Amicus Mortis Posts
March 4, 2019 /

Finding meaning in death August 24, 2017

It seems to me that in Western society, people generally, for whatever reason, find it difficult to come to terms with death, either their own, those close to them, or those around them.  What does it mean to die?  And why should we or would we, even think on such things?  Would finding meaning in death help us understand why we’re alive, what we’re living for, and how we might live our embodied lives differently?  And could this sense of meaning then revision not only how we might live our lives but conceptualise our purpose and help us think about what we’re living for?

Perhaps in humanity’s past people understood why they were alive much better than what we do today.  For example, the ancient Egyptians quite literally lived to die.  The Egyptian Book of the Dead, or rather the English translation of “yeret hur” Coming Forth by Day (its correct name) reveals a sophisticated spiritual belief-system and world-view which suggests that death was very much a part of the social fabric of life, (not just evidenced by the fact that the wealthy spent years building and decorating elaborate tombs well before their death).

To me this suggests a certain comfortability not only with death but with the afterlife – these people knew that they lived beyond death, they knew that how they lived their lives had an influence in shaping their spiritual destiny, and they prepared themselves for this destiny.  In reading the Coffin Texts one can sense that death was incorporated into life and that it was understood, and what’s more, that that understanding had its rightful place in the culture and society; death was embraced in a manner which was not only quite ordinary, but because it was an important transitory event.

Reflecting on this, it appears that our embodied lives are really only a means of preparation for something far more significant.  How do we understand this significance?  What is this significance?  Why aren’t we taught about this significance?

I have thought about death all my life; readers of this blog and those who know me can attest to this.  I was socialised into it as a child and that socialisation has never stopped, something which has made me realise how imperative it is that we do think about death as much as we think about life.  Elliott states it beautifully, “coming to terms with death is a lifetime’s work” as does Angela Tilby. “What is needed here is praeparatio mortis: preparation for death, a spiritual education in coming to terms with our mortality.  This is a task not for the last weeks of life – It is often too late by then …”.

Elliott, H. (2011). Moving beyond the medical model. Journal of holistic healthcare. Vol. 8, Issue 1, May.

Tilby, A. (2011). BBC Radio 4, Thought for the Day, 17 February.
March 4, 2019 /

Meditating on death in the midst of life July 29, 2017

Our first Death Café, after a hiatus of some six months, occurred shortly after the death of Jon Underwood, the iconic founder of the Death Café social enterprise.

As I sat listening to the conversation, I couldn’t help but reflect on this remarkable man, and that how without him what was taking place today, at this very minute, would never have occurred. He was a visionary who pioneered the community death conversation forum and death literate movement; an informal, agenda-free space for people to come together to have conversations about death-related issues. He was also provocative in that he confronted what for many people in the West is a difficult concept; the meaning of their mortality. In social research terms, we can define this as, amongst other things, community development, community capacity building, and the fostering or strengthening of individual resilience.

But Jon was simpler than that. His objective was and always will be, to “increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives”. How we all do this is uniquely individual, yet there is one thing I can be sure of, new trains of thought were generated in the minds of all those who have ever attended a Death Café I’ve had the pleasure to facilitate. And that is thanks to Jon, the first death activist and advocate I’ve had the pleasure and privilege to know.

As always, people came from all walks of life and brought with them varied life experiences, belief systems, and ways of being in the world. Being a palliative care nurse, one attendee “ponders death a lot”, while a medium gently observes, “I rely on death in order to do my work”. Another is curious and wants to know what Death Café is all about, another has friends with cancer which in turn make her think about her own death, and one works in pastoral care.

Topics ranged from the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill, to palliative sedation and end-of-life or terminal restlessness. “What’s going on?” I wondered, “We don’t know” was the response. The impact of deathbed visions on the dying and their carers was another topic which was explored. How is it possible that these things occur, and how merciful is it that they do. We also explored a quote by E M Forster, American essayist and novelist; “Death destroys a man, the idea of death saves him”.

It is a provocative statement, and one, I feel, intended by the author to evoke a response, to make the reader or listener consider the contradiction in the statement, and to invite us all into a relationship with death in order that we might live our lives a little better, a little more meaningfully, and to work toward our spiritual destiny perhaps a little more consciously.

Thank you Jon, without you, none of this would have been possible.
March 4, 2019 /

The sleeper must awaken June 11, 2017

Dune, a science fiction novel written by American author Frank Herbert, was originally published in 1965. In 1984 it was released at the cinema to a worldwide audience. The statement, “The sleeper must awaken” is part of a conversation which takes place during a scene featuring two of the main characters, Duke Leto Atreides and Paul Atreides, his son.

