The finality of death is the greatest and daunting mystery of life. 

 

In light of the insights of Dr. Rudolf Steiner, first-hand accounts of near-death experiences, the spiritual readings of the "Sleeping Prophet" Edgar Cayce, and first-hand experience, physical death is a transition to a higher stage of consciousness. It is the return home to that eternal sphere from whence we came before birth and were separated for a time. There is a river.  Life and consciousness continues.

 

In the immediate years after the death of someone with whom we are connected, a process exists and applies every human being. First-hand accounts of near death experiences show that the transition to the spiritual worlds are largely consistent, but no two experiences are precisely alike. While we may not be able to see the effects here, the impact of prayers, good feelings, universal love, and positive thoughts that is projected from the physical world are perceived and received by our loved ones and those who exist in the purely spiritual worlds. Thoughts, activities, and feelings are real forces that are viewed, felt,and permeate the non-physical world.

 

Thoughts and feelings are observed in the spiritual worlds a having color and feeling unique to what is expressed. Those who possess the special ability to adequately perceive the physical and spiritual worlds with a faculty of spiritual vision, which is a latent faculty in all of us that can be developed, observe the living quality of feelings, thoughts, and ideas that surround us.

 

Depending on what is projected, whether it be true or false, or of a higher or lower quality, each thought and feeling has an objective color, or combination of hues and colors, energy, and a form connected with its true nature.  True love, for example, emanates from the heart and the soul and has a living quality that sustains, warms, and balances. Anger, lust, impatience, materialistic thoughts devoid of life, can do great harm and serve as blockages. Materialistic thoughts create impediments between ourselves and loved ones who have died.

 

To know the spiritual worlds, and the reality of the spiritual within ourselves, is a gradual task. It opens a path to the sphere of the eternal where those who have died exist in a purely spiritual state of being. Meditation, study of the spiritual worlds and experiences, and prayer guide us to create a bridge. During our lives in the physical sphere between birth and death, we are influenced by, and project an influence, of forces that are invisible to physical sight, but can be observed spiritually.

 

Dr. Steiner observed that the spiritual solar system consists of 7 planets, and not 9 which scientists have categorized, that project unique influences into the cosmos. They are planes, spheres, and cities of activity and include the Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury. Many who have passed through a near-death experience recall the experience, and joy, of reconnecting to the universe as a living body of stars inhabited by spiritual beings who are an eternal cosmic family. Each human being is a star in the universe. Each soul that passes through the gate of death passes through a series of transformations, changes, and experiences which begin with a life-review. This review occurs in unique ways.

 

Dr. Steiner observed that this review lasts 3 1/2 days. During this process, each person reviews their life in the company of their guardian angel, family members, guides, friends, and/or Christ-Jesus. It is reviewed in a multi-dimensional way from every perspective including the perspective of every person that we come into contact with during our lives and how they felt as we interacted with them. Did they experience joy, love, or pain? Dr. Steiner provided deep insights into these processes and stages at work in this transition including Kamaloca, or purgatory in biblical terms, which lasts approximately 1/3 of the duration of one's physical lifetime.  It is the time of purging, enlightenment, change, and healing.

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(1) "In Anthroposophical literature I have, as you know, adopted for these Beings the names used in olden times to designate the higher Hierarchies. The first is the Hierarchy immediately above man, linked with him from above as the animal kingdom on Earth is linked with him from below. This is the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. 

 

Then, above this Hierarchy, comes that of the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and then the highest Hierarchy of all — the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. There are nine ranks, three times three ranks of Beings higher than man. Between each group of three higher ranks (ranging from below upwards) there is a parallelism with the three lower stages (ranking from above downwards) of animal, plant, mineral. 

 

Only by including all these ranks have we a complete picture of the world to which man belongs."

- Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships, Volume 5, Lecture IV III https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA239/English/RSP1966/19240331p01.html

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(2) "All the heavenly bodies of our solar system are interconnected, and as such they are the exterior expression of spiritual beings. The individual who knows these spiritual beings also knows the forces that are at work from one planet to another as well as in the spiritual world during the time between death and rebirth."

