Afterlifers often struggle to try and find ways to describe their experiences there and sometimes rely on descriptions like ‘everlasting summer’ and ‘perpetual sunshine’ and similar to get their ideas across. This can cause people here to worry whether that would not get monotonous or boring after a while, and that idea of heaven can begin to sound more like a ‘hell’. However, we need to remember that they are describing spiritual states, which they experience in a spiritual body, and tying to use metaphors to do so. Everything we are used to: taste, sound, smell, touch, weather, climate, hot, cold, and so on, has a spiritual equivalent, so those are the metaphors they use. However, such metaphors are never a perfect fit. They are happy with permanent spiritual sunshine in the same way you would always prefer to drink clean water rather than drink dirty water. Besides, they have access to gloomier or darker spheres if they want to, but usually they only go there to help those who are ready to progress out of those situations.
“Could a scientist make a cave-man realize the wonders of electricity, of the wireless, or of the X-ray? How can one of this sphere do other than give impressions of spirit life?— Vague, perhaps; indefinite, as the critics say; but still impressions; like shadows of the real, or like a chord of music that preludes faintly the harmony to follow… I will leave still another impression with you of this life. But how can I give it except in phrases that you can understand? Joyous activity, increasing knowledge, loving companionship, and, finally, an ever- growing comprehension of the infinite, all-pervading Wisdom and Love.” — After Death: Letters from Julia
What if the Afterlife is a reality where we can conceive of wonders and delights, which we can hardly imagine now, and we can create those very things using the power of the mind? What if we can share our creations with others? If we consider also that benign beings from higher levels have been helping to create the human Afterlife for eons, then we can assume they have probably got the idea of the type of things we like by now. Considering the wonders, delights and creations that people can come up with to entertain, educate and amuse each other– especially when they have unlimited time and resources to do so as they have in the Afterlife – is it any wonder that most of them are so happy? And this is before we add the influence of beings from Higher Realms as well as the Presence of God being available as a tangible experience.
Challenges in the Afterlife
If you feel wary about anything sounding a bit 'too perfect', then this section is for you. It is about some of the challenges in being in the Afterlife and how to handle them. The fact that there are challenges will be a relief to some as it makes the Afterlife seem more believable.
Like any new beginning, the Afterlife can bring its challenges along with opportunities. Not every transition to the Afterlife is easy. For example, in a world shaped by thought, what is going to happen to rigid and closed-minded people?
Some people face problems in entering the Afterlife due to ignorance and closed mindedness. There are those who insist they are right, even when confronted with evidence to the contrary. They will change their views in time, but they cause themselves unnecessary distress when they insist that they know best, despite evidence to the contrary.
Many people make the transition to the Afterlife happily and easily. They can look around and plainly see that everything is much better for them there. However, all of us have met stubborn or argumentative people who, once they get an idea in their head, cannot let it go. Such people always need to be ‘right’ and cannot stand to be corrected. They hate to be ‘wrong’ in any shape or form and will resist any kind of contradiction.
The people who often face the biggest challenges in adjusting to the Afterlife are those opinionated ones who arrive with rigid ideas as to what the Afterlife is supposed to be like. It is not so much what the person believes that is the problem, because if they are open-minded, they can easily discover the real truth of their new situation. The problem arises if they stubbornly insist in sticking to their ideas about the Afterlife, even when confronted with a reality that differs from their beliefs.
Opinionated people do not change their character, or their opinions, just because they have ‘died’. They are still as opinionated as ever and still as prone to stick rigidly to what they already believe. If their ideas about the Afterlife are not confirmed, such people can get very argumentative and possibly upset and deny the evidence of their own eyes. Some of them have got used to brow-beating or bullying others into submission and it galls them when they try the same tactics in the Afterlife without any success.
Therefore, one of the big tasks in welcoming New Arrivals is to help them accept that they are now ‘dead’, even though they say, “I cannot possibly be dead as I have never felt better in my life!” Skilled helpers are always available to handle New Arrivals as relatives and friends may be very well-meaning, but might not have the skills to help someone who has got ideas stuck in their mind and won’t let them go.
Some New Arrivals may argue along the lines of, ‘This can’t be heaven because no Choir of Angels is here to welcome me.’ Or, ‘There cannot possibly be an Afterlife. I don’t believe in such a thing’. Or, ‘I gave a lot of money to the church expecting my reward. Why am I not being given a place of honor? I demand to see whoever is in charge here!’
