I tend to read a lot of non-fiction these days, much of it pagan-based, so when I saw The Afterlife Unveiled: What the dead are telling us about their world by Stafford Betty, I was drawn to it . I grew up Catholic and so was raised with an idea of the afterlife, or Heaven, as a place lined with streets of gold where lions lay down with lambs and Jesus sits to the right hand of God (or is it the left?). I’ve read many books these past years as part of my search for knowledge, enlightenment and a path to call my own. Some of these books have been about spirits and what happens when we die. I wanted to share this book as I found it very interesting and enlightening.
**I do apologize for this lengthy post but I found so many parts of this book so very interesting and had a hard time narrowing it down. Can you tell I don’t write reviews for a living! Ha! ;)**
The dearly departed have much to say in this book about the world they inhabit. Stafford Betty, has been researching this material for 25 years and has put, as he says, the ‘best of the genre’ into this book. There are seven accounts of the afterlife by those who are now what we call ‘dead’. Mr Betty does make it clear that although he is confident that most of the accounts are authentic there is the risk that some of the medium’s interpretations may have contaminated the true message being communicated by unintentionally letting some of their own ideas come through with the interpretation. That being said, many descriptions about the afterlife are all too similar and, having come from different medium sources living so far apart in time and/or place, he is very nearly convinced that most of the messages came through accurately.
In his introduction, Betty mentions Richard Matheson’s well-researched movie, What Dreams May Come. I remember watching this a few years ago and thinking it seemed a little too ‘out there’ for what the afterlife would be like, according to my upbringing/opinion. Perhaps this movie isn’t that far off the mark and when reading the descriptions in this book it brought to mind many scenes from the movie. I couldn’t help thinking about Robin William’s suicide and how ironic it all seems now.
One of the communicators from the afterlife that really grabbed my attention as I read was Robert Hugh Benson. In 1901 he became an Anglican priest who three years later converted to Catholicism, becoming the privy chamberlain to Pope St. Pius X. He wrote several novels for which he became famous, one being The Necromancers, published in 1909 within which he called spirit communication ‘dealings with the devil’. He died not long after in 1914. It is interesting to note that while alive, he was psychically gifted but was taught by the Church to see this gift as more of a psychological impairment.
Life in the World Unseen, first published in 1954, is Robert Hugh Benson’s words through medium Anthony Borgia. During their communications one of the first things he wanted to make clear was on the topic of religion. After passing he says:
I could see volumes of orthodox teachings, creeds, and doctrines melting away because they are of no account, because they are not true, and because they have no application whatever to the eternal world of spirit and to the great Creator and Upholder of it. I could see clearly now what I had seen but hazily before, that orthodoxy is man-made, but that the universe is God-given.
Both Christmas and Easter are looked upon as birthdays: the first, a birth into the earth world; the second, a birth into the spirit world.
Spirit guides constitute one of the grandest orders in the whole organization and administration of the spirit world. They inhabit a realm of their own, and they have all lived for many centuries in the spirit world. … It would be safe to say that by far the greater number of spirit guides carry on their work all unknown to those whom they serve, and their task is so much the heavier and more difficult. … It naturally saddens them to see the mistakes and follies into which their charges are plunging themselves, and to be obliged to stand aloof because of the thick wall of material impenetrability which they have built up round themselves. … Inspiration, devoted to whatever cause or pursuit, comes from the world of spirit, and from nowhere else.
The astral body in which we live immediately after we have died is a duplicate of our physical body, except that it is made of a fine, tenuous substance…We don’t think of putting food into our mouths, because it isn’t needed. Therefore, the whole of the astral digestive tract and the elimination organs, like the kidneys and colon, cease to function. … However, we continue to use the psychic centers of the body. These become much more active because they are now free of the physical body.
When any individual, on earth or here, omits doing something that he feels and knows he should do, the whole creation feels the loss. Whereas when we do something that adds grandeur and stature to life, the whole created universe gains from that action. It can make you shiver inside to know and appreciate how far-reaching a thought or deed or word of any person can be.