-Rudolf Steiner, The Principle of Spiritual Economy, Lecture 3, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA109/English/AP1986/19090307p01.html

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(3) "The dead look down on to the physical world just as the living (that is, the physically living) look upward into the spiritual world. But their feelings are reversed, so to speak. In the physical world between birth and death, man has a way of gazing upward, as to another world which grants him fulfillment for very many things which are either deficient or altogether lacking in contentment in this world. It is quite different between death and a new birth. 

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There, there is an untold abundance, a fullness of events. There is always far too much happening compared with what man can bear; therefore he feels a constant longing to return again into the earthly life, which is a “life in the beyond” for him there. In the second half of the life between death and a new birth, he awaits with great longing the passage through birth into a new earth-existence. 

 

In earthly existence man is afraid of death because he lives in uncertainty about it, for in the life on earth a great uncertainty prevails for the ordinary consciousness about the after-death. In the life between death and a new birth, on the other hand, man is excessively certain about the earthly life. It is a certainty that stuns him, that makes him actually weak and faint — so that he passes through conditions, like a fainting dream, conditions which imbue him with the longing to come down again to earth."

-Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships, Volume 1, Lecture 3, GA235, 23 February 1924, Dornach, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA235/English/RSP1972/19240223p01.html

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Dr. Steiner observed, through the mature vision and perception of a spiritual initiate in the modern age, that there are two distinct phases, or periods, that an individual soul progresses through after death which are distinct from one another; the sphere of "Kamaloca" or “soul" world consisting of both lower and higher planes and "Devachan" or "heaven" which also consists of different stages of activity.  Each soul spends roughly 1/3 of the number of years lived during his or her time in Kamaloca after one passes through the gate of death.

 

Thus, human existence comprises of three primary spheres of activity:

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"The three worlds are: 

1. The physical world, the scene of human life. 

2. The astral world or the world of soul. 

3. The devachanic world or world of spirit.
 

These three worlds are not spatially separate. We are surrounded by the things of the physical world which we perceive with our ordinary senses: but the astral world is in this same space; we live in the other two worlds, the astral and devachanic worlds, at the same time as we live in the physical world. 

 

The three worlds are wherever we ourselves are, only we do not yet see the two higher worlds — just as a blind man does not see the physical world. But when the “senses of the soul” are opened, the new world, with its new characteristics and new beings, emerges. In proportion as a man acquires new senses, so are new phenomena revealed to him."  

-Rudolf Steiner, At the Gates of Spiritual Science, Lecture 2, The Three Worlds, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA095/English/RSPAP1986/19060823p01.html 

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(4) "How long does a man remain in Kamaloka? For about one-third of the length of his past life. If for instance he has lived for seventy-five years, his time in Kamaloka will be twenty-five years."

-Rudolf Steiner, At the Gates of Spiritual Science, Lecture 3, Kamaloca, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA095/English/RSPAP1986/19060824p01.html

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(5) "...man has to wean himself gradually from these physical wishes and desires, so that the soul may free itself from the Earth, may purify and cleanse itself. When that is achieved, the Kamaloka period comes to an end and man ascends to Devachan."

-Rudolf Steiner, At the Gates of Spiritual Science, Lecture 3, Kamaloca, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA095/English/RSPAP1986/19060824p01.html

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(6) "How does the soul pass through its life in Kamaloka? In Kamaloka a man lives through his whole life again, but backwards. He goes through it, day by day, with all its experience's, events and actions, back from the moment of death to that of birth."

