About the Invisible Community

About

the invisible community

Everyone knows someone who has died. Many feel that their connection with that person still continues in some form. Others even feel it continues to develop: increasingly one hears of examples of communications from the departed. Admittedly it is not so easy to accept all of these as valid, but perhaps one of the most convincing accounts is that contained in the little book THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER which is reviewed on this site (click BOOKS).

Of special interest in this account is how the young man who has recently died begs his family not to grieve too deeply for him as this hinders his ongoing development. This kind of communication is undoubtedly of immense value to those of us who are keen to understand what existence is like after death. An aim of this site is to search out all such communications that may enable us in the course of time to foster increasingly beneficial relationships with our departed friends.

We may summarise the main concerns of the invisible community as follows:

? Understanding life after death

? Stimulating communication between the living and the departed

? Enabling cooperation between the two worlds

To meet these concerns the invisible community arranges events and issues a newsletter, invisible news, four times per year. Many of the features, verses and links on this site first appeared in the newsletter, which is produced both in a paper format and as an email.

Find out more about 'invisible news'

Funding

the invisible community is currently funded by the Cultural Freedom Trust (Registered Charity No.281954) . The Trust was created by a Charity Commission Scheme dated 24th February 1995 with the objects to advance education and to relieve persons in need, sickness, hardship or distress. Currently the Trustees are Anastasia Druitt and Christian Thal-Jantzen.

The Trust is continually seeking funds to extend the activities of the invisible community so that we can put on more events and develop the website and newsletter. If you would like to make a donation just click the link below:

Help support the invisible community with a financial contribution

Helping children with grief

Here we look at ways of helping children to appreciate and understand the nature of death and how this has been considered in different books.

Although children may not be blessed with the ability to understand the death in an intellectual way, it would be wrong to think that they have no real experiences of their own. More likely the opposite is true. In chapter 3 of his book, Love Lives On, reviewed in this issue, Louis LaGrand records a pertinent story, told to him by an Australian woman.

The event she describes took place when she was nine years old and concerned her relationship with a boy she had got to know at school. They had struck up a deep friendship and often played together. Then one night she was awoken by the boy’s presence in the room. Though she was convinced of his presence, she realised that it was not a physical experience because she could see through him. Other aspects of this powerful experience made her realise that her relationship with her young friend was about to end and eventually her father was awoken by her crying and found her in the kitchen. The father took her to her parents’ bed and tried to console her, thinking she had had a bad dream. She could not explain the experience to them and it was not until the next day that the family heard that her friend had been killed the previous day in a tragic train accident.

As this account shows, it is not always easy for children to explain their experiences and, sadly, they are all to often told that these experiences are not real. If we are going to help them come to terms with loss, it is clear that we must go about it in a way that suits their disposition.

When someone very special dies by Marge Heegaard, was brought out towards the end of the last century and is an inspired idea that recognises that children need to be creative in the process of coming to terms with the loss of a relative or close friend.

In essence, this is a child’s drawing book. Each page tackles a theme in the grief process and invites the child to draw something that will help it understand. The book first tells the child that the pain of grief is natural and that it is ‘OK’ to talk about it. Then the book takes the child through a process of simple steps that aim to convey something of the nature of death.

For example, at the beginning it looks at the natural phenomenon of change by describing the principle of metamorphosis of the caterpillar. Then it looks at death as a process of change. Later the child is led to reflect on its feelings in the situation, and is invited to draw something that, for example, might make it angry or seems fearful: ‘Drawing something fearful makes it less powerful.’

However not everything in this book is perfect - on page 7 children are told: ‘...Death is the end of living. The dead don’t eat, sleep, think, or feel anything.’ In such a book, it is disappointing to find such an untruth, which gives the impression that the dead have no consciousness. Such a statement will neither be comprehensible to, nor help a young child.

