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
Paul, I endorse all that you say. But bear in mind that souls on the lower astral levels–the great majority I assume–don’t relate to God in any advanced or mystical way. For them a religion of service is where they should start. I was thinking of them and probably should have pointed this out. Thanks for all the great quotes. Your writing, as always, is unfailingly excellent. For that too I thank you.
I agree with all of Paul’s assembled quotations with the exception of the reference to Islam in the Taylor quote. So I am happy to give the whole a pass as long as it doesn’t violate copyright laws in a manner that would endanger Jon Beecher’s publishing enterprise.
Paul,
As is often the case, your extensive comment opens up a whole new vista for discussion.
As Stafford points out, service to others and love of the neighbor reportedly play a big part in the process of moving through these spheres, and with no money changing hands, presumably, everyone’s a volunteer.
Reportedly, in the spheres or levels beyond this one, people often remain bound by their beliefs and thought patterns—especially their religious beliefs, and as a result, live in their own world’s in the company of the like-minded. OBE pioneer Robert Monroe referred to these levels as Belief System Territories.
Some communicators claim that the only way to transition these worlds—to salvation—is through the love of God. To love God, one has to accept that God is, whatever God is. Progress after death (to use AI language) appears to be “complex and multifaceted.” But if “salvation” is available to all, and salvation is the goal, it must be something everyone is capable of.
And we are told time and time again by discarnate communicators that this something is the love of God.
Dear Jon (and Stafford),
You and Stafford are certainly correct that service to others and love of the neighbor play a significant role in the purification and progression of the soul in the return to God.
Stafford, you are certainly correct that discarnate souls can only ‘start where they are’, and that start – to formulate it in the familiar Hindu terminology – is likely to be conserably (if not, indeed, exclusively) more centered in karma yoga (the way of works or service (seva)) rather than bhakti yoga (the way of love or devotion to God), with jnana yoga (the way of knowledge of God) as a yet more distant possibility.
Jon, as you bring up the matter of being bound by ‘beliefs and thought patterns’, what, as you note, Robert Monroe termed ‘Belief System Territories’, it is worth bringing in some additional discarnate commentary on this point.
First, let me more expansively quote from the snippet from the discarnate T.E. Lawrence via Jane Sherwood that I quoted in my prior comment:
“I want now to try to deal with a subject of some difficulty. It may seem to certain people that, having made sure of survival and a state of blessedness partly corresponding to the usual idea of heaven the need for a religious belief and practice would either cease or be very much modified. It is true that we survive but as human beings still, not as angels, and until we become angelic spirits the need for a religious background to life is for most people as strong as ever. The naïve expectation that after death one comes straight into the presence of one’s Maker leaves out of account the immaturity and helplessness of the human spirit, and if such a confrontation were possible one wonders whether any created thing would survive the encounter.
My own view of the situation is a limited one and I can only record what I know from my own experience since I came here, experiences which do not extend beyond the knowledge and outlook of the early planes. I have mentioned the variety of types found here; their bond of harmony is not in any uniformity of temperament or outlook but in their having reached a particular stage of development. In consequence of this they are at home in the special atmosphere of this plane. Granted this diversity of attitude one will expect that religious views will vary just as much as on earth; so they do, and there is provision here for every typical attitude. Even the agnostic can maintain his position because the Transcendent is still the Transcendent, and the Absolute is still the Great Unknowable.
Habitual religious attitudes are of course modified by our actual experiences. 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. Dogmatic teaching about heaven and hell is fortunately corrected by the known facts; freedom from the cramping doctrines of eternal punishment, original sin and predestination is a wonderful release for those who have lived out their lives under such man-made shadows. For the more philosophic, I suppose the great discovery is that the whole scheme of things is built on eternal justice and that any philosophy based on materialism is untenable. It has to be seen as childish and willful ignorance which cannot be maintained here.” [Jane Sherwood, “Post-Mortem Journal”, pp.120-1]
In a quite similar vein, the spirit Zabdiel who communicated with the Rev. G. Vale Owen, was to convey:
“Now, I must add to that, of my own knowledge, this, ensuing. You must know that, when people first come out of the earth life into the first stage of their life eternal on this side, they are as they left the earth. This much you know. They who have any serious religion at all continue their worship and manner of life and conduct according to that religion as to its main and leading principles. But as they progress there is a winnowing, and the chaff is blown away, one fistful after another, as they go on from sphere to sphere. Yet while some shoot ahead, the bulk linger and go more leisurely onward; and those who have left them behind come back to them, from time to time, to instruct them.
