Posted by Roberta Grimes • April 29, 2023 • 47 Comments
The Source, Understanding Reality
Morning has broken like the first morning.
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning,
Praise for them springing fresh from the world.
Sweet the rains new fall, sunlit from Heaven,
Like the first dewfall on the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness where His feet pass.
– Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965), from “Morning has broken” (1931)
We talked last week about our need to learn to share an ever deeper human love as part of our effort at spiritual growth. So it seems to be only fitting to follow that discussion by talking about something that is also important, even though we take it entirely for granted, and that is the gentle, green and leafy love that is happening all around us. My office has a big bow window, and although it also has a desk, I prefer to work sitting in that window with my laptop and my two large plants. One plant began its life as a Realtor’s prop on a front-hall table nearly a decade ago, when my younger daughter’s family was selling their house. That plant has since become gigantic, having grown into a sturdy tree with its three wooden trunks twisted together and its leaves a rich and abundant display. Now it stands more than four feet tall in a big ceramic pot on the floor between my chair and the glass. The other plant is a pretty fountain of pink, white, and green ivy leaves that cascade from a large pot on a plant-stand two feet beyond my hassock. I have just returned from a ten-day business trip, and I have found that, sadly, once again my plants were worrying while I was away.
We don’t think of plants as loving their people. Although we do assume that cats love their moms! My older daughter, who lives with us, recently adopted two rescue kittens. She takes frequent business trips that were hard on her kittens in the beginning, even though we kept explaining to them that Mom was going to come right back. Fortunately, her adoptees soon adjusted, and now they spend their days with my husband and me whenever our daughter is traveling. But my plants will accept no substitute. Even though their watering schedule had been maintained, and even though they got abundant sunlight, when I came home after ten days away, there were leaves shriveled and dying on both of them.
The most transformational book that I ever have read is The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. Nothing else comes close! I first read that amazing book in 1973, its year of first publication, and I didn’t realize until years later the way it had formed a basis for my fifty years of afterlife research. It opened my eyes to a deeper awareness that nothing ever is as it seems. It primed me to accept the evidence that what we experience as human consciousness is universal. And never again, for the rest of my life, have I cut a tomato or grated a carrot without wincing. The fact that such a seminal masterwork which is so fundamental to our understanding of life has been steadfastly ignored by mainstream scientists because it doesn’t fit their predetermined narrative was my first clue that the mainstream science emperor is sadly altogether naked. And that science emperor appears now likely to remain naked, not only for the rest of my life, but perhaps naked even for my children’s and my grandchildren’s lives as well.
The Tompkins and Bird book’s fundamental insight is that plants are conscious and they mentally communicate with one another, and they also mentally communicate with us. And what an amazing revelation that is! Consider only the work of Cleve Backster, who in the nineteen-sixties was one of America’s leading experts on lie detectors. One morning in 1966, Mr. Backster decided on a whim to use his office plant as an experimental subject. He attached a galvanometer to one of its leaves. And, what do you know? He found that the plant in his office was reacting very much as a person would react as it sat there in its pot having its transient, amazingly human-like thoughts. He soon found that the most extreme reactions in his plant were produced when he decided to burn one of its leaves. Its reaction was less if Backster only imagined burning the leaf, without actually intending to do the plant harm. His plant would react, too, if other living things in the room were mentally threatened with harm. And Backster and other researchers later demonstrated that these reactions are present even in living fragments of plants. My goodness, plants can read the minds of their own keepers even from a distance of miles away! There is so much more to Backster’s work that mainstream science still ignores. These amazing revelations are now almost sixty years old, and they are all by themselves sufficient reason for you to pick up and read one of the most amazing and most unjustly ignored books in human history.