One surmises that it was out of an awareness of the above problem that Diana Crossley and Kate Sheppard created a very similar book: Muddles, Puddles and Sunshine. The format is the same, but its imagination extends beyond drawing and the book is filled with coloured pictures that probably make it more accessible than the black-and-white format of Heegaard’s book. The author’s of Muddles, Puddles and Sunshine do not fall into the trap of trying to tell children what it is like to be dead, but, in addition to giving the child the opportunity to express how it feels, offer the child (and the parent) lots of ideas for things that the child can make, and even cook, as a means of transforming the sadness into creativity.

Muddles, Puddles and Sunshine is one of ten books sold by an organisation called Winston's Wish, which has been expressly set up to provide support for bereaved children and young people. On their website they list the following areas of activity:

group work with bereaved children and their families

individual work with bereaved children and their families

range of publications and resources

support programme for schools

tailor-made training and consultancy for professionals

national helpline for anyone caring for a bereaved child (08452 03 04 05)

Website: www.winstonswish.org.uk

Further information: info@winstonswish.org.uk

BOOKS:

* When someone very special dies by Marge Heegaard, Woodland Press, Minneapolis (1991)

* Muddles, Puddles and Sunshine by Diana Crossley & illustrated by Kate Sheppard. Produced by Winstons Wish in conjunction with Hawthorn Press (2000)

Helping children understand death

Louis LaGrand: Ways to prepare for afterlife contact

Preparation for afterlife contact is one of the themes that Louis LaGrand touches upon in Messages and Miracles (a book containing one hundred questions and answers about after-death contact). In question 55, LaGrand considers whether it is possible to initiate an after-death contact. His view is that such contact cannot be initiated from this side, or at least it cannot be guaranteed. He believes an after-death contact is a unique and spontaneous event that depends on the wish of the departed friend. Nevertheless he also maintains that it is possible to prepare oneself for such contact and makes five suggestions:

Desire it -

Obviously this is the first step, but LaGrand says that real desire means that every day you think about what it is you want, you try to imagine that one day your wish will be answered, even if you do not know how or when. Basically he is saying that you have to turn your desire into an attitude: Passionate, on-fire, unbending desire must be ongoing and mixed with a generous portion of faith that your goal will be met.

Believe -

If one has never had an after-death contact it is not easy to believe that one day it will happen. But LaGrand suggests two ways two ways to reinforce belief. First is to look back at other psychical experiences you have had such as coincidences and other hard to explain phenomena that suggest a sixth sense. Second is to make contact with others who are trying to do the same.

Relax -

Basically this is LaGrands way of stressing the importance of meditation, but realising that some may find this concept difficult he makes the alternative suggestion of listening to sounds such as music or nature or even silence. The quiet receptive mind has long been considered a prerequisite for experiencing nonphysical reality. The important thing is to find a time and a place where this is possible. LaGrand suggests twenty minutes daily.

Open to your Spiritual Self -

This suggestion is about the need to recognise the existence of spiritual reality. For those who have trouble with the word spirit, LaGrand suggests substituting openness of heart and continues: In either case, our spiritual or heart side is grounded in pure unconditional love that never empties By developing our inner life with such awareness we create the space in which an after-death contact can occur.

Pray -

LaGrand makes clear that he believes that a study of the history of prayer confirms it works and even goes on to cite scientific studies. The kind of prayer that interests him is like a two way conversation with God as a loving friend - its a partnership! In other words listening is an important part of praying. Answers may come at the time of praying but equally they may also arise though nature, people, imagination, chance, etc.

All this is obviously valuable advice from a man who, we may assume, is talking from his own experience. Below you can read reports of two other researchers into the afterlife- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and Rudolf Steiner - both of whom had profound experiences of their own.

Read our review of LaGrand's book Messages and Miracles

Kubler-Ross describes an afterlife contact

Kubler-Ross describes an afterlife contact

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who died in August, 2004, dedicated her life to developing a new understanding of death and the afterlife. Hailed in a 1999 issue of Time Magazine, as one of the centurys greatest minds, Kubler-Ross wrote some twenty books and countless articles for magazines and medical journals. But, while for the most part she would write about the experiences of her patients, she also had some remarkable experiences of her own.