-Rudolf Steiner, At the Gates of Spiritual Science, Lecture 3, Kamaloca, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA095/English RSPAP1986/19060824p01.html 

 

 

 

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Dr. Steiner observed, and those who publicly provide accounts of near-death experiences, that during the initial period of life after death the soul relives its life in the minutest detail in reverse. Whatever harm or good we brought forth during physical life is unveiled before us. We live within the experiences and feelings of every person with whom we harmed or helped. Dr. Steiner observed that if we caused some harm to a spiritual being, albeit human, plant, or animal, we will experience the same harm twice; first during our transitional period in the afterlife, and the second during a subsequent lifetime. What is done in the physical sphere must be met in the physical sphere. Harmful things result in redemptive karma, love and goodness uplifts life and the universe, and raises us higher and closer to the spirit.

 

On the spiritual planet-city of the Moon, which is the first and last sphere that we pass through during our time in the spiritual worlds after death and before rebirth, the spiritual guardians of karma inscribe our deeds onto our pattern which characterizes the environment, form, goals plan for our next lifetime.  Our karmic record is adjusted and we move forward.  This record is referred to in esoteric terms as the Akashic Records or Akasha Essence.  The universal records house the entire history of the universe imprinted on the finest ethers of existence. Each human being has a book, as it were, that contains our entire soul history inscribed with every form, thought, feeling, and deed since the beginning of time. Some near-death experiencers have described being led to their book which is labeled with their name.
 

The average time that an individual spends in the spiritual worlds varies. For some, the duration is only a few years. For others, it can last for centuries. There is a certain cadence, however, associated with the planet Saturn which requires 30 years to orbit the Sun and the Moon which cycles through phases of 18 years and are referred to as moon nodes in Anthroposophy.  Transformative moments during our lives often occur during the climax of moon nodes as the human being progresses through life. If a person lives 72 years, then he or she would cycle through 4 moon nodes or moments of change. Air Chief Hugh Dowding who commanded the RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain in World War 2, authored several books on spiritual research, recorded instances of souls who had been deceased for several hundred years. 

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(7) "One year of the spiritual world corresponds to 30 years of the physical. Man has a way of hastening here in the physical world whereas in the spiritual world, so to speak, he always has to revolve in far larger circles. So, as one spiritual year is equal to 30 earthly years, in one year of the spiritual he experiences approximately the same piece of the world as in 30 years of the physical. He thereby experiences it more intensively, more inwardly."

-Rudolf Steiner, GA168, The Influence of the Dead on the Life of Man on Earth,  https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA168/English/Singles/19161203p01.html 

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(8) "The unfolding of man's life between death and a new birth takes place in successive stages. For a few days after passing through the gate of Death the whole of the past earthly life is seen in living pictures. This experience reveals at the same time the gradual severance of the vehicle of the past life from the human soul-and-spirit.
 

In a time that comprises about a third of the past earthly life, the soul discovers in spiritual experiences the effect which this life must have in accordance with an ethically just World-order. During this experience the purpose is begotten in the soul to shape the next earthly life in a corresponding way, and thus to compensate for the past.

 

There follows a purely spiritual epoch of existence. During this epoch, which is of long duration, the soul of man — along with other human souls karmically connected with him, and with the Beings of the Hierarchies above — fashions the next life on Earth in the sense of Karma."

-Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, GA 26, On the Picture Nature of Man, Supplementary to the last set of Leading Thoughts. https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_a02.html

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(9) "And so another world appears to him (after Kamaloca); after the world of colors (Astral world) comes the world of musical sounds which in a certain sense was there already without the significance it now has. The world of Devachan is a world of sounds the sounds which Pythagoras called the music of the spheres. The heavenly bodies as they pursue their courses can be heard resounding. Here we recognize the harmony of the Cosmos and we find that everything lives in music. Goethe as an Initiate, speaks of the Sun resounding; he indicates the secret of Devachan."

-Rudolf Steiner, At the Gates of Spiritual Science, Lecture 2, The Three Worlds, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA095/English/RSPAP1986/19060824p01.html 

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(10) "…when a man dies his astral body and his Ego leave the physical and etheric bodies. Then he has before him, for a certain time, the great memory-tableau of his last life in the form of a vast picture. The main part of his etheric body is then cast off as a second corpse and something like an extract or essence of this etheric body remains; he bears this extract with him through the periods of Kamaloka and Devachan and brings it back again into his next incarnation. 