It is the eve of what eventuates into death, betrayal and an epic battle for control of a valuable resource found only on the desert planet Arrakis. The two are standing on a rampart of sorts talking about the future when turning toward his son the Duke says, “Without change, something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”

I’m reminded of this because in May I joined a Work exercise group and as it so happened, the fact that I am psychologically asleep (in the Work sense) was brought home to me yet again, vividly and starkly, as was the reality of the human condition, and in particular of my condition as a member of the human race. Charles Tart captures it as follows:

We are dreaming. We are entranced. We are automatized.
We are caught in illusions while thinking we are perceiving reality …
We need to awaken to reality, the reality of the problems
caused by our fragmented selves, so we can discover our deeper selves and the reality of our
world, undistorted by our entranced condition.

Charles Tart, Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential, 1987.

In attempting to undertake the exercise I learnt a valuable lesson; I had to be awake while being awake. The task of completing the exercise served as a two-way mirror which enabled me to see aspects of the Sleep State and to experience the reality of the profoundly blinding nature of what the Sleep State is, of how its cloying nature seduces the mind and obscures the vision without our even being aware of it.

It seems to me that Tart has captured the intensity and sense of urgency that accompanies all work on oneself – death constantly stalks us and we never know when or how it will strike. Will we die without having awoken to the possibilities of our soul growth and evolution, in the Work sense, or will we die as robotic automatons, always thinking we’re awake yet never realising we are not.

 
March 4, 2019 /

Rebirth Sufi style May 19, 2017

Once upon a time the fishes of a certain river took counsel together and said, “They tell us that our life and being is from the water, but we have never seen water, and know not what it is.”  Then some said, “There dwells in the sea a very wise fish who knows all things.  Let us journey to him and learn what water is.”

They made the journey, found the wise fish, and made their request.  He replied:

O ye who seek to solve the knot!

Ye live in God, yet know him not.

Ye sit upon the river’s brink,

Yet crave in vain a drop to drink.

Ye dwell beside a countless store

Yet perish hungry at the door.

They thanked him and said, “Forasmuch as you have shown us what water is not, we now know perfectly what it is”, and they returned home satisfied.

[Sufi teaching story, source unknown.]
February 25, 2019 /

Reflections of a year of living and dying December 18, 2016

” ‘Transpersonal’ refers to an interdisciplinary approach, where the
purpose of assimilating scientific, historical, psychological, and spiritual
concepts is to create a broader, more inclusive knowing.  
Here is a larger context that acknowledges multi-layered levels of
consciousness that can transcend mere personal identity.  
It is an expanding and encompassing view of humankind, which addresses
body, mind, spirit, and the dimensions of human nature.”

Mary Anne Sanders, Nearing Death Awareness, 2007.

I dedicate the last month of the year to reflection and remembrance.  Reflection regarding how well I’ve lived my life during the preceding months, and remembrance of the presence of God in my being (although this is something not just relegated to the 12th month).  Living as I and many others do, as a world within a world, brings many challenges and this year has been no different.

Health and wellbeing hurdles, unexpected twists and turns professionally and privately, personal insights, the letting go of certain worldly attachments (not an easy thing to do), Death Cafe (always a joy), a return to academic study (the promise of new things), and the learning of the art of surrender. At times I felt overwhelmed by that which the behaviour of others revealed to me, always mindful though of my own psychological buffers and ‘blind spots’.  At times, and because of the ever-present maliciousness and unkindness of others, and the burden of crushing responsibilities, I reached out for help and was able to endure the torment and the horror of it all.

I’m particularly reminded of a quote by Carl Jung because it seems to capture the essence of what has been an intense period of emotional, psychological and spiritual growth, “The more veiled becomes the outside world, steadily losing in colour, tone, and passions, the more urgently the inner world calls us” (cited in Jacobi, The Psychology of C. G. Jung. An Introduction with Illustrations, 1962, p. 149).  There were many times when I asked myself, “Surely there’s more to life than this?”  Of course I know there is, but what I realised was that I wasn’t making enough effort to answer that question.

It is difficult to be in the world, but not of it.  To be engaged externally with a busy life and to be of use to others is necessary, however this year has taught me that its just as important to be of use to oneself as it is to others.  The sleep state is pervasive, suffocating, alluring.  At times it is so subtle that we’re hardly even aware of its presence in our lives, until something suddenly jolts us into a momentary state of wakefulness, but then that too passess, and we succumb without even realising it, to sleep.

