In case you prefer to listen.
Many Christians claim that when they die God takes them into his presence, where they bask for all eternity in blissful repose and nothing more is expected of them.
The spirits that I have devoted much of my career to their study tell a very different story. There are moments of repose, yes, but activity is the norm. The “Communion of Saints” that forms part of the Christian creed promises loving companionship with family, friends, and innumerable others. But more is expected of those who desire to rise to a fuller, more divine life and higher joy—a life undreamed of in most of earth’s theologies. That life is best suggested by the word service. Service: the wise see its beauty and grandeur, even its necessity.
Heaven isn’t unbroken bliss. Heaven is the world where spirits who practice the religion of service live. Revealing its nature and its attraction—not only to spirits but to many of you—is the purpose of this blog.
First let’s see what heaven is not. Imperator, one of the many spirits I will cite here, tells Christians their afterlife is “no sensuous ease in a heaven of eternal rest; no fabled psalm-singing around the great white throne, whereon sits the God; no listless, dreamy idleness, cheaply gained by cries for pity, or by fancied faith; none of these . . .”
Another spirit was greatly surprised when he learned this. He tells us that (quote) “when a year or so had passed of your time, we began to look together at the question of what I was to do. You can see my difficulty: I was not prepared for work or effort, and had incorrectly thought that eternity was a place of endless rest, but this is certainly not the case; there is work to be done in our life which is as important as what is done in yours, and we are given a choice as far as possible.”
Let us look more deeply into this. Charles Drayton Thomas puts it concisely: “The ruling principle is service to others, and sharing happiness.” AD Mattson tells us that “God still gives us the opportunity and responsibility in the spiritual world to serve.” Frances Banks tells us that she desires to advance “to a sphere for which my whole soul yearns” and that the key to progress is “continued service.” Serving, doing something useful, benefiting others—heaven vibrates to this kind of music.
But service, after all, can be a joyless grind. The kind of service described in practically all spirit sources, however, is rewarding, even when it isn’t well received, even when its rejection brings pain to the one serving. That’s because the service is lit up by love. And love always carries joy in its wake.
Imperator says, “We have our work still to do; and in doing it we find our delight.”
“Everywhere we go,” says W. T. Stead, “we are conscious of the general love for one another. It is much more evident than on earth, and that great affection is the direct cause of the general brightness and radiance of this world.” But this love doesn’t just shine outward to other residents of heaven; it shines downward. Silver Birch tells us, “Remember, I am not only a teacher, seeking to teach eternal truths and reveal the powers of the spirit: I am also the friend of you, for I love you dearly and strive always to help you with all the strength and power that I possess.” There it is, service lit up by love, but this time love for us.
Nowhere is the primacy of love brought out more forcefully than in the following instruction given by Aphraar, an advanced spirit: “Love! This life in all its phases, its multiform developments, its heights and depths, is but a grand commentary on that one word. Love is the only study we pursue—the food we eat, the life we live.”
But love doesn’t come easily to heaven’s residents. It must be worked at, mastered. Advancement depends on such mastery. And mastery requires dedicated service.
On of the many ways that spirts grow in the afterlife is by taking on the responsibility of a spirit guide. Each of us, we are told, has one or more. Working, lovingly, on our behalf can be rewarding or frustrating, depending on how we respond.
We’ll look at spirit guides in my next blog. I’m Staford Betty, afterlife researcher, retired professor of religious studies, and author of many books on the afterlife. Hope to see you next time. Good evening.
Stafford Betty, Professor of Religious Studies, CSUB, (ret) is the author of When Did You Ever Become Less by Dying? and Heaven and Hell Unveiled. His latest novel, Guardians of the Afterworld is published by White Crow Books.
Stafford can be found at staffordbetty.com.
Stafford, as I have often opined, organized religions make the mistake of pushing worship of God with little attention to the afterlife (the deductive approach), when it should be taking the inductive approach of explaining the afterlife, as you have in this blog/video and then letting God unfold from that. I shudder every time I hear someone say, “May he/she rest in peace.” Thank you for this.
