Do spirits in the astral realms look forward to a transcendental climax, an ecstasy or state of exaltation, presently out of their reach?
Many souls speaking from the afterlife see with great clarity how much growth lies ahead of them. The Englishwoman Etta Thomas (-1920), communicating through the famous medium Mrs. Osborne Leonard to her brother and psychical researcher Drayton Thomas, sees herself as a work in progress. “. . . the four years since I passed over have gone very quickly and very happily. I grow more conscious of the wonderful things around me, things of which I was not wholly conscious at first. For instance, my range of sight and hearing, as well as understanding, is constantly increasing.
Other spirits look ahead to a future that almost takes away one’s breath. An unidentified woman who dedicated herself to the care of children in London’s slums but was no saint tells us why she must be satisfied with her present station in a “lower heaven”: “Oh! the vision of what lies ahead would o’erpower us. So we wait in preparation in ‘the vestibule of Heaven.’” Are there many levels? “Oh, yes! There are others, how many I have no idea. The question which sometimes occurs to me is: Shall we ever reach the last? Is there a final? Since God is infinite, is it possible for us to arrive at any limit? Think how far we were from holiness when we commenced our pilgrimage on earth, and what a trifling distance we have yet travelled, then you will understand that there must yet be innumerable such stages before we can hope to stand in the undimmed splendour of God’s presence.
Frances Banks, an Anglican nun who began communicating through the medium Helen Greaves a month after her death in 1965, sees herself as evolving toward “the eternal Center of Light and Creative Energy which men call God.” She feels she is already on the upward path, for she finds herself sloughing off her astral body in favor of a Body of Light. “I feel as though I am starting on a Path of Light which leads . . . into Realms of unimaginable beauty and wonder of which I have, as yet, but the faintest glimmer of comprehension.”
Drayton Thomas (1867-1953), the well-known theologian and psychic researcher mentioned above, received this message from his deceased father: “One cannot attain a stage at which one can say, ‘Th ere is nothing more to will, I must go on exactly as I am.’ Because when we master what we think is the absolute crowning point of knowledge in any subject, we immediately find that it has opened out a world of new knowledge again. You see it all around you. The possibilities over here are infinitely greater… there will always be this glorious sense of adventure in understanding.” However, “There are sluggards and dull people here, as with you.”
The California judge David Hatch (1846-1912), writing through the hand of the medium Elsa Barker in 1914, confirmed Thomas’ warning: “Most souls are nearly as blind as they were on earth.” But there are plenty of teachers “who stand ready to help anyone who wishes their help in making real and deep studies in the mysteries of life.”
Edward C. Randall (1860-1935), a Buffalo, New York attorney and psychic investigator, sat through over 700 seances with the direct voice medium Emily French and came to this conclusion: “I have come to know there is no death; there are no dead. That change is one step only in life’s progression, in the unceasing march of evolution, in which neither identity nor individuality is lost, and that life goes on and labor continues as the soul works toward perfection, for progress is an absolute law that nothing can resist.”
I endorse with deep conviction this view of our future state. But I always remember that a dedication to the affairs of earth must be our present focus. As that great Anglican hymn has it, “Come, Labor on. Who dares stand idle on the harvest plain while all around us waves the golden grain?”
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 novels include The Imprisoned Splendor, The Afterlife Therapist and Guardians of the Afterworld. His latest book, The Hell Dwellers: A Novel about the Dark Side of the Afterlife is published by White Crow Books. Stafford can be found at staffordbetty.com.
Dear Stafford,
Your reflections are particularly timely for me, as I have just completed an extensive comparative examination of more than 170 works, spanning more than a century and a half, drawn from a representative selection of the broader literature of ostensible communications from deceased individuals. What emerged from examining these accounts together was not simply the recurring affirmation that spiritual development continues beyond death, but a remarkably coherent larger picture of the nature, means, and ultimate significance of that development. It is a picture worth considering as a whole, for its implications extend considerably beyond the prospect of advancement through successively higher spiritual realms.
One of the strongest recurring themes is that death does not fundamentally remake the individual. We apparently survive substantially as the persons we have become, retaining our recognizable identity, character, affections, understanding, and limitations. The circumstances of existence may change dramatically, and relief from physical constraints may open possibilities previously unavailable, but death does not of itself confer wisdom, dissolve attachments, or complete the unfinished work of spiritual formation. What we have made of ourselves during earthly life consequently matters a great deal. Our habits of thought and conduct, our loves and aversions, the quality of our motives, and the degree of inward understanding we have cultivated all accompany us into the new condition.