“[Some] who have cultivated [to high an] opinion of their deserts are much disappointed when they are given a lowly place, sometimes a very lowly one, and not ushered immediately into the Presence of the Enthroned Christ to be hailed with His ‘Well done.’ Oh, believe me… there are many surprises awaiting those who come over here, some of a very joyful kind, and others the reverse. I have, only lately, seen a very learned writer, who had published several books, talking to a lad who, in the Earth life, was a stoker in a gasworks, and being instructed by him. He was glad to learn, too, for he had partly learned humility… and [was] owning up his mistakes and his vanity of intellect in his past life.” — After Death: Letters from Julia
Others have picked up ideas from gurus, Eastern religions, oriental philosophies and so on and expect the Afterlife to be a certain way. As mentioned earlier, if they hold onto these ideas very strongly, this can block them from experiencing the Afterlife as it really is as they are holding up a thought image that stops them seeing anything else. Afterlifers will try to help such people, but they can only go so far because of their respect for free will.
Again, the problem is not the wrongful ideas. Lots of people pick up wrong ideas about the Afterlife, so this is quite common. The problem is the rigid way some people stick to their ideas and refuse to listen or notice anything which contradicts their views. The absurd insistence some people have in clinging to ideas about a place they know nothing about would be laughable if the consequences were not so tough on them. They have their free will, so no one will force them to change their opinion. However, their mental rigidity will create a shell around them and will hold them back for a while.
In some cases, even the most skilled helpers cannot convince a person that they have died and this blocks the person’s progress till they eventually relent, lose some of the mental rigidity and see the error in their ideas.
If the person reacts angrily and aggressively to their Spirit Helpers and insists on staying that way, then they will find themselves in a sphere in the Afterlife along with other angry and aggressive people. Like attracts like and they can all be angry and aggressive to each other as long as they want till they grow sick of it and ask for help to move upwards.
However, most people are not so heavily opinionated. They are usually kindly, open-minded people who just need more time to adjust their ideas. They will find themselves in pleasant surroundings with similarly kindly and open-minded people who can answer their questions and help them to explore the joys of the Hereafter.
The people who have the hardest time in the Afterlife are those who habitually focus on thoughts, feelings and actions that cause harm to others. They do not suffer because they ha
ve been condemned by God; they suffer simply because they have put themselves out of alignment with the life-enhancing, natural flow of the Afterlife. How much someone uses their free will to move out of this benign natural flow is the extent they will suffer. Some put themselves out of alignment by a considerable amount so they suffer greatly - at least for a while (see the chapter, Hell and Lower Spheres).
The Divine Presence
“We are filled at times with a recognition of the Great and Good and Loving Power above and beyond us. Our praise is more a spontaneous expression of love and joy that we are cared for by the Supreme Being, and we never doubt this or grow indifferent to it.” — Life Here and Hereafter
Let’s look at the issue of the presence of God from another point of view than we did when it was mentioned in other chapters. This time, we are going to look at how their idea of God can be very different from ours.
Another thing, which can make the Afterlife seem 'too good to be true', is the general level of happiness there. On Earth, we can get pessimistic and when things are really going well, some people begin to wonder when disaster - that they are sure is going to happen sooner or later - is about to strike. Others have been influenced by the negative view of themselves as 'sinners' as taught by some religious leaders and it is hard for them to conceive of God as anything other than scary and something to be avoided as long as possible. It is interesting to note how often quotes from the Hebrew bible use the most negative option for the translation of the words. For example, the word often translated as 'fear' can actually mean 'awe' or 'reverence'. Therefore, we could quote the famous bible quote, “Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom as actually being "Reverence of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom'. This gives a completely different meaning and interpretation of our relationship with God than one based on fear.
People in the afterlife often say there is a ‘loving presence’ guiding the whole of life and all evolution, whether on this level or on their level. They can feel and sense this Presence - and some call it God. They do not experience God as tyrannical and temperamental as in some rigid authoritarian religions teach, but as this benign presence, which asks of nothing much from them, but gives all they are willing to receive. The more they see the world as this Being sees it, the closer they come to this Being – i.e. God.
“We may be in the Presence yet it will still be invisible to our perceptions. But, as the sun bathes man with its rays even when hidden by filmy clouds, so are we [aware] of God… Only the last veil hides that Light, still too strong for the soul's inner sight, but we are warmed, cheered, comforted, inspired by it when, thus tempered, it permeates all our being, and endows us with its own kindling power.” — Beyond Human Personality
There is a primary force at work in the universe. The nearest we can get to describing it is to call it ‘Love’, but it is in fact far beyond our conception of the term. Our sense of connection with God depends on our sense of connection with the goodness within ourselves. The more we express goodness, the stronger and more real becomes our connection with the ultimate source of goodness, whether in this world or in the next.
Their growing sense of connection to this benign presence enables them to trust that ‘all is well’, even though they don’t know God as a personality any more than we do. Nor do they know the answers to all these mysteries of life any more than we do (though those on the higher levels have more of a grasp of these things). However, they see and feel the divine presence at work all around them and within them, and so can easily have faith - though for them, it is more like knowing .
