Roberta Grimes

Going Off-Track at Death

Posted by Roberta Grimes • August 08, 2026 • 14 Comments
Book News, Death, Podcast, Understanding Reality

When the moon is in the Seventh House,
And Jupiter aligns with Mars,
Then peace will guide the planets,
And love will steer the stars!

 This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius,
Age of Aquarius, Aquarius, Aquarius!
Harmony and understanding,
Sympathy and trust, abounding.
No more falsehoods or derisions,
Golden living dreams of visions,
Mystic crystal revelation,
And the mind’s true liberation,
Aquarius, Aquarius, Aquarius!

 When the moon is in the Seventh House,
And Jupiter aligns with Mars,
Then peace will guide the planets,
And love will steer the stars!
– Galt MacDermot (1928-2018), Gerome Ragn (1935-1991), James Rado (1932-2022), from “Let the Sun Shine in” (1968)

We talked last week about the natural death that people have been able to expect for countless generations past, just as a commonplace. To help you put our conversation into perspective, I first began to study death back in the early Seventies, beginning with hundreds of wonderful old accounts of readings by deep-trance mediums that had been received around the turn of the twentieth century, and that I happened to find in Boston’s used-book stores. I must have come across those old books at first, I guess, by happenstance. I was just out of college and on my own, living cheaply with roommates and looking for something cheap to read, when I found those books that had been written by people who were studying and documenting the heyday of that much better form of mediumship that had been a sensation in Boston, New York, and London, back before and around the turn of the twentieth century, but that simply doesn’t happen now. Not since the advent of electric lighting. Because it takes too much time and patience to develop the kind of mediumship where the medium develops the ability to go into deep trance, and the medium’s guide then takes possession of the medium’s body, and with your (usually) newly-transitioned loved one right there with her, the guide can help your loved one answer your authenticating questions in deep and wonderful detail. Ah, those were the days!

That was back when I was afraid of death. It’s hard for me even to imagine feeling that way now! But I bought, and I avidly read every one of those books that I could find, and I was astounded to discover how similar to one another those accounts from the newly-dead all were. The easing of fears as death approached; the frequent near-recoveries just before death happened; the disappearance of entire bedroom walls when young people were dying, back in those days before antibiotics, so they could glimpse whole vast, gorgeous, unbelievable scenes of the place where they were going. Then the loved ones appearing in the upper corners of the room; and so on and on. Back then, I read many hundreds of individual descriptions of the dying process that had been received from people who had lately made that journey home, as I was first doing research and convincing myself that our universal human death is a natural transition to a consistent and believable, rather earth-like, and always love-drenched, afterlife. The Bible’s Old Testament tells us that we are formed of a material body from the matter of the earth, and a separate life element from God (see Genesis 2:7), which two parts will separate again at death. The material body then returns to the ground, and the spirit, the life element, returns to God (Ecclesiastes 12:7). And this in fact is just what happens.

It took me two, or perhaps three years of extreme post-college immersion in old books about turn-of-the-century mediums’ readings, and whatever else I could find about death, to at last sit back, sigh, and give up. I had begun that journey as a skeptic by nature. And this was The Big One, after all; I was not going to be fooled where an afterlife was concerned! I mean, really:  life extends after death? What were the odds likely to be about that? But after I had read what I reckoned then were more than two hundred different accounts of individual deaths that had been received in New York, Boston, and southern England, no duplicates, of passings that had happened over the course of maybe fifty years’ time, I had to admit finally that I had proven to myself that the afterlife absolutely had to be real. There was no question of believing in it any longer, but I was certain now that it actually was true. That whole experience had been like reading the accounts of two hundred people’s trips to, maybe, Fiji, for heaven’s sake! All the different accounts I had read had had their own individual idiosyncrasies, of course; but when I put them all together, they were all reporting the same basic after-death process, and the same big and little afterlife details. The same kinds of clothing, the same pastimes, the same scenery, the same everything. I never found even a single account that was an outlier; not even one account where, for example, there were harps and a throne room, or where people lived on clouds and wore wings. I am a skeptic, but I am also a realist. So I knew before I reached the age of thirty that, yes, there is an afterlife, and it seems to be both universal and remarkably earthlike, with actually even a few endearingly silly details.