This discovery that plants are actually conscious still fills me with wonder, to this day. It formed a basis for my research-based awareness that what we experience as consciousness must be primary. There is no other explanation that fits all the evidence! So when I read the ultimate quantum-physics-for-dummies book, Quantum Enigma by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, and I found that the greatest of all quantum physicists had decades earlier reached the same conclusions, I had a profound and joyous eureka moment. As the genius quantum physicist Max Planck famously said, ”I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness! Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Here is an astonishing video that gives you some sense of just how sensitive and mutually cooperative, and how oddly aware and almost human-like plants actually are as they intensively work and live together in their wild communities, right there in our own backyards. Please do take the time to watch this video, since I cannot conceivably do it justice. I only can tell you that after you have watched it, you will forever after see each patch of forest as a thriving community of sentient individuals in communication with one another, sharing their resources and caring for their young, and even fighting off anything that means to do their little community harm. You will never look at any plant of any size in the same way again.
So, yes, what we experience as human consciousness is the base creative force, and it is governed by what we experience as emotion. Consciousness is all that objectively exists, which means that it should not really surprise us to find that every living thing is in some way conscious. And in fact, that may also be true of even what we consider to be non-living things. If Consciousness is the base creative force and all that exists, then perhaps even things like rocks might also be in some way conscious? One of the things that we generally do when we first return to our eternal home after death is to go sightseeing, even on other planets. After all, there is neither time nor space in the afterlife, so we can easily travel to far distant places. I recall long ago reading an account by someone who had been enjoying doing his post-death touring, and he talked about visiting a planet where the life was not carbon-based, but instead it was silica–based. That entire planet teemed with life! But you didn’t realize that at first anything at all on the planet that he was visiting was alive, because it all moved so ve-e-e-ry sl-o-o-wly. And, you know, come to think of it now, the rocks all around us on planet earth are moving ve-e-e-ery sloo-o-owly too-o-o….
I have been back home in our cozy bow window with my two plant friends for ten days now, which was as long as I had been away from them. Of course I cleaned them up, I got rid of the dead leaves, and since I have returned there has not been even one additional dead leaf on either plant. Not a single sign of stress at all, now that they have their human back, and in fact the tree here beside me has confidently begun to put forth some new baby leaves to replace those that were dropped during its time of crisis while I was away. I can see, too, that the ivy is happily beginning to flower again, for the second time this spring. It occurs to me to wonder whether these plants might have mentally communicated about their sudden loss of their human when I was so abruptly gone? Or do plants of different species unfortunately communicate in different plant-languages? But to answer one question that might perhaps now be occurring to you: No, of course not! Do I look like the kind of person who would give names to plants?
Actually, though, for people and plants to spend our days in close proximity to one another is healthy for all three of us. Plants exhale oxygen, and they breathe in carbon dioxide, while people do the reverse; and it has lately been shown that plants also help to improve indoor air quality in tightly-constructed modern homes. But now I am already beginning to worry about these plants’ mental health when I take my next business trip, even though that is not planned to happen until mid-August. Do you think that I ought to plan to Zoom with them the next time I am away from them? Or perhaps just hearing my voice by phone might be enough to comfort them? Am I starting to sound like a demented plant-lady?
I have never had much of a green thumb, but my mother had a remarkable way with plants. Her house was full of gigantic ferns and big, leafy trees in pots. She had flower gardens every summer, too, each year freshly grown from seeds, and she grew her own vegetables, corn and tomatoes and squash, and cucumbers from which she made the best pickles. I can recall thinking when I was a child that caring for plants looked like too much work, but these two plants have grown to be enormous so quickly, and all on their own. As I think about it in retrospect, my parents simply ran an old tractor to till the soil each spring, and then they stayed ahead of the weeds on weekends until their vegetables could take care of themselves. Perhaps they staked their tomatoes. There was not a lot of work to gardening the way they did it. Texas summers are too hot for growing vegetables, but we drip-irrigate bougainvillea plants each summer in pots in front of my big bow window. So at least these two will have those bougainvilleas to commiserate with through the glass when I am away in August. And maybe also having family members come in and talk to them when I am away the next time might help?