Dear Stafford,
On the one hand, what you are conveying here is important to mention and certainly representative of broad aspects of the discarnate literature. On the other hand, it is extremely strange to frame “The Religion of Heaven”, as per your title, in the manner in which you have, in which you almost exclusively foreground service to one’s fellows and love for one’s fellows, going so far as to speak of “the religion of service” and of love that shines “outward to other residents of heaven” as well as “shines downward”. But neither service to one’s fellows or love for one’s fellows, either on earth or in heaven and as fine as both are, form a sufficient or suitable foundation for religion at all, whether of this world or the next.
Allow me to remind you of that which you already know, namely that “religion” – derived from the the Latin ‘ligare’ (to bind, connect), implies the reconnection between man, on the one hand, and the sacred, the Divine, or God on the other, the Latin ‘religio’ carrying such meanings, according to the philologist Max Müller, of “reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, piety.” In other words, ‘religion’ has foremost to do with the ‘binding’, the ‘connecting’, or the ‘yoking’ (as with the Sanskrit ‘yoga’, from the word ‘yuj’ meaning ‘to yoke’ or ‘to join’) of man back to the order of the Sacred and to the Divine, however conceived. To put it in terms of the second major concern you discuss, that of love, it is as if you have quoted the second of Christ’s two great commandments [cf. Matt. 22:37-40 (KJV)] – “love thy neighbour as thyself” – while neglecting to quote the first commandment (first both in the text and as well as in critical significance) – “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind”.
All this is to say that both service to one’s fellows and love for one’s fellows are at once fine and necessary, but they are mediate engagements, not foundational ones. What is the proper foundational concern of the individual, whether incarnately or discarnately? The return to God. Both love and service to one’s fellows are subordinated to this larger, primary concern. How is this return to be effectuated, to be accomplished? By the gradual purification and perfection of one’s soul, both incarnately and discarnately. You quote from the discarnate Frances Banks – a source I esteem as much as you do – and that “she desires to advance ‘to a sphere for which my whole soul yearns’ and that the key to progress is ‘continued service.’”
Allow me to quote somewhat more fully from that passage, following her temporary ascent to a higher plane or level of vision and experience, a state that she cannot hold and from which she falls back to her prior state of being:
“The vision may have been right, but the approach to it savored of egoism; the egoism of the limited human mind which has to be cleansed and stripped before the higher pattern of the spirit can manifest. I see now that the thought-pattern on earth is not geared sufficiently high above the material and the personal to hold such a possibility. I have had to learn too, that I am far from ready to participate as I had hoped. …One can only realize one’s errors and go forward into greater understanding. But now I am content. The vision is still with me, complete and satisfying; the hope of further teaching and progress. I must make myself ready by continued service, as well as by facing myself and learning of my defects, ready for that transition to a sphere for which my whole soul yearns.” [Helen Greaves, “Testimony of Light”, p.75]
And in another passage: “But I am trying to shed some of the clutter of the personality. We all have to do that. And there are three ways in which to carry it out here. By self-judgment, and true assessment of experiences; by service to one’s fellows; and by aspiration. Not so different, you will say, from the earth life after all!” [Helen Greaves, “Testimony of Light”, p.60] But additionally, and perhaps even more critically than these ‘three ways’ is a fourth she addresses: “More and more important therefore and invaluable, is the inner life of meditation and contemplation and at-one-ment with Divine Beauty and Truth.” [Helen Greaves, “Testimony of Light”, p.59] As these various passages make clear, what is of critical concern is – as she terms it – the cleaning and stripping of egoism, the shedding of the clutter of personality. All this so that she may rise higher. Toward what? Towards a fuller life in and of the Divine.
