Chapter 5
Spirit Geography: Planes of Existence
In This Chapter
• Hollywood’s vision of the hereafter
• Religion’s views
• Using energy to connect with spirit
• Akashic records: the story of your soul
• Ways to connect with your divine energy
• How spirits evolve
In this physical world, we define nearly everything in terms of time and space. We measure our opportunities and limitations in those terms. It takes 45 minutes to drive 20 miles to work. It takes 35 minutes for a cake to bake. Once a year, we celebrate the anniversaries of our births, which we count in years and which define life itself. When you are two years old, someone else takes care of your every need. If you are 16 years old, you can drive (to your birthday party to enjoy cake, if you like!). When you are 85 years old, you know you are reaching the end of your physical life. Time and space are our boundaries, and there is just so much of either.
The first time Rita’s father showed himself to Rita, he presented himself at the age of 27 with a full head of golden hair, a pier 49 T-shirt, and a muscular physique. When Rita first saw him, she questioned who he was. He had been 41 when she was born, and she never had seen him as a young man. Other times after that, he showed himself at age 50 or so, although he was almost 81 when he passed to the world of spirit.
On the other side, there is no time and space. There are different levels of existence but there is no sense of linear time or structured space as we know those limitations here in the physical world. Spirits do not age chronologically. When they come through in communication with us, they might appear at any age from before or after their physical lives ended. The spirit “embodies” its image of ideal, whatever that might be, which might change as the spirit evolves.
Lights, Camera, Action!
As humans, we spend a lot of time and energy trying to understand, define, and explain life beyond death. From the spooky to the sentimental, we’ve created views of the hereafter in books and movies. Here are just a few examples:
• Hamlet, William Shakespeare’s sixteenth-century play, is one of the earliest works in which the plot revolves entirely around interaction between a spirit and a person in the physical world. Hamlet, the young prince of Denmark, receives visits from the spirit of his recently murdered father, the king, who tells Hamlet that the murderer was none other than Claudius, the king’s brother who has since assumed the throne. To authenticate the spirit’s claims, Hamlet has his father’s murder re-enacted according to the spirit’s description of the events, and finds Claudius’s reactions convincing proof of guilt. Four hundred years after it was originally written, Shakespeare’s play still appears on stages across the world each year. In 1997, it was released as a movie featuring Kenneth Branagh in the starring role.
• Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989) combine surprising compassion with comedy and action as these films follow the adventures of a team of “scientists” who capture ghosts and release them to the higher existence they can’t seem to find on their own. The cast includes Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Sigourney Weaver, and Annie Potts.
• In the 1990 romantic thriller Ghost (Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg), a husband refuses to move on to the other side until he saves his wife from the unscrupulous “friends” who murdered him. The film won Goldberg a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Rita, the reluctant medium who connected Sam (Swayze) and Molly (Moore).
• While inattentively fiddling with the radio, Daniel Miller (Albert Brooks) drives his sports car into the path of a bus in the 1991 movie Defending Your Life. He finds himself in Judgment City, where a panel reviews the key points of his life to determine where Daniel goes next.
• In the 1998 film What Dreams May Come, comic Robin Williams plays it straight as Chris Nielsen in an imaginative and ultimately touching story that explores the heavy concepts of tragedy, loss, suicide, heaven, purgatory, and hell.
• Young actor Haley Joel Osment captivated audiences in the 1999 film The Sixth Sense, with his character Cole’s somber assertion “I see dead people.” Among them was child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), not yet aware that he no longer inhabits the earth plane.
• In the 2002 thriller Dragonfly, Kevin Costner plays Dr. Joe Darrow, an emergency room physician who believes his wife, killed in a bus accident, is attempting to contact him through his critically ill patients (especially those who have near-death experiences).
Mediums and Messages
The dead people young Cole sees in The Sixth Sense are somewhat frightening, conveying a sense of desperation. One unequivocal assertion we can make is: Spirit contact is not like this! When you “see dead people” they will not be gruesome, scary, or in any other way unpleasant. If what you experience scares you, your fears are in control, not spirits. Even spirits in need don’t make contact or come through in ways that we might find frightening. If they did, why would we continue the contact?
These, of course, are but a very few of the movies that deal with the “Is there life after death?” question. Feel free to add your favorites to the list, which truly is so extensive that it could be the topic of a book itself! Indeed, it seems that Hollywood works overtime to bring us new and varied versions of life beyond physical death each year. How close to the truth are these presentations? Well, how close are Hollywood presentations of anything to their real counterparts? Entertainment, after all, is the mainstay of Hollywood. That’s what sells tickets and keeps people in their seats. When we watch movies, we want to get our money’s worth in terms of entertainment value.
