If you haven't already made a New Year's Resolution, let me suggest one:   Make death your friend, your daily companion.  Rather than thinking of death as the Grim Reaper, imagine "him" or "her" as Dr. Death, the greatest and wisest teacher and healer you'll ever have.

      "Ridiculous," you say? If so, you're taking issue with some great thinkers.   The eminent Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung said that it is psychologically beneficial to have death as a goal toward which to strive. Mozart called death the key to unlocking the door to true happiness.  Shakespeare wrote that when we are prepared for death, life is sweeter.   The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne said that "to practice death is to practice freedom."  Essentially, what they all say is that in understanding death, we come to understand life and better enjoy it.       

       When friends and acquaintances hear of my recently-released book, The Articulate Dead, they often react with some hesitation, as if death is a taboo subject.  When I tell them that the book is about scientific research strongly suggesting that consciousness survives physical death while also telling a little about the afterlife environment as reported through various sensitives who have been able penetrate the veil, "One life at a time for me," is a typical reaction, a subtle and supposedly "intelligent" way of saying that the person is not interested in the subject matter.   

       I respond to that comment by saying that I agree that we should be living in the present, not looking ahead to some distant afterlife.  But I add that the best way to live in the present, or to live in the "now," is to "live in eternity."   That always brings puzzled expressions and requires some explanation. 

       It is not easy to explain how to "live in eternity," but the best analogy I can come up with is retirement from the work force.   Most people, even those who find some joy and fulfillment in their jobs, look forward to retirement.  They envision more freedom and opportunity to pursue things that really interest them and which involve less stress and conflict than their occupations. They anticipate more time for leisure activities, travel, maybe even an around-the-world cruise.  Retirement is not something they constantly dwell on, but it is a motivator that more or less straddles the dividing line between the conscious and the subconscious.  That's what "living in eternity" is like - having that long range goal in the back of the mind while still focusing on the present.   It's like a baseball player taking each game as it comes, but still envisioning some day being in the Hall of Fame.  It's something of a dream that continually inspires him to face up to the challenges.  

       What if retirement meant no income of any kind - no savings, no social security, no pensions?   There would be nothing to look forward to except poverty, squalor and despair.  Unfortunately, that is how most people look at death and the afterlife.  Orthodox religion has not been able to paint a picture that offers anything more than a humdrum heaven or horrific hell.   Assuming that a person feels qualified for the humdrum heaven, how can he or she get excited about floating around on clouds all day while strumming a harp, or in what seems like an endless Sunday church service singing hymns and praising God?  How appealing is that?

      In effect, there are three approaches to viewing death:  1) a march into an abyss of nothingness; 2) seeing the humdrum heaven and horrific hell of orthodoxy; 3) viewing it like beginning retirement with an around-the-world cruise.  Those who make friends with Dr. Death usually settle on number three.  

       Various polls suggest that 80-85 percent of the U.S. population believe in an afterlife, but the problem is that they don't really "believe."  They just "hope" for it while striving to be "one with their toys," worshipping celebrities as gods, and living in the moment, having no conception what death brings.  They might as well be marching toward the abyss of nothingness that the atheist does his best not to think about.

      "The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else," cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker wrote in his 1974 Pulitzer prize-winning book, The Denial of Death.  "It is a mainspring of human activity - activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying it in some way that it is the final destiny of man."

       To free oneself of death anxiety, Becker explained, nearly everyone chooses the path of repression. We bury the anxiety deep in the subconscious and go about our every day activities mostly oblivious to the fact that in the great scheme of things those activities are exceedingly short-term and for the most part meaningless. 

      "The enemy of mankind is basic repression," said Becker. The theme of his book is that the unrepressed life can bring into birth a new man. In another book along the same line, The Broken Connection, Robert Jay Lifton, a distinguished professor of psychiatry and psychology, says much the same thing as Becker. "In real psychological ways, one must know death in order to live with free imagination," is the way Lifton puts it.