I had never before thought much about the fact that God must dearly love all of God’s green creatures, having made so many of them, and having made all their communities so love-filled and so heart-stoppingly beautiful. Some of these more recent insights about the symbiotic relationships among all our forest friends are making their way into professional forestry practices now, especially in the old-growth forests of Europe, and with results that are shaking up even the most determinedly unsentimental scientific types. The primary problem with mainstream science is that it took a wrong turn into willful materialistic cluelessness more than a century ago, when the scientific community as a whole first refused to accept the great Max Planck’s conclusions about the broader implications of quantum mechanics. But nevertheless, now here we are.
At this point, the best work being done in investigative science is being done not by materialist scientists, who are long since out of ideas, but by more open-minded creationist scientists. I receive the latter’s newsy emails twice each week, and what they have to say is often compelling. After two centuries of floundering, Darwin’s ideas about blind evolution and natural selection are looking more and more nonsensical, while the whole concept of design and a Consciousness-based Designer is making more and much more sense. Here is another video for your viewing pleasure!
We live in a house blessed by dozens of magnificent trees that shared with us our grandchildren’s growing-up. These trees were not much more than saplings in pictures of our next generation as young children, while now they are great oaks and cedar elms. Just because they always made so little fuss, we used to think of green plants as not sentient. But we realize now that these trees probably consider our family to be their own family, since we have lived in this house for the past twenty years. If we ever were to sell our house, they would mourn our loss the way my office plants mourn for me every time I am briefly away, so we have assured our trees that we will be leaving this house to our family’s next generation… which of course is also their own.
To paraphrase an ancient Chinese proverb, green plants hold up half the sky.
The likelihood that not just animals, but also plants are as sentient and as loving as people will rock your world if you allow the full implications of that fact to fully seize your mind! And in the afterlife there is no question about it. The plants there are conscious and extremely loving, and they will reach out and caress you as you walk by. But just look around you now! Look at this whole green and living earth! And look at the stars! Oh my dear friend, every kind of love in all creation is directed toward your own spiritual growth! And even the poor, foolish plants in my office love me, and they keep sadly mourning my repeated and always unexpected loss. And the grass beneath your feet, and the trees that line your driveway, all the vegetation in your life loves you! Oh, what dumb fools we always have been, never to have seen how absolutely, how utterly and overwhelmingly each one of us is so completely loved!
Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning.
Born of the one light, Eden saw play.
Praise with elation, praise every morning.
God’s recreation of the new day.
Morning has broken like the first morning.
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning,
Praise for them springing fresh from the world.
– Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965), from “Morning has broken” (1931)
Oh Roberta, what a very sweet and lovely post! We are surrounded by Love not just in human form, but in nature itself, every day. I noticed that so many people accepted an invitation to try to see things differently during covid. From turning to meditation and contemplation, to discovering, at a new level, nature. A year ago, a garden center said they’d never experienced such an influx of new customers. It wasn’t just “something to do”, but these new customers did research, asked questions. It would seem that Jesus’ “Wake up Plan” for us, isn’t just about humanity…it’s like the whole earth is with Him, waving, “wakey wakey”.
I remembered my beloved “so real” dream I had back in 2013 or so, living in a new small community. I recall clearly the yard, the place of the house, the small church down the road. In that dream, I was so at peace and happy, and saying “hello” to the flowers flanking our house, and they were responding, actually bending toward me. It was joyful.
I live in that house now; I’m sitting in the dining room typing this. Just down the road is Immaculate Conception Church. It didn’t dawn on me until after we’d bought the house and were here, putting in our touches. I put in flower beds and upon seeing them in bloom, I shivered, remembering the dream, as I stared at the road, looked over my shoulder to see the tip of the church’s spire down the road.
How I so pray and hope for life like that! To connect with the flowers and plants with such joy!
I just ordered the book too. Thank you again!
Seems that you had more than “just a dream,” Fran, especially since it eventually came true.
PS You will love the book – I just know it
Oh yes, my dear Lola – the book is riveting to read!
Oh my dear Fran, yes indeed, the world and all of creation is waking up! And the more people love the world of plants, the more they love us in return.