Indeed, the testimony repeatedly suggests that our inward condition has a far more immediate relationship to our experienced surroundings than we ordinarily recognize in earthly life. Thought, desire, and imagination are frequently described as shaping the environments individuals encounter, while affinities of character and disposition draw them into corresponding relationships and conditions. The language of spiritual vibration or resonance often expresses this same correspondence between what a person has become and the world to which that person is receptive. Thus, the circumstances of postmortem existence are not represented simply as rewards or punishments externally assigned, but as intimately related to the individual’s own formation. Yet these conditions are not necessarily permanent. Understanding can grow, attachments can weaken, and assistance is repeatedly described as available to those prepared to receive it.
A particularly significant distinction emerges here between knowledge and spiritual development. Prior understanding of survival and postmortem conditions may help individuals recognize their circumstances, overcome confusion, and avail themselves of opportunities for further progress. Yet intellectual knowledge, however extensive, is no substitute for the transformation of character. Indeed, entrenched expectations and convictions may themselves become obstacles to understanding. Conversely, a person whose earthly life has been characterized by kindness, integrity, and genuine concern for others may be well prepared for further development without having possessed an accurate intellectual understanding of the afterlife. What matters most is not simply what we know, but what we have become, and how receptive we remain to further truth.
The opportunities for development beyond death are represented as extraordinarily varied. Learning, reflection, creative endeavor, and the acquisition of new capacities all have their place, but service to others emerges with particular prominence. Those who have received assistance in their own adjustment and development may themselves become helpers, participating in a continuing circulation of care, instruction, and mutual growth. Relationships are therefore not merely pleasant accompaniments to spiritual progress; they are among its principal means. Prayer, meditation, contemplation, and other forms of inward spiritual practice likewise retain their significance, cultivating receptivity to dimensions of consciousness and spiritual reality not ordinarily accessible. These different avenues are generally complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Useful activity without inward development can become another form of distraction, while contemplation divorced from love and service risks remaining incomplete.
Nor is progress portrayed as an automatic process imposed upon everyone. Individual freedom remains consequential. People may become absorbed in familiar pleasures, cling to limiting attachments, resist assistance, or simply feel no immediate desire to advance. Such conditions may persist for extended periods, and some accounts describe serious regression or profound spiritual stagnation. Nevertheless, the prevailing emphasis is upon the continuing availability of help, the possibility of renewed aspiration, and the capacity to begin again. The literature more frequently affirms eventual recovery than irrevocable spiritual failure, although its testimony does not conclusively establish the ultimate limits of refusal. What emerges most clearly is a picture of development in which personal willingness and receptivity matter, even as assistance, encouragement, and opportunities for transformation remain available.
Another unresolved question concerns the role of reincarnation in this continuing process of spiritual development. Although extensive spiritual development in discarnate conditions is widely affirmed, the necessity, frequency, and purpose of further earthly embodiments remain subjects of genuine dispute. Some communicators regard reincarnation as an occasional or conditional requirement, others as a usual or necessary part of spiritual evolution, and still others question or reject it. These disagreements are consequential, but they do not displace the extensive convergence concerning the possibility and character of spiritual development beyond death.
Whatever the circumstances in which development takes place, however, the more fundamental question is what spiritual progress actually consists of. It would be easy to imagine an indefinite succession of more beautiful environments, greater powers, and increasingly exalted experiences. Such descriptions certainly abound. Yet the deeper implication of the testimony is that progress is not principally a matter of acquiring more, or even knowing more. It is a transformation of the person who experiences and knows. Greater compassion, freedom from possessiveness, clarity of understanding, responsibility, and capacity for love are accompanied by an enlargement of consciousness itself. Possibilities formerly beyond our comprehension gradually become intelligible and accessible. What appears as advancement into a higher realm may therefore be understood, at least in part, as the outward expression of an inward development that has made a wider order of reality available to us.
This transformation also has an intrinsically relational dimension. Spiritual maturity is repeatedly associated with a movement beyond the boundaries of isolated selfhood into increasingly intimate communion with others. The testimony describes forms of shared understanding, sympathetic participation, and mutual awareness that considerably exceed those ordinarily accessible through earthly relationships. Some accounts develop this further into the conception of a group soul or larger spiritual unity within which individual beings participate in one another’s experience and understanding. These more elaborate formulations are not universally represented, but the broader movement beyond self-enclosure is widely affirmed. Significantly, such enlargement need not imply the disappearance of individuality. In many accounts, participation in a more comprehensive life deepens and enriches the individual rather than extinguishing personal identity.
And here the inquiry begins to disclose something more profound. The familiar human personality may not exhaust what we most deeply are. Across the literature, though in differing formulations, we encounter the suggestion of a more comprehensive spiritual identity: an enduring Spirit underlying the changing personality, a higher or greater Self of which earthly consciousness is a partial expression, or an indwelling Divine presence that constitutes the deepest ground of our being. These conceptions are not identical, and their differences should not be overlooked. Nevertheless, they converge upon a profound possibility: that spiritual development involves not only the progressive improvement of the familiar personality, but also the discovery of a deeper nature that was present all along.
