The last time Martin had gone to the mountains for his annual vacation hike something happened to him. When he came down from the mountains, he saw that a few things had changed. The colors of everything he looked at were different, and he was surprised that the people who he said hello to didn’t say hello to him. He walked around for a while trying to get someone to recognize him, it was like people could not see or hear him. What was going on here? He even found that when he tried to get into his car to drive home that he could not grasp the door handle. He tried and tried but nothing happened. In fact, the more he tried to get into his car, the more frustrated he got. Martin didn’t know that he had died.
When a person dies, they learn very quickly that they are still very much alive and nothing has changed for them, except, that things are not as they were. They find that they are able to go where they want, and say what they want to whomever they want seemingly by thought. The only thing is, no one hears them or responds to them. The person will often go to family members and try to talk to them. Again nothing happens.
It must be extremely difficult for a person who dies suddenly to try and talk to people and to have no one hear them or respond to them. What can they do? Some will realize that something has happened to them and even think that they maybe dead. When they realize this, they will sometimes cry out to a deceased friend, God or a parent or grandparent for help. When the person called for appears, the deceased is normally surprised. The person’s friend or parent will tell them that they have died and its time for them to move on.
Move on? Yes, if a person knows something about the fact that there is life beyond the physical, it is easier for them when they die. They may not realize at first that they have died, but will soon come to that conclusion when everything they learned about dying was true. A deceased person will call out to a deceased loved one for help. They may even call out to a Saint or God or Jesus. People don’t want to be alone when they die. They want people around them who can help them to understand what has happened to them and help them to ingrate into the afterlife.
Death and dying is a subject I talked about during a course in pastoral skills that I had been conducting. Ministers often have to talk to a dying person about the afterlife. Most denominational ministers know only that the dying person should be Christian. If they are, then the person will go to be with the Lord when they die, if not, sleep in the grave until the “Great Day of Judgment”. It is recognized by all denominations that there is an afterlife, but the afterlife consists, for them, of two places – heaven and hell. For Spiritualists, there is only an afterlife called the Spirit World – multiple denominations of light and darkness. It depends on what it was that the dying persons did during their physical life that determines whether or not they will go to a spiritual denomination of light, heaven, or a dark Spirit denomination that can be considered as purgatory. The darker regions of the Spirit World is where a person will have an opportunity to make restitution for their negative wrong thinking and decisions that they were deeply engaged in during their physical life. We call the negative wrong decisions “sin.” Once the person makes restitution for their wrongs, they can advance to a higher spiritual denomination.
We believe that God has given everyone freewill and it is through freewill that we are able to make decisions, good or bad. We teach that a person should practice Personal Responsibility and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” in their life. These two great Spiritual Laws are two of the most important laws known to man. If a person practices these laws, they will be assured a place in the afterlife that will allow them to continue to grow spiritually and work their way back to the presence of God. Even Christianity believes this.
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