I’ve been caught up with the groundswell of change regarding attitudes toward death.  This is not necessarily negative because it seems that when we think about our mortality we think about how meaningfully we’ve lived our lives.  Perhaps, as a result, we make changes.  Perhaps we become kinder to others, less judgemental, and less harsh in our behaviour toward them.  Perhaps we ask ourselves, or begin to ponder, those ‘big’ questions; “Why was I born?”, “What am I doing here?”, “What happens when I die?”, or the big one for me, “Surely there’s more to life than this?”.

It has been a year of living and dying for many people in the world.  Some have lived for values or ideals, or for a purpose, while others have died honouring them.  Some have lived with hope, while others have died hopeless, perhaps in despair and anguish. Some have had their lives taken from them, either intentionally by their own hand or that of another, or unintentionally due to accident or an ‘act of God’.  And through it all the universe in all its majesty has been witness; planets and moons have orbited, stars have been born and died, and life has continued unabated in all its wonder.  And ever so slightly, the outside world lost a little of its colour, tone and passions, and ever more increasingly, the inner world called.
February 25, 2019 /

Death destroys a man … November 15, 2016

“As it is, we must hold to other things, because Death is coming. 
I love death – not morbidly, but because He explains. 
He shows me the emptiness of Money.
Death and Money are the eternal foes.  Not Death and Life …
Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him. 
Behind the coffins and the skeletons that stay the vulgar mind, lies something so immense
that all that is great in us responds to it.”

E.M. Forster, Howards End, 2002.

There is much ado these days about coffins and skeletons, and using death-related insignia for cause and effect in promoting death awareness, which I too occasionally get caught up in, but when I find that happening I bring to mind that one sentence from Forsters text, “Behind the coffins and the skeletons that stay the vulgar mind, lies something so immense that all that is great in us responds to it.”

These are words laden with meaning and complexity, and worth pondering.  What is it that Forster is referring to?  What is that immensity that all that is great in us responds to?  What lays beyond the vulgar mind, which is all too often satisfied with the drossy excitement of life?  The drama of it? The ‘wow’ of it?  The ephemeral shallowness of it?

Eastern teachings tell us that the material world, and we ourselves, are impermanent, and that the only permanence is change.  Yet Eastern teachings also tell us that this can be overcome, that something in us can become permanent, that something in us can transcend this state of affairs.  How do we understand ‘permanence’?  What is ‘permanent’?  And how can we become something other than what and how we know ourselves to be.

Does it have something to do with Forster’s ‘immensity’?  And is there something innately in us, buried deeply within, slumbering perhaps, that is waiting for us to acknowledge its presence?  Could it be that Forster’s immensity calls to us and yearns for us, yet at the same time is denied by us?

And in the solitude of silence the answer comes.
February 25, 2019 /

Deathbed Phenomena September 11, 2016

“Dying is an exquisitely individual process and there is no way to change or fully
understand the experience, one must go through it alone. 
At the same time, it is the most social of all experiences.  It intimately involves and draws
upon the love, thought, feelings and states of those who are to remain on earth,
and it intimately involves  the vast love, affection and shared life and spirituality of the next world.  There is a subtle co-mingling of both worlds, without any sense of competition: only
a sense of total sharing  prevails and this sometimes moves one to profound joyful tears, and even, paradoxically, to bitter tears on rare occasions.”

Philip W. Groves, The Process of Transition, The Philip W. Groves Centre, 1999.

As readers of this blog know, my interest in other-worldly non-material phenomena (or that which I term ‘spiritual’ phenomena as opposed to material and ‘worldly’ phenomena), is grounded in life experience and my previously completed Social Work doctoral research; a qualitative study which explored after-death contact between the bereaved and the deceased (Knight, 2011).

In conjunction with completing that research, an online  Midwifing Death (Barbato, 2015) course in 2015 and presently, the influence of my current enrolment in a Masters Social Work qualifying degree, my interest has turned toward other-worldly phenomena that the dying experience in an end-of-life context, vicariously termed ‘deathbed phenomena’. The term deathbed phenomena is adopted from Brayne et al, in that “death may be heralded by deathbed phenomena such as visions that comfort the dying and prepare them spiritually for death” (2006, p. 17).

The end-of-life can be contextualized as a period of transition from one way of life to another, from living life in the flesh, to, depending on one’s spiritual belief-system and/or sociocultural world-view, living life in a transformed state or just ceasing to exist. Depending on the nature of the event of dying and the type of death trajectory, this period can be deeply and profoundly distressing, destabilising and/or psychosocially and psychospiritually transformative for the dying individual, those who care for them, and their family and friends.