This introduces a fundamental complementarity into the understanding of spiritual progress. On the one hand, there is the gradual transformation of character, consciousness, and spiritual capacity through experience, discipline, love, and service. On the other, there is the possibility of direct recognition or realization of a spiritual Reality that is not simply a remote destination, but is already present within and underlying individual existence. The former can prepare the individual for the latter, while moments of illumination or direct spiritual recognition may themselves transform the person and initiate further development. These movements need not occur in a fixed sequence, nor does an initial realization necessarily represent the culmination of the process. Becoming and awakening, gradual formation and direct recognition, appear as complementary dimensions of a larger spiritual undertaking.
These complementary dimensions of spiritual development acquire their larger significance within the prevailing Godward orientation of the discarnate accounts. As consciousness and character develop, the individual is increasingly represented as approaching a fuller participation in Divine life, a more intimate communion with its source, or a direct realization of the spiritual Reality underlying existence. Yet this movement does not necessarily lead away from individual activity, relationships, or creative participation. On the contrary, further realization is frequently associated with enlarged capacities for service and contribution to a greater Divine purpose. The highest fulfillment envisaged is not merely a state of personal bliss, but an increasingly complete participation in a life whose possibilities transcend our present understanding.
At this ultimate horizon, however, important questions remain unsettled. Some accounts anticipate a consummating union with the Divine, while others envisage an indefinitely continuing enlargement of consciousness and participation, with each newly attained realization opening further possibilities. These perspectives are not necessarily incompatible, since union with the Divine need not imply the cessation of creative activity or further discovery. Nevertheless, they are not always presented in the same terms, and we cannot assume that all descriptions ultimately refer to an identical condition. Similarly, the most widely represented explicit view preserves individuality even in Divine union, sometimes regarding its fullest realization as an enrichment rather than a dissolution of personal identity. Other accounts anticipate a transcendence of separate individuality, or a transformation into a mode of consciousness not adequately described by our present categories. Taken together, these accounts do not definitively resolve these differences.
The uncertainty surrounding such ultimate questions is itself instructive. Many communicators acknowledge that their knowledge is bounded by their own experience, the conditions accessible to them, and what they have learned from others. A person who has traversed several stages of spiritual development may speak with considerable apparent authority concerning those stages without thereby possessing exhaustive knowledge of the entire process or its final destination. The strongest convergence therefore concerns the continuity of personal existence, the incompleteness of spiritual formation at death, the opportunities for further development, and the progressive enlargement of understanding, love, and spiritual capacity. Claims concerning the final destiny of all souls, or the ultimate nature of Divine realization, necessarily rest upon less secure foundations. Yet the larger pattern discernible within these limits points toward an understanding of human spiritual nature and fulfillment that extends well beyond the particular circumstances of life after death.
That larger understanding exhibits a striking correspondence with the essential propositions of what is commonly called the Perennial Philosophy. Across diverse religious, philosophical, mystical, and contemplative traditions, one repeatedly encounters the understanding that existence is grounded in an ultimate Divine Reality; that human beings possess a deeper spiritual nature than their familiar personal consciousness; that this Reality can, at least in some measure, be directly known or realized; that such knowing requires or accompanies a transformation of the individual; and that the highest fulfillment of human existence lies in realization of, or participation in, that Divine Reality. The discarnate testimony does not uniformly affirm every aspect of this understanding, nor does it supply a single agreed metaphysical system. Yet its broad correspondence with these essential propositions is remarkable.
Moreover, it appears to contribute something distinctive. The great contemplative and philosophical traditions have extensively explored the spiritual nature of the human being and the possibility of Divine realization, but often leave comparatively little developed understanding of the intermediate conditions through which individual spiritual growth may continue beyond bodily death. The discarnate literature potentially supplies a provisional cosmology of precisely this continuing development: the processes of adjustment, purification, learning, service, changing relationships, expanding consciousness, and progressive realization that may occupy the immense territory between ordinary earthly experience and the highest possibilities of spiritual existence. Its distinctive value lies in the concreteness and immediacy of ostensible personal testimony concerning these conditions.
There is also a potentially important evidential implication. Insofar as these communications represent genuine experience transmitted through sufficiently independent sources, their convergence with central insights of the Perennial Philosophy offers a measure of corroboration from a different body of testimony. Such corroboration must remain qualified by the problems of source dependence, cultural inheritance, mediumistic influence, and the limited perspectives of individual communicators. It cannot simply be assumed that repeated testimony establishes independent confirmation. Nevertheless, the possibility that these accounts provide both a more detailed understanding of postmortem spiritual development and additional support for a wider perennial understanding deserves serious consideration.
