Roberta Grimes

Dying

Posted by Roberta Grimes • January 10, 2026 • 2 Comments
Afterlife Research, Death, Human Nature

The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and staunch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket molds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.

“Now, don’t you go till I come,” he said,
“And don’t you make any noise!”
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,
He dreamed of the pretty toys;
And, as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue.
Oh! the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true!
– Eugene Field (1850-1895), from “Little Boy Blue” (1888)

My dear ones, let us now consider together, in frank and very positive terms, what our next-stage journey is going to be. After all, for many of us, that journey is not very far away now. I am something of an expert on what that lovely transition is going to be, because I studied it exhaustively when I was right out of college. The year was 1970. I was living in Boston, and working for a big insurance company, programming an IBM 360 computer that was the size of a house, although it had much less power than does your cell phone. On weekends, I took to browsing used-book stores to collect what were some amazing books. The end of the nineteenth century, and the first twenty years of the twentieth century had been the heyday in southern Great Britain and in the northeastern United States of the great deep-trance mediums, like Gladys Osborne Leonard (who was my favorite, along with her chatty spirit guide, Feda). So, in the Fifties and Sixties, all the people who had first collected the wonderful books that had been written by the folks who had studied those phenomenal mediums were themselves dying, and a lot of their wonderful books had ended up in Boston’s great old used-book stores. Where I then gladly found many of them!

My purpose back then was to convince myself that our lives truly are eternal, because at the time, I was worried about that. And wow, those books were so spectacular that I was able to convince myself then, in spades! I bought perhaps a dozen of those wonderful books, and I read them eagerly; and it was easy for the skeptic that I was at the time to firm up a strong case for human survival. Deep-trance mediums were not like any sort of medium that is working today, but rather they could go into trance so deeply that they could withdraw from their bodies altogether and let their guides, with the newly-dead person sitting right beside them, take over the medium’s body and speak directly to those sitting in the room. It was amazing! I read so many cases of newly-dead people who could give their living survivors detailed accounts of what dying had been like for them, and also where they were living now; and even though they had died in London, perhaps, or in the Boston area, or in the environs of New York, they all had had personal variants of very much the same experiences. It was always basically the same process, the same sceneries, the same clothing, the same pastimes, the same personal judgment process, the same often tiny details. The same everything! Through almost a hundred different death and afterlife accounts, no two were alike, and yet no two were very different.

This is how, when reviving hospitalized people who were close to death became more common in the Seventies, so then Raymond Moody wrote his Life After Life about near-death experiences, I could study NDEs, and could realize pretty quickly that in fact, reviving people who have actually died is impossible. We will talk about the death process in a moment, and you will see then that our material bodies during life have an internal energy body which is connected to our material body by what is referred to in the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes as a silver cord. So, then when your energy body leaves your material body – as it often does, while your material body sleeps – that silver cord can be seen, and it looks like a faintly shimmery, bluish streak. Here is that Biblical reference:

Remember Him—before the silver cord is severed,
and the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
and the wheel broken at the well,
 and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
– (Ecclesiastes 12:6-7)

The Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes was written about 935 BCE. That was almost three thousand years ago. Three thousand years! So, it was written even a thousand years before Jesus had to enlist the tremendous powers of the Godhead to produce more energy in one burst than all of humankind together even today can produce in one burst, just to reanimate His crucified and stone-dead body enough to resurrect it for one more day on that first Easter Morning. NDEs have nothing whatsoever to do with death, as you will shortly see; so the name that Dr. Moody gave to them is really unfortunate. Even today, some foolish NDE experiencers will talk about “having died and come back to life”. And in so doing, they demean both life, which is precious and extraordinary, and also the wonderful gift that NDEs actually are. Genuine NDEs are in the nature of very vivid, dream-like sequences that are given to experiencers by their spirit guides. Each dream-like sequence is unique to the experiencer, and it is meant for that experiencer’s own edification.

Life, on the other hand, is precious and extraordinary, in and of itself! Scientists still cannot tell us where life first came from, and nor can they say even now how it is produced; they cannot yet even tell us for certain how we can be sure when we are actually dead. But they can tell us, to their own amazement, that they lately have discovered that life actually gives off light. And that light fades and disappears when the life that produces it fades and dies.

So, I learned in my twenties from the great deep-trance mediums who had been developed toward the end of the nineteenth century what the overall process associated with a natural death would be. And most deaths are natural. Moreover, my further studies indicate that the process of a natural death really has not changed at all since I was first out of college. If a death is accidental, on the other hand, or if it is caused by human agency, it may seem to us to be worrisomely painful; but please know that we are routinely told afterward by the person who experienced that death that he or she was out of the body before the car crash or the murder or whatever it was happened.When death is going to be the result of some event, our guides protect us from experiencing most of the pain of it.  