One is reported in her book 'On Life After Death'. In the essay, entitled "Death does not exist", Kubler-Ross describes an occasion when she was intending to give up the work she was doing at Chicago University. She was just about to explain her plan to a colleague before he entered a lift, when she was distracted by the sudden appearance of a woman in front of her. Her colleague disappeared into the lift while she returned to her office with the woman. The rest of the story is related in her own words

When we reached my door she opened it with this incredible kindness and tenderness and love, and she said, Dr. Ross, I had to come back for two reasons. One, to thank you and Reverend Gaines? (he was a beautiful black minister with whom I had a super, ideal symbiosis), to thank you and him for what you did for me. But the other reason I had to come back is that you cannot stop this work on death and dying, not yet.?

I looked at her, and I dont know if I thought by then, It could be Mrs. Schwarz,? I mean, this woman had been buried for ten months, and I didnt believe in all that stuff. I finally got to my desk. I touched everything that was real. I touched my pen, my desk, my chair, and its real. I was hoping that she would disappear. But she didnt. She just stood there and stubbornly, but lovingly, said, Dr. Ross, do you hear me? Your work is not finished. We will help you, and you will know when the time is right, but do not stop now. Promise??

I thought, My God, nobody would ever believe me if I told them this, not even my dearest friend.? Little did I know I would later tell this to several hundred people. Then the scientist in me won, and I said something very shrewd and a big fat lie. I said to her, You know Reverend Gaines is in Urbana now.? (This was true; he had taken over a church there.) I said, He would just love to have a note from you. Would you mind?? And I gave her a piece of paper and a pencil. You understand, I had no intention of sending this note to my friend, but I needed scientific proof. I mean, somebody whos buried cant write little love letters. And this woman, with the most human, no, not human, most loving smile, knowing every thought I had and I knew, it was thought transference if Ive ever experienced it took the paper and wrote a note. Then she said (but without words), Are you satisfied now?? I looked at her and thought, I will never be able to share this with anybody, but I am going to really hold onto this. Then she got up, ready to leave, repeating: Dr. Ross, you promise,? implying not to give up this work yet. I said, I promise.? And the moment I said, I promise,? she disappeared.

We still have the note.

Read our review of 'On Life After Death' by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Steiner's suggestions for developing afterlife contact

In a lecture he gave in 1918, Rudolf Steiner describes two ways that we can develop ourselves to facilitate communication with deceased friends. One is to nurture a heightened sense of community; the other is to awaken to a subtle semi-conscious mood of gratitude for everything that touches the soul.

To help us understand what he means by community and its importance for the world of the so-called dead, Steiner says: There really is a connection, though invisible, between all things a connection like that between the members of a single organism. Just as the finger, the earlobes, and indeed every part of our organism are connected with each other, there is also a connection between everything and every event in our world. He goes on to say that, in a sense, the dead already have a consciousness of this in a way that human beings on earth still need to develop. To understand and communicate with deceased friends we must develop a sense for this special consciousness which is intrinsic to their world.

Steiner suggests a number of ways to develop this new community consciousness. One exercise is to imagine that you attune your thoughts so closely to another that whatever the other does, thinks and feels is felt as our own experience. He goes on: And we are ready to reach the discarnate individual only when we are able to think back fruitfully to what we had in common with the one to whom we were karmically connected. This can happen only when we are able to re-experience what we experienced in common with that other soul, even the slightest detail, and to think of it as one thinks when one has this feeling of community.

Concerning the second way to bring ourselves closer to the realm of the dead, Steiner says we have to become aware that in the depths of the soul there is a feeling of gratitude for all that enters our lives. Of course when something goes wrong in our lives this is not generally agreeable to us. But when we look back to difficulties in the past, we can often see how they helped our development -and we could even say they enriched our soul. According to Steiner, deep down we all carry this mood of gratitude for whatever comes towards us. If we can awaken to this mood in ourselves, find the place where it lives, then we will reach the zone where the communications of deceased friends can flow towards us.

Steiner gave many lectures on afterlife contact and some of the most interesting accounts (including the lecture on community and gratitude) are collected together under the title Staying Connected published in 1999.

Read our review of 'Staying Connected' by Rudolf Steiner

How does suicide affect the afterlife?

