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An Easter Message: Embrace the Discomfort

Posted on 29 March 2021, 9:54

jesus

I had a “foolish” dream the other night.  I dreamt it was April Fool’s Day and I was pretending to be a priest or minister of some kind while giving a sermon for this coming Sunday, Easter Sunday. I remember thinking that the church hierarchy would not approve of one of those I was quoting, but I went ahead with it.  As near as I can remember, the sermon went something like this: 

I see a few young faces among those in attendance today but not nearly as many as I would like to see.  Nevertheless, my sermon today is primarily for you, the younger generation. At the same time, I hope the older folks will stay awake and ponder on what I am saying, keeping it in mind when attempting to offer guidance to their children, grandchildren, or other young people lacking experience in worldly ways. They seem to be more idealistic than earlier generations but not nearly as pragmatic.  But, of course, I’m being “old-fashioned.”

I don’t know how many times within the last year or two I’ve heard some young person say, “That makes me feel uncomfortable,” or “I’m not comfortable with that,” or some other declaration of discomfort, one that seems more feigned than real.  My response to all that is, “Get over it! Discomfort is a part of life’s learning experience. It’s good for you. May you be fortunate enough to feel more discomfort.”

Let me explain my response by suggesting to you that genuine discomfort is most often associated with adversity of some kind.  Call it hardship, difficulty, misfortune, grief, pain, whatever works for you.  If it’s pain, then it is only a very mild or moderate pain. The kind of discomfort suggested here falls well below the real pain threshold and might not even register on a zero to 10 gauge. It usually has to do with a disagreement. Let’s assume, however, that it’s real discomfort, not the feigned discomfort of some self-centered, know-it-all person, and that it does register on the pain scale. Call it an “affliction.” Here’s what the high spirit known as Imperator had to say about it: 


“It is necessary that afflictions come.  Jesus knew and taught that. It is necessary for the training of the soul.  It is as necessary as physical discipline for the body.  No deep knowledge is to be had without it.  None is permitted to scale the glorious heights but after discipline of sorrow.  The key of knowledge is in spirit hands, and none may wrest it to himself but the earnest soul which is disciplined by trial.  Bear that in mind.”

More recently, the late Dr. Elisabeth Kűbler-Ross wrote: 


“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”


And this, from one of our former presidents, Theodore Roosevelt:


“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life.  I have envied a great many people who had difficult lives and led them well.”

The bottom line here, as I see it, is that you should embrace that discomfort, not complain about it. Don’t wimp out. Don’t be a cream puff. You should dissect the discomfort and fully examine it, then figure out how it can help you grow spiritually.

Why is it that being “uncomfortable” is now such a common lament? I think I know.  It is because so many young people have been seduced by the entertainment and advertising industries, by Hollywood and Madison Ave. They have been led to believe that life is all about having fun.  Eat, drink, and be merry, and do it with many different partners. It’s about being self-absorbed in the pursuit of fun – not the pursuit of happiness.  Such a lifestyle lacks in commitment, morality, work ethic, and spirituality.  It results in people being less rugged than they were in the past, and so the discomfort threshold is significantly lower than it once was. A two-hour power outage is now a great discomfort to many – no phones, no computers, no television – whereas people once survived with no power at all.

In earlier years, the mass media was less hedonistic. Only in recent decades has it focused on having fun. I recall, not long ago, a dying man was interviewed on a popular television program.  He was asked what he would tell others battling terminal conditions.  “Live life to the fullest,” was his animated reply.  “Have Fun!!!”  He went on to describe the seemingly shallow and superficial ways he was having fun.  The program host and the audience all applauded and reacted as if the man had given sage advice.  I wanted to vomit.

Having fun when you know you are dying is not always as easy as some make it out to be.  In his 2016 New York Times best seller, When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi, a California neurosurgeon diagnosed with terminal lung cancer at age 36, addressed the “one day at a time” philosophy of the nihilistic humanist by saying that such an approach didn’t help him. “What was I supposed to do with that day?” he asked, pointing out that time had become static for him as he approached the end.  He considered more traveling, dining, and achieving a host of neglected ambitions, but he simply didn’t have the energy.  “It is a tired hare who now races,” he explained.  “And even if I had the energy, I prefer a more tortoise-like approach.  I plod, I ponder.  Some days, I simply persist.”

