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Going Home (Part Two)

Posted by Roberta Grimes • September 28, 2024 • 20 Comments
Afterlife Research

Most people live on a lonely island, lost in the middle of a foggy sea.
Most people long for another island,
One where they know they would like to be.
Bali Ha’i may call you, any night, any day.
In your heart you’ll hear it call you. Come away, come away.
Bali Ha’i will whisper on the wind of the sea.
Here am I, your special island! Come to me, come to me.
Your own special hopes, your own special dreams
Loom on the hillside and shine in the Streams!
If you try, you will find me where the sky meets the sea.
Here am I, your special island! Come to me, come to me.
Bali Ha’i, Bali Ha’i, Bali Ha’i!
– Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) & Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960), from “Bali Ha’i” (1949)

The quirkily lavish, oddly earthlike, and entirely solid-seeming reality that we enter at death, having just left a bland, familiar, and also solid-seeming earth-reality that is right in the very same place can be easily explained. As you and the few loved ones that you had thought were dead, but who are still quite alive after all and look to be amazingly less than thirty years old, step together into a patch of gray fog that invites you to leave the scene of your earthly death, you all are still giggling a little with the joy of being together again. You are stepping, but mostly it feels as if that fog is moving you right along. You look back, and you see that the room in which you have just died and all the people in it are growing vague and vapory; and then it all disappears.  And very soon, right ahead of you the fog begins to lift; and as it does, there appears all around you a scene of the most confounding beauty. At first, you think, Huh? How is this even possible? How can two solid realities exist in pretty much exactly the same place? But then you remember what Roberta and her spirit guide, Thomas, used to say about matter all the time. Earth-matter is somehow 99.9999999% just empty space!

And now, in this amazingly beautiful, new but somehow strangely familiar place where everything seems to be erroneously colored – perhaps red grass and a yellow river beneath a brilliant green-and-orange sky – you and your mom sit down together on a solid stone bench, while your childhood cat leaps into your lap. Now your new body is young and lovely, too! In the distance, you can see people playing with odd sorts of toy vehicles that never have been seen on earth, small one-seater planes and helicopters and an in-line two-seater car, none of which vehicles makes a sound or gives off exhaust because they all are powered by mind. There are advanced Beings nearby as well, very tall and wearing long dresses and various hats and insignias of rank, but none of them approaches you. They know that you have just died on earth and arrived with your loved ones in this arrival garden, and you need a little time to re-acclimate yourself. Yes, you are breathing, but that seems to be optional. The very air feels and tastes like flowers, like love, like everything beautiful. And wow, there even are snow-capped mountains in the distance!

Right about now, or even before now, your more limited earth-mind will re-merge back into the sixty to seventy percent of your vast, eternal mind that was left behind when you took that last incarnation, just completed. Suddenly you are incredibly brilliant again and you remember very many things, including old friends that you realize you had missed very much, and prominent past lifetimes. This moment oddly seems to be no particular time, and there is no sun, and while the sky is streaked with colors, there don’t seem to be clouds. At some point, whether it is a minute or days later in earth-terms is immaterial, an advanced Being or a few advanced Beings approach and sit down beside you, and you know that these are spirit guides of this lifetime that you have just completed. If you are vibrating at a higher level than the Level Three entrance level, now is when they will invite you to join them at that higher level. Truly, you have at last come home!

This has been a typical description of the sort of post-death trip to an arrival garden as it has happened from a normal North American death on earth at any time during the past century and a half. If you had died instead in England, or in China or Japan, or in Serbia or Australia, your post-death surroundings would have looked culturally different, but the process afterward that we are soon to describe would have been about the same. Sadly, though, it is much harder in recent years for those who are nearing death to know beforehand what is going to happen to them after they die. And one of the reasons for that, I am sorry to say, is all the people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs) over the past fifty years, and who are now convinced that they have been briefly stone-cold dead and been to the genuine afterlife and then miraculously come back to life, and that now they have big news to reveal to the world. It is too bad, really. NDEs are interesting phenomena, although they are of limited educational value. And actual death, or even near-death, NDEs certainly ARE NOT.

