MANY PATHS, ONE HORIZON
© Kit Constable Maxwell


Chapter 15.

JOURNEY IN SPIRIT

MANY PATHS, ONE HORIZON
The story of mankind's spiritual awakening, and of the part we play in it.
© Kit Constable Maxwell

15. JOURNEY IN SPIRIT
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In the late 19th century the newly formed Society for Psychic Research began collating evidence on the abundance of psychic happenings that had become the craze at that time19. Many ghostly tales were debunked, more were discredited, while a small percentage withstood the efforts of a generally sceptic governing body to offer a rational explanation.

19 Started chiefly by one, Mme Blavatsky, a Russian émigré who first taught the cult of Theosophy and the then preposterous concept of communication with the dead.

Now, a hundred years later a balanced and curiously consistent picture emerges from a host of psychic communicators, mediums and sensitives which give us an increasingly vivid image of the afterworld.

TIME OF DEATH
The exact time of death is now determined from the time it takes for the brain to suffer irreversible blood starvation - this can be up to half an hour after the heart has stopped, or it may be longer; we can never know for sure. People who are successfully resuscitated during the first half hour following circulation failure will probably be brain damaged, (usually beyond repair) and may be blind, deaf, mute, paralysed or comatose. The few that survive speak of near death or out-of-body experiences and recall vivid memories imbued with light, love and well being. These are often accompanied by culturally determined visions of Christ, The Virgin Mother, God or the saints. These memories generally have a profound effect on the person and changes them on a deep level, and they develop a sense of vocation and faith that guides them for the rest of their lives.

Scientist are now able to tell us, however, that this euphoria can be triggered by endorphins, substances similar to morphine which are released into certain function areas of the brain when the outer protective membrane senses dangers like anoxia or blood starvation. Air Force pilots training to fly supersonic aircraft are tested in giant centrifuges to simulate gravitational pull ('g' forces) far in excess of normal. At around 9g - 10g they experience black-out, then unconsciousness followed by the same euphoric sensations and sense of well being, all accompanied by the same visions of light described by the near dead - but miss out on the cultural associations and the sense of enlightenment. In other studies, a Canadian research doctor working with electro-medicine, wires up the same image-forming parts of the brain with electrodes - and replicates the vibrational frequencies of the dying brain. Sure enough, the near death experience occurs again, complete with tunnel vision, bright lights and feelings of overwhelming beauty and well being.

FATAL SHOCK
The conclusions we must draw from these new findings is that the near dead or out of body dead were never actually dead, only experiencing the supercharged emotions of a brain reacting to near fatal shock. This rational explanation doesn't explain the lasting sense of vocation and purpose described by so many survivors (many books have been written about them, see bibliography), and we are still left with the problem of deciding how we accurately determine the moment of irreversible death....

The subject of death is one that western cultures don't much like to discuss, preferring to claim atheistically that death is final rather than consider any logical or illogical sequence to our life on earth. Christians resort to the 'heaven-and-hell' tradition without ever seriously considering the nature of either - preferring, instead, to trust in divine providence.

COMMUNICATORS
Today our questing attitude to life and death is well provided for with an ever increasing flow of information from communicators 'on the other side'. All the collated information suggests we will find ourselves in a state of continued mental awareness unchanged by the experience of death. Death is described as a steady metamorphosis into a realm of altered consciousness. We are still just ourselves, albeit disembodied, and still questing but now experiencing a discarnate perspective and the companionship of fellow spirits on their parallel journeys of self discovery.

All spiritual communicators speak of the power of the mind which must learn to express itself through the imagination, backed by our own will. In short, what we want, we can have, and our heaven becomes what we make of it. The only identifiable reality is ourselves and our power to perceive it. If we spring from a religious tradition then we shall fulfil our expectations of a religious experience. Or if we have adopted an atheistic, agnostic or materialistic perspective of life then our early experiences of the discarnate world will reflect these same views, complete with material props and earthly pleasures.

In time, which could be instantaneous or linear, we will learn to differentiate between what we now are and what we must yet become, what constitutes a universal reality and what constitutes our own limited expectations of reality.

GROUP SOUL
Communicators speak of successive stages of spiritual development during which we progressively lose our ego- consciousness and slowly reunite with the many aspects of our group soul. This group soul is our next step on the spiritual hierarchy and may comprise hundreds of individual energies working toward the group's collective goals.