One thing that struck me from the start was that the afterlife seemed not to be religious, although it definitely was spiritually well-ordered. Others who had studied the afterlife before me had named it all the astral plane, borrowing that term from Greek philosophy; and had learned that it is many-layered, based upon a love-gradient. Fascinating. And perhaps what most had struck me as my endless curiosity was pulling me into  making afterlife research my lifelong, all-consuming hobby is how much each Being is deeply respected, even treasured, as we separately voyage through our eternal existences. We don’t really respect the other eight billion people on earth with us now very much, to be frank. That is just too big a number! But there are many, many more of us who are not living on the earth right now, who are also part of the one great Mind, and who are, with us, as individually precious and unique as snowflakes, each of us is eternal and infinitely best-beloved. Now, please try to get your mind around that!

We have always known that for people to return home after their spirit bodies leave their material bodies and their silver cord breaks so their material bodies die – what they do at that moment is their own choice.  We think of their completing the natural process and rejoining long-lost family and friends is what everyone is going to want to do when they die. But for between five and something over twenty percent of those who begin the natural death process, their progression to the afterlife after their silver cord breaks is not immediate. People generally go off-track at death for one or more of these reasons:

• Becoming earthbound. This is a catchall category for saying that you just didn’t stick with your deathbed visitors when they tried to take you home. What usually happens when people don’t accompany their visitors back into the afterlife area is that they stay near where they have died, and they mindlessly resume some repetitive task. This is why, for example, you might find some old New England house where a shade of a woman is often seen walking through a wall where a door used to be, long ago.
• Religious terror. Some hospice workers tell us that the people most fearful at death are ardent Christians. These poor folks will tell those attending them that they haven’t been good enough to make it to heaven, and they are terrified of going to hell. Steeped in fear as they are, some who find themselves alive after death will decide that it seems safer to just stay put.
• Having been taught to fear the normal death process. Some fundamentalist Christian preachers teach their flocks to fear and avoid at death anything that doesn’t comport with whatever their own religion teaches. When the concept of deathbed visitors coming to take people to the afterlife first entered general public awareness in the early part of the last century, some preachers began to tell their congregations that what might seem to be dead relatives are actually demons sent to lure them to hell. Dying people steeped in fears like these will refuse all contact with their dead loved ones, so many of them will end up earthbound.
• Being too certain about what comes after death. There are thought-form places to which the most closed-minded people gravitate before they can complete their transitions, the most common of which reportedly are clouds with St. Peter’s Gates and a village surrounding a steepled church. That great astral traveler of our own generation, Bob Monroe, called these places “hollow heavens.” They are bo-o-oring, so those led astray by them are generally happy to be rescued.
• Believing we are evil enough to go straight to hell. There is at least one thought-form hell into which some people’s fears might put them before they can manage to make it home. It’s a “hollow hell,” if you will. Those whose anxieties put them there generally call for help, and at once they are out of that illusion and safe with upper-level beings who can help them to finish their journey.
• Being certain that death is extinction. Some people expect to blink out like a light. They are sure they will experience nothing after death, so nothing is just what they get! They might wander alone in a fog of nothing for eons.
• Being begged by loved ones not to die. A medium visiting an old hospital was drawn to a section of it that was being rehabilitated, and there she found a forlorn little boy still lying in his hospital bed. It was estimated that he had died almost a century before. The last thing his distraught mother had said to him was, “Don’t go until I get back! Wait for me!” And there he was, still waiting. The kindest thing we can do for the dying is to give them permission to let go!
• Being distracted by the grief of bedside mourners. Newly-dead people are as clueless about what to do next once their silver cord snaps and their bodies die as are infants fresh from the birth canal. Especially when they are dying young or unexpectedly, they can be so alarmed to see the sudden distress of their loved ones as their bodies die that they will often try to comfort these people they love. Doing this is pointless, since no one can see or hear them now; and these efforts can lower the newly-dead person’s spiritual vibration to the point where he or she can no longer see and follow those deathbed visitors. Thereupon, the newly-dead person can become stuck in place and outside of time until eventually rescuers come.
• Being addicted to anything. Whether it’s alcohol, drugs, sex, or something else, being addicted to anything is a terrible idea! Many addicts will refuse to transition. No one can see them now, so this is their big chance to finally get their fill. It’s playtime! All they need is a body. So they will hang around bars and try to possess living drunks, or in alleys and try to possess living addicts. Reportedly, there even are great pig-piles of naked discarnates wearing astral bodies in various astral spots, all desperately trying to have sex with one another, but never successfully managing it.
• Being killed in battle. They are in the thick of it, perhaps running across a battlefield, when a bullet kills their body. And they keep right on running! During the two World Wars, some British mediums were singled out by discarnate rescuers as being best able to help these deluded beings to realize that they had died in battle, and to help them then to spot the dead loved ones who had been trying to get their attention so they could take them home.
• Being executed. I am adamantly against capital punishment. It is the worst kind of pollution there is! Someone is killed at what is not a planned exit point from this lifetime, and at the height of the worst possible negative emotions, including rage and fear, so he is extremely likely to range free as a deeply negative earthbound being who is now bent on terrible mischief. Penal executions are the spiritual equivalent of pouring gallons of arsenic into our public drinking water! Although efforts will be made to rescue these people, some will remain earthbound and dangerous for a very long time. I think it likely that many of the deeply evil, and therefore hopelessly weak but nevertheless troublesome Shadow Men that lurk in dark places trying to scare people are in fact the shades of executed criminals.
• Preferring to be here rather than there. My wonderful Sixth-Level communicator friend, Mikey Morgan, who is a regular guest on my Seek Reality podcast, considers this to be a particular problem. The death process at our chosen exit points generally includes making our earth-bodies decrepit, after which our beloved dead appear to us in healthy new bodies. Of course, most of us will want to join them! I have never personally heard of anyone actually refusing to go with deathbed visitors because she preferred to stick around here, except for my own always willful and highly gregarious mother, who actually did refuse to leave when she was on her deathbed at about her age 88. Eventually, she was taken in her sleep at the age of 93. Problem solved!

