Sooner or later there is one question that enters
the minds of a good number of people regardless of their beliefs. That
question is, “If there really is a life after this one, what would such
an experience be like?” It is quite a challenge to think of another reality
where physical forms are nonexistent, where spirit-beings are neither
female or male, where human emotions are not necessary, and where each
inherits the reality of living beyond the boundaries of time.
There have been experiences written by authors to
suggest that the converse is true as well.
A number of incarnating spirit-beings feel too confined during
the nine months it takes while their physical forms are being created.
These moments are when they first feel emotions, feelings that can
become terror for newcomers to the human experience.
They change their minds and retreat to the world of their origin.
The world of time, filled with physical forms is too much for
them. They refuse to conform
to their new environment and they leave allowing a perfectly formed
fetus to be born lifeless. When searchers for answers turn to the Scriptures,
they are greeted with human speculation where Heaven becomes a
new earth where there is no death, no tears or sorrow, where streets are
paved with gold and pearly gates will greet returning souls. Equally, Hell was created by humans to deal
with evil people who misbehaved on earth.
This environment has been imagined to be a place where
punishment, eternal torment takes place beyond the reach of our loving
Creator who must have created such a place. The master of temptation and
evil has been personified and named as Satan or the
Devil. This divine duality came from the beliefs of
Zoroastrianism, a Persian religion where there was a god of light and a
god of darkness. The Hebrews absorbed this belief while being held in
captivity in Babylon. This belief made its way into Christianity where
well-meaning clergy have used the concept to help personal salvation
to become an urgent need. Such
a fearful idea, however, negates their preaching that God’s nature is
one of unconditional love. All of these realities came from the human
imagination. All of them
are true for those who believe that they are.
For them, eternity in Heaven becomes a reward for having
run the good race, or by living a life as a faithful disciple of
Jesus Christ. This means that human performance is required for
salvation either by having developed specific beliefs or bringing
into reality certain skills of spirit.
Again, such a suggestion cancels God’s amazing grace. Human imagination is wonderful because it gives
individuals something to hold on to that gives them hope. People feed on their beliefs
and fantasies that their lives on earth are not the final chapter of
reality. Further, it gives people the idea that there is justice for
those who lived venomous lives.
This justice can be nothing more than an “eye for an eye.”
We are very challenged when we think of Adolf Hitler being in
Heaven. However, that is
where his spirit-being went at his death.
Are there any hints in Scripture that give readers
something substantive to anchor their hope that is far more than
thoughtful speculation?
Jesus comes the closest when he said, “In my father’s house are many
rooms (levels of awareness).
I would never tell you this if it were not true.” (John
14:2) This gives a testimony that afterlife is
universal and is not a reward to just an exclusive group of believers.
Everyone who ever lived in this world eventually graduates and
enters the next level of awareness.
Each of us will continue to refine who we are designed to become.
Yes, even spirit-beings are still growing and maturing.
Like on earth, spirit-beings are not on the same level of
awareness as others. Jesus taught there are different rooms or
dimensions; none which are designed for punishment. The universality of living beyond the grave was
experienced by Jesus and his inner circle of disciples while being
together on Mt. Hermon. Jesus entered into a conversation with Elijah
and Moses. (Matthew 17:3)
Jesus warned his disciples not to mention this experience to anyone
until much later. This
episode was reported in the three synoptic gospels.
Obviously, neither of these men knew anything about Jesus during
their lifetime. There is a Scripture that may be the closest to
reinforcing what a good number people have reported during their
surgery. Patients have
experienced being out of their bodies where they remembered
conversations among their surgical team.
This passage is the only reference of a near-death experience
reported in the New Testament.
(2 Corinthians 12:2f) Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a respected author, became
fascinated by such experiences and wrote a pamphlet to record her
findings on the out-of-body experiences of children. She is known for
her frontier-shattering book, On Death and Dying.
She chose children to interview because they would have the
least defined narrative, void of religious training.
The episodes she recorded were remarkable. Personally, Lois and I have had our own experience
of her brother Keith following his death in a car accident. It happened
one evening when Lois returned home from a meeting earlier than I did.
When she got home, Keith’s massive presence was everywhere up to
a half mile before pulling into our driveway.
The experience was so unsettling and overwhelming that it
motivated her to briskly walk to get inside our home. Before entering,
she exclaimed out loud, “Keith, wait here, Dick will be home shortly.” As I was driving home, I, too, felt that Keith
would be there. When I got
out of the car, I walked into our backyard.
I said out loud, “Keith. are you here?”
In my head, foreign words formed, “Dick, Dick!
Can you hear me? Can
you really hear me?” I
responded out loud, “Yes, I can hear you.
Where are you?” He
said, “I am standing right in front of you.” It was then that our
back-and-forth communication began. He told me what happened during the accident and
why he was where he was when it happened.
They had not eaten and his wife insisted that they stop for food.
He told me that she was blaming herself and was planning to join
him in death. She felt that had she not insisted on their stopping for
food, their car would have been further down the road. He asked me to
call her every day to stop her.
Secondly, he told me that his parents were denying everything and
have taken his picture down from the wall where his sisters and brother
were hung. I did call his wife the very next day and when she
heard what Lois and I had experienced, she began sobbing.
She said, “Dick, I have not told that story of our stopping for
sandwiches to anyone. There
is no way you could have known.”
When we drove to Westfield, Massachusetts to visit Lois’s parents
over Thanksgiving, sure enough, Keith’s picture had been taken down from
the wall where pictures of his brother and sisters were hanging. Our discussion continued.
I asked him what it was like.
He said the same thing that was reflected in the 2nd
Corinthian passage. There
were no words to describe where he was. He was mystified when we could
experience him and no one else showed any awareness of his presence. He
told me that he did not recognize anyone. Further, he asked me what he
should do. I told him to be
kind and to ask the others where he should go.
Apparently, he found his way because he never again returned to
us. Where did his spirit-being go? He found the entrance, a worm-hole that
takes spirit-beings home.
Once there, the only way to return to earth is through a
mother’s womb. This
worm-hole is like a birth canal. It is one-way only. Once Jesus
entered it, like everyone else, he could not return.
All of the resurrection experiences ended once Jesus entered the
worm hole. Many spirit-beings delay in crossing over.
They still have emotions, and enjoy watching the behavior
of people when their friends and family know for certain that no one is
watching. Being at this
level and electing to stay, they find that they can still communicate
through high intuitive mediums.
However, eventually they, too, cross over when they are ready. God does not have an emotional connection to what
we do with our lives. God
only sends angels to earth who, initially, come here to grow spiritually
while in their limited forms.
The risk taken by incarnating spirit-beings is that they can lose
the motivation to grow spiritually and join themselves to the material
world with its illusions of wealth and power, forgetting that this is an
opportunity to see what they could do with their lives.
Each of us displays what actually surfaces from
within us that can help or hinder our spiritual growth. Everyone
influences other people.
(Matthew 7:14) There is no Heaven nor Hell as many of us
define it. There are only
more opportunities to continue growing at our own pace. Life on
earth is like being in a simulator that offers us moments to display
what we are. Life is very brief and then we graduate where we consider
the results of our sojourn while in our limited forms. When we believe we are ready by being better
prepared, we incarnate again as was described by Kahlil Gibran in the
last sentence of his book, The Prophet, “A little while, a moment
of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”
Thus, the cycle of rebirths continues, giving each of us a true
adventure just as the nursery-rhyme taught us when we were in grade
school. “Row, row, row your
boat gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily,
life is but a dream.” |