If we can’t deal with discomfort and the suffering it brings in our prime years, how can we possibly deal with it in our dying years?  Many people turn to drugs and alcohol because they didn’t learn how to deal with discomfort when they were younger. They were offended by being around someone who thought differently than they did, and, oh my gosh, it made them feel “terribly uncomfortable.” 

We’ve recently heard members of royalty complain about the difficulties of privilege.  It’s so tough and uncomfortable dealing with all that pomp, grandeur and luxury.  It sounds like it is even tougher than being homeless.  There appears to be a paradox there: the greater the privilege, the greater the hardships and discomforts.

Another lamentation I often hear these days is, “I deserve it.” However, I rarely, if ever, hear the person explain why he or she deserves it.  In most cases, the person seems to think it is deserved as some kind of birthright . I think they’ve been watching too many commercials.

According to child psychologist Dan Kindlon, as set forth in his book, Too Much of a Good Thing, modern parents are too indulgent with their children.  He says they give the kids too much and demand too little from them. When they are overindulged, Kindlon claims, the result is what amounts to the Seven Deadly Sins of religion: pride, wrath, envy, sloth, gluttony, lust, and greed, all of which are symptoms of narcissism.
 
A fairly recent book titled The Narcissism Epidemic, by Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D. and W. Keith Campbell, Ph.D., offers some interesting discussion on the narcissistic mindset. The two authors begin by stating that Americans are being persuaded that becoming more vain, materialistic, and self-centered is actually a good thing. “The narcissism epidemic has already had serious consequences,” they write. “First there has been a giant transfer of time, attention, and resources from reality to fantasy. Rather than pursuing the American dream, people are simply dreaming. Our wealth is phony, driven by credit and loose lending; this part of the narcissistic dream has already been dashed. Second, narcissism has corroded interpersonal relationships. There has been a switch from deep to shallow relationships, a destruction of social trust, and an increase in entitlement and selfishness.”

As Twenge and Campbell see it, religion has long been a deterrent to materialism and narcissistic behavior, but it has in some ways recently contributed to the narcissism problem. They point out that religions and volunteer organizations that aligned themselves with individualistic values have thrived, while those that have not have often withered. They note that some megachurch pastors, mentioning specifically Joel Osteen, pastor of the largest megachurch in the United States, stress self-love as a requirement to loving others, but they state that there is little evidence to support this idea and conclude that “loving yourself isn’t all that important for loving others.” 

Imagine, if you can, a world without discomfort, without pain, without suffering.  Might it not resemble the picture we have of Nero fiddling as Rome burned?  Is that our goal?  Don’t these superficial and frivolous “discomforts” we hear complained of so much these days suggest that we are approaching such a condition?

If it is genuine discomfort, then let’s grin and bear it, or, as suggested earlier, embrace it and learn from it. If it is fake discomfort, then wake up and face reality. Become more pragmatic. Let me end by again quoting Imperator:

“This is our Easter message to you.  Awake and arise from the dead.  Cast aside the gross cares of your lower world. Throw off the material bonds that bind and clog your spirit.  Rise from dead matter to living spirit; from earthly care to spiritual love; from earth to heaven.  Emancipate your spirit from earthly cares which are earth-born and unspiritual.  Cast aside the material and the physical which have been the necessary aids to your progress, and rise from engrossing interest in the worldly to a due appreciation of Spiritual Truth.  As the Master said to His friends, ‘Be in the world, but not of the world.’”

Next blog post: April 12

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
His latest book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is published by White Crow Books.


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Absurd, If a Truth Can Be Absurd

Posted on 13 March 2021, 19:26

As discussed in Chapter 12 of my current book, No One Really Dies, the “Paraffin Hands Case” has gone down in the annals of psychical research as one of the most, if not the most, convincing case offering objective evidence of spirit life. “It is very absurd, if a truth can be absurd,” Professor Charles Richet, a Nobel Prize winner in medicine, said, referring to the results of the experiments that he and Dr. Gustave Geley, the director of the International Metaphysical Institute in Paris, had carried out with Franek Kluski, a Polish medium, during November and December 1920.

