Book fairies and other messages from spirit

I missed the Edgar Cayce thought for the day on Sunday, which is sent out by the Association for Research and Enlightenment each day, using a quotation from the thousands of readings which Edgar Cayce did during his life. It was: "While individual experiences are personal, or rather individual, these give that NECESSARY experience that will enlighten and enliven the abilities of others; for each soul needs only that awakening to be able to create in the physical all necessary for that soul's development through any period."

This speaks to something I have been wondering about. I have had a few experiences which psychologists might call anomalous or anomalistic, and actually I didn't share them for a very long time, because I worried about people thinking that I had lost my mind. Finding the Quaker Fellowship for Afterlife Studies (QFAS) was a great relief, because even if I don't resonate with everyone's experience, I know that the people in the fellowship will listen with an open mind and heart to what I have to say. 

I do not expect anyone to accept my experiences as true or even relevant to them, but I have the feeling that sometimes information finds the right people at the right time. Many of my friends in QFAS have the same experience of book fairies that I have. Someone decides to get rid of the very book I want to read, or a book which contains the answer to a question I have been thinking about. Sometimes I have been sent the right person, or the right video, or the right email that tells me exactly what I need to know to take me on the next step of my path. Sometimes, I've had a book for ages but haven't got around to reading it and will open it just when the information in it tells me something I needed or wanted to know.

A lot of Quakers worry that talking about what they believe is somehow going to influence or divert someone from their own true path, but I think that part of being on a spiritual path is to recognise whether something "speaks to your condition" as old Quakers used to say - and still do. I believe that we have to learn to know whether something is right for us, and one of the things which drew me to Quakers in the first place was their acceptance that Quakers might be a stepping stone on someone's path but not necessarily their final destination. People's needs change, what they believe may change.

One aspect of being on a spiritual path is openness to the idea that we are all at different stages, and we may even get different things from the same book or the same information at different times. I must have read Natalie Sudman's book The Application of Impossible Things about nine or ten times by now, and although it is a slim volume, I always find something new, something different in it. The book hasn't changed, and so I am driven to the conclusion that I change, and pay attention to different things depending on the progress I have made since the last time I read it.

Speaking to a group of friends about mystical experiences, I started to feel guilty, maybe I should have been talking about this for years, and could have helped others along on their journey. But then, if spirit is working the way I think it is, maybe now is always the perfect time to begin.

Surviving Death on Netflix, and elsewhere

Image CC0 from Pixabay by Karin Henseler

 I become clerk for the Quaker Fellowship for Afterlife Studies last September, and many of the things which the fellowship is interested in are encapsulated in a new series on Netflix: Surviving Death.

The series covers near-death experiences, mediumship, signs from the dead, end of life experiences, and reincarnation.  The series doesn't cover the subjects in depth, but gives enough detail to intrigue the casual viewer into wanting to know more. There is a trailer for Surviving Death on youtube here.

It astonishes me that everyone isn't as curious as I am about the way things work.  I don't know if our culture's taboo on death extends to not wanting to know about the afterlife, or if the huge number of horror stories and stories about ghosts and haunting have made people afraid to think about it, but there seems to be a division in society between those who are curious and those who do not wish to be bothered by anything resembling evidence that life extends after death.

For those like me, who have experienced a separation of consciousness and body, it is obvious that life after death is a reality. I am amazed that even people who are interested and open to the possibilities are not aware of the huge amount of material on youtube and elsewhere on the internet which offers more information.  So I thought that in addition to giving the Netflix series a plug for those who haven't seen it, I would post some links to other sources of information. This is a few links for near-death experiences, which is the subject of the first episode of the Netflix series.  I will post subsequent ones for the other subjects dealt with in the programme.

Near-death experiences

There are many many channels on youtube exploring these experiences. One of the best known is the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) channel, which is a non-profit organisation for experiencers and those interested in these experiences.  Many of the famous examples of near-death events have been interviewed or have spoken on the channel. You can find IANDS channel page on youtube here, and if you click on the VIDEOS heading across the page, you will be able to browse their many videos, Anita Moorjani and Eben Alexander among them.

I also like Hamish Miller's near-death experience, on Tim Walter's channel; you may also like to see Hamish talking about his life before and after that near-death experience.

I love these three interviews with Natalie Sudman on Bob Olson's Afterlife tv channel, talking about her book The Application of Impossible Things, written after she was blown up by a bomb in Iraq: here's the first, the "blink" environment; here's the second, the "rest and life review" environment; and here's the third: the "healing environment". Someone who talks about regretting coming back is Peter Pangore, interviewed here by Shaman Oaks.

If you want to look into research about near-death experiences, you can listen to Pim Van Lommel talking about his research