       Lifton tells us that we have to be able to imagine it, to visualize it before we can accept the survival of consciousness. Therein is the failure of orthodox religion; there is nothing to visualize beyond harps and clouds. When we make Dr. Death our companion, however, we can begin to visualize something, even though it may never be completely in focus. In so visualizing, we begin to comprehend the divine plan. We are able to understand that there is no sudden enlightenment on the Other Side. There is no heaven-hell dichotomy. There are planes or dimensions to which our undying minds or souls gravitate based on the spiritual development achieved on earth. We are able to formulate a paradigm that involves a Creative Force, whatever shape He, She, or It takes, and are able to see how the divine plan plays itself out in cosmic evolution. We see how we are really souls occupying bodies rather than bodies housing souls and how our souls are progressing in finding their way back to Oneness with the Creator through the challenges, the adversities, the trials and tribulations offered us in a particular lifetime. We understand how a life without adversity offers little opportunity for growth. We come to appreciate the words of Mozart that "death, as we consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence."

       That's as difficult for most people to understand as the controversial Atkins' Diet, which I have undertaken as part of my New Year's resolution to lose 20 pounds, is for me to comprehend.  The Atkins' Diet calls for the dieter to eat all kinds of fatty foods, at least in the beginning stages.  That makes absolutely no sense to me, but I know it worked for me in the past.  Just as mainstream scientists take issue with the findings of psychical researchers who have discovered an "afterlife," many scientists find fault with the Atkins' Diet.  It's hard to know what to believe, but one thing becomes clear and that is that science nearly always lags behind truth.  There is something of a paradox in both death and the Atkins' Diet, but life often seems like one big paradox.  

      It is possible to view death in a positive light, in the same way we view retirement, but, unfortunately, orthodox religion has been as closed-minded as mainstream science in opening itself to true enlightenment.  The Bible tells us to "seek and ye shall find," and further says that "seek ye first the kingdom of God."  But you have to know where to look, and orthodox religion still doesn't know where to look.  

      And that is why I wrote The Articulate Dead, hoping that at least a few people might read it and visualize a spirit world, thereby helping them make friends with Dr. Death and "live in eternity."    Moreover, many spirit messages suggest that knowledge of fundamental facts about the way things work on the "other side" facilitate one's "awakening" and progress in the new environment.   
  

      For more information on "The Artculate Dead" click on one of the two sites below

 http://www.galdepress.com/books/paranormal/articulatedead.html

or

http://www.amazon.com/Articulate-Dead-Michael-E-Tymn/dp/193194248X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230787057&sr=1-1

     

 

     In his 1942 book, Life Now and Forever, Arthur J. Wills, Ph.D., president of the U.S. College of Psychic Science and Research, tells of his own experiments with out-of-body travel and then goes on to tell the story of an experiment carried out by Mary C. Viasek  and Mrs. Z. J. Allyn, a materialization medium.

       Mrs. Viasek, who had learned to travel out of body, told Mrs. Allyn that she would attempt to visit her circle on September 28 while she was traveling by train from California to Toledo, Ohio.   At the time of the séance in Los Angeles, the train was in Utah.   After leaving her body, Viasek willed herself to Allyn's circle in Los Angeles.  The circle was already in progress and Viasek entered the materialization cabinet, where she found Allyn entranced in a chair and a number of spirits waiting to materialize.  The "cabinet guide" told her that she was welcome to observe but because she was mortal she could not participate.

      Viasek then observed three "spirit chemists" collecting something.  Looking closer, she saw a band of light, of bluish-grey vibrations, resembling heat waves, passing around the circle and into the cabinet. "The stream of vibrations started from the medium's husband, Mr. Allyn, who sat by the right side of the cabinet, and gradually increased in size as the various members of the circle contributed their vibrations to it," Wills quoted the report, going on to explain that the stream was about two inches in width and six inches in depth and increased in size as it passed around the circle and then into the cabinet, at which time it was about a foot in width and 18 inches in depth.   It was further noted that not all of the sitters contributed to the stream, as it appeared to go around a couple of them.

       Once the stream reached the cabinet, a spirit chemist took it and appeared to pour it into the back of the head and neck of the medium.  At the same time that the light, bluish-grey vibrations were being poured into the medium, a white substance (not named, but apparently ectoplasm), began to emanate from the medium's chin, throat, and chest. This emanation was then taken by another spirit chemist and put over the spirit to be clothed.   As he was pouring the substance over the spirit, he said in a firm positive voice:  "Think your features!  Think your face!  Think your eyes! Think your form!  Think positively!  Think your form as you were on earth!  Think your arms!"  As the spirit thought these things a form gradually built up over him. 

      All the while the circle members were singing in order to establish and maintain harmonious vibrations.  When they finished one hymn and before starting another hymn, the materialization failed as "the substance fell from the spirit."  The spirit chemist then began attempting to clothe another spirit and it also failed when the hymn was abruptly changed.  Viasek noted that the vibrations changed when the singing changed and interfered with the manifestations.