 

While he is in Kamaloka there is inscribed into this life-extract everything he has experienced through his deeds, everything that has been incurred in the way of human Karma and for which he has to make compensation. All this unites with the extract of the etheric body which passes on from one incarnation to another and man brings it with him when he again comes into existence through birth. The term in Oriental literature for what we call ‘etheric body’ is ‘Linga Sharira’. Thus it is an extract of Linga Sharira that man takes with him from incarnation to incarnation."  

-Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of St. Luke, Lecture 3, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA114/English/RSP1964/19090917p01.html

 

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​​Dr. Steiner described different regions of the higher life. The higher spheres, which we refer to as Heaven, he described as Devachan. The experience of the soul passes from lower to higher regions of experience as it lets go of the trappings, instincts, cycles, and habits of earthly life. Dr. Steiner stated that to describe the experiences of the higher life is not easy, due to the limitations of language and human perception, which are firmly rooted in the mundane day-to-day experience of waking life.

 

The experiences of the spiritual worlds varies from person to person. However, there are common shared experiences that can give a student a compass. Spiritual experiencers speak of healing centers, universities, lecture halls, and constructs that service divine purposes. Cities, homes, vistas, and planes of experience that are not defined by, or constrained by, the limitations of the physical world exist. People move by thought and will, not by manual means. People communicate through thought, images, and feelings. Dr. George Ritchie, author of “Return from Tomorrow”, provided insights into his experiences when he died and was brought back to life in 1943 where he encountered souls engaging in a common spiritual purpose, marvelous cities, and a great spiritual library that he, and Edgar Cayce, referred to as the Hall of Records. 

 

Based on near-death accounts, and a variety of spiritual works written in the early 20th century, there are periods of rest and healing after death but preparations are quickly undertaken for a rebirth and new missions. The spiritual worlds are spheres of growth, education, activity, planning, and transformation. These are the spheres of eternity from which all of physical creation originated.  We give back what we are to the universe, and the universe gives to us. The universe is populated by a an infinite number of divine beings who do not incarnate in the physical world, yet oversee and guide us on the long path of human, world, and cosmic evolution. Dr. Steiner informed us that there are nine grades, or ranks, of divine beings in the universe. The angels are closest to humanity, and oversee our destinies from one lifetime to the next.

 

Dr. Steiner observed that it is essential that each person learn as much as possible about the spiritual worlds and spiritual nuances of life, so that we can build upon what have learned as pass beyond the gate of death and progress further and faster than we could have done so otherwise. One still has to learn when one enters the spiritual worlds. One should not assume that all things are known. The capacities and limitations of a person, based on the moral and spiritual quality of the life just led, opens or closes doors to further experience and stages of existence.

 

Dr. Steiner revealed that by following a practice of reading to the dead, that a bridge can be formed between the reader and those with whom he or she is connected on the other side of the grave. Anthroposophical lectures and books, for example, which are founded on the truths of the spirit through the vision and wisdom of a genuine initiate who has direct experience and knowledge of the spiritual worlds, are extremely helpful to those who live in the spiritual worlds.

 

Degrees of amplification exist in the spiritual worlds that, in light of the nature waking human life, seem to have no external quality.

 

For example, a lie  is described by Dr. Steiner as the equivalent of a murder in the spiritual worlds. Anything that is false simply dissipates in the spiritual worlds or can cause harm. Prayers and love radiate as marvelous color, feeling, and warmth that is perceived as more real than physical objects. The proper method of reading to the dead is an altruistic and spiritual undertaking done as a service to humanity that does not carry with it any benefits of karma. It is purely a service to humanity.  The method of responsibly reading to those who have died is simple and involves envisioning one's deceased loved one as an image and reading texts as thoughts. This method is described in Dr. Steiner's lecture series Life Between Death and Rebirth.