There are a few genuine scholars, of whom I am one, who have spent decades studying more than two hundred years of abundant and consistent true afterlife evidence. The best of this evidence was produced in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries via deep-trance mediumship, which is a very advanced and much more accurate form of mediumship than is mental mediumship. For reasons that we needn’t pause to mention now, it barely still exists today. Here are three fundamental facts which are true beyond question:

  • Death is always a one-way trip. What maintains the life of your material body during the frequent out-of-body experiences that all or nearly all of us enjoy during our lives on earth is an amazingly stretchy energy cord which was first named in the Bible “the silver cord” (Ecclesiastes 12:6), which connects our material body with our energy body. Near-death experiences are a type of out-of-body experience that generally happen in the astral plane, of which what we call the afterlife is a tiny part: we will be talking about the whole greater reality next week. But the silver cord cannot be reattached, so once yours breaks, then your material death must occur. Many of the more extensive near-death experiences will come to a place where the NDE-er will be warned that he or she must turn back because the afterlife area is just ahead, and if they continue forward, then their silver cord will break and they will die. No one who is alive on earth now and able to tell the story has ever actually died.
  • Normal deaths are in large part remarkably consistent experiences. The afterlife is surprisingly, although quirkily, earthlike, having been created by minds that have interacted with the earth. And soon after we first return to the afterlife, we are loved and supported through a very consistent love-based welcoming and decompression process that is designed to help us to make the most of what we have leaned during our time on earth. I will briefly describe that usual process just below. NDEs often contain some of these usual post-death elements, especially versions of the life review, but generally in NDEs these are mixed with odd dreamlike events.
  • “God”, “Satan,” and strange mythic creatures don’t appear in the genuine afterlife. For example, I have never seen any credible report of God appearing anywhere in physical form, and both Thomas and Jesus have told me that God never takes a physical form. Jesus does appear, but in His own places and for His own teaching purposes. There is no hell, yet it has been reported that as many as one in seven NDEs is in some way hellish. And our minds are unfortunately very powerful! People who trust that some famous NDE-er’s story is a real report of what they themselves can expect to experience when they die risk letting their adherence to that story lead their own actual death process far astray.

What is alarming to me is that many people who leave their bodies at death will nowadays go off-track for a time. For many, it will be just a few earth-days or earth-weeks of confusion; but for some, it will be much longer than that. Mikey Morgan and my Thomas both tell us that the percentage of people who today do not smoothly transition to the afterlife may be close to twenty-five percent of those who die on earth! Think about that! Almost one in four! Just between the exit from their body that we reported on last week, and the arrival in the afterlife that we have described this week, almost one-quarter of those who die on earth will now go off-track for days, or even for years. And some of them will go so far off-track that one-by-one they will have to be sought and found and rescued before they can be taken to that reception garden.

Is the recent broad fascination with NDEs to blame for this problem? Not for all of it, but I think that it likely contributes to some of it. I hear from people about NDEs all the time, and the people that I hear from assume without exception that NDEs depict actual deaths! That fact absolutely horrifies me. If you have fixed in your own mind the NDE dream that was experienced by Eben Alexander, or by another famous NDE-er, as if those people really had died and then come back to life, and if you let your expectation that his dream-experience during his NDE will be your actual post-death experience, and if that expectation then leads you astray at your death, you are going to have a really big problem. But if everyone who is going to die one day were simply programmed to stick with the deathbed visitors who are going to come to take them home, then many more people will likely make that simple journey home unscathed.