Spirits come through as they want us to perceive them, and in ways that affirm their identities to prove the continuity of life. Spirit communication, we say again, is always about goodness and healing. When we seek genuine spirit communication, the drama of the connection is what keeps our attention—often for long after the experience of the connection draws to a close.
Heaven and Hell, Reward and Punishment
Many Western faith systems present a view of life, death, and what happens beyond death as a structure of good and bad, reward and punishment, heaven and hell. You live a good life here on the earth plane, and then, as a reward, your soul goes to heaven when your body dies. There is a process of judgment by an all-powerful God, with an immediate result. In some belief systems the decision is final, while in others there are ways the spirit can “earn” its way to a better place in the hierarchy of the hereafter, either through its own actions (penitence) or through the prayers and penitence of those on the earth plane.
The soul’s destination after physical death—heaven, hell, or purgatory—is a place described by physical attributes. Heaven is generally portrayed as a location in the sky that exists above the physical earth, far beyond the ability of sight to perceive it. In many Christian faiths, heaven is the home of God and the ultimate destination for “good” souls. Hell, by contrast, is generally portrayed as deep within the earth’s core, a place of fire and eternal burning. It is the domain of the devil, the ultimate evil, and the ultimate destination for “bad” souls. The concept of judging a life to determine the soul’s destination and journey beyond physical death did not come into existence until the Middle Ages (800 C.E. or so).
Spiritology
Purgatory is a station of transition where the soul goes to await judgment following death of the physical body. Within the Roman Catholic belief system, a soul in purgatory may atone for the sins committed during its physical life to then qualify for eternal existence in heaven.
The role of such representations is often more to enforce codes of morality and behavior than to advance an understanding of the soul’s continuing existence. Rewards encourage one set of behaviors, while punishments discourage another. Strict reward and punishment structures leave little room for learning or changing. An action receives a judgment, for which there is then either a reward or a punishment. A more acceptable, and certainly more positive, approach for many people is one that requires accountability within the context of learning, growing, and evolving.
Eternal Existence with the Gods
The premise of heaven and hell predates Christianity and other modern faith systems, existing in the mythology of many ancient cultures whose faith systems embraced multiple gods, including the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Celts, and Mayans. In these systems, heaven was the home of the gods from whom came the light and warmth that made life on earth possible. This heaven arched through the sky above the earth, with the movements of the sun the visual evidence of its existence. In Greek and Roman mythology, Hades ruled the underworld from his palace within the underworld and various other gods did so in other cultures (see Chapter 2).
Neither heaven nor the underworld in these ancient cultures were exclusively good or bad; in fact, the gods and goddesses who inhabited them had both good and bad characteristics. And everyone who died went to the underworld, because this was where the dead “lived” after death. They didn’t endure eternal suffering; to the contrary, theirs was an existence free from the pains and problems of physical life. There was no judgment to determine who ended up where; it seems that “life” pretty much went on as before death, but without the physical trappings.
Transcendence, Nirvana, and Beyond
The faith systems of the world are varied and diverse, and each has its own perspectives on life, death, and beyond. Here’s what some of them are:
• Olam Ha-Ba, the “World to Come,” the belief in afterlife, as in some Jewish sects
• Reincarnation, the belief that the soul returns to another physical life, integral to faiths such as Hindu
• Resurrection, the belief that the soul returns to its physical body in a whole and pure state
• Nirvana, the belief in transcendence of the self, as in Buddhism
It’s All About Energy
It is through energy that spirits are able to communicate across the boundary between the earth and spirit planes. Understanding different approaches to energy systems gives us insights into how spirit communication takes place.
Energy both separates and links the physical and spirit worlds. It is the essence of all existence, although it takes many different forms. You are energy, the chair in which you are sitting is energy, the book you are holding is energy. The principles of science—physics, specifically—substantiate this. All objects, tangible and intangible, visible and invisible, audible and inaudible, are matter. And all matter is comprised of energy structures—atoms, molecules, electrons—that vibrate at certain frequencies. The rate, or speed, of the frequency determines the matter’s tangibility.
The energy of matter that forms an object we consider solid, such as a chair or a book, vibrates so slowly that we are able to physically perceive its matter. The energy of matter we cannot see, such as the air we breathe, vibrates very fast. Your physical body vibrates slowly enough to have tangibility, while your spirit vibrates so fast that you cannot perceive its presence through your five physical senses. And energy on the spirit plane vibrates so fast that it doesn’t have an appearance or presence at all, as we might define that, unless a spirit chooses to represent itself in a tangible form.
Silver Cord
Few people think of Albert Einstein (1879-1955) as a mystic. But it was this famous physicist who, in his watershed work in physics, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (first published in 1918), described, defined, and quantified all existence as energy that vibrates at different frequencies. Low-frequency vibrations produce tangible or visible representations such as the objects of our everyday lives, Einstein said, and high-frequency vibrations produce energy we can’t quantify with our physical senses. It was a very New Age concept from a scientist who lived three quarters of a century ago!