The two scientists succeeded in having “entities,” a more acceptable word to scientists than “spirits,” dip their hands and feet, and even part of the face of one, into some paraffin so that molds could be made of their body parts. They carried out their experiments under very controlled conditions in Geley’s laboratory. In one of the experiments, they added some bluish coloring matter to the paraffin to rule out any skeptical claim that Kluski had somehow smuggled ready-made molds into the laboratory.  The mold was produced with a bluish tinge to it.

Space did not permit me to include the report of Felix W. Pawlowski, professor of aeronautical engineering at the University of Michigan, in my book chapter, so I will summarize it here. While on sabbatical leave in Europe during 1924, Pawlowski, believed to be the first professor of aeronautical engineering, was invited to sit in on several seances with Kluski in Warsaw.  He reported on his observations in the September 1925 issue of the Journal of The American Society for Psychical Research and also in a 1926 issue of Zeitschrift fuer Parapsychologie (Magazine of Parapsychology). 

Pawlowski (below) reported that he was “rather skeptical” before the experiments, but that he felt there might be “something in it” and was surprised that official science had not given more attention to it. He describes Kluski as “a highly educated and cultured man of a prominent and well-known family, an accomplished poet and a very prominent figure in the big banking business.” He added that Kluski was as anxious to understand his mediumship as anyone else.

felix


The preliminaries, Pawlowski reported, called for an examination of the room and all articles contained therein. Windows and doors were locked after Kluski appeared entirely naked (to confirm he brought nothing into the room). No ladies were allowed. The white light was turned off and the red light turned on as soon as Kluski went into the trance state. “After a few strong and distinct raps in the table or in the walls, bright bluish stars appear and begin to move high above the table, near the ceiling,” Pawlowski recorded, noting that the ceiling was more than 12-feet high. When the stars approached him and were about 16 inches away, “I noticed to my great astonishment that they were human eyes looking at me. Within a few seconds such a pair of eyes develops into a complete human head, and with a hand having a luminous palm illuminating it clearly. The hand will move around the head as if to show itself more clearly to the onlooker, the eyes looking at one intensely and the face smiling most pleasantly.”

Pawlowski added that when questions were put to the apparitions, the facial expression was always perfectly suited to the answer and that an amiable smile played constantly about their lips.  The apparitions came so close to him that he could hear them breathe and feel the breath against his face.  They would occasionally touch his face and hands.

“As the phantoms made their appearance, I saw something resembling luminous smoke or fog floating above the head of the medium like a small cloud,” he continued. “This cloud moved to one side and in a very few seconds became a human head, or else it would be extended vertically and become a complete human figure, which immediately began to walk about.”

He recalled one phantom, appearing as an old man, who was perfectly luminous by its own power. “The old man wore a high, conical headdress, and was clothed in a long robe which hung down from him in deep folds,” he reported. “He approached us with majestic strides, his robe swaying as he walked. His hands were engaged in making motions in the shape of triangles. At the same time he was speaking in a deep, solemn voice. He stopped behind me for about ten seconds, waving his luminous hands above us and speaking continually. He then withdrew to the far end of the room and vanished. His coming was accompanied by a wave of ozonated air which filled the room even after the seances had ended ... His language was rather guttural, and unknown to anyone present’ although between us we commanded twelve different tongues. To date, no one has succeeded in identifying his language, or in discovering who the phantom is. Among the members of the Circle, he is known as the Assyrian priest, a designation which fits his external appearance perfectly.”

Other phantoms belonged to different nationalities and generally spoke their native language, although Polish was most often spoken. “Nevertheless, they readily understand remarks addressed to them in any tongue,” Pawlowski continued. “They seem to have the power of reading the minds of others, for it is not necessary to utter any given wish or question; merely to think it sufficient. It is necessary only to form the wish that a phantom should do some particular thing, in order to have such a wish granted, or, as the case may be, refused.” He explained that the phantoms sometimes said the particular request was beyond their power. “However, most of them ‘fly’ in the air, across the table and high above the table and the sitters if they wish.’

“Not all apparitions are able to speak,” Pawlowski further explained. “Many prefer to make themselves understood by rappings, a very tedious and lengthy proceeding, since the raps always correspond in number to the place of a letter in the alphabet. The voices are perfectly distinct and of normal strength, sounding like a loud whisper.” Pawlowski noted that he tried to replicate the raps with various experiments, but he failed.