      During these failures, Viasek was in the cabinet but could not get her feet on the floor. When the group members started singing Shall we gather at the river, her feet touched and she found herself standing in front of one of the chemists.  He said, "You are mortal.  You cannot go," but she appealed to him and he then consented.   The chemist then turned her around with her back toward him and began pouring the substance drawn from the medium over her, while saying:  "Think your features positively, just as you are!  Think your hair! Your eyes!  Think your form!  Think your arms!  Think your hands!  Think your feet!"

     Then the chemist placed some substance over her to form her dress, a garment of white lace. "This was a creation of the chemist, not of her thought."

       When Viasek stepped through the curtain into the circle, she felt that she was blind for several seconds, but her sight then came to her.  However, she found she could not speak.   As one of the sitters approached her, she received "strengthening vibrations" and was able to speak.  As she began to talk to the group, something happened to upset the vibrations of the circle and Viasek felt as if her breath had been knocked out of her by a blow to the solar plexus.  She stepped backwards toward the cabinet and seemed to lose consciousness before regaining it again and observing other materialization successes and failures. She could not discern exactly when the forms began to materialize, but she noted that they began to dissolve outside the cabinet.   What little of the substance was left when the materialization dissolved flowed toward the incoming stream of light, bluish-gray vibrations.

       Members of the circle confirmed Viasek's materialization and it was noted that her "breathing" problems began when Dr. H. H. Turner, one of the circle member, increased the light in the room so that he could make a note of the time and record Viasek's words.

                                                                          

above:  Professor Robert Hare

      One of the distinguished scientists of yesteryear featured in my recently-released book, The Articulate Dead, is Dr. Robert Hare, a professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania during the 19th Century. Like most of the other scholars and scientists investigating mediumship, Hare started out as a disbeliever and expected to debunk mediumship. 

        After receiving very evidential messages from his deceased parents and sister, Hare became a convert.  “I did not yield the ground undisputed, and was vanquished only by facts and reasons which, when understood or admitted, must produce in others the conviction which they created in me,” he explained. “If I was the victim of an intellectual epidemic, my mental constitution did not yield at once to the miasma. It took some three months to include me among its victims.”

        The son of an English emigrant, Hare invented the oxy-hydrogen blow-pipe, a forerunner of the modern welding torch, before he was 20 years old. He was the first person to fuse lime, magnesia, iridium and platinum. In 1816, he invented the calorimotor, a type of battery from which heat is produced. This led to his invention of the deflagrator, which was employed in volatilizing and fusing carbon. In 1818, Hare was called to the chair of chemistry and natural philosophy at William and Mary and that same year was appointed as professor of Chemistry in the department of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he would remain until his retirement in 1847. 

       After his first few sittings with mediums, in which the communication came primarily by table tilting or raps, Hare, inventor that he was, immediately went to work contriving an apparatus which would facilitate and expedite communication, as the process he had observed was very slow. He devised a machine, called a spiritoscope, with a circular disc, the letters of the alphabet around the circumference of the disc, and with weights, pulleys, and cords attaching it to the tilting table. The medium would sit behind the table in order to supply the “psychic force” through which the spirits caused the table to tilt, but the medium could not see the wheel and had no idea what was being spelled out. 

      Put to the test, the contraption worked and the first spirit to communicate was Hare’s deceased father, Robert Sr. When Hare continued to doubt, the message came through, “Oh, my son, listen to reason!” At a second sitting, his father again communicated, saying that his mother and sister were also there but not his brother. Personal information was given to Hare, information which Hare was certain the medium could not have researched. 

      While reasonably certain that his spiritoscope prevented any kind of trickery by the mediums with whom he was sitting, Hare continued in his investigation with caution, asking the communicating spirits for information that would prove their identities. In his third sitting, when the message was spelled out that his sister was there, Hare asked her for the name of their father’s early business partner. She responded correctly with the name “Warren.” He then asked her for the name of their English grandfather’s partner, who had died in London more than 70 years earlier. She again responded with the correct name. “The medium and all present were strangers to my family, and I had never heard either name mentioned, except by my father,” Hare recorded. “Even my younger brother did not remember that of my father’s partner.”

       With another medium, Hare asked his father for the name of an English cousin who had married an admiral. The father spelled out the name. Hare also asked his father for the maiden name of an English brother’s wife. The Spiritoscope spelled out “Clargess,” which was correct. 

