try to assure him that she was still alive—that there was a life after death, in which he had not believed—and that they, one day, could be re-united (Sherman-Dead Alive 1-2).

            Apparently some discarnate souls take so casually their communication with those they knew while in physical bodies that they can’t be bothered to materialize fully when making an appearance. John Fuller reports that two scientists were investigating voice communication from a discarnate Dr. Mueller when Mueller appeared to them several times while giving the lectures they were capturing on tape:

O’Neil was puzzled because… the image appeared only partially. At first, the lower half of [Mueller’s] body was not visible, and later, Mueller’s left leg and left side of his face were not visible. When O’Neil mentioned this to him, Mueller merely replied, “Yes, I understand.” O’Neil waited for an explanation, but apparently Mueller didn’t feel like bothering to give one (Fuller 99).

            The data we have presented here is only an infinitesimal portion of what is available worldwide, but it is enough to support our contention that there is no justifiable reason for mankind to continue to deny the validity of life’s continuance after physical death. It is not only ridiculous, it is inexcusable to simply scoff at such tales and question the sincerity or sanity of their proponents instead of taking the time to study the abundant evidence and form an opinion based on fact. The survival of the human personality after the physical body dies is not a theory that requires faith. It has been proven.

            According to actress and author, Shirley MacLaine, each of us benefits when we accept this:

Maybe life is a cosmic joke on us. We take it all so seriously. We try to legislate morality instead of living it, and go around judging everybody who thinks differently… I just know that from what I have learned, felt, and read, I can't ignore [the evidence that life continues after physical death]. And why should I? Some of the greatest minds this planet has ever seen believed in what I’m just beginning to understand. So I’m going to go on investigating… because it’s making me happy… it’s strange, but knowing there is a law of cause and effect in operation makes me very aware of how precious every single moment of every single day can be. Nothing—literally nothing—is insignificant. Every thought, every gesture, everything I say and do has an energy attached to it which is hopefully positive. In the back of my head I am constantly aware that harmony does exist… as a real energy, a resource I can draw on. I am aware that everything has a reason for happening. Also, I know that whatever good I can do, whatever fun I can share, whatever contribution I make, even if it’s to say ‘Good morning!’ to someone, will, somewhere, sometime, come back to me. It’s not a matter of making Brownie points. It just feels a whole hell of a lot better in me. It gives me a kind of feeling of living in a universal now. Every now second becomes important (MacLaine 363-364).

Every man, woman, and child on earth has an obligation to begin to live as if life continues after death. The evidence that this is true is resounding, and the need is intense. The survival of everything we treasure in this classroom we call earth depends upon.

Works Cited:

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Atwater, P.M.H., Coming Back to Life: The After-Effects of the Near-Death Experience, Ballantine Books, New York, 1988.

Browne, Mary T., Mary T. Reflects On the Other Side, A Compelling Vision of the Afterlife, Fawcett Columbine, New York, 1994.

Browne, Sylvia, Life on the Other Side, Penguin Putnam, Inc., New York, 2000.

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Randles, Jenny, Beyond Explanation?, Bantam Books, New York, 1985.

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