Dying, and the potentiality of impending death, can catapult the individual into an existential crisis of meaning, and it is within this often turbulent and frightening context, and frequently “on the threshold of death” (Greyson, 1994, p. 460) that deathbed phenomena such as deathbed visions, dreams and coincidences, deathbed escorts, and nearing death awareness experiences are widely reported (Alvardo, 2006; Barbato et al, 1999; Corliss, 2014; Fenwick & Fenwick, 2008: Greyson, 1994; MacConville & McQuillan, 2010; Stafford Betty, 2006).  Similarly reported is the beneficent impact such experiences have in providing comfort and security for the dying and for dispelling death-fears.

Metaphorically speaking, deathbed phenomena have a lot to say.  It tells us that there are those who have gone before us who continue to love and care for us as we do them.  It tells us that existence doesn’t end, it just changes.  It tells us that something deeply profound is at work which is operating beyond the confines of the empirical universe and the dominant materialistic, and reductionist, scientific paradigm.

The feeling of an experience confirms its reality and none more so than the feelings that accompany other-worldly phenomena such as this.  In the face of at times overwhelming fear, despair and uncertainty, these phenomena engender a sense of calm and peace. According to hospice Social Worker J Scott Janssen, “near-death experiences, deathbed visions, and after-death communication are phenomena that social workers in end-of-life settings say clients and their families encounter.  Knowing how to respond is the challenge” (Janssen, 2015, “Deathbed Phenomena in Hospice Care: The Social Work Response”, 2015).

Alvarado, C. S. (2006). Neglected Near-Death Phenomena. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 24(3), 131-151).

Barbato, M., Blunden, C., Reid, K., Irwin, H. & Rodriguez, P. (1999). Parapsychological phenomena near the time of death.  Journal of Palliative Care, 15(2), 30-37.

Barbato, M. (2015). Midwifing Death Correspondence Course (MDCC), online course, midwifingdeath.com.au/index.html

Brayne, S., Farnham, C., & Fenwick, P. (2006) Deathbed phenomena and their effect on a palliative care team: a pilot study. American Journal of Hospice & Palliative Medicine 23(1):17-24.

Corliss, I. B. (2014). Transitions: Exploring the Frontier, OMEGA, 70(1), 57-65.

Fenwick, P. & Fenwick, E. (2008). The Art of Dying: A Journey to Elsewhere. London, England: Continuum

Greyson, B. (1994). Near-death experiences. In R. Corsini (Ed.), The encyclopaedia of psychology (pp. 460-462). New York, America: Wiley.

Groves, P. W. (1999). The Process of Transition. Balgowlah, Sydney, Australia: The Philip W. Groves Centre.

Janssen, J. S. (2015). Deathbed Phenomena in Hospice Care: The Social Work Response. Social Work Today,15(6), 26.  Retrieved from http://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/111715p26.shtml

Knight, M. (2011). Ways of Being: The alchemy of bereavement and communiqué (Doctoral thesis, the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia). Available: http://hdl.handle.net/2123/13764

MacConville, U. & McQuillan, R. (2010).  Capturing the invisible: exploring Deathbed Experiences in Irish Palliative Care. The Irish Times: Going into the light. Available from: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/going-into-the-light-1.579411

Stafford Betty, L.  (2006). Are they hallucinations or are they real?  The spirituality of deathbed and near-death visions, OMEGA, 53(1-2), 37-49.
February 25, 2019 /

Which way? August 12, 2016

“What is needed here is preparatio mortis: preparation for death, a spiritual education in coming to terms with our mortality.  This is a task not for the last weeks of life – It is often too late by then …”

Angela Tilby, (2011). BBC Radio 4, Thought for the Day, 17 February.

For a long time I’ve been in a quandary about something.  Most people who know me know of my interest in death, dying and the afterlife, but few know about my experience of being a student in an esoteric Christian School for a number of years.  This period of my life, in conjunction with the other-worldly experiences which began in my childhood, has had a profound and ongoing impact in shaping my way of being in the world and my relationship with what I term Higher Life, the Fourth Way, and Beyond the Fourth Way (all of which has been documented in a book I was asked to write when I was a student of the School).

