Near-Death Experiences and The Place We Call Home

I have been reading Robert Grant's informative book, The Place We Call Home and have copied out the following excerpts that give guidance in how to live one's life in order to find peace and contentment, here and now. Further helpful guidance is given by people who have had near-death experiences, telling us what to expect when we pass from this realm into the next. Dr. Raymond Moody, the renowned author of Life After Life has recently moved to Santa Cruz and will be teaching a course about life after so-called "death" at UCSC.  He will also be giving talks/symposiums at a church on High Street several times a year, with guest speakers who have had near-death experiences. In January, Dr. Eben Alexander will be speaking with him. Dr. Alexander, a neurosurgeon, had an extraordinary near-death experience of his own that changed his entire life, giving it new meaning that could not be ignored.  He wrote a book about his experience called, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife. 

As Robert Grant says in his book, "the illuminating stories of near-death survivors and the reassuring accounts of loved ones who have visited the living have helped move us a step closer to the light of understanding and away from the shadows of fear about death and dying."   I hope you will find the short excerpts below from Grant's book to be interesting and informative.

EXCERPTS from The Place We Call Home -- Exploring the Soul's Existence after Death by Robert J. Grant:

One man who has helped pave the way for millions to learn there is no death, only a change of worlds, is Edgar Cayce (pronounced "Casey").  Through his psychic gift that opened a door between the material and spiritual worlds, Cayce, who died in 1945, became the most documented psychic in the world. He was telepathic, clairvoyant, clairaudient, had the ability to be a medium, and was precognitive in the waking as well as the trance state.  To Cayce, there was no difference between the material and spiritual worlds; all of his life he was able to see through the veil and communicate with those who have passed beyond the earthly world.

To many people who sought out Cayce, trying to understand the continuity of the soul's existence, he gave this essential answer: You are not a physical being with a spiritual being inside.  You are a spiritual being who--for a short time--resides in a body.  You do not "have" a soul. You are a soul. You are NOT the body.

The Cayce readings frequently stated that in the spiritual dimensions, time does not exist; it is only valid in third-dimensional reality--the material realm.  All is truly One Essence. Time is a dimension that the soul passes through in order to awaken to know the true relationship it has with the Creator.  The soul enters at birth into a limited space-time continuum to learn lessons in the finite, material world.  The most important lessons--our ability to love, to forgive, to grow in patience and grace--all acted out in the framework of daily life, working and personal relationships,etc.--go with the soul after physical death.  These lessons are not physical. They are spiritual lessons enacted in the physical world.

In this light, we can see how our ability to love or not to love creates the very fabric of our after-death environment.  In short, we create heaven or hell for ourselves, based upon our application of spiritual laws during earthly life.  If the earthly life has been lived as a quest solely for power, then regardless of other soul growth and development, universal law requires that after death, the soul will be held in an earthbound state of consciousness focused upon the earth but not in it, surrounded by the thoughts, desires and feelings for power that the soul loved in the earth.  This is a transitional experience, to be sure --but time there is not the same as here in the three-dimensional world.

By the same token, if we choose to hold in mind a spiritual ideal that helps us grow in awareness, one that helps us forgive others and love more deeply at the end of the physical life, the great light of unconditional love will guide us to the realms of peace, serenity and higher heavenly states of consciousness.  Where we go after death is dependent upon the choices we make during our physical life.

One of the most reassuring truths found in Cayce's readings is the statement that we do not pass through the death transition alone.  We don't leave this world alone any more that we enter it alone, and leaving this world, according to the readings, is much easier than entering it.  What we term "death" is actually a return to a broader, more expansive consciousness where the soul is free from the limitations of physical form.  Perhaps this is the reason the thousands of people who have had near-death experiences report feeling more alive and more awake than during their physical lives.  The unseen realm is the true home of the soul; the earth is a necessary school for learning and growth.  It is a brief interim in the scheme of eternity--an important interim, nonetheless--but physical death is, in many ways, a return "home" with new lessons learned.  In the return to the realm, not of darkness and death, but of true light and living, we gather together with loved ones and those souls of like mind, just as we gather with friends and family during our physical lives.

