Roberta Grimes

Going Home (Part One)

Posted by Roberta Grimes • September 21, 2024 • 15 Comments
Afterlife Research

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed! 

The Lord hath promised good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be
As long as life endures.
– John Newton (1725–1807), from “Amazing Grace” (1779)

I had thought that talking about what happens at death, and how it actually feels to die, has been pretty much done to death here by now (please pardon the pun). But people in the class that I am currently teaching have suggested to me that, oh no, the death process from the perspective of those who are making that universal journey is something that we haven’t talked about here nearly enough. So if those who have requested this post feel that way, then we ought to talk again about death, because unless you know all about this process, you are likely to feel apprehensive about it. And really, you shouldn’t worry about death at all! Because the fun of dying is the most glorious time of your life. And other than being born, the whole precious rite of passage for each of us back into eternity is the most universally human thing that is going to happen to us all.

Fortunately, thanks to some gifted physical mediums who lived around the turn of the twentieth century, at this point a great deal is known about the usual death process, about the genuine afterlife, and also about the very few things that might go wrong in what is supposed to be an easy and natural process. Let’s call these possible problems “traps for the unwary”, because if you learn in advance what is supposed to happen, you should be able to avoid nearly all of these problems. And thanks to the pioneering twentieth-century work of Dr. Max Planck and our visionary friend, Nikola Tesla, and then also special thanks to the painstaking research of such modern notables as Dr. R. Craig Hogan and a number of others, a lot is known now about the greater reality that we all are going to re-enter at death, and in which we spend most of our eternal lives. So, yes indeed, I guess that it really is time! Let’s all talk again about humankind’s great universal journey that happens at the end of this life on earth.

The first thing for all of us to realize is that almost nothing about our lives on earth is random, and that includes the timing and the manner of our deaths. When we plan our lives before our births, we also plan into them two or three possible exit points that our higher consciousness can choose to take, once we have wrung as much value as we can from our days on earth during this brief lifetime. For most of us, our primary purpose on earth will have been to have achieved as much spiritual growth as possible. For some, though, there may also have been a teaching component for ourselves planned into this lifetime, or a mentoring component, or a writing component, or something else that we came to earth to do; but in any event, once all your purposes have been completed, or else once your higher self has determined that it will not be possible to achieve any more in this lifetime, then your higher consciousness will decide that it is time to go home.

That “higher consciousness”, by the way, is the sixty to seventy percent of your eternal mind that you left behind when you entered this lifetime. You stripped down to just a subset of your eternal mind that is designed and energized for rapid learning! But you will reunite with the rest of your mind almost as soon as you return home, and you will be amazed to discover how much smarter your eternal self actually is.  Please note, too, that you are unlikely to be consciously aware at first that your higher self has made the big decision that it is time to go home.

Your higher self can choose almost any mode of weakening or damaging your body so you can exit this lifetime, some of which causes of death may not obviously look to anyone to have been a planned sort of bodily exit at all. For example, we are told that even nearly all “accidental” deaths are in fact deaths at planned exit points. But certainly, to fall ill with cancer or another rapidly fatal illness is the sort of exit that your higher consciousness planned into this lifetime. Dying in your nineties because your body cannot support life any longer is also kind of a no-brainer pre-planned exit. But, one way or another, about one calendar year before your pre-planned death, your life will begin to wind itself down. You are likely not to be much aware of this fact on a conscious level, but those at the celebration of your life held afterward are likely to be full of stories about how they heard from you suddenly two months ago, after many years apart. Or a spouse will recount that a few weeks before your fatal auto accident, you sat him down and told him where your household cash drawer is and where your jewelry is hidden; or the week before your fatal heart attack, you handed your wife a sheet of paper with all the bank account numbers and the safety deposit box combination and secret codes to whatever your family owns written on it. I hear these surprising winding-up stories from people all the time.

So, the period leading up to your death is likely to be orderly and well-planned, even whether or not you are consciously aware of planning it. And your material body has an instinct for its own survival, so it is going to fight to avoid declining in health; which means that your decline will likely be gradual and sporadic, especially if you are younger, and with periods of reprieve built into it. And of course, if your death is not at a planned exit point, if it truly is an accident like a drowning, a death in war, or a murder, then most of what happens in a natural planned death is unlikely to apply in your case. In most such unplanned deaths, you are likely to find yourself just unexpectedly alone outside your body and feeling immaterial, perhaps looking dazedly at your inert material body. If this happens to you, call for help! Those who have been there and done that will report to us that right away, a tall and glowing being comes running. He or she apologizes for not having been there to help at once, and often others will join that first being. Then you will be whisked away to the third level of the astral plane, which is the entrance level to the afterlife, and there you will be joyously welcomed home.

But if yours is a more regular death at a planned exit point, your material body will likely need to go through a process of weakening over months, or even over years of time before it will be willing to give up its non-material inhabitant. Your material body might be barely functional by the time your actual planned death approaches, but eventually there will come a day when your body no longer can hold on to you. So then at last your death can begin.