Avoiding going off-track is easy! Simply put, you will be fine if you will:

1. Raise your personal consciousness vibration. The more loving and less fearful we are, the easier and safer our death process will be. And closely following the Gospel teachings of Jesus is the most effective way to make rapid spiritual progress.
2. Learn the truth. Death is less scary when we know in general terms what to expect, but it is important that we not become so fixed on details of what the evidence tells us that we might inadvertently create a Summerland hollow-heaven illusion of our own. Just happily know that you are going home and all is well, and you will be fine!
3. Remain open-minded. The best way to approach our deaths is with nothing more than the certainty that we are about to enjoy an easy and happy homecoming. Then let it unfold!
4. Ignore your living mourners until after you have completed your transition. Once you have returned home, there will be many things you can do to reassure and comfort them.
5. Trust and follow your death-bed visitors. The natural death process is a passage back from this illusion to the greater reality that is our eternal home. And the trip will be quick and easy if we will just relax, trust, love, and let it happen!

A very popular guest on my thirteen-year-old weekly Seek Reality podcast is Father Nathan Castle. Father Nathan is a beautiful and very loving priest who was recruited many years ago by Spirit to do rescue work for people who had died traumatically and gone off-track at death, but who now felt more ready for the afterlife. Father Nathan’s books about these rescue cases of his are fascinating, and really delightful to read! Both he and Mikey Morgan, another popular and wonderful Seek Reality guest who is a Sixth-Level being and answers listeners’ afterlife questions from that level of understanding, tell us that the rescue work for those who are not yet quite back home is always ongoing, and almost everyone who goes off-track at death is soon rescued. For my part, my dear ones, I have of late been informally asking random people questions about their own knowledge and comfort concerning the next stage of life. What do they know about death? Are they at all afraid to die? And beyond my little circle of afterlife experts and instructors, all of whom of course know what is going on, and a few people who have taken courses that I’ve taught, I am sorry to say that I cannot find anyone who really more than believes or hopes that life goes on beyond death. Which is a terrible, a really shocking fact! Think of their anxieties, and their entirely unnecessary middle-of-the-night worries. My Thomas agrees with me. So, we are going to see whether we can figure out what we might be able to do to help to ease everybody’s fears….

When the moon is in the Seventh House,
And Jupiter aligns with Mars,
Then peace will guide the planets,
And love will steer the stars!
– Galt MacDermot (1928-2018), Gerome Ragn (1935-1991), James Rado (1932-2022), from “Let the Sun Shine in” (1968)

 

 

(Many photos are from Vecteezy.com)