Hi Roberta. That book on the secret life of plants was a mind blower for me also, many years ago. It makes it hard even to eat plants, let alone animals. The thought of all the pain and suffering in the world, even of plants, is hard to contemplate sometimes. It is hard to think of at the same time as one contemplates God’s unconditional love and the ultimate unity of all of us, even the plants, within the field of Consciousness – such a paradox. I guess that is part of what makes this world such a great school and such a good spiritual workout. All that drama, like a gripping movie, keeps us hooked in the ultimate illusion that this world is. Is it the same for the animals (and plants)? I have often wondered, what do they do in the afterlife, what gives them purpose, if they no longer have the need to do the things to survive and reproduce that exist in this world. What do Jesus’s pet fish and deer do?
Dear Scott, to this day I cannot eat anything green that is not cooked. I cannot eat a salad. I can’t even eat a fruit unless I first cut it into pieces – I won’t bite into an apple or a peach, for example, but I can cut it up and eat it. We talked about all of this at dinner tonight. I worked it out years ago – my rationale seems to be that the plant produces the fruit to be eaten, and it isn’t green. But I won’t eat any green food unless it is cooked and the cells are no longer living, just as I won’t eat living animal food.
As for Jesus’s pet fish and deer, they just hang around and eat, although apparently they don’t need to eat any more than we do. But of course Jesus loves having them around Him because they don’t worship Him. They just see Him as their friend.
What a beautiful post. My apartment looks out onto a forest and I love to sit and be one with it. Sometimes if I’m very patient and attentive I can begin to see the auras around the trees. I definitely want to read the Secret Life of Plants now. However as someone who has gone vegan because I found that as I progressed along my spiritual path I could no longer in good conscience condone the use, abuse and killing of other living creatures, I am slightly concerned that I’ll feel just as bad about chopping up vegetables 🫣
I read that book a decade ago, and it made me wonder if plants may have an afterlife, If they are part of consciousness like we are, then it would be reasonable to expect that they do.
My dear Lola, that is a good question. I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of individual-plant afterlife, but like wild animals they might share a kind of group soul. Good question!
Become a fruitarian, dear Lisa. Fruits are produced by plants to be eaten. I can eat fresh fruits and also cooked green vegetables, but that is as far as I can go. But how wonderful that you can see the forest’s auras!
Excellent and informative blog, which did actually cause me to question why we have to consume other things to survive. It bums me out, actually. And, I’m not a vegetarian as I do eat a little meat, but I try to get most of my protein needs from eggs & milk (not sure if that’s much better). Not making a judgment call on anyone’s eating habits, but I do wonder what the perfect scenario is down here on earth. I tried being vegan but I felt weak (I’m a small person, 95 pounds but my metabolism is high so I actually have to eat a large amount of food to maintain my weight and not lose it unintentionally). Do you have any thoughts on why we have to consume other [living] things in order to survive? And/or if there is a moral dilemma in eating meat? I realize this will be just an opinion but I’m interested in all viewpoints. Thank you, as always, for blogs which not only teach but make us think about all manner of related subjects!
Well, my dear JenniferK, this is yet another spiritual stressor for us. Earth-life gives us so many! If an animal or a plant is to be consumed so we can survive, for example, will we care enough to make sure that it is treated kindly? Eggs from free-range and not caged hens, for example. No veal from boxed calves. That sort of thing.
Thank you, and you got that right! (re: spiritual stressors). I do try to at least make sure to get the cage-free eggs, avoid veal, I try not to eat very much meat at all, that kind of thing. I liked your explanation about eating fruit. Makes sense that the tree produces that to be eaten. Obviously, I think that eating with gratitude would be important (maybe the plant knows you appreciate the nourishment they offer – ok, is that a little too “out there”? Lol). I guess, we do the best we can.
Much love to you,
JenniferK
Roberta, Thanyou for that post. You and the other other 3 posters before me this morning confirm my observations that plants and trees are alive and conscious just like us humans. The older I get, the more I see that this is true and my day is not complete without taking a daily stroll in my neighborhood and talking to them!
Oh my dear lovely David, you always make me smile. And they talk back to you, I’m sure, in their way!