But let’s assume here that you have made your afterlife journey home with the help of your treasured loved ones. You have arrived! What generally happens after your brief rest with your loved ones in a reception garden is that, depending upon your mental state, you might spend some further time simply unwinding with your close family and friends, in a family compound perhaps. Or if you have arrived home mentally or physically damaged, you might spend as much as three or four earth-months in what are called the healing gardens, being nursed back to full spiritual health. It is this possibility, that you might have been judged to be in need of healing, which is the reason why we recommend that your loved ones still on earth generally wait for a few months after your death before trying to reach you through a mental medium.

Okay, so now you have been welcomed home by your spirit guide or guides, and by those closest to you from this most recent lifetime. You also have been healed, if necessary. Next will come two big events which can happen in either order, although the order given here seems to be the most usual one. You will have your Life Review, and you will Party Hearty!

  • Your Life Review can happen in many different ways and locations, from privately in a mimic of your earthly home, right through very publicly in a gothic stone castle before a three- to five-person council of elders. I have seen the review described as appearing instantly within a holographic orb, and running either forward or backward, with key people from your lifetime just ended right there beside you, or else with no one there other than your spirit guides. In any event, your guides seem always to be there. And in one way or another, almost right away, every significant event of your life just completed seems to be somehow reviewed again in what seems to be little more than an instant; although, as we have learned by now, in the afterlife there is no real time. And what is important is that we are experiencing every event of our lives from the perspective of the people that we most affected. We are then asked to forgive each one of those people. And then – hardest of all! – we are asked to forgive ourselves. And we must do that! Your guides and others will give you lots of help and support, but if you find that you really cannot forgive yourself for something that you did in this life, then your vibration will slow until you wind up in what Jesus called “the Outer Darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth” (see e.g. MT 8:12). So please learn prevenient forgiveness right now, for heaven’s sake, while it is very easy to learn and, yes, you can take it with you!
  • Your Welcome Home Party will be for you the time of your afterlife! And mostly because of all the people who might well show up. After all, remember that many of the greats are also in the afterlife, as are people you loved and still resonate with from as far back as your childhood of this past lifetime, and even loved ones from some of your most important previous lifetimes. These bodies lack internal organs and we don’t need to eat or drink in the afterlife, but since you are used to eating and drinking whenever things get festive, of course food and drink are going to be served. Whatever you consume will simply disappear. The joyous call is put out by mind that your welcome home party is going on now and all your special people will be invited, so for what might feel like forever in an eternal heavenly afternoon, they will keep on showing up! Even enemies of this lifetime, who will hug you as you realize that this enemy is a great eternal friend from two lifetimes back. And my goodness, your first girlfriend, a high school teacher, and now here comes John Lennon with his guitar, since you were a big John Lennon fan in life. He speaks quietly with your friends, and then he sits down by the fireplace and he sings Imagine. Of course, everyone knows that there is a laugh line coming, so even before John Lennon sings “Imagine there’s no Heaven,” everyone’s joyous laughter fills the room!

But might Jesus show up at your party, too? We recognize people in the afterlife by their personal spiritual energies, and not so much by the way they look. And our vastly treasured, so very precious Friend Jesus has personal energies so powerful that for the rest of us who are not nearly so spiritually advanced as He is, even to be very close to Him can be uncomfortable. So instead, before our party began, perhaps we  went with a few friends to visit Jesus on His riverbank, to receive His blessing. And wonderfully, He invited us to stay for a while to feed His fish with him, to pat his deer, and to tell Him how we are enjoying our having lately come home. And wow, then we did truly feel blessed indeed!

Someday you’ll see me floating in the sunshine,
My head sticking out from a low flying Cloud.
You’ll hear me call you,
Singing through the sunshine, sweet and near as can be.
Come to me, here am I, Come to me!
If you try, you’ll find me where the sky meets the sea.
Hear am I, your special island! Come to me, come to me.
Bali Ha’i, Bali Ha’i, Bali Ha’i!
Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) & Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960), from “Bali Ha’i” (1949)

(This is the second of four blog posts which together help to explain the death process, how the greater reality works, and what eternal life is like.)

