An interview with psychotherapist and author ‘August Goforth’
Posted on 30 April 2010, 12:54
Outside of the actual evidence suggesting that consciousness survives physical death, the most important teaching coming through modern revelation is that we do not cross over into some humdrum heaven or horrific hell, as orthodox preachers would have us believe. We pretty much cross over as we are when we depart the material world spiritually.
That is the primary message conveyed by August Goforth and Timothy Gray in their 2009 book, The Risen. August Goforth is a pseudonym for a New York psychotherapist who for obvious professional reasons is reluctant to use his actual name. He is also an intuitive-mental and psychophysical spirit medium.
Timothy Gray was a New York City writer, editor, and photographer who transitioned to the spirit world during the early 1990s and then, about two years after his physical death, began communicating with ‘Goforth,’ his former partner in earth life, providing his own experiences in the afterlife as well as information given to him by ‘The Risen Collective,’ a group of more advanced spirit entities who use Timothy Gray to relay information to Goforth. The ‘Risen’ is the authors’ term for those who have transitioned to the spirit world and seen the light, i.e., excluding earthbound spirits.
‘Tim and I passionately want to share that there is no such thing as death,’ Goforth writes. ‘There is only Life – infinite varieties, forms, qualities, and expressions of it. What the majority of still-embodied people fear as ‘death’ is simply a transitional phase from one quality of life to another.’
The authors discuss everything from the initial experiences after death to dwelling places in the afterlife, the nature of the afterlife, and advancement in the afterlife. The authors discuss the nature of self, obstacles in communicating, materializations, the rescue of earthbound souls, dreams, out-of-body travel, mediumship, skeptical attitudes, dealing with grief, and misinterpretations relative to reincarnation, to name just some of the subject matter.
One especially interesting communiqué deals with skepticism in the afterlife realms. Apparently, there are scientists and others in the spirit realms who do not believe that the material world called earth exists. I recently put some questions to ‘August’ by e-mail.
August, when did you discover your mediumistic abilities? How did it develop?
They discovered me. The abilities were always there, and I experienced a wide range of phenomena as a child, but didn’t see any of it as unusual, including the moving musical lights, levitating toys, and laughing with ‘extra guests’ at my grandparents’ dinner table.
My earliest childhood was immensely happy due to all the spirit activity around me, and I can still remember the immense feelings of warmth, love, and safety while tucked into my big Victorian iron bed at night, listening to the gentle voices that spoke to me from just overhead. Often, and up into my early teens, an open book would appear over my head, face down and glowing in the dark, and I would read from it until I fell asleep; but I’ve no memory of what I read.
My grandmother transitioned when I was two, and thereafter often sat in my tiny rocking chair and silently watched me while I played. My parents never interfered, and if they did make negative suggestions, my ‘spirit family’ would counter those effects somehow, so I grew up not knowing that my experiences were not the norm. I was a solitary child, but never lonely, due to all the spirit company that was with me, and this remains so even now. It wasn’t until I was in my 40’s when Tim first materialized to me that I reached a new level of awareness – sort of the ‘quantum leap’ that hit me over the head that something funny was going on. Then all the pieces fell into place. Duh! You’re a medium!’
Will you briefly explain how you now communicate with Timothy and the spirit world?
There are several levels or ‘species’ of communication that occur – some separately, others collectively, making for a rich, multidimensional experience. One I call ‘teasing,’ which are little, sometimes not-so-subtle hints of Tim’s presence, like moving objects about in significant ways only I would understand, or influencing events and people to remind me he’s never far away. Kind of like slipping little love notes into my lunchbox. We are almost always in ‘psychospiritual mental’ contact, where we share an exceptional vibratory spiritual and mental space created by our affinity and love for one another.
I can internally hear his voice clearly, and feel him as well. While it’s not like a thought in my head, but ‘somewhere else,’ only I can hear him. It’s in this space that we commune, a most intimate experience, and are gabbing away to each other, making jokes, offering emotional support and validation, from the moment I wake up until I fall asleep and can then join him more completely in an astral geography. We’re working on direct voice now, which is still very rare for us.
Many books on mediumship point out that the messages can be colored by the medium’s own mind. Do you see this as a problem or concern with your mediumship? If so, how are you able to distinguish between what has come from spirit and what from your own mind?
My spirit colleagues taught me to distinguish between ‘me’ and ‘not me.’ Several chapters in the book are devoted to gaining awareness of the differences between one’s ego-mind and the voices of its criticizing simulate selves and that of one’s Authentic Self. To quote from it:
‘Until we can become familiar with these false inner gods and their agendas and methods, we will be unable to determine with confidence when a voice actually belongs to a Risen One. If we want to have conversations with the Risen, we must be able to at least temporarily silence the voices of the simulate selves. Second, until we become aware of the ego-mind’s lies about death, which keep us fettered to fear, and of our hidden beliefs that make us co-conspirators with it, we will have little chance of ever connecting with our Authentic Self, and then with the greater authentic reality of the Risen.’
A friend pointed out that he noticed that, rather than egotistically treating my abilities as unusual, or making me ‘special,’ I’ve integrated and normalized them in ways that easily fit into my life.