Thank you, Roberta. Again, an inspiring and beautiful post.
About a month ago, I decided to move my office to our lanai which overlooks total greenery. I am fortunate to live in Florida and enjoy the hot weather.
I’m completely grounded, get out in the sun as much as I can as do my dogs.
I would highly recommend grounding, lots of sun, and researching the work of Dr. Jack Kruse. Science at its best.
Oh my dear Susan, I did love living in Florida! Such a beautiful state, the sunshine and the ocean and we could pick oranges and grapefruits off our own trees each morning. But my son-in-law said it was too humid and too full of old people, and Austin was a happenin’ place, so off we went. We have been here for twenty years now, but your state is truly lovely!
Well thanks Roberta! How do I cut up my okra now? I posted that video on my locals community. Amazing video. You can never look a plants the same way again.
Oh yes, my delightful friend, therein lies a problem. I cannot cut nor eat any uncooked green food. A colored fruit, yes. Strawberries? Sure. Okra, no siree. Lettuce? Nope.
I bow down on my rag rugnd just stay there awhile
Oh Roberta– you have filled my heart with gratitude and happiness
that trees are not stuck one place without friends.
I was thinking this morning since I now know I am eternal,I worry about the nature of time Hurry,hurry there’s so much to learn!
Oh 1 thing to share- after the nuclear meltdown in Russia in 1986
biologists found the birds were coming back! Their DNA was altered
so they were protected from radiati9n gfl,erica
Hi Erica,
There is quite a big dog colony living in Chernobyl. They adapted as well.
Oh my dear Erica, and isn’t that wonderful? The birds, and also the dogs! Nuclear radiation is not nearly the problem that we once thought it was, since DNA seems to be able to adapt to it so easily! But yes, my dear, we all must get to learning, and quickly now. Isn’t it amazing how much more there still is to learn!
Oh Roberta, thank you for a wonderful post. I live on the edge of a large park and I too get to see the loveliness of nature with each season. Spring begins so sweetly as the leaves on the trees begin to unfold. and they remind me of lace in the beginning, they are so fresh with their green color. The flowers have been also abundant and lovely with color this year. Thank you for reminding us that they too are conscious, I will look upon nature with new eyes because of your post today.
Oh my dear Jennifer, I am so glad to be able to help you see it freshly! One exercise that I used to think I should teach is “One new thing.” Because it worked so well for me! Notice one new thing in your life every day that you never have noticed before. Could be anything. Looking for that one new thing makes you look at your world and the people in it with with fresh eyes every day until you spot some new little thing. I think it makes you feel a little bit more alive.
Dearest Roberta,
I am a little puzzled as to why your plants reacted so negatively when, as I think and hope, that your husband would be in the house when you are off to the East Coast busy reassuring your plants that all is well. Or does he think you have become a plant lady, who asks that you do what is plainly nonsense.
Yours,
Cookie
Oy, my dear Cookie, it’s because plants don’t appreciate jokes, I don’t think. And they also seem to have pretty good memories. Once a few years ago, before Ratha moved back from Seattle, Edward forgot to water the tree and I forgot to remind him, and when I got home from my trip it was dry and I was cranky and he said right in of it – but kiddingly – that if I die first, that plant goes right in the trash. And do you know, I think it has never forgotten that?
Dear Roberta. Hi friends. There is a fern which has 1440 chromosomes! Compare that to our 46. Now which is the more complex life form?
Oh my dear Ray, this is such a wonderful point! I recall that when the Human Genome Project was underway, because all these materialist scientists were assuming that our genomes must encode for our minds, they were envisioning thousands of genes! Then the results were announced, and… silence. Just 46 lousy little genes. And they are still clueless!
Definitely makes you look at the world differently.
Nature is known to help us reduce stress. I wonder if there is some kind of a connection we have through consciousness that is taking place.
Oh my dear wonderful Thomas, you can count on it!
A deep thought!
We born of God and spend most of our lives
trying to find Him.
We have Him cordoned off in churches.
That is ignorance, big time.