 

The souls who live purely in the spiritual worlds cannot find their way to loved ones or friends through dead, abstract thoughts. Nor can they find their way through anger, sadness, dark feelings, thoughts, and ideas. These things repel them. One seeking to build a bridge should aim share notions of love, forgiveness, compassion, well-being, and friendship.

 

Prayers are real. Prayers are living forces of good that change the lives of people, the world, and the universe. In one near-death experience, a person died and spoke of observing fireworks rising from the world that were zipping past her and into space. These  fiery shooting stars of light passed by her at incredible speeds moving to different locations in space beyond her field of vision. She realized that these fireworks were in fact prayers going out to specific individuals who resided in the spiritual worlds from those who still lived on earth.

 

Dispositions, attitudes, and capacities are formed, and reformed, during our physical lives and carried with us after death. After one dies, he or she begins a new life in the spiritual worlds which has a birth, apogee, and rebirth when we return to the physical world. Thus, if one did not have a chance to encounter Anthroposophical topics, or lives a life constrained to purely materiliastic notions, the journey through the afterlife can be a longer and more difficult one. If we pursue a spiritual course, and seek out genuine spiritual truths and facts, then the path opens up and becomes smoother.

 

Dr. Steiner provided meditations to his students that were designed to aid those who have died knowing the effects and outcomes that are experienced by the human soul while living in the spiritual worlds. For example, the dead can experience a spiritual thirst and hunger that permeates the soul and can be extremely painful. Thus, Dr. Steiner provided certain mantras that address thirst, cold, or warmth.

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(11) "In cases of violent death and of suicide, the impressions of emptiness, thirst and burning are much more terrible. An astral body that is not prepared for existence outside the physical body, separates with great travail…”

-Steiner, Rudolf. An Esoteric Cosmology, The Astral World, Lecture 9. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA094/English/SGP1978/index.html

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(12) "How can we be of help to one of the Dead? We must be united with him by a spiritual bond. We can help, for example, by quietly reading to him; uniting ourselves with him inwardly and lovingly, we can take him with us through a sequence of thoughts, we can send ideas and imaginations up to him in the higher worlds. Such services of friendship are always helpful. Reading in this way is of benefit, although in earthly life the man may have been too indifferent, too easy-going; we can lighten his sufferings even when there was no evidence in his life that he longed for these things. 

 

Much blessing is often sent from the physical plane into the spiritual worlds, in spite of the great gulf which separates the life between birth and death from the life between death and a new birth. Many living people will feel that they are intimately connected with the Dead; they will also be conscious that they help the Dead. The first souls with whom we come into contact after death are those with whom we had already formed close ties on the Earth, not those who were unknown to us on Earth. A direct continuation of the earthly life takes place after death. The soul is inside whatever it perceives, fills it through and through. 

 

During the period of Kamaloca, the ether-form of man expands as far as the orbit of the Moon. All human beings occupy the same space; they are not “in each other's way” during the Kalamazoo-period. After this period of Moon-existence we inhabit the Mercury sphere; then the Venus-sphere, then the Sun-sphere; here we live within a sphere of higher spirituality, for the astral elements of the Moon-sphere have been overcome. Life in each of the planetary spheres depends upon the mood and quality of soul acquired during the Moon-period; the life of those who have unfolded the quality of moral fellow-feeling differs from the life of those who are egoists. 

 

The former open themselves to humanity. Above all we shall be able to form a connection with those with whom we were together in earthly life. The nature of these relationships will depend upon whether we have been a comfort or a source of trouble to the others. A man of inferior morality will become a spiritual hermit; a truly moral man, on the contrary, a sociable inhabitant of the Mercury-sphere."  