So they go on from age to age, and realm to realm, and sphere to sphere; and all the while they approach nearer to the Universal idea of the All-Father. Brethren they still are together; but they learn to welcome, and then to love, brethren of other modes of religious thought and belief; as these others do also. And so there is a constant and increasing intercourse between those of varying creed. But it is long before most will merge together in absolute unity. These old Persians [Zoroastrians] still retained many of their own peculiar ways of looking at things, and will do so long hence. Nor is it to be wished for otherwise. For every one has a character of his own, and so adds of his own to the commonwealth of all.” [Rev. G. Vale Owen, “Life Beyond the Veil”, Vol.2, pp.178-9]
To quote once more from the discarnate Anglican nun Frances Banks, as communicated to her friend Helen Greaves:
“There are no tenets, no creeds, no formulae, no hard and fast rules devised by any mind to restrict or confine progress here. All is individual and yet all is for the good of the whole, for the advancement of the group. It is a ‘forward and backward’ movement, if I may be allowed to use a contradictory expression. Each soul and each group moves onward towards greater expansion, towards the Divine conception of an illimitable Creation, individually and collectively. Yet at the same time each group and each soul directs ‘backward’ to the plane below its present achievement, the fruits of its knowledge.
These ideas, ideals, and conceptions fit into and make manifest the Divine Pattern or Plan as far as it can be accepted by the souls still in the illusion and glamour of matter. No acceptance of another soul’s belief colours progress. The soul must judge for itself – must make its own progress, must choose what to accept as truth for itself. No soul is coerced, forced or bound by creeds. If he believes that this is Heaven, or conversely that he is in Hell, then for him that is so at his present state of progress.
Helpers and Teachers and Great Souls there are in number to explain such errors of thinking, but there are no rules to follow and obey except the Divine Precept of Love, Light, Wisdom, and Understanding.” [Helen Greaves, “Testimony of Light”, p.108]
Finally, the discarnate Frederic Myers, communicating through the esteemed automatic writing medium Geraldine Cummins, takes a more critical view of the binding of beliefs and thought patterns that you raise in your comment:
“In the Fourth stage the soul becomes sensible of the group-soul, and through the awareness there arises a great change. He begins gropingly to realize the character of experience, the possibilities of mind; and in this Fourth stage if he is a Soul-man he is peculiarly liable to error. That is to say, once he becomes cognisant of the group-soul and of its many emotional and intellectual experiences he may, if a certain section of that group-soul be in a fixed mould, take upon himself its shape and remain within it for aeons of time. In this connection when I write ‘mould’ I desire to indicate a certain special outlook. For instance, a fanatical Buddhist or a very devout Christian may be held within the groove of his earthly beliefs. For those other souls in his community are, perhaps, also, held in the chains of those particular ideas. So there he may remain, making no progress, in a thought or in a memory world which consists of the Christian or of the Buddhist dream. He is held fast in the tentacles of an octopus. This octopus is the earthly Christian or Buddhist idea of an After-life, their view of the universe as created when on earth.
Now, you will recognize that such conditions tend to inhibit progress. For it means — to use another metaphor — dwelling in an intellectual chrysalis, living in the past earthly conceptions. And it is needful that the journeying soul should come to a state in which he can at will survey them, but not be held by them, or be imprisoned in their limitations.” [Geraldine Cummins, “The Road to Immortality”, p.65]
Myers continues his critique in the following passage from the same work. Here, I find his emphasis on the word ‘fanatical’ to indicate, not a state of piety or devotion per se (although he does speak above of ‘very devout’ in conjunction with ‘fanatical’), but rather a kind of imbalance or distortion of a given faith – what is often indicated by such labels as ‘fundamentalism’ or ‘extremism’. In other words, as I interpret what he is saying here, he is not speaking of ‘Christians’, ‘Buddhists’ or ‘Mahommedans’ (a term that rather dates him as a Victorian) per se, but rather fundamentalist, extremist or excessively dogmatic members of those ‘faith communities’, which is fair enough:
“Every Christian born upon the earth is inspired by some individualized spirit. When I write ‘individualized’ I desire to indicate that it is a thought of God; it is not, therefore, the Whole, it is not the Fount of all life.
So there are numerous fanatical Christians who, though they led lives of rectitude on earth, committed certain intellectual sins. These might be summed up in the phrase ‘rigidity of thought,’ ‘an outlook limited by fanaticism.’ Briefly, they are wedded to a limited concept. In the fourth stage of existence they must learn how to escape from such a prison if they are to make further progress. These remarks apply equally to Buddhists, Mahommedans, and all those other fanatical adherents of various religions or, as in the modern world, of scientific conceptions. For science tends more and more to become a religion or special outlook for many human beings.