The most astonishing and interesting aspect of these phantoms, according to Pawlowski, was their “absolutely human behavior.” He said they acted like guests at a party. “As they passed around the table, they greeted those persons with whom they were acquainted with a smile of recognition, whereas they studied any new faces attentively. The inquisitive look in their eyes is hard to describe. I could see from their efforts to understand our expression, our smiles, our questions and answers, as well as from their actions, that they were particularly anxious to convince us of the fact that they actually existed and that they were not illusions or hallucinations.”

Moreover, Pawlowski pointed out, they were not always life size. At times, they were only half or two thirds normal size. “When I saw a phantom of this kind for the first time, I thought it was that of a child, until on closer examination, I could tell by the wrinkled face that it was an old man or woman, though much below normal size.” When the leader of the Society would petition the circle to help the medium, the group breathed deeply and regularly, apparently in an attempt to add to the medium’s power, and the phantoms would then regain full size.

Like Richet and Geley, Pawlowski observed paraffin hands being produced. (below) “The apparitions put their hands in the paraffin and drop off the glove-like molds on the table,” he explained the process. “If it is a luminous hand, it is clearly seen splashing in the perfectly transparent liquid, like a goldfish in an aquarium. The gloves are rather carelessly thrown off and on one occasion a couple of them rolled off the table on my lap and from there on the floor ... It takes the apparitions from one-half to three-quarters of a minute to produce the glove. When I tried to do it myself it took me several minutes to cool off the paraffin on my hand, and then, of course, there was no possibility of pulling off the glove unbroken. I could not do it with a single finger, immersed only to the middle of the second link.” (Photo by Pawlowski shows one of the molds.)

hand

Pawlowski also reported seeing apports of small objects, but was told by other members of the circle that rather heavy objects had been transported to the seance room from distant places during prior experiments. He also noted that there was a significant drop in temperature, from six to eight degrees centigrade during the production of the phenomena.

“It is impossible for anyone to reject or to deny these phenomena, and it is impossible to explain them by clever trickery,” Pawlowski concluded. “To accept the possibility of creating in a few minutes live and intelligent human beings, whose bones one can feel through their flesh, and whose heart-beat one can hear and feel, is beyond our comprehension. As much spoiled as we are by the marvels of modern science, we can hardly believe nature revealing to us, in such splendor of beauty, the enigma of universal life, the divine secret so far so jealously guarded from us. To accept them would mean to change entirely our attitude toward life and death, to be obliged to revise entirely our sciences and philosophy.” Thus, he added, he was not prepared to subscribe to the spiritistic theory without more study by other scientists.

Nearly a hundred years later, we are still waiting for those “other scientists” to study the matter. On the other hand, it may be that the spirits have thrown in the towel on trying to convince humans that they exist. People check internet sources which say that Houdini claimed he made similar hand molds, and that’s enough for them to dismiss the reports by esteemed men of science. They don’t ask for evidence that Houdini observed molds made under the same conditions, if he observed them at all. And what about the other phenomena? It’s simply too mind-boggling and therefore it’s easier to believe Houdini than Richet, Geley, Pawlowski and many other credible scientists who carried out controlled experiments and replicated them. Then, there are those who believe the phenomena are real, but it’s easier for them to believe that it is some kind of subconscious manifestation than a production by an “entity” from another dimension of reality.  It appears that “absolute certainty” is not possible and that we can strive only for a high degree of conviction. 

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
His latest book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is published by White Crow Books.

Next blog post: March 29

 


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Boston Mayor Describes Afterlife Conditions

Posted on 01 March 2021, 10:02

While visiting the office of the Society for Psychical Research in Boston during February 1888, Anne Manning Robbins met Dr. Richard Hodgson, who, at the time, was interviewing various people who had had sittings with medium Leonora Piper. Robbins’s first sitting with Mrs. Piper was during the winter of 1884-85, not long after Piper’s mediumistic ability was discovered and before Professor William James of Harvard was introduced to it. “The personality of Mrs. Piper, then a young woman, with her sweet, pure, refined and gentle countenance, attracted me at once,” Robbins wrote in her 1909 book titled Both Sides of the Veil.