-Rudolf Steiner, The Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz, GA Unknown, VI. The Starry Heaven Above Me — The Moral Law Within Me, 19 December 1912, Munichhttps://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA130/English/RSP1950/19121219p01.html

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(13) "...the dead draw nourishment from the content of our souls in sleep, then every thought that enters the spiritual world and is concerned with it and its beings can be perceived by the dead. On the other hand, if we do not cultivate such thoughts, the dead are deprived of them. Ideas related only to the material world, to things in nature, live in our souls in such a way that the dead cannot perceive them. These ideas, however scholarly or wise, are meaningless for the dead. As soon as we have thoughts about the spiritual world, not only the living but also the dead have immediate access to them. 

 

That is why we have often recommended that our friends read silently to an individual with whom they were closely connected and who has passed on to the spiritual world. One forms an image of the person and then, while thinking about him or her, one reads on a subject related to the spiritual world. The dead can then participate in the process, which is important. 

 

Although the dead are in the world we know through spiritual science, thoughts about the spiritual world must be produced on earth. The dead must perceive more than the spiritual world around them; they need the thoughts of those who live on earth, thoughts that for them are like perceptions.

 

The most important and the most beautiful thing we can give the dead is to read to them in the way I have just described. We can give something to the dead by reading on a spiritual subject. And if you doubt that this is useful, since the deceased is in the spiritual world anyway, just think that we can be surrounded by things and beings in the physical world, yet may not understand them. The understanding has to be acquired. 

 

Thus, although the deceased is in the spiritual world, thoughts from earth have to flow to him. Illuminating thoughts must flow up to those regions where the dead dwell, just as rain streams down from the clouds as a blessing to the physical world."

- Rudolf Steiner, The Presence of the Dead, GA 154, 3. Awakening Spiritual Thoughts, 5 May 1914, Basel https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA154/English/AP1990/19140505p01.html

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Wherever we are in life, everyone benefits when we strive to know the spiritual worlds. The dead and the living form a kind of unity, whether we are aware of it not. One's attitude, disposition, and nature of relationships significantly influences his or her experiences in the life after death.  We should always aim higher, and we can help those who have passed beyond the gate of physical perception. Much of what we need to know lives in the human heart already. However, seeking the answers has a lasting and positive impact on the world. The reality is that as one ignores the spiritual worlds, and the spiritual side of life, we expose ourselves to great risk and increases the possibility of illusion.

 
For those who enter into the spiritual worlds unprepared or in a state of darkness, having led difficult lives, the spiritual worlds can be a difficult transition. However, the Light of Christ-Jesus, as the Redeemer and Representative of Humanity, the angels, friends, and loved ones shine upon us all and exist as an eternal, enduring light and life in the spiritual worlds. For there is desert, river, or ocean that He cannot cross. It is hope, design, universal love, fidelity, patience, kindness, and selfless courage that leads us one step closer to the spiritual.

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"May my love

Be sacrificially woven

Into all of the protective sheaths

That surround you-

Cooling all warmth,

Warming all coldness-

Life carried by love

Light-gifted, upward!"  

-Rudolf Steiner, P195, Mantric Sayings and Meditations

 
 

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No one is forgotten or passed over. Each soul is a vital and irreplaceable part of a universal family. The bridge is not just in our thoughts, but in our heart. The universe was created out of love and wisdom. Aiding those who have died, our fellows, all livings beings, and learning about the nuances of the spiritual worlds, and how the world of the spirit permeates physical life, which can be achieved by anyone, allows each one of us to mature, expand, and help each other on the long journey of physical and spiritual life; lives that have a starting point, an apogee, a decline, and a necessary ending…

 
The transition home is one filled with astonishment, reunions, awareness, joy, and hope. Profound relationships long forgotten are resurrected. One's destiny is revealed and comes into focus. Prior lifetimes come into view through the eternal memory and being of the spiritual worlds, guided by the Redeemer and angelic guardians who guide each human being from one lifetime to the next.  When one comes into contact with the spiritual worlds consciously, the heart yearns, pangs, sings, and resonates with a certain inner and living continuity that cannot be described in human terms. It is a living stream that permeates the depths of the soul...