Life After Life Article No. 2 FORETASTES OF DEATH Jesus Characterised An Out-Of-Body Experience As “Passing Through The Eye Of The Needle” It is said death must remain a mystery because no one has ever died and returned from the dead to relate to mankind exactly what transpires in the hereafter (a dichotomy of Heaven and Hell in Christian parlance but which occultists refer to as the Astral world). That is not exactly true. In precariously close brushes with death, some people have reported what are known as Near-Death Experiences, or NDEs in short. Thousands of cases of NDEs have been documented by doctors. NDEs happen when a critically or terminally ill/seriously injured person slips into and out of a death state and therefore peeps into the world beyond by way of his spirit body, not the physical one. Doctors say NDEs are particularly common among people who suffer heart attacks or survive near-fatal accidents. Some of the world’s eminent NDE researchers are Jeffrey Long, Jody Long, Paul Perry, and Raymond Moody. Dr Moody alone logged more than 150 NDEs before he came up with a book titled Life After Life, which was based on experiences with his patients. In a 1991 Gallup Poll, 13 million Americans, which was roughly 5 percent of the population then, admitted to having had an NDE experience. The Astral world has also been accessed through the aid of hypnotherapists. A hypnotherapist uses hypnosis on volunteers to get them to describe what happened to them between their previous lives and the present one, that is, between their recent incarnation and the present reincarnation. Dr Michael Newton, who wrote two books titled Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls, is particularly notable in this field. He hypnotically investigated 7000 people altogether and all were consistent in the relation of their experiences of death in previous lives. There are also people who possess an inborn gift to tune in, or see, into other realms of existence. These are called psychics, examples of whom include Linda Williams and James Van Praagh, who have written highly illuminating books on the subject too. OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES Then there is the phenomenon of Out-of-Body-Experience, or OBE. An OBE, also called astral-projection, can be induced by somebody else who is well-versed in this craft or can simply be entered into voluntarily through disciplined and meticulous meditation. An OBE is similar to an NDE, the only difference being that an OBE is not the result of a traumatic experience. In an OBE, one simply goes into the Astral world to explore it, like an adventurer, but using his spiritual body, also called the etheric body. We all can do this, but the knowledge has been selfishly and sinisterly withheld from us by those who wish the bulk of mankind to remain in perpetual ignorance with respect to the existence of the unseen world. Jesus characterised OBE as “passing through the eye of the needle” (MATTHEW 19:24) although Christendom has completely misinterpreted and therefore misunderstood his statement. The apostle Paul had an OBE he makes mention of though only casually in 2 CORINTHIANS 12:2. Witches are past masters of the OBE craft .However, their OBE is normally restricted to traversing the physical world, albeit in spirit form. Witches obtain their powers to astral-project from forces of darkness. These forces substantially limit their domain of projection. THE EXPERIENCES OF BECKOW Some people who have had an “extended” OBE have written comprehensively about this. One example is Steve Beckow. Beckow at first referred to himself as “Brother Anonymous” for fear that people would simply laugh him off if he owned up straight off and therefore discourage him from documenting his experiences. In his OBE, Beckow had occasion to interview hundreds of souls who died under various circumstances and across different eras. They gave him their names and how and where they died. Among them was the legendary British statesman Winston Churchill (1864-1975). Beckow’s OBE first took place in 1977. The second and more eventful one happened in 1987. He says in terms of Earth time, each of his OBEs took him not more than 8 seconds but it took him 20 years to translate into words what he experienced (the Astral world is a timeless dimension). Beckow went on to write more than 40 books, of which about 5 relate to his OBE exploits. He says he reincarnated on Earth from Arcturus, a constellation of highly evolved beings, to help enlighten mankind particularly in relation to spirituality and the metaphysical world. Words are not sufficient to describe or characterise the spirit world. It explains why Paul in 1 CORINTHIANS 2:1 said, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him. In 2 CORINTHIANS 12:4, Paul also says he was “caught away to paradise and heard unutterable sayings, that it is not possible for man to speak”, though the proper translation is that he experienced things that cannot be accurately articulated in ordinary human language. ANCIENT SOURCES Finally, we have the ancient writings on the death theme such as The Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and some titbits by philosophers of yore such as Socrates and Plato. In fact, Asian mystics, both those who reside in the East and the Western world, have been writing books about the death experience as far back as the 19th century. Unfortunately, these books are not easy to find as they disappeared from the printing presses decades ago. The few that can be found on the Internet in electronic format are typically written in almost inaccessible English, which can be off-putting to many a people. I have myself researched all the above-mentioned sources plus many more besides and what I have learnt is monumentally eye-opening. For instance, I gathered that our forefathers knew what happened after death and when a person was certain to die, more so the aged and infirm, they did not intercede for their continued existence. They sat at their side and sketched out to them the journey they would take on their way “home”, what they would encounter on the way, and what to do or say to the beings they met. The Tibetans and other Easterners did likewise too. As a result, people who died from illnesses or old age did so very peacefully and willingly and not whilst kicking and screaming or with inner protestation. As this series on life after death unfolds, a lot of questions will be provoked. I invite you to email me your questions at bib.bcs@gmail (not through inbox messaging or timeline posts as you may not get a comprehensive answer in this regard as my mind will not be fully focused). I do not guarantee answering your questions there and then. I prefer to address them collectively in a dedicated article at an appropriate time. Let me at this juncture underscore the fact that although I’m a Christian and will from time to time quote from the Bible, this is only by way of citation considering that for us in this part of Africa, Christianity is the default religion. My knowledge of the afterlife is not informed by religion: it is eclectically derived – from a multiplicity of sources. Let’s get started.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 05:18:35 +0000
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