 

 

Roberta Grimes
Latest posts by Roberta Grimes (see all)

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20 thoughts on “Going Home (Part Two)

  1. Thank you Roberta. Your words here and your podcasts always are a great comfort and even more importantly an inspiration to me to live and forgive more fully. Thank you!

  2. Dear Roberta,

    And here I vex over nasty letters from my HOA sent because I did not beg to plant a new flower before doing so, and warnings from the water authority that my yard is drinking too much…and and April’s tax calculations for the year. Ah, to leave all of that behind.

    I am curious why you attack NDE reporting? They tell of life reviews, which you also state are done. Technically, the NDE was termed NEAR Death, not Death. In my own research, which has reviewed over 6000 reports, what I’ve found most interesting is the description of going Out of Body, i.e., consciousness separating from the body such that it is able to travel any distance on Earth (the 2023 updated text by Titus, et.al., The Self Does not Die, documents 128 cases in which the accuracy of reports about what was seen at a distance from the body were verified as highly accurate). In addition, reports similar to OBEs associated with trauma or intense fright are made from deep meditation and lucid dreaming. From this its fair to conclude that our consciousness functions well, actually even better, when somewat detached from the physical body and brain. The features reporte from the OBE are generally consistent across individuals, such as time no longer running, that everything encountered owns consciouseness, that a store of knowledge about the world became available, and an intense feeling developed that everyone is a part of all that is, most especially a part of God.

    What happens after death remains a mystery to me, so I tune into what seers have said, such as Edgar Cayce. I do also enjoy leaning about your own descriptions as well.

    1. Jack H Hiller,

      Regarding Cayce, find/buy—“The Edgar Cayce Companion,” by Frejer;
      and study, “Return from Tomorrow,” by Ritchie, who was friend to Robert A. Monroe : “Journeys Out Of The Body.”

      During one of my many Vibration-Induced OBEs, I had been lodged
      half-in/half-out of my physical body, which sight of – by my Astral eyes – (( as I caught sight of my physical )) had caused me to feel so disgusted by my body (( I have a very attractive Hollywood-looking-type physical face/body ))—I had to fight an immediate impulse to VOMIT after gaining full-physical consciousness.

      My sense was—that being in this
      physical body is – in some way –
      a MISTAKE ! Or was I facing
      KARMIC accountability/
      punishment, which had repulsed
      me ?

      -Rick

      1. Well, my dear Rick, I understand that we all feel that way from an out of body perspective. Astral matter is far more beautiful and pure.

    2. Oh my dear and so very much beloved Jack, I am so sorry! I knew it would bother you that I was attacking NDEs here, and I apologize to you, my darling, but you should see the emails that I receive, and you would agonize, as I do, over the fact that in every single email that I ever get nowadays, people refer to me as an NDE expert. No matter how careful you are, my dear one. many others, including those who actually have NDEs, and including even IANDS itself, are not so careful. Now the great mass of humanity assumes that the only evidence of life after death is NDEs. When, technically NDEs really are no such thing!

      And to answer those who wonder what harm it might do to have people thinking that Eben Alexander actually died and came back to life, well, a lot of people have read his book. And now a great many more people go off-track after death. The human mind is both highly suggestible and highly powerful! And that is a very dangerous combination. Are these people who were programmed by NDEs to think that dying is like having an NDE not even seeing their deathbed visitors when they appear? Who knows? But when the percentage of those who go off-track at death is now almost one in four, my darling, you know that something is now going extremely wrong, and I am anguishing about not knowing what to do about it!!

      1. Good Morning, Robert.

        Thank you for the continued clarity of NDE’s.

        Love reading your posts on Sunday morning along with your books.

        Trying time for SW Floridians after our barrier islands were severely damaged by storm surge.

        1. Oh my very dear Susi, please stay safe! My whole extended family lived in beautiful Sarasota, Florida, from 2003-2005, and we loved it! We would have stayed there forevermore, if Hurricane Katrina had not chased us all the way to Texas. Our exquisite home, which I remember so fondly, which was within close walking distance of a white-sand beach and where my little grandson and I would pick oranges and grapefruits to squeeze in our very own orchard every morning, for sure is under water now. Oh my dear, please be safe!