We live a. reckless life, separated in houses, and deciding
the world is the only thing we can manipulate—Earth is
waiting outside,made of God for us. Giving so much!
When we can’t bear the loneliness without God, we start
the search for Him.
If we are lucky, we find Consciousness buzzing in the plants, trees, animals and in us.
We are not alone. We are loved by the Earth and Nature.
God has never left us!
Consciousness is God!
And God’s Son has entered our plane to love,protect,and teach us .
We must be able to believe . Faith is short distance from
Jesus.
Roberta, you are buzzing high,very high, and you can teach
us the Truth We only have to be willing, open. to learning.
Gratitude, Forgiveness, and Love
Thank you Roberta!
Oh my dear sweet precious Erica, the love is all around us! The love is everywhere, in the people and plants and in the very air we breathe, and we can feel it calling us everywhere! Indeed, finding it is more a matter of subtracting all that we have put between us and love’s awareness, because it calls to us. The sweet love of Jesus calls to us, and there is no rest until we find our rest in God!
Dearest Roberta,
Sometimes there is indeed a keen feeling that Love Consciousness envelops us; there is no clearer place to feel this gentle holding than when immersed in nature. Simply sitting quietly in a forest glade, or settling on a cliff overlooking the ocean, one can feel a deep connection to the All.
People residing in the city talk of ‘nature deficit.’ This can be ameliorated by taking to the wild places for a time and returning refilled, calm and much refreshed. Even living in the most beautiful tree-lined suburban street does not equate to the special feeling of spending time in a forest that remains just as the Divine created it. No scarring, no cutting into the natural landscape and resulting urban domination exists in the wild. No brutalist 1970s architecture can be found there. Amid nature it feels like the trees and foliage wish to include us in their soothing peace. (Would that modern people were more nature aware, than product or technology aware.)
To learn that even houseplants have a type of consciousness, a sense of emotional feeling, has profound implications for understanding the nature of consciousness. Personally, I am beginning to see how little I truly understand it!
Love this blog my dear!
❣️🕊🙏🏼🌹🌲🌳
Ah yes, my darling Efrem. The plants in every pot are indeed wild things in their own way, just as you and I are wild things. I will say the last part of that sentence again. You and I are wild things. We have of necessity conformed our behaviors to the pots that contain the roots of our lives, but that does not make us any less wild in our thoughts!
What we come here to do in these lives on earth is to learn to contain and control our thoughts, to shape our minds with love and help them to rise above fear and more and more toward love, which is why the teachings of Jesus and of the other great Masters worldwide are so essential, and are so transformational. And why the tender love-based example of the plants is so sweet! It turns out that all the forests of the world are actually far less wild than we are. Who knew?
Roberta, I have just watched ‘ Heaven, an unexpected journey’ by Jim Woodford on YouTube. It was amazing and I’m sure you have seen it. What puzzles me is his detailed description of hell as I recall from your books and in this blog that you said there is no hell! What are your thoughts on this, I would love to know?
Oh, my dear beautiful Linda, indeed there is no hell at all!! NO NDE IS A REAL, EXTERNAL EXPERIENCE!! Every NDE ia akin to a dream, personal and subjective, an experience created by one’s own spirit guide for one’s own edification. NDEs happen in the astral plane, so they feel like a huge deal to the experiencer, but the experiencer is still ALIVE, dear, and being given a weird dream – in this case, a nightmare. The silver cord is still attached!
I have just watched Jim Woodford interview on YouTube and he describes how he encountered hell very vividly when he had a NDE. I feel sure you must have seen it or read his book ‘Heaven an unexpected journey’ and as in your books you say there is no hell I just wondered what your thoughts are on this?
Many people have seen hell even if they never believed in it. If what they saw isn’t “real”, then we have no right to insist that the good things we see are actually real either. We simply don’t know who or what is orchestrating all this, or why.
My dear beloved Lola, this is simply untrue, and you know better than to say it this way. Every last one of these folks was an NDE-er, so none of them actually “saw” an objective hell, any more than they “saw” the real heaven or the true God, or the real tooth fairy.