Skeptics and debunkers often point to the inability of mediums to get names as evidence that it is so much bunk. You talk about this in the book. Would you mind summarizing the problem as you now understand it?
I’ve lost track of the ‘St. Germains’ who claimed to have important messages for me, so I’m quite adamant about requiring proof and validation of a spirit’s identity. The Christ, Jesus set an example by commanding names and identities of spirits who made all kinds of claims and demands. A spirit can easily pick a name and identifying characteristics out of one’s mind and pretend to be that contact, and nobody’s the wiser.
A medium with little or no awareness of his simulate self voices may not be able to determine validity. Names would seem easiest, but light and sound move at a highly faster, finer rate in the spirit environment, so a medium may catch the sound as it zips past her spiritual ear—and not much more beyond that. ‘Mandy’ might sound like ‘M ee’ to her. It could be Mindy, Mandy, or Mikey. A great deal of time and ingenuity will be needed to continue to puzzle this out.
Experienced Risen Ones will forgo wasting time and energy on a name, hoping that other details and the feelings they evoke will be powerful enough to validate their identities. A medium must be exquisitely sensitive to intuitively understand where the Risen One is trying to lead. Skeptics will misinterpret this intelligent avoidance of names as lack of evidence, but their focus on what isn’t there disables them from being open to what’s actually there.
As I understand it, modern psychotherapy pretty much takes a materialistic/reductionist type approach to understanding and solving individual problems, thus ignoring possible spiritual causes. How are you able to deal with this conflict in your practice?
I avoid a reductionist approach, which breaks things down to supposedly identity causes and effects. It views the bits and pieces through a critical lens of pathology rather than one of health, so the finer, less apparent spiritual aspects of a patient’s wholistic being can’t be seen under such a delusional microscope. Looking at pieces instead of the whole will never give a complete picture towards a correct understanding and acceptance of a patient’s presenting situation.
My practice is psychodynamic, where the patient remains whole, and we develop a real and human relationship; our interactions reveal living energies and real-time aspects of our wholeness together. My stance as an accepting, nonjudgmental witness, and my self-awareness of this, give me access to those finer spiritual energies that reveal the hidden worlds all embodied people inhabit, as well as the spirit inhabitants of those worlds. My silent but conscious awareness is often all that’s needed to stimulate a patient’s previously inactive awareness of these dimensions and all they have to offer; and in time, they begin to draw on those supportive spiritual energies, and healing ensues. It’s not even necessary to talk about spirits or mediums or the afterlife with them, although, not surprisingly, these words or idea are often eventually brought up by the patient in some way.
Your book discusses the materialization of Timothy. I’d appreciate it if you would briefly explain this experience and your take on it.
While his materialization lowers him closer to my slower vibrating environment, they raise me up and closer to his space of higher vibrations. It’s largely an emotional experience, even though it’s also physical – but it’s beyond physical – it’s hyperspiritual. The experiences have permanently merged with my terrestrial body manifestation, transforming me on every level. Your question makes me cry, because it immediately evokes the events of his materializations, re-stimulating my vibrations to such an extent that they can still shake me to the core. The events were crisp, clear, stunning, and glowing; at the same time, they exuded such an immense feeling of love and safety that somehow, perhaps because of the lack of fear, enabled them not to feel strange or frightening, but rational, normal, appropriate, and sanely beautiful.
What are your conclusions on reincarnation?
They’re informed by Tim’s in-depth exploration about the subject, and so I refer to his current conclusions:
‘The evidence strongly indicates that we cannot be re individuated again…my observation is that there is never any need to go back to do it again, for the universe is infinite and never-ending and will provide me with unceasing opportunities, always new, fresh, and alive, to explore, learn, and expand my self-awareness on a continual basis. I don’t need to claim more than one life because my one life is enough. Because this one life is eternal it will always be more than enough, which is the core meaning of ‘abundance.’ Clearly, we are reborn upon our transition, but this rebirth is always into a new world and a unique state of existence, not back into the old one. The old one no longer exists—life is experienced in the continual now. We develop and carry forward the template for our new life. We are the template, and a new world will simultaneously arise from us as we arise from it, as a direct result of how we lived our lives on earth or from wherever we are continuously transitioning. The more brilliantly we live—that is, the more light-filled—the more spectacular will our lives manifest as we transmute ever onward. There are no limits to brilliance except as self-imposed. But even that is an illusion, for there is no real limit to anything.’
What do you see as the three most important messages coming from Timothy and ‘The Risen Collective’?
1. ‘Do not adjust your screens. This is not a test.’
2. ‘The very structure of the Intelligent Universe is light and music—singing, talking, and laughing. Life is real and death is not, so there is nothing to fear unless you fear life’s light-filled music. Death is not the end to life but another beginning, another birth. It is a door, a passage to more life, more than we could possibly imagine.’
3. ‘As beings of light we continue on endlessly—our immortal experience. This realization is of immense importance, for we are literally having our immortal experience in this very moment. Immortality doesn’t begin after we transition to Risen, but commenced when we first arose on this world, fired into life with a Divine Spark, to awaken and breathe and move up and out into this world, our earth.’
Check http://augustgoforth.blogspot.com and go to Amazon.com if you are interested in ordering The Risen.
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