“We have need for faith even here. These things are still a mystery, although we believe in the far-off final good that shall come even to the earth. We are not responsible for the earth; we cannot explain the miseries of its life. But we know that compensation exists on this side, and that beyond us undoubtedly lies the explanation which is already reached by wiser minds than ours.” — Spirit World and Spirit Life
The Sages of the Ages
In the Afterlife, we will be able to see and hear people who are more in touch with the Divine Presence than we currently are. Some of these will be people a little ahead of us while others will be the 'sages of the ages'. Some of these sages will have names familiar to us; others will be unrecognized by the world, but will be known in the Afterlife by the quality of their radiance.
There is no shortage of help and guidance and at each step along the way, wise guidance and direction is always at hand. Yet, we have free will and can choose to accept help or not.
All You Need is Love?
It’s not so much that ‘all you need is love’, it seems to be more the case that Love is ultimately all there is (or at least all there is worth bothering about). Only Love has reality. Afterlifers progress by learning what Love really is and how it includes qualities that we might not normally think of as love, such as; intelligence, creativity, wisdom and goodwill.
“Wisdom checks and restrains love so that it may attain to an unearthly purity, a purity that can pierce like a spear, that can enter the heart of life, reach to the deeps of being. Wisdom causes man to see through surface ugliness and perceive the beauty of the soul in the plain woman, in the ugly and decrepit old man, in all those human beings who, surrounded by squalor and hideous life and circumstance, yet struggle on, showing by their humanity to others a fairness of spirit that belies the outward appearances.” — Beyond Human Personality
In the Afterlife, the further away something is from Love, the more dense, lifeless and barren it becomes. The lower the sphere, or level a person is on in the Afterlife, the more restricted they are simply because of their low level of consciousness. They are not able, and don’t actually want to participate in anything else. They are rejecting the higher states of consciousness, they are rejecting life, and they - as said earlier - are rejecting the good. This is another way of saying they are rejecting God. They are using their will, as they have the right to do, to choose something else.
Yet, even in this, life is served. When a seed is planted in the ground, it is planted in darkness. Ultimately, the seed only needs to follow its natural impulse to push shoots upwards and then life can unfold. Seeds don’t have free will, but humans do. Some refuse to put up their ‘shoots’ and just remain stuck in the soil, stuck in the darkness. But where is there for them to go? Nowhere. They are just stuck in a very narrow existence till they finally tire of it and push their shoots upwards and choose life.
Chapter 6: The Afterlife in Detail
“We never have forced upon us something that we do not want, whether it be [work], music or art, entertainment or learning. We are free agents, in every sense of the term.” — Life in the World Unseen
In this chapter, we look at some of the details of the Afterlife and the situations regarding families, relationships, and the ‘nitty gritty’ details of normal life there.
Lifestyle Overview
"Many pleasures are here also, for there are many varieties of minds and many conditions to meet. In pleasures, the reunion of friends and relatives must be counted. And there is the delight of loving friendship, and companionship higher and finer and more enduring than worldly ties. We have concerts of music that would delight your soul; and wit and eloquence are as much valued here as there. Then there is travel; for we can move slowly or fast as we choose.” — Spirit World and Spirit Life
Much of what a person experiences living in the spirit world has to do with the power of the mind. Released from the restrictions of a physical body, the spirit soars. We are more able to enjoy life and to respond to delights and pleasant experiences. The inhabitants take great delight in creating pleasant experiences for each other and have ample time and means to do so (as mentioned earlier, all they really need is their own mind).
Therefore, much of our lifestyle there will be based on doing whatever helps to make us happy and content. Much of this has to do with having a varied life and doing things that help make other people hap
py. Sometimes being busy, sometimes doing nothing, learning things, relaxing, being playful, being serious, whatever provides the full spectrum of a rewarding and fulfilling life.
Much of the delight and wonder, which will be around us there, is created by the impulses streaming from that Great Mind we call God. As we learn to respond to those impulses, we get to know that Great Mind and its Great Love and draw closer to its source.
“… the realities and the immense fullness of the spirit world come as such a shock of revelation to those who were anticipating an eternity of celestial nothingness!” — Life in the World Unseen
"Don't worry! You will find the counterpart of every pure joy here, and in greater measure than we can express. Never fear. All the joys that you have there will only be intensified here." — Spirit World and Spirit Life
There is much music and many delightful sounds there whether it is from actual musicians, or simply the sounds emanating from the flowers. Yet, we can tune out those sounds if we so choose. Since the mind has immense control over the spirit body, we can shut out specific sounds, various types of sounds, or even all sounds if we want to.
“On the earth-plane, our physical bodies, in a heavy physical world, prevented similar mental processes from producing any physical result. In the spirit world, we are free and unfettered, and those actions of the mind show an instant and direct result, whether it be to move us with the quickness of our thought, or whether it be to shut out any sight or sound that we do not wish to experience.” — Life in the World Unseen
The same goes for the sense of smell. The spirit world is filled with many exotic and delightful smells. Some will be familiar, some unfamiliar. Yet, these too are subject to the power of the mind,
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