The energy of the physical body is not capable of vibrating at a high enough rate to exist solely on the spirit plane. So when there is a spirit contact, the spirit comes through to the earth plane. To make its presence known, the spirit must slow its vibration as the medium raises his or her vibration so they can meet and communicate.
Your Body’s Energy Centers: Chakras
As a structure comprised of energy, your body has energy centers called chakras. Life energy, called prana, flows through them. Your aura is a final, outer layer of energy that surrounds the body. There are seven chakras, which roughly align with your body’s physical nervous system:
• The first chakra, often called the root chakra, resides at the base of your spine. Its energy is the energy of survival, which relates to your security and well-being. Your root chakra connects you to your physical life. The color associated with this chakra is red.
• The second, or sacral, chakra resides in your lower pelvis, and is the energy of sex uality, relationships, creativity, and emotions. The color associated with this chakra is orange.
Spiritology
A chakra is a center of energy within your body. The word means “wheel” in ancient Sanskrit. Prana is a Sanskrit word meaning “life energy.” Your aura is an outer layer of energy that contains your body’s prana and keeps it circulating through your chakras.
• The third, or solar plexus, chakra resides in your solar plexus or “gut”—the center of your abdomen just above your navel. Its energy relates to personal power and self-esteem. The color associated with this chakra is yellow.
• The fourth, or heart, chakra resides at the level of your heart and is the energy of emotional love, affection, and partnership. The color associated with this chakra is green.
• The fifth chakra resides at the base of your throat and is the energy of expression and truth. The color associated with this chakra is blue.
• The sixth chakra, often called your “third eye,” resides in the center of your forehead. Its energy is the energy of inner vision and psychic perception. The color associated with this chakra is indigo.
• The seventh, or crown, chakra resides at the crown of your head. It is the energy portal that connects you to the divine and the collective spirit that exists beyond your individual being. The color associated with this chakra is violet.
The prana that flows through your chakras connects your physical body with your spirit. Increasing the flow of prana to a particular chakra activates and enhances it. Yoga and meditation are two ways to awaken your chakras (more about these practices later in this chapter).
In yoga, the seven chakras are the centers of energy that flow through the body.
The Human Energy Field: Your Subtle Body
Your physical body is more than a container that carries you through your life. In fact, your existence is a composite of seven layers of energy known as the human energy field. These layers are called subtle bodies. They are simultaneously independent and interrelated, and correlate to your chakras:
• Your etheric subtle body is like an energy shadow of your physical body. It is the energy element that connects you to physical life, and it correlates to your first, or root, chakra.
Spiritology
The human energy field is the composite structure that contains your physical existence. The subtle bodies are the seven layers of the human energy field.
• Your emotional subtle body is the energy of your feelings and emotions. It correlates to your second and third chakras.
• Your astral subtle body functions as a conduit between the physical energies and the spiritual energies of your existence. It correlates to your fourth, or heart, chakra.
• Your mental or intellectual subtle body is the energy of your thoughts and intellect. It correlates to your fifth and sixth chakras.
• Your causal subtle body is your connection to the divine. It correlates to your seventh, or crown, chakra. It is the most highly developed of your energy structures, and through it you are connected to a greater cosmic or spiritual existence.
Remember our discussion of energy vibration earlier in this chapter? The varying vibrational levels of these different energy layers, or subtle bodies, allows them to co-exist with what you perceive to be your physical existence. They just vibrate at higher rates, so you are mostly unaware of them.
Energy flows between the human energy field that is beyond your individual existence and the chakras that are your personal existence. In this way, you are separate from yet integrated with the overall energy of all existence. It’s as though your body “plugs in.” Even though you reside on the earth plane because your existence is physical, you remain connected to the spirit plane because, after all, the essence of your existence is the energy that is your spirit.
Your Soul’s Story: Your Akashic Record
An Akashic record is a cosmic collection of all that ever was, is, and will be, as documentation, so to speak, of the soul’s existence, mission, and journey. It’s not an actual document or book or even record as we might think of these, but rather exists in the realm of spirit as a divine record. The content of the Akashic record is said to be deeply symbolic. It is possible to connect with your Akashic record through meditation or through a good psychic counselor.
Psychic counselors who do past-life regressions believe this is made possible by accessing your Akashic record (see Chapters 21 and 22). And some people believe that your spirit guides draw from your Akashic record as they provide you with guidance and assistance (see Chapter 7).
There are references or parallels to the concept of Akashic records in many faith systems, including the following:
• The Bible’s Book of Revelation (the Book of Life) and recording angels, who document the soul’s thoughts and deeds for God to review on Judgment Day
Spiritology
An Akashic record is the collection of all of your soul’s actions and travels, past, present, and future. The term comes from the ancient Sanskrit word Akasha, which means “primary or primordial substance.”