Currently, there is a growing global social movement to reclaim our dying and death, to wrest it from the medicalised model and reductionist framework which has become so entrenched in the West, and to face our mortality with acceptance and fortitude.  In fact, over the last few years a whole new industry has sprung up in response to our disenfranchisement with death and dying.  The aim and intention of this industry is to enable us to take charge of the type of death we want including how, where and by whose hands we want to die, and what type of funeral or burial we might want.  Websites and blogs have sprung up on the world-wide web, national and international workshops and conferences are offered, journal articles are published and organisations and related events devoted to raising death-awareness and dispelling death fears populate social media and the marketplace.

While there is an intense focus on becoming ‘death literate’ (Noonan et al, 2016)[2] there are other quiet voices emphasising something else; the importance of what happens after death, preparing for our afterlife, and understanding why we’re born at all.  There is a purpose to our birth, as there is to our life, as there is to our death, the physical event of which is the door through which we pass from embodied life into disembodied life.  While we need to think about our death, we also need, as Tilby so eloquently puts it, a spiritual education prior to our death.  It seems to me that increasing emphasis is being placed on the event of our dying, but precious little emphasis being devoted to the spiritual purpose of our life.

We all have different ways of being in the world and understanding the spiritual nature of the universe, and I’m no different.  Being heavily influenced by the events of my childhood, (which if truth be told are not that uncommon), and the ongoing other-worldly or psychospiritual events which have not only populated my life but served to educate me, I am in no doubt that life continues after death, and that not only is death simply ‘deathless existence’ (Groves, 1998) but that ‘our sense of reality depends upon the way we know things’ (Groves, 1998) [3].  But there is more to it than this, much more.  I rather like the following Sufi teaching story, which illustrates this point:

Once upon a time the fishes of a certain river took counsel together and said, “They tell us that our life and being is from the water, but we have never seen water, and know not what it is”. 

Then some said, “There dwells in the sea a very wise fish who knows all things.  Let us journey to him and learn what water is”.  They made the journey, found the wise fish, and made their request.  He replied:

Oh ye who seek to solve the knot!

Ye live in God, yet know him not.

Ye sit upon the river’s brink,

Yet crave in vain a drop to drink.

Ye dwell beside a countless store

Yet perish hungry at the door.

They thanked him and said, “Forasmuch as you have shown us what water is not, we now know perfectly what it is”, and they returned home satisfied.

It seems to me, that we are the fish.

Noonan, K., Horsfall, D., Leonard, R. & Rosenberg, J. (2016) Developing death literacy, Progress in Palliative Care, 24:1, 31-35, doi: 10.1080/09699260.2015.1103498

Groves, P. (1998).  Consciousness as a Spectrum. 1998 Lecture Series. The Philip W. Groves Centre: Author.

 
February 25, 2019 /

Death Literacy July 15, 2016

Although ‘death literacy’ appears to be gaining ground, it seems to me that most people don’t really think about death all that much.

Do we all know we’ll die?  Does the idea of death, as a colleague of mine of posted in an online forum some time ago, lie in the back of our minds?  I think it does, but why?  Why is it there?  Why isn’t it in the front of our minds? Why is it that we often don’t engage with death or think about death until it touches us personally?  And why is it that generally, it is such an event that makes us notice death, makes us pay attention to it, not in a morbid way but in a way that enriches how we live our lives and shapes what we are living for?

Readers of this blog would be familiar with my childhood experiences, as they would my research, which explores after-death contact.  The literature terms these experiences “extraordinary” but for me they are ordinary and simply a part of life. When I was a child I first became aware of the fact that when people ‘died’ they didn’t really die because I could see them and interact with them.  But as I grew older, the vivacity of those and other non-ordinary experiences dimmed a little.  As I found my place in the world, responsibilities and duties gradually overshadowed the vividness and clarity of the world I experienced as a child.

On a far grander scale, perhaps humanity’s history is reflective of this, and perhaps in the growth of that history death, over time, has been forgotten, has fallen away from the front of the collective mind so to speak, so that now it sits in its recesses only to be seen or remembered when life, through certain events, calls us to remember.  It doesn’t seem to be a part of the psyche of the culture I live in, which is Western (a fact I have always found rather peculiar).  In contrast (for example), the ancient Egyptians quite literally lived to die.  The Egyptian Book of the Dead, or rather the English translation of “Yeret hur”, Coming Forth by Day (its correct name) reveals a sophisticated spiritual belief-system and world view which suggests that death was very much a part of the social fabric of life, (not just evidenced by the fact that the wealthy spent years building and decorating elaborate tombs well before their death).