What emerges, finally, is a vision of human spiritual existence far richer than the simple prospect of survival followed by an indefinite ascent through more exalted surroundings. We appear, if these accounts substantially reflect genuine experience, to be engaged in an ongoing process of formation and discovery in which what we become, what we learn to love, and what we progressively recognize ourselves most deeply to be are intimately related. The development of the individual and the realization of the Divine are not necessarily separate enterprises, but interconnected dimensions of a single spiritual adventure whose ultimate possibilities may exceed anything presently within our comprehension.
And this brings us back to the significance of earthly life. The prospect of continuing development beyond death should neither diminish the importance of our present existence nor encourage us to postpone the work of spiritual formation. The understanding, character, love, and inward capacities cultivated here are precisely what we appear to carry forward, and the opportunities and responsibilities of earthly life have their own enduring significance. Equally, death need not be regarded as the termination of an unfinished Quest or the point at which our possibilities of growth are finally exhausted.
Death neither completes nor renders futile the spiritual formation undertaken during earthly life. Rather, it appears to open a wider field of existence in which that formation may continue, deepen, and increasingly disclose the spiritual Reality underlying individual existence itself.
In that light, your concluding appeal to labor while we are here seems not merely an appropriate moral exhortation, but a natural consequence of the entire picture. The work before us is neither isolated within the brief compass of earthly life nor deferred to some more favorable existence beyond it. It is one continuous undertaking, and we are already engaged in it.
Best,
Paul
Superb. I entirely and enthusiastically agree with every insight expressed here. I was especially moved by the challenge to deepen our spiritual experience while still embodied. In my next video prepared for TikTok and YouTube, I’d like to quote extensively from these insights while giving credit to you as the author. Who else expresses them so well? Do I have your permission, Paul? If so, can you she a little light on your background? I think all of us who follow the blogs that Michael and I post must be eager to know a smidge more about you. Can you put it in fifty words or less as a start?
Sounds good to me. Learning and growth have always been core values of mine, so I hope and trust that will continue in the “next” life. As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve also embraced the importance of peace, rest, and relaxation. I hope and trust there is plenty of room in the afterlife for that, too. I don’t want to continually be learning and growing. I’ve done plenty of that here already. When I get to the afterlife, first thing I’ll probably do is take a nap.
Dear Stafford,
If you wish to learn more, I’ll be giving a two-hour talk on the themes discussed in my above comment this coming Sunday , October 25th, 10:00am (US Eastern) / 7:00am (US Pacific) at the following Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84638941708?pwd=PpNu9NZsySN53bZbW2T3oAU6KYup98.1
Apologies for the early hour Bakersfield, CA time.
I’ll be with you, the early hour notwithstanding.
Dear Stafford,
The Zoom link has had to be changed due to the hacking of an earlier meeting. I will email you the new Zoom link directly tomorrow (Saturday). The subject line will be: The Long Path Beyond Death Zoom Link. Sorry for the hiccup. The time remains the same. I’ll pass your name to the organizers to get you past the virtual waiting room.
Paul – Sorry that the Zoom link went private. Any chance that it was recorded?
Paul’s text speaks volumes of books read and digested. His summary of spiritual knowledge learned speaks for itself, enriched with his deep thoughts and eloquently put. Seldom I have come across in one text what hundreds tried to say. I would encourage Paul to transform these deep thoughts into a book, we should all need to contemplate.
Dear Theo,
Thank you for your very kind comments. If you and Stafford would humor a little blog cross-seeding, you will likely also find of interest my recent comment posted to Michael Tymn’s current blog post “Surviving Death Has Different Meanings”.
All best regards,
Paul
Stafford, I confess to having some concerns about being active on the Other Side, but I admit to applying terrestrial standards to it all and I continually remind myself that so much of it is beyond my present comprehension.
Mike, do you mean that, since we might not be active, you think we might be passive on the Other Side? Can you clarify?
Stafford, I tend to think that activities I enjoy here will not be available to me on the Other Side, so I do wonder how I will remain active eternally. I guess that passivity is my concern. However, so many of the communicators say how active and happy they are, so I accept that their activity and happiness is beyond my understanding. I think the most serene I have ever been is in the dentist’s chair under the influence of nitrous oxide. I recall hoping that the dental surgery never ended. There’s something of a paradox there. However, I’m not sure that eternal serenity is something to look forward to.
Michael – Should you find the prospect of eternal serenity too daunting, I know of a little blue planet where you can have an action-packed adventure vacation. 😎
I think eternal serenity would become unbearably boring.