Some, it appears, have difficulty understanding that they are really dead - believing instead that their mental vision of a dematerialised environment is but a lucid dream.

We are powered in spirit as we are in body - by the forces of consciousness and our willing surrender to higher values. As we create on earth our own experience of life, so in spirit we face creative choice powered by our individual mind.

Slowly we gain the ability to evaluate our earthly life and the effect it had on ourselves and others... and this sometimes painful self judgement helps us plot our new path of transcendence. The dazzling reality of our mind's vision brings these memories into sharp focus, undiluted by the material perspectives of the body and the slow vibrations of earthly matter. This concentration of feeling can be a tough experience as we examine motive rather than pretext, and we may come to cherish for the first time the love and support of the entities who will accompany us through this important stage of our spiritual awakening.

Communicators describe a wonderful mental environment, incomparable with our world of matter. This realm is readily malleable by the power of imagination, thought and invocation. We are taught to accept responsibility for our thoughts, our motives and our actions. I believe this process can start right here and now, so that when our faults and failings are revealed in glaring nakedness they will be backed with the will of love that powers spiritual transcendence. No one said life was easy, but an indifferent and negative approach to life can perpetuate the discomfort of spiritual evolution.

ESSENCE
We will slowly shed our earthly perspective and wrestle with the new experiences of spirituality. We then enter what guides call a 'second heaven', a realm of lost identity and metamorphosing spirituality. We no longer know who we are in strictly human terms, but begin to rediscover ourselves as our lost ego consciousness is slowly replaced by a refined essence of identity which carries our soul towards new spiritual horizons. This is the stage experienced, I imagine, by the unsuspecting caterpillar before he emerges in the unsolicited, resplendent and quite unrecognisable form of a mature butterfly.

We renew old friendships established through the centuries of successive and often symbiotic incarnations. We learn to recognise and trust the guiding light of eternity which powers so many diverse experiences of life, death and rebirth.

All communicators tell us that each soul has experienced many incarnations - and successive lives have forged bonds of lasting unity. Our fragmented self is reunited with our group soul with whom we share the work of spiritual evolution.

Ultimate bliss is a vibrant experience that would quickly wither the unevolved soul; we must learn how to bask in spiritual fulfilment. This process may call for many souls experiencing and sharing many incarnations in the Great Plan of the group's metamorphosis into spiritual empowerment.

The experiences of the discarnate soul broadly follow the heaven, purgatory and hell ethic of Christian teaching. The difference is there is no judgement, no punishment, just the continuing goal of spiritual growth that we experience in our life on earth, powered by our own perspective and our maturing spiritual vision.

ANCHORED
To know the experiences of the discarnate soul we must, as on earth, know ourselves. To grow into what we might yet become we must shed that which belongs to our temporal experience of body and matter. Souls may become stuck in an inappropriate and outworn notion that they still belong to their earthly heritage, categorised by their class, creed and culture. Such important conditioning for physical life has no place in the spirit world and those who rely on social props for their identity will soon, we are told, find themselves anchored by their own beliefs which are responding to the full and self fulfilling power of thought that is their new experience of reality.

If all this sounds alarming, demanding and fraught, be comforted by all the communicators' assurance of love, support and guidance which prevails at all levels - and is available to all who are able and prepared to accept responsibility for their own progress.

The capacity for love we can develop in this world is the one quality we can carry with us into the next. Unresolved problems in life won't be expiated merely by death but by a willing, trusting and positive desire to continue evolving in pace with spiritual energies which, like the caterpillar, we don't fully understand.

 
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Table of Contents - click on any chapter to open it
Section
Title
Page
i
Prologue                   Click here...
v
ii.
Preface
viii
1.
Space and Matter
1
2.
Evolution of Life
5
3.
Birth of Awareness
14
4.
Spiritual Goals
28
5.
Psychology
43
6.
Evolution and Astrology
52
7.
Astrology and Fate
59
8.
Light, Love and Feeling
68
9.
Primal Scream
75
10.
World Religions
82
11.
Ethics of Caring
96
12.
Thought Conditioning
102
13.
Miracles and Prayer
108
14.
Shadow and the Unconscious
116
15.
Journey in Spirit This page
124
16.
Pantheism and Matter
131
Appendix I
Glossary of Terms
136
Appendix II
Bibliography
139
Appendix III
Acknowledgements
144