To me this suggests a certain comfortability not only with death but with the afterlife – these people knew that they lived beyond death, they prepared for it.  Do we? I have a sense that death was once incorporated into life and understood, and that understanding had its rightful place in the culture and society; death was embraced in a manner quite ordinary.

Perhaps in humanity’s past people understood why they were alive much better than we do today.  I have found that often a death-related event turns a person inward.  They become contemplative, they ask meaningful questions and a psychospiritual shift appears to occur within them.  I have always felt that death was somehow intimately linked to the intrinsic spirituality of an individual.  In what state do we want to die?  In what state do I want to die?  How do we want to enter the spiritual universe?  How do I want to enter the spiritual universe?  What do we want to take with us?  What do I want to take with me?

Most people rarely think about death, and in fact to do so labels the individual “morbid”.  I have thought about death all my life.  I was socialised into it as a child and that socialisation has never stopped, if anything it has made me realise how imperative it is that we think about death as much as we think about life.  Elliott states it beautifully in writing, “Coming to terms with death is a lifetime’s work” as does Angela Tilby. “What is needed here is praeparatio mortis: preparation for death, a spiritual education in coming to terms with our mortality.  This is a task not for the last weeks of life – It is often too late by then …”.

Elliott, H. (2011). Moving beyond the medical model. Journal of holistic healthcare. Vol. 8, Issue 1, May.

Tilby, A. (2011). BBC Radio 4, Thought for the Day, 17 February.
February 25, 2019 /

Food for thought June 17, 2016

A self-confessed spiritual person told me once that I wasn’t spiritual if I didn’t believe in reincarnation. I had responded in the negative to his question of whether or not I believed in the doctrine, and his response, though not dissimilar to others, caught me by surprise.  Later, I wondered why a belief in reincarnation had become a hallmark for being ‘spiritual’.  I also wondered why those individuals, when encountering an opposing stance, always either seemed compelled to argue otherwise or to look at me with a pitying expression on their face.  People often cite the evidence of past lives as proof, and there are compelling accounts, but intuitively I have always felt that the reality is other than what we believe it to be.

Some time ago I chanced across a book, “Thirty Years Among the Dead“, written by Carl A. Wickland, M.D. a psychiatrist, physician and physical researcher. It presents accounts of spiritual encounters with disembodied souls over a 30 year period, and is an incredibly fascinating insight into the work he undertook in treating patients with mental health problems who were being possessed by disembodied earth-bound spirits.

I opened the book randomly to Page 317 and read the following:

Very unexpectedly we had a visit from the one whose teachings and writings have made world-wide the theory of Reincarnation.

EXPERIENCE, NOVEMBER 1, 1922

Spirit: MADAM BLAVATSKY

Psychic: MRS. WICKLAND

I wanted to come to you this evening. I believe in the work this little circle is doing, and I am very pleased with the work you are carrying on. I wish there were more to help us, to meet us on a half way basis to understand there is no death …

I wanted to be a leader in some way or another. Now I want to bring the truth to the world. I knew of spirit manifestations and I had them myself. I did a great deal in my early days along this line but I commenced to investigate Theosophy … To me came Reincarnation … I studied Reincarnation, and I thought there was truth and justice in the theory that we come back and learn and have more experiences. I taught it and wanted to bring it out to the world and its peoples. I felt that I remembered far back in my past. I felt I knew all about my past, but I was mistaken.

Memories of “past lives” are caused by spirits that bring such thoughts and represent the lives they lived. A spirit impresses you with the experiences of its life and these are implanted in your mind as your own. You then think you remember your past.

When you study, especially when you study Theosophy, you develop your mind and live in an atmosphere of mind. You remove yourself as much as possible from the physical. Naturally you become sensitive and naturally you feel the spirits around you. They speak to you by impressions and their past will be like a panorama. You feel it, and you live over the past of spirits and you make the mistake of taking this for the memory of former incarnations.

I did not know this when I lived. I took it for granted that these memories were true, but when I came to the spirit side of life I learned differently … Reincarnation is not true. I did not want to believe that. They told me here in the spirit world that I could not reincarnate. We progress, we do not come back … If I impress a sensitive with an idea, in one sense I reincarnate – not in his body, but by impressing him with what I have done … No, Reincarnation is not true. I believed it, I taught it, and I was sure that I should come back and be somebody else. But I will not … Some may say this is not Madam Blavatsky, but do not doubt – it is.

I was astonished when I read this, especially as I am very familiar with Theosophy as I am with the principles of reincarnation. What’s more, I had chanced across this book and opened it randomly to Page 317. Isn’t it strange how events unfold?