• Buddhism’s Akasha or Akasa, the life essence that is present as a space around the physical and spirit worlds and that contains all existence
• Psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s collective unconscious, the premise that all people share certain symbolisms, thoughts, and beliefs through a connected unconsciousness (see Chapter 22)
• The cosmic consciousness or collective mind of metaphysics, which holds that all spirits, on the earth plane and on the spirit plane, are united on a deep level of consciousness
Connecting with Your Divine Energy
There are a number of ways that you can connect with your divine energy. Among the most common are prayer, meditation, and yoga. All combine the physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions of existence. (And there are Complete Idiot’s Guides for all three: prayer, meditation, and yoga! See Appendix B for details.)
Prayer
Through prayer, we communicate directly with the divine, however it is that we perceive it. This can be as God, as god or goddess, as the Universe, or the collective spirit. Although it is a communication between an individual and his or her divine, prayer can take place in groups. The collective power can be amazing, particularly when directed toward healing or releasing a spirit to continue on its journey.
Rita was once called to a house where a spirit, whose physical life had been ended by murder, was unable to complete its transition from the earth plane to the spirit plane. The house was filled with great sadness, and its new owners often saw moving objects and heard noises. They realized that this was an opportunity, and wanted to help the spirit. Rita gathered a small group at the house to pray for and with the spirit, encouraging the spirit to accept the welcoming contact from friends and family already on the other side and asking for divine assistance with the transition. Finally the connection was made, and the spirit moved on. All who were praying could feel the sadness suddenly lift.
Prayer connects you with the divine by activating your causal body and the energy of your seventh, or crown, chakra.
Meditation
Meditation connects you with the divine by activating your mental subtle body and your sixth, or “third eye,” chakra. A common meditative practice is to focus on a single thought until all other thoughts leave your mind. You then explore this single thought in total completeness. Through this process, you can gain relaxation and clarity.
Silver Cord
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was a physician, minister, and naturalist who studied the survival of plant and animal species in their natural habitats. Darwin observed that natural selection meant the strongest and most adaptive representatives of a species were the ones that survived and reproduced. He published his findings in 1859, in what would become his defining work and most famous book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
Yoga
Yoga postures, or asanas, activate various chakras, which in turn access their correlating subtle bodies. Yoga combines activities of the physical body with meditation, providing a range of connections that can be quite basic, as with breathing exercises, or complex, as with postures that access the causal subtle body.
Spirit Evolution
Even though they don’t age as we think of aging, spirits evolve as they acquire wisdom and insight. Here on the earth plane, we tend to think of evolution as a scientific process defining the changes that a species of animal or plant experiences over the course of its known existence. This is the means by which the species adapts to changes in its environment, and in a Darwinian view—which refers to the theories of evolution put forth by naturalist Charles Darwin—the means by which the species extends its life. In theory, a species can perpetuate its existence for as long as it is capable of changes that remain compatible with its environment.
When a species exceeds its capacity to adapt, it dies out—one by one—until finally there are no members of the species left. Prehistoric creatures, such as the dinosaur and the wooly mammoth, are now extinct; they were unable, as a species, to adapt to the changes in their environments. Scientists theorize that every species will ultimately reach the limits of its abilities to adapt, or evolve, and will become extinct. But even in the finality of one ending is the beginning of a different existence. New species arrive, with new capabilities for change and adaptation, and the cycle of life continues.
Remember, though, that time and space define the cycle of life here on the earth plane. These borders contain and define the spirit’s physical existence here, as they do all living things. But on the spirit plane, there are no such boundaries. Evolution is endless. A less common definition of evolution seems more applicable to the concept as it applies to spiritual growth: “unfolding; the action or instance of forming and giving something off; emission” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, Merriam-Webster, Inc., 1993).
The instant the physical body’s death releases the spirit, the spirit’s experience of its existence changes. (Think of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.) The higher side consists of many different levels of evolution, although these are not hierarchical or judgmental. The spirit, of course, evolves during its physical existence on the earth plane, too. Your physical life is a dimension of your soul’s mission, and is a necessary (and, we hope, a most pleasant) journey.
The Least You Need to Know
• The representations of Hollywood offer a sensationalized—and inaccurate—view of life beyond the physical world, often playing on our fears.
• Most religions and belief systems incorporate some sense of the soul’s existence beyond the physical body’s death.
• Energy is the common force that connects the earth plane with the spirit plane, and it is through energy that connection between the two planes can take place.
• Your soul has a mission that extends through and beyond your physical life.
• Prayer, meditation, and yoga are some of the ways in which you can connect with the divine.
• There are no boundaries of time and space on the spirit plane, so a spirit’s evolution is endless.
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