          1. Love hearing and connecting with you, Roberta. Thank you for sharing your memories of Sarasota; such a magical place on earth.

            I do have a question and not sure if you will see this but the NDE’s are so prevalent, what do you believe are their purpose for those of us living?

            All the Best and Love in the World

            Susi

  3. I will forgive anyone for anything no matter how hard or how long it takes because Jesus asked us to. The hardest has been forgiving myself. When it’s my time to leave this earth and go home the first person I can’t wait to see is Jesus. I hope you’re not saying we might not see him when we cross over. I love my family, but I want to see Jesus more than anything or anyone.

    1. My dear beautiful Amy, I have myself seen that everyone who asks to meet Jesus when he or she returns home does indeed get to meet the genuine Jesus Himself! He loves you, my dear one, and He makes a special point of meeting everyone. But you first have to make sure that you will safely go all the way home! So just make sure that you do not for a moment believe that NDEs are anything more than vivid out-of-body experiences, and as your own exit from this lifetime approaches, look eagerly for the departed loved ones that you would most like to see appearing in the upper corners of the room. Even perhaps call for them in your mind! And yes, sometimes self-forgiveness is the hardest part of our life-review. You make a wonderful point. So learn prevenient forgiveness now, my darling, and I promise you that all will be well. 🙂

  4. I guess, a part 3 is going to be written as well? About what we will do once we are in that world? Of course, you can be anything you want to be, from a musician, to artist, architect, writer, gardener, skateboarder, tourist traveler to the universe, etc. But what about the highest level 7? What will we do there; is that world totally non-visible? Ethereal, just living in bliss feeling and experiencing the love of God with no need to do anything, to see anything? This is the most mysterious level I really don’t understand yet, het we are all destined to go there, as it is our birthright, even though apparently some decide to stay at a level below that and are happy enough with that; after all, we do have free will, always.

    1. Oh my dear and very much-beloved Adrian, when first I saw your comment, I wished that I could make some Twilight Zone music play about now! Just what WILL Part Three be about?? And might there even be a Part FOUR, do you suppose?? Oh my! Actually, we had planned for just three parts, but now that you mention it, I spent so much of the second part ranting against NDEs and expressing my horror at what a few prominent NDE-ers and IANDS itself have done, in trying to make the world think that this interesting but clearly very fringe phenomenon has anything to do with actual death, that there could easily be four parts. I will discuss it with The Boss.

      And speaking of my Thomas, as you point out, in the afterlife we can look as we like. I am his first guided subject, and as my life approaches my transition, he has become more relaxed about letting me know more about him. Such as, for example, how he chooses to look at home. He has never done that before, and now I know why! My beloved guide, my dear, is a sixth-level being. And like many at that level, when at home, he presents as very tall. Long robe. Hat and insignia of rank. Long hair with a formal curl on his shoulders. And just yesterday, as I was waking up, he allowed me to see that he was wearing, um, a pointed beard and a fu manchu mustache. I said, “Oh my god!” He said, “Not quite.”

  5. Thomas’s “Not quite” was perfect. A little snarky, but perfect nonetheless! You should tell Thomas that by keeping his shoulder to the wheel and maintaining a good attitude he’ll likely be up for a promotion! He deserves one IMHO.
    Your NDE discussion points are excellent.Years ago, I was also under the impression that NDE experiencers had actually been to the afterlife. Well, after some more reading, I learned otherwise. It’s that pesky silver cord issue as mentioned in Ecclesiastes! If that cord is intact you’re still bound to your earth body. It’s been written about quite a bit. Eben Alexander’s book ( and other sources such as the book “After” by Bruce Greyson, M.D.) note how close to death Dr. Alexander was based on earthly medical criteria. He’s still around in this plane of existence, so even though he was about as close to being truly dead as a person can get and still manage to recover, he (by definition) still had enough bodily cellular activity to maintain cellular membrane integrity and appropriate electrochemical gradients, subpar as they were, to keep him alive, barely. I’m pretty sure that our current level of physiologic monitoring may not have the sort of sensitivity that can pick up neuronal activity levels as low as Dr. Eben Alexander’s levels must have been. By modern criteria, he WAS “brain dead.” But just because the criteria for brain death are “modern” doesn’t make them 100% accurate. “Res ipsa loquitor.” (As an attorney, Roberta knows this Latin phrase forward and backward!)
    “The thing speaks for itself.”
    Nevertheless, while accounts of NDEs are interesting, I agree that they are not an accurate description of the afterlife.