Upon learning that Robbins had stenographic abilities, Hodgson solicited her help in recording and transcribing future sittings with Mrs. Piper. Robbins accepted and assisted Hodgson for many years. It was in 1894, that Robbins first met Augustus Martin, (below) who had become Boston’s police commissioner 10 years after serving as mayor. Robbins, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, became his administrative assistant for the next five years and later worked with him when he became the water commissioner. She remembered him as a man of “dignity, sweetness and light.”

augustus

Martin, usually referred to as “General,” after Massachusetts Governor John Long commissioned him an honorary brigadier general because of his distinguished service during the Civil War, especially at the Battle of Gettysburg, died on March 13, 1902. On May 21, 1903, Hodgson, who had been studying the mediumship of Mrs. Piper for more 15 years at that point, was informed by Rector, Piper’s spirit control at the time, that a spirit there was constantly calling for a lady in the body. After some struggling to get the name, Rector (using Piper’s hand) wrote “Robbins.” The spirit was identified as having been Augustus Martin, but it was said that he was not yet ready to speak, though he would be soon. However, it wasn’t until December 23 that year, some 21 months after his passing that Martin actually began to communicate. Rector asked Hodgson to arrange for a sitting by Robbins.

During that sitting, Rector first addressed Robbins and brought her old friend Hiram Hart to communicate with her. Hart then said, “I am bringing another friend who seeks you, who knows you as you are. ” It was explained that Martin was not yet able to speak through Piper and that Hart would relay his words.

“You have called for me in your spirit,” Hart relayed Martin’s message through Mrs. Piper. “I knew it and felt it, but I could not reach down until the conditions were arranged for it. Do you know what they all mean? Perhaps you know better than I do. But these good priests opened the way, who showed me the Light, opened the door for me and there I am. Would to God you could see me as I am! I am quite the man that I was, only my ideas are all changed. They are more now I think in harmony with your own.”

Martin apologized for not taking her seriously about spirit communication when he was alive and she attempted to tell him about her visits with Mrs. Piper. In fact, Martin didn’t seem to realize that Mrs. Piper was the medium through whom his words were being delivered that day. However, he added that what Robbins told him in those earlier days had helped him adjust to his new environment.

Some discussion then took place about Martin’s family. He said that his grandson Augustus, who was named after him and who died at age two, about six months after his death, was with him. Also, another grandson was born just a week prior to the sitting. Martin said he thought that the newborn was also named after him.  Robbins told him she didn’t know the name. When she later checked with the mother, she was told that the given name was William Everett, but they called him Augustus, as he seemed to replace the little Augustus whom they had lost.

“It is just the little details of the material life which I cannot grasp and [in] which I long to have you help me, but the actual life, and the actual life of the children, and all that, is well known to me, but the details of the material life I cannot see,” Martin communicated. Robbins again asked if Martin was speaking directly to her or if Hiram Hart was relaying his words to her. Martin replied that Hiram was doing it for him as he did not yet know how to communicate directly, without the help of others.

Robbins asked about his initial experiences following his physical death. “When I first passed out my mind was cloudy, rather confused,” Martin replied. “I felt as though I was going into space, did not know where, drifting as it were, for a few hours – that was all – and then I felt as though there was a strong hand grasped me and said to me: ‘It is all right, it is all over.’ And I said: ‘What is over?’ I could not seem to understand what it all meant, and after a little while, perhaps an hour, possibly an hour or two, I saw oh such a light! You cannot imagine it, cannot conceive what it is like. It is the most brilliant and yet the softest moonlight that you ever saw, and I thought, what a beautiful light it was! And all of a sudden I saw people moving about. I saw their heads, their figures. Then they seemed all clad in white, and I could not seem to make them out.  They were moving in the air.”

“…You could not conceive of anything more strange and beautiful,” Martin added, “in a sense – the confusion was not so beautiful, but because it was so I could not seem to retain my consciousness and could not seem to be released from the burden that hung over me, and all of a sudden, the moment I realized this hand was on my arm, then I began to see clearly; and from that moment I have been advancing and going on, and I have seen everybody I ever knew, and I have had the happiest time you could imagine. I have a mansion all my own and live in it just the same as you live in your place there, just the same. I have walls, I have pictures, I have music, I have books, I have poetry, I have everything…It is not a fac simile of that life, but that life is a miserable shadow of what this really is, and when I get strong, as I become stronger, and, that is, more accustomed to using this [light], I can tell you more clearly about it.”