The whole NDE phenomenon has been slightly useful, but overall it has also been tremendously harmful, and thanks to the power of the internet I now consider it to be more a curse than a blessing. NDEs are nothing more than powerful dreams that generally occur in the astral plane, and with experiences created for us by our own spirit guides, often to shape us up or otherwise to give us personal messages that are meant FOR US ALONE, and not for the world! But the atmosphere of the astral is so powerfully different that it overwhelms us simply to be there. People like me have beaten IANDS over the head enough that they now issue a lot of disclaimers, but the experiencers still put out their YouTubes as if they are real pronouncements from God. They are not.
Hi Linda. I don’t want to come off as speaking for Roberta but , I seriously doubt she has seen or read this. Hell is a religious contrivance. All religions are man made. No evidence of such a fearful and unloving idea is to be found in communications from those who inhabit the next realm.
Oh my dear much-beloved Ray, I could not have said it better! You are so right, my dear one! There is no hell. The whole idea is a human religious contrivance. So perfectly said!!
Darling Linda, this is a double-post I assume, and I am so sorry that this NDE-er has troubled you this way, or has troubled anyone, even for a moment! Jim Woodford simply had a bad dream, and then he woke up from his dream with his silver cord still securely attached. That he has chosen to post his brief personal nightmare on the internet as if it had been a real experience so it can upset innocent people this way is shameful!!
It is a definitive, objective fact based upon all the afterlife evidence that I have managed to gather in more than fifty years of research that there is no actual hell. There is just that outer darkness that Jesus talks about, to which we can briefly condemn ourselves.
Hi Roberta,
Funny that this came up, I got into a debate, on Twitter of all places, about a person who committed a mass shooting.
The debate was whether this person would be spending eternity in hell. I’m sure you know the religion that many of these people were quoting to make their argument. I hope I am wrong, but it almost seemed like there was some enjoyment at the thought of this person suffering for eternity because they did something wrong here. I can almost see Jesus’ shaking his head wondering when the madness will stop. I felt bad for everyone involved.
I didn’t expect many to change their minds, but I did have a nice conversation with one person. That alone made it worth my time.
Dear Roberta,
Your explanation brings great clarity and comfort. In times past, like Lola, I have often been disturbed at the content of certain NDEs.
One thing I’ve noticed about NDEs is that, although they do seem to share similarities, there are also VAST differences between them. Therefore, what you say must be true, that they are meant ONLY for the individual who is having one. Otherwise, how can one reconcile the many differences between each NDE? It’s obvious that all of these disparities cannot be collectively unified into a single theory or truth that applies to all people.
For example, one person may see a hell. Maybe that person NEEDS to see a “hell,” because there are serious issues in their life that they need to correct. So, that person’s NDE is tailored to his specific situation and can bring enlightenment and correction to his path. I read an interesting article somewhere about how even negative NDEs can have a positive effect on the person who had one, because it shows them that they need to change course.
I think the problem comes when people take NDEs as gospel.
I have had some interesting experiences in the astral, and I’ll admit I’m not totally sure what to make of some of those experiences, but I’m learning not to get too caught up in my perception of any particular experience, or to take my dreams as reality – and dreams can be VERY realistic at times! There may be messages of import in the dream or astral experience and I can explore that for myself, personally. But on the same token, I wouldn’t go telling anyone else that my dream meant something for THEM. Perhaps NDEs are on the same level.
Much love to everyone here,
JenniferK
Hi Roberta,
I flatlined during my transplant surgery and ‘found’ myself among black and white
planets. I was thirsty.the feel of gravity brought me back.
!I never saw Jesus so I figured I hadn’t died!
Afterwards I thought-wow God is SO organized-! felt !I was on a conveyor belt—
oh my silver cord!
I never believed in hell, as that idea came about 300 years after Jesus died. It’s just that it seems a bit sadistic to show people a place like that. They insist they are not dreaming and that it was being shown to them
Thank you dear Roberta, Ray and Lola,
I had never thought of our individual experiences being tailored for us personally so now it makes more sense!