Now, if the soul is to pass from the Fourth to the Fifth stage he must first shake off, cast from him any dogma, any special earthly outlook which has shaped his mentality, which confines it; so that his vision is limited, and his experiences are, therefore, also limited; consciousness of reality being thus withheld from him.” [Geraldine Cummins, “The Road to Immortality”, pp.65-6]
It is important to note the emphasis Myers brings to bear in the above passage on what is in fact the foremost binding belief and thought pattern in the present era, that of modernism and scientific materialism, which serves very much as a ‘relgious creed’ in its own right (and indeed the dominant religious creed) for contemporary man. Here, it may be worth quoting the following formulation by the eminent parapsychologist, the late Charles Tart, one deliberately meant to parody – indeed to invert – the Apostles’ Creed of Latin Christianity:
“I BELIEVE in the material universe as the only and ultimate reality, a universe controlled by fixed physical laws and blind chance.
I AFFIRM that the universe has no creator, no objective purpose, and no objective meaning or destiny.
I MAINTAIN that all ideas about God or gods, supernatural beings, prophets and saviors, or other nonphysical beings or forces are superstitions and delusions. Life and consciousness are totally identical to physical processes, and arose from chance interactions of blind physical forces. Like the rest of life, my life and consciousness have no objective purpose, meaning, or destiny.
I BELIEVE that all judgements, values, and moralities, whether my own or others’, are subjective, arising solely from biological determinants, personal history, and chance. Free will is an illusion. Therefore, the most rational values I can personally live by must be based on the knowledge that for me what pleases me is Good, what pains me is Bad. Those who please me or help me avoid pain are my friends; those who pain me or keep me from my pleasures are my enemies. Rationality requires that friends and enemies be used in ways that maximize my pleasure and minimize my pain.
I AFFIRM that churches have no real use other than social support; that there are no objective sins to commit or be forgiven for; that there is no retribution for sin or reward for virtue other than that which I can arrange, directly or through others. Virtue for me is getting what I want without being caught and punished by others.
I MAINTAIN that the death of the body is the death of the mind. There is no afterlife, and all hope for such is nonsense.” [Charles Tart, “The End of Materialism”, p.296]
One might also here nod, in the briefest of ways, to the extenstive discussion of ‘immanent closure’ to be found in Charles Taylor’s “A Secular Age”, a masterly analysis of the modern worldview.
With all this said, what is certainly true is that there is considerable critique – often of a very harsh, but just as often of a fairly nonspecific nature – of religious ‘creed, doctrine and dogma’ to be found in the communicated writings of such discarnate figures as the discarnate Anglo-Catholic priest (in life) Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson and the discarnate spirit guides Imperator and Silver Birch. Very often, what is being critiqued in such sources is not religion per se, but rather Christianity and certain Christian doctrines more specifically. This is in keeping with the overall thrust of the discarnate literature as a whole as we have it, which is largely comprised of dead Westerners speaking to living Westerners, a great proportion of which are dead Englishmen and women speaking to living Englishmen and women. There are undoubtedly discarnate civilizational spheres that are continuations of civilizational spheres in this world, but about these we hear hardly anything. Thus, there is considerable criticism of such doctrines as Trinitarianism, the divinity of Christ, the vicarious atonement of Christ, original sin and salvation by faith. But of course, such doctrines are particular to Christianity and are not found in other faiths. In fact, an ‘earthy faith’ such as Islam explicitly repudiates all five of these doctrines. Does that mean that ‘Islamic dogma’ would be acceptable to such discarnate critiques as those above but that ‘Christian dogma’ would not? It’s an intriguing question, but we simply do not know.
In any case, the general takeaway that I find in the the collected quotes above is that the continuation of earthly religious belief, practice and community is fairly common discarnatly and not in and of itself problematic – unless the soul or sect in question is particularly narrow and closed-minded – but rather something that quite naturally becomes elevated, corrected and broadened in the general course of the soul’s progression. Compared to modernism, atheistic humaism or scientific materialism (three ways of pointing to the same utterly conventional contemporary worldview), a ‘creedal dogma’ such as “credo in unum Deum” (I believe in one God) – to which equivalent formulations may be found in other faiths and with respect to which I know of no critique or rebuttal from discarnate sources – is likely to serve the discarnate soul very well indeed.
In closing (of this particular comment, anyway), I wanted to note that I rather like your formulation “To love God, one has to accept that God is, whatever God is.” For many newly discarnate moderns, steeped all their lives in ‘The Western Creed’ – itself another name for nihilism, a topic on which Michael Tymn has had much to say over the years, indeed just two posts back (cf. his post “If I Were the Devil”) – just accepting that God IS – the very kindergarten of ‘creedal faith’ – is likely to be a major initial undertaking and accomplishment. As for your nod to ‘the love of God’ upon which you end your quote, indeed!
My very best to you both,
Paul