Robbins asked him if he would eventually be able to communicate directly. “Yes, but not just now,” he answered. “I am trying to understand the laws and the workings of the [medium], and they put me up here so I could see. Just like a schoolboy being sent to the board to figure out a multiplication table. I am set up here, I am held here, and there are three [spirits] one behind me, and one on either side of me, holding me up here and telling me to talk, and I am talking to Hiram, and Hiram is repeating it after me, and I am trying to do a sum in geometry. That is just what I am trying to do. And since I am not fully equipped in that problem perhaps you can understand something of the difficulty.”

Robbins asked Martin if he remembered any of the public officials who used to work with him. “I think I should,” he replied. “Many names have gone from me, naturally, and new ones have come up to me. Names of places, names of people whom I knew in the mortal world, have gone from me to a certain extent, and as I go on they go still farther from me, but I shall never forget you. I remember when I was suffering so, I remember the little councils we had together, and they have lasted in my memory and will to the end of all life.”

Robbins then asked him if the spiritual sympathies are the only ones remembered. “Yes, well, those are the real vital ones, those are the real ones,” he answered. And when you understand better the conditions of life and the conditions of passing from that life to this, the changes in the life as it were, you will understand more clearly what that means. But until then it will be difficult for you to understand it fully.”

At a later sitting, Robbins told Martin that she had assembled many of his speeches and put them together in one complete copy.  She wondered if Martin knew anything about it. “Well, yes, I knew the outline, but the work itself, the actual work as it was going on, I could not fathom.” Martin explained. “But I knew the work concerned my mortal life and things that transpired in it. But the nature of it I could not define. We know what takes place in a general way, but if we were to define it, condense it and give utterance to it, it would be difficult. But such is the law of this life. Remember, now, if you could see me you would say I was a mere film, and you would say, ‘how transparent and peculiar and how light and how strange you look to me;’ and you would say, ‘where is your body? You look like a shadow, as it were,’ but still I could talk with you, we could converse with each other, and you would be surprised to see how real I am. The passing out is really beautiful, just after you once get beyond the border, it is perfectly beautiful. You know the meaning of the word heaven? Well, it is heaven indeed.  But the coming back is a little confusing at first and we have to learn.”

Martin said that he sometimes dictates thoughts to Robbins. “I want to say this, that when you are working I sometimes dictate thoughts to you, and it is surprising to me to see how clearly you register them, and I think sometimes you are surprised to think that you have done what you have, and if you just stop and give me a thought you would know why it was that you did those things, registered those thoughts. Sometimes there seems to be a barrier between you and your thoughts, they are not clear, and they seem to be a little obscure, and then they clear up, and you have always attributed that to the condition of your brain, and now if you just give me credit for a little bit of help you would do the right thing. Not that I am egotistic, but the point is that I am really with you. And I want to say one thing, that you have not grown old in spirit and not in the flesh. It looks so clear to me, so free, so bright and so young, and I think your body looks the same. I can’t see much change. Yes, I think you look about the same. I can’t see the body so clearly as I can the spirit.”

After discussing the building they once worked in, Martin asked about Orinton Hanscom, one of the higher officials in the police department, with whom he had had some differences when they were working together. Martin mentioned that he now had a higher opinion of him “because I see his principles.”

Martin further explained that it was pretty much beyond her comprehension, and said that if her eyes were opened to the spiritual life she could see him as he stood there talking with her, observing every gesture which is copied by Rector

Robbins asked if everyone leaves here just when right for him or her to go, whether he is young or old. “Yes, yes, yes,” he replied, “that is all in the hands of God, and although we never see God – I have never seen Him and never hope to – He rules us all and reigns over us all, and we are a part, a branch of Him…”

The above is significantly abridged from Chapter 8 of my book, “Resurrecting Leonora Piper.” Martin had much more tell Robbins.

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
His latest book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is published by White Crow Books.


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“Life After Death – The Communicator” by Paul Beard – If the telephone rings, naturally the caller is expected to identify himself. In post-mortem communication, necessitating something far more complex than a telephone, it is not enough to seek the speakers identity. One needs to estimate also as far as is possible his present status and stature. This involves a number of factors, overlapping and hard to keep separate, each bringing its own kind of difficulty. Four such factors can readily be named. Read here
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