But now, let’s consider a usual death, the sort of death that most people experience. What happens in that case? Will we be much aware of what is going on? Will we have much choice as things progress? Let’s talk about it:

• Life-Planning. As part of our pre-birth life-planning process, we generally plan into our lives three exit points from this upcoming lifetime that our higher consciousness can choose to take when it decides that it has wrung about as much value as it can from this upcoming lifetime. One possible exit is likely to be in youth, one in middle age, and one in old age; and yes, we and our guides might choose to move these dates as our lives go along. The decision to take an exit point will be made about a year beforehand, and then most people will begin, although unconsciously, to wrap up their lives. We might take a major, long-postponed trip; perhaps contact very old friends; and so on. People might decide at last to make their wills, and husbands might share with wives their secret passwords.
• Changes in Body and Mind. Unless a death is going to be via a heart attack, a stroke, or some fast-moving cancer, a natural death requires either a serious illness or very old age to weaken our bodies and soften our attitudes toward the coming transition. And as we progress in that direction, our resistance to the whole idea of dying gradually lessens. A lot of this happens gently, subliminally, with the loving help of our spiritual guidance, but eventually our loved ones will likely notice our mental shift. We might want to talk about death, or want to read about how it happens, or perhaps we might want to go church. Remember that very often we may have been traveling out of body and into the astral plane with our spirit guide while our body slept, without conscious memory of that event, but with some gentle awareness of having done it.In general, and often surprisingly, our fears will lessen, and we will come to relax ever more about death during that final year.
• The Final Month. This very last phase before transition has always been a magical, extraordinary time! In the first few decades of the twentieth century, before antibiotics, when many children and young adults died, there are reports of walls of bedrooms disappearing for some of the young dying, and those who were close to death could see right into the beautiful Level Three astral plane, where they would soon be heading. These children and young adults would joyously describe to those around their beds the giant flowers, the fountains, the distant mountain ranges, the people on their whimsical, mind-propelled toy vehicles, and so on, and sometimes for days. More recently, the dying will sometimes experience what is called Terminal Lucidity, when someone who might have been comatose or in end-stage Alzheimer’s, and sometimes for years, with a brain that is entirely fried, will unexpectedly wake up and begin to interact with those around the bedside. These folks might even sit up in bed, start talking in normal sentences, and seem to be just fine again! This phenomenon is easily explained. At this point, the inner energy body, which is leaving, is more easily separating from the material body; and as that happens, the damaged material brain no longer acts as an anchor on the healthy energy mind, so the healthy mind can briefly express itself freely.  

• The Active Death Process. Now things are set for the dying person to leave his or her material body. Dying people who are awake when this happens tell us that the process begins in the fingers and toes and travels up the arms and legs, and it feels like a kind of un-velcroing; they say it doesn’t hurt, although it does feel funny. Soon, then, the whole energy body has gathered in the chest; and then the energy body leaves the material body, either through the chest wall or through the top of the head, and it often lies above the material body, full-length and face-down. Or else it might sit above the material body in lotus-position. The dying person may then notice that the spiritual body is naked, and hurriedly produce clothes. And of course, immediately the dead loved ones, those spirit visitors who have come to take the dying person home are rushing to hug their loved one, just as those physical loved ones around the bed are  rushing to feel for a pulse.
• We Accompany Our Loved Ones on Our Brief Journey Home. This is a time of extreme danger! Most dying people newly out of their bodies will be distressed to see their bedside mourners’ distress, and they may attempt to capture the attention of living people and reassure them that they have survived their death. But if you are the dying person, and you do that, you can lower your personal vibration to the point where you can no longer see your Mom and older sister and your childhood dog anymore, and they needed to keep your full attention because they are the ones set to lead you home! There is a real risk that if you lose contact with those deathbed visitors, you could become an earthbound spirit for a time. So, whatever you do, if you are the one who is dying now, focus closely on your deathbed visitors! And as you do that, your silver cord, which had been stretchy enough to let you travel across the universe if you have ever wanted to do that during life, is becoming frayed now, and it breaks, which is your material body’s actual moment of death. But if you are the one who has died, you don’t much notice that, because you and your loved ones have already raised your vibrations together, and begun to leave that room behind. As you glance back at it, you can see it becoming vague and vapory; and then it disappears in a light, grayish fog, as just ahead, in the very same place but just at a higher vibration, the glorious Third Level of the astral plane dawns before you and your loved ones. You are arriving home!
• What About Those Who Don’t Make It Home Right Away? We should note here that both Mikey Morgan and my own dear spirit guide, Thomas, tell us that, surprisingly, as many as close to twenty-five percent of those who leave their material bodies on earth will by their own  choice not transit to the next level right away. I know very little about this phenomenon, so there is little that I can tell you about it! I only know that there are many who do spirit rescue work, including dear wonderful Father Nathan Castle, who is my frequent Seek Reality podcast guest. So if you ever find yourself outside your body and needing to be rescued, just call for Father Nathan Castle’s help.

My dear one, you are truly an eternal being! And it is impossible for you to fully understand how deeply and completely you in particular are loved. We come to this very difficult earth-school to learn and to grow spiritually; so yes, some of this life may have felt hard for you. Rough and unloving. And unfortunately, Emperor Constantine’s version of Christianity suggests to us the possibility of punishment in our next stage of life. But, oh my dear one, you can forget all that now! God is love, and only pure and glorious love. And after the very hard and bitter life that you have just spent in earth-school, the infinitely loving God of All is eagerly waiting to welcome you home with milk and cookies forevermore! The tender, love-filled process of going home after a life lived on this hardscrabble earth is so sweetly joyous; it is truly the best part of life. You have been loved and nurtured all your life, but often without fully realizing that was what was going on for you. However now, toward the end of your time on earth, God can begin to show you God’s love purely, and without reservation. And God does that now! Oh, my very dearly beloved friend, welcome now to the perfect and eternal love of the forever-living God!

 

Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face;
And they wonder, as waiting the long years through
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
Since he kissed them and put them there.
– Eugene Field (1850-1895), from “Little Boy Blue” (1888)

 

 

(Many photos are from Vecteezy.com)