       It was explained to him by his father that the spirits direct currents of vitalized electricity on the particular muscles of the medium which they desire to control. It is not necessary that the medium be a person of good moral character or have a balanced mind, but an advanced spirit would not be able to control the organs or mind of a medium unless in affinity with the medium. When spirits wish to impress the mind, the spirits can dispose and arrange the magnetic currents of the brain so as to form or fashion them into ideas of their own. They can instantly determine the sphere of a spirit, in or out of the body, by the particular brilliancy and character of the light in which he or she is enveloped, as well as by the peculiar sensation which his or her presence creates. 

        At a sitting with a Mrs. Hayden, Hare received a message from a spirit identifying himself as C. H. Hare. “Not recollecting any one of our relations of that name precisely, I inquired if he were one of them,” Hare wrote. “The reply was affirmative. “Are you a son of my cousin Charles Hare, of St. Johns, New Brunswick?” Hare asked. “Yes,” was then spelled out. “This spirit then gave me the profession of my grandfather, also that of his father, and the fact of the former having been blown into the water at Toulon, and of the latter having made a miraculous escape from Verdun, where he had been confined until his knowledge of French enabled him to escape by personating in disguise an officer of the customs.”

         Hare was unaware of the young man’s death, but the brother of the communicating spirit visited Hare in Philadelphia some time later and informed him that his brother, Charles Henry, had been killed at sea in a shipwreck. Here was a message clearly outside the telepathy hypothesis, which held that the medium was reading the mind of the sitter. 

       In that same sitting with Mrs. Hayden, the words “pulsatque versatque” and “Quadrupedante” were spelled out by Hare’s father. Hare immediately recognized the words as being from Virgil and recalled his father explaining the English meaning of the Latin words to him some 55 years earlier.

     “As soon as convinced that the phenomena were due to the shades of the dead, I looked with eagerness for some consistent information of their abodes, modes of existence, of the theological doctrines entertained by them, and the actual diversities of their situation consequent to various degrees of moral and intellectual merit,” Hare stated.   His father explained that the spirit goes to a sphere for which it is morally and intellectually adapted based upon a sort of “moral specific gravity.” 

      The first sphere above the terrestrial one, i.e., the second sphere, is the abode of “degraded” spirits, meaning not only evil spirits but “misdirected” ones as well. He pointed out that there are millions of such spirits in the second sphere, what religions call Hell, Hades, or Purgatory, who are groping and unable to free themselves from the fetters of earthly conditions. This sphere is said to be the abode of as many spirits as all the five spheres above it. Nevertheless, contrary to the teachings of many religions, the spirits on this sphere are not permanently confined there as “onward and upward” is the motto of the spirit world. Sooner or later, spirits from higher levels are able to reach them and help them see the light.

Because of the barriers spirits must overcome in communicating with the material world, the senior Hare warned his son to discern the messages and not take everything literally. He was further informed that there are no visible boundaries between spheres, but spirits have a peculiar sense which makes them understand when they are passing from one sphere to another. 

       Each sphere, the senior Hare said, is divided into six circles, or societies, in which congenial spirits are united and subsist together according to the law of affinity. While these spirits generally agree in moral and intellectual matters, there are individual differences and some disagreements. 

      Spirits united by ties of consanguinity and marriage may or may not be linked together in the spheres and in the same society. It depends on the affinity between them, including the level of advancement. However, a spirit in a higher sphere can pass to a lower one to visit with loved ones. But a spirit can never ascend to the higher spheres until fully prepared for such a transition. 

       After Professor Hare gave a talk to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in which he spoke of his interest in spirit communication, some members of the organization called for his expulsion from the organization. However, this apparently resulted in Hare becoming even more entrenched in his belief and he went to his grave certain that there was something beyond death. “No evidence of any important truth in science” he offered, “can be shown to be more unexceptionable than that which I have received of this glorious fact that heaven is really ‘at hand,’ and that our relatives, friends, and acquaintances who are worthy of happiness while describing themselves as ineffably happy, are still progressing to higher felicity; and while hovering aloft in our midst, are taking interest in our welfare with an augmented zeal or affection, so that, by these means, they may be a solace to us, in despite of death.”
      To read more about what Professor Hare was told about the afterlife, you might consider my book, “The Articulate Dead,” which can be purchased at http://www.galdepress.com/ or at http://www.amazon.com/