The discarnate T.E. Lawrence similarly speaks of the need for the ‘cleansing’ of the soul as a necessary preliminary to progression:
“If you can think of your most inspired moments – all too brief and infrequent in earthly experience – and imagine a life where this is the normal standard of living experience you will have a faint idea of what the future holds for you. It is obvious that the capacity to know, feel and understand in this scale of intensity has to be attained by degrees and that if it came before the cleansing process had at least been begun it would be too keen an agony to bear. Even then our scale of intensity is weak compared to that of the higher planes.” [Jane Sherwood, “Post-Mortem Journal”, p.127]
Similarly, “The process of purgation through which we pass leaves the soul more free from its strait jacket and more impelled to follow a path which will lead finally to union with the Godhead.” [Jane Sherwood, “Post-Mortem Journal”, p.121]
This return to God, this progression and elevation to what is at once one’s Source, Ground and End, may also be engaged through other modalities of soul purification and perfection than service and love, although all such modalities are fairly closely intertwined. Thus the discarnate W.T. Stead, whom you also quote from, addresses the question of “What Qualities in the Earth-Life Lead to Most Rapid Progression on Our Side?”:
“That is a most important question, and in order to make my reply to that clear to you, I must give you a diagram. This is a general statement, and I must define the word spirituality. To be spiritual you must have trodden down the coarser and heavier parts of your nature to such an extent that you have practically forgotten them. You may do this through a love of your fellows: through religious ecstasy: through a desire to be perfect in any form of art: through courage: through any kind of work which you can do with all your might, and for the glory of God: through honesty in industry: through pity: and through the bearing of pain for yourself or others without complaint. All these things build a house worth living in on the other side. But let me extend a little. A sense of value is necessary for the accomplishment of anything that is worthwhile. He who accepts the values that are merely conventional, and is too indolent to search his own soul and find the right values, cannot go far on the spiritual road.” [Estelle Stead, “Life Eternal”, p.54]
To return to Frances Banks, who speaks more fully of this path of progression of fullness into the life of God:
“This is the next step in progression, the stepping out of illusion into the consciousness of the functioning of the Higher Self, an emergence into a wider consciousness and an awareness of Spiritual Beings and of Forces from the All-Creative Mind of God. This is a gradual process and may take years (in earth consciousness of time) to fulfill. I feel as though I am starting on a Path of Light which leads upward and onward into Realms of unimaginable beauty and wonder and of which I have, as yet, but the faintest glimmer of comprehension.” [Helen Greaves, “Testimony of Light”, p.129]
Similarly, in her final conveyed words: “May it be true then, of those who read these words on earth. May the Light of Awareness of Divine Unity shine through the illusive and temporal veils of assumed personalities, so that, in preparation for this further experience, they may indeed be known by their Light. God Bless You all.” [Helen Greaves, “Testimony of Light”, final para.]
In very similar terms, the discarnate Julia Ames communicated to the then living W.T. Stead:
“There are degrees of this Light [of God]. Between the grey confines of the Borderland, between Heaven and Hell and the radiant glories of the spheres where souls perfected in the Love of God and man are to be found, there is an infinity of space. And we grow and evolve, more and more, in the realizing sense of the glory that suffuses the world and all the universe of worlds.” [W.T. Stead, “After Death, or Letters from Julia” (Enlarged Ed.), p.168]
While the discarnate Frederic Myers was to convey back from his own advanced discarnate state:
“The state of the departed souls is one of endless evolution in wisdom and love. Their loves of earth persist, and most of all those highest loves which seek their outlet in adoration and worship.” [Raynor Johnson, “The Decisive Testimony”, final para.]
Myers was to further convey the promise that this journey of return, and its eventual completion, was established – no matter how long the road ahead – for the vast majority of souls:
“I can only assure you that all save a few souls are eventually united with God. There is neither speech nor language which can describe that unity when the dross has been cast away – that miracle of unity with God, who has many names but is the Divine Spirit.” [Geraldine Cummins, “Travellers in Eternity”, p.198]
Let me conclude with a portion of a remarkable script from the unnamed ‘Master’ – whom I personally recognize as a discarnate sage – conveyed to George Wright:
“The various stages and degrees of Self-realization marking the progress of the Underlying Reality toward the goal of ultimate fulfillment are represented by different planes of development, from the crudest, densest physical expression through graduated and overlapping levels of consciousness to the highest spiritual individualizations. On these higher levels consciousness has so expanded and merged as a result of accumulated experience that it becomes less individualized or differentiated and approaches unification with the Universal Self, the Cosmic Consciousness, or the Underlying Reality.” [Theon Wright, “The Open Door: A Case History of Automatic Writing”, 120]
May God bless you and light your path,
Paul