The first thing that you will be likely to notice, a day or two or even as much as a week or more before your body actively begins to die, is the presence of beloved people that you used to think were dead, simply appearing in the upper corners of the room. Sometimes they will speak, but perhaps at first they just will be there; and perhaps one or more of them will step down and join you, but just as often they will simply stay where they are in the room’s upper corners and they will begin to talk to you in your mind from there. One or more of them might even be treasured pets! These have been judged to be the deceased loved ones that you are most likely to trust, and to follow. And the first sight of these loved ones, looking to be no more than in their twenties now, healthy and happy and solid, is going to banish every remaining fear from your mind. If you are at a dying loved one’s bedside, you might enjoy sharing some of these wonderful moments as the deathbed visitors first arrive; more often, though, as these visitors arrive, the dying cease to communicate with the living altogether.

We know, too, that a dying patient who might even have been comatose, perhaps for years, can sometimes now become alert and aware and even talkative again. This amazing phenomenon is called “terminal lucidity,” and it can include some extraordinary phenomena, even a full awakening, sitting up in bed, and normal or nearly normal communication with those who are at the bedside. When a dying person has been in a coma or has a severely damaged brain and has been unable to communicate for many years, for that person suddenly to seem normal, even for many hours, in the period just before death seems impossible! And yet, it is thought now that terminal lucidity likely happens in most cases when people with damaged brains, or people who were comatose before death begin the active dying process without much sedation in their systems. So, why does it happen?

The planned natural death process is highly predictable. Our bodies while we are on earth are built like a set of nested Matryoshka dolls. The outermost layer is a transparent energy shield that protects us from various kinds of negativity, and can actually be seen by sensitive people to barely shimmer and glow with one or more colors. Then comes the material body, which is dying now and will be left behind; and finally, there is the inner energy body. That inner energy body is you; it is who you actually are, and is what is about to go home. That body at first begins to separate from the head and the extremities of your material body. As it does that, you become free of your material brain, et voila! If your mind has been trapped by a damaged brain, you might enter a brief period of terminal lucidity as your energy body separates, when you will be unexpectedly able to interact with those around your bed. Meanwhile, your inner energy body is gradually continuing to separate from inside your material body, in a process that feels like a lot of tiny threads breaking. It doesn’t hurt at all, but it does feel funny.

Once your inner energy body has entirely separated from your material body, it gathers inside your material chest. By now, you have stopped communicating with those around the bed, and your personal vibration is rising rapidly. Then your energy body rises from your material body, occasionally from the top of the head but most often from the chest, and some sensitive people at the bedside can actually see this as what looks like a gray mist rising for a couple of feet and then seeming to disappear. What actually happens is that the mist, which is you, simply rises in vibration higher than what any living people can see, and it reforms into a naked body in the air which is still attached to your material body by your silver cord. There is no pain in any of this. Nothing about dying is painful, or has much sensation to it; in fact, sometime in the final days or even weeks before actual death, and even for cancer sufferers, pain seems to largely disappear altogether. The only strong sensation reported is that many who have died report a sensation upon first  leaving that boat-anchor of a dying body of almost unbearable joy. Your dead loved ones who have come to take you home all gather around to hug you now as your body reforms in the air, and everyone is happy and laughing, while you of course now notice your lack of clothing, and you hurriedly mentally clothe yourself. This is such a joyous time!

Meanwhile, your silver cord, which during your life on earth has been stretchy enough t0 let your energy body travel to the edge of the universe while your body slept if you ever had a mind to do that, has begun to fray. And then it breaks, and your body on the bed breathes its last. This is a moment of danger for you, since your instinct might be to try to comfort your loved ones around the bed who are distressed at your material death. But you cannot help them now, since it is impossible for them to see or hear you! And if you try to get their attention to show them that you have survived, you will lower your own vibration so you will no longer be able to perceive those who have come to take you home. That is how we make ghosts! No, instead you must resolutely join your mother, your aunt and uncle, and your childhood pet dog, as together your vibrations rise even more.

(We might just note here that the silver cord is a faintly bluish energy cord that was first mentioned in the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes. It connects your material body to your inner energy body, viz: “Remember Him before the silver cord is broken and the golden bowl is crushed, the pitcher by the well is shattered and the wheel at the cistern is crushed; ⁷ then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it” [Eccl 12:6-7].)

The most amazing thing about entering the afterlife at your death is that you will find that it is right in the same place where you died! But it’s just at a slightly higher rate of vibration. So, dying is as simple as changing TV channels. As your joyous loved ones surround you and your childhood dog licks your hand, all of you together are entering a brief gray fog. You glance back at your deathbed scene, and you can see that it is all looking vague and vapory now. And as you watch, it simply disappears, and that gray fog briefly surrounds all of you. But ahead of you, things are growing brighter and brighter. And to your amazement, as the fog around you thins, what dawns ahead and around you is the most glorious possible whole new world.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.
– John Newton (1725–1807), from “Amazing Grace” (1779)

(This has been the first of three blog posts which together briefly explain the death process, what the afterlife is like, and how the greater reality works.)