When the American mass media began reporting accounts of near-death experiences, communications between the living and the dead, and extrasensory perception, the Western world made its first tentative steps toward a more enlightened world view about the nature of the soul and spirit.  The magazine articles, television documentaries and numerous books written on these subjects have helped usher humanity into an era of spiritual renaissance.  The illuminating stories of near-death survivors and the reassuring accounts of loved ones who have visited the living have helped move us a step closer to the light of understanding and away from the shadows of fear about death and dying.

For eons we have been taught to fear.  Sects of fundamentalist Christian religions have taught people to fear God. Political systems use fear to control the masses. We have been taught to be afraid of the life after death because many of us believed we were going straight to hell in a handbasket, without any hope of redemption.  In light of the thousands of accounts of near-death experiences documented by Dr. Raymond Moody, these teachings appear to be nothing more than misconceptions.  The majority of NDE survivors Dr. Moody interviewed knew without any doubt that they were loved without condition by a force greater than themselves--God.  They knew they were an integral part of this universal source of love.  This powerful sense of love, they said, was not dependent upon anything they did or said--it simply was a fact of consciousness.  The most important lesson they learned from dying was that their purpose in life was to go about the business of loving others unconditionally just as they themselves ere loved.  Dr. Moody said if every human being on earth acted on that simple principle of unconditional love, then we could truly have a heaven on earth.

This message of love is perhaps the most important facet of knowledge that has come out of NDE research.  The extent of our spiritual growth, development and evolution--in this world as well as in the next--is measured and is dependent upon our willingness to manifest unconditional love towards our fellow human beings.

The time-honored saying that when someone has died they have "passed on to their reward" is very much a valid truth.  Each person inherits or is "rewarded" with the sum total of what they have built during their physical lives.  According to Edgar Cayce, we are constructing the state of consciousness we will move into after death by our thoughts, desires, intentions and deeds in the material world.  If we consciously seek to act from an intention of love and to manifest compassion, love, forgiveness, patience, etc., these spiritual virtues literally create for us the "reward" of a light-filled existence after death.  It isn't on the merit of accomplishment that we move to the higher realms after death; it is from loving and acting from the heart, from a place of spiritual understanding in all facets of our lives.  What we have cherished in our hearts and minds will have a great deal to do with where we find ourselves after death.  Our intentions are most important.  If we have acted out of love, even if our actions have been perceived or judged negatively by others, it is our motives, our intentions that matter.  They will be considered most essential in our life review after passing into the next realm.

The souls that find themselves in the shadowlands or the earthbound realms after death are not being punished or condemned by any force or power except of their own making.  The inner life creates the outer world of our existence after death.  If we have spent a lifetime holding grudges, harboring resentments, being prejudicial or racist in our thinking, acting out of jealousy or hate or malice, those thoughts collectively form the building blocks that create a home in the shadowlands, the hellish realms.  In accordance with universal law, that which we think, we become; that which we build, we move into. 

How can we best prepare and build for ourselves a light-filled existence after we leave this world?  How can we build a consciousness that far transcends the trappings of the earthbound realms after death?  If we want to find our way to the Light after death, we need to be able to find and recognize the Light here, during our time on earth.  We can begin to expand our beliefs and increase our knowledge and understanding about the eternal nature of life through study and through reading.  We can also learn through our dreams, which are a way of viewing the thought forms that we have created.  As we begin to grow in spiritual awareness, applying principles that magnify the Spirit in our daily lives, we move to a higher state of consciousness in the waking state as well as in our dream state.

Curiosity about our true being and about the world is an important quality to develop.  There are many good books and much wonderful online material telling more about the unseen realms that exist all around us, even as we live in this world.  Opening our minds and hearts to these hitherto unexplored realms, through interest and study, will lead us to understanding and peace.