    1. Oh, my sweet and wonderful Mark, “A bit snarky” first thing in the morning would define Thomas on some days pretty well! Actually, that is not the way he looks most of the time. Generally, when I see him clearly he is either with or fresh from having just visited Jesus, and then he is dressed like Jesus, very simple homespun belted robe or tunic and pants, only maybe six feet tall or less, and clean-shaven. This very fancily dressed and tall version of Thomas with the long hair and pointy beard and fu manchu mustache and even the round hat is what sixth-level beings typically look like. He likely had just come from some sort of meeting, and he thought it was time to show himself that way.

      And now Thomas points out that we really do have to talk about one more aspect of the afterlife, having spent so much effort talking about NDEs this week. So this is going to be a four-part, and not a three-apart series!

  6. Dearest Roberta,
    Firstly, I have looked into NDEs and the experiencers often indicate that there is a place up ahead they cannot get to, should they wish to return to earth life. So, even when a person is having their NDE experience, they are told – so far and no farther. Then of course they return to their earth life and tell us onlookers all about their experience.

    I remember years ago, even as I filed through various NDE accounts, that I wanted to know about ‘that place up ahead’. I felt that it was very significant somehow. Was this the true Heaven? I thought.. I felt the ‘hidden’ space was more important than NDEs themselves.

    Actually, I found NDEs to be mixed, often contradictory, accounts concerning the existence of heaven and hell. Some were outright judgmental, religious experiences while others were open-minded, free and loving ones.. The point is that there was no true consistency, as would be found in an actual, grounded place.

    So I took only a few things away with me, after studying NDE recounts:
    – Due to some evidential findings along the way, I deduced that the soul does exist out of the physical body.
    – There seem to be ‘connections’ to other souls/beings and new understandings available in the NDE state of consciousness.
    – There is an ‘astral place’ or dreamlike and highly creative potential that can be reached by the mind under certain, often physically traumatic conditions.

    So Roberta, while so many NDEs are inspiring, hopeful and contain loving, spiritual ideas I am happy to leave them alone. 🙏🏼🕊❣️

    PS: Now I see that the true afterlife, not the personally creative NDE account, is where our answers are found. There has to be firm ground, as it were, beyond the fertile creative astral space where NDEs are had.

    1. Ah, and my sweet beautiful Efrem, there are some quite wonderful journeys that we can take in the genuine afterlife! That is part of what I didn’t get to talk about this week, because I got so worked up about NDEs. So we will talk about those wonders next week!!

  7. I agree with you 100% about the near death experience. It is not the place where we will “live”, but we are left with the mystery of how Dr. Alexander saw a girl who he did not recognize only to find out much later that she was the sister he never knew he had. They were both adopted by different families as babies. Maybe it was meant to be. What better way is there to show everyone that the afterlife is real than to have a neurosurgeon survive against all odds and tell us what happened to him

    1. Oh my sweet beautiful Lola, all quite easily explained. When Eben Alexander, like all NDE-ers, was having his near-death experience, he was astral-traveling in the astral plane, which is where our eternal lives take place. So naturally, he gravitated there toward this relative of his. We will be talking about these phenomena over the next two weeks, so all of this should make more sense then.

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