If we are to understand the nature of life after death we must ask whether the type of death has an influence on the quality of existence for the soul. Does it make any difference if death is caused by illness or by a natural catastrophes (eg an earthquake). How is it with unnatural catastrophes (eg train crashes) - or with murder, combat and suicide? Does it make a difference whether one dies young or old? These are not abstract questions for anyone who wishes to send their heartfelt thoughts or prayers to departed friends will wish to be able to picture their state of soul. In this article I would like to make a start with these questions by considering the nature of suicide.

As a starting point let us take one of the extraordinary experiences that George Ritchie relates in his near-death account Return from Tomorrow. During his journey with the being he calls the Light, his attention is drawn to a number of situations where, unbeknown to a person going about their daily life, an invisible dead person is constantly following, begging and begging their forgiveness. But the living person remains quite oblivious. Ritchie does not understand who they are or why they are doing this, but the Light tells him:

They are suicides, chained to every consequence of their act.

Obviously the suffering of those left behind after a suicide can go on for a very long time. Likewise, when one considers all the events that have been prevented by a suicide (the eventual ramifications could easily spread to many, many people) then one begins to understand the gravity in the words to be chained to every consequence of their act.

From my own study of near-death reports, it would seem that the individual aspects are not arbitrary but are born out of personal destiny of the experiencer. Indeed in Ritchies case, his observations of suicides would seem to have been a necessary and intrinsic part of his encounter with death, since they would later enable him to find a way through the despair that followed. Like many others who have revealed their near-death experiences, Ritchie longed for the other world upon his return, but taking his own life was out of the question because he realised how this would affect others and knew the kind of hell to which suicide would lead him.

Ritchie is not the only near-death experiencer to feel this way about suicide. In his book Life after Life Raymond Moody says that he spoke to several people who attempted suicide and then had near-death experiences and all were uniformly described as unpleasant. One woman reports if you leave here a tormented soul, you will be a tormented soul over there too and another man said: I didnt go where [my wife] was. I went to an awful place I immediately saw the mistake I had madeI thought I wish I hadnt done it? .. Although not all investigators are willing to confirm Moodys findings that suicide results in unpleasant near-death experiences, Atwater, Williams and Fenwick (in the UK) all confirm that the general consensus amongst experiencers corroborated that suicide was not a good solution to earthly problems.

Near-death reports may confirm our suspicions about post-suicide experience and some people may even seize upon them as justification for making suicide illegal. But the intention here is neither to condone nor oppose suicide simply to understand the consequences. For only through understanding can the individual decide what is right for him or herself. However our faculty of understanding starts to feel overstretched when we try to imagine that Ritchies observations extend to all forms of suicide. We must ask whether every suicide is condemned to this type of hell?

Obviously there is a whole range of psychological disturbance that can result in suicide. But there are two particular forms where the fate that Ritchie describes might seem unjustified. The first is assisted suicide or euthanasia, which usually takes place in the presumably more mature consciousness of an older person. Assuming that friends and relatives would not wish any unnecessary suffering, it seems unlikely that after such a death, the suicide would feel the need to seek their forgiveness.

The second is the sad and disturbing phenomenon of suicide in adolescence during higher education. All too often these days we hear that the pressure to do well at school has been too much to bear. Surely the consciousness here is one of pure innocence these youngsters have hardly begun to take responsibility for theirs lives. In their case suicide is more like a disease to which they have succumbed - especially when compared to the same decision in a mature adult. Astonishingly, Ritchie in fact says that one of the suicides he observed was a boy trailing a teenage girl. From our earthly standpoint however, it is difficult to believe the soul of such a young person would be confined to this type of hell for long.

The spiritual implications of suicide in the young or the terminally ill are clearly distinct from other forms of suicide and deserve further attention. Accordingly if we return to Ritchies account once more, we may note that the individuals who had committed suicide, seemed to be have been dead for some time. In his book on near-death experiences, Nothing better than Death, (reviewed in this issue) Kevin Williams suggests that the kind of torment that Ritchie describes may have to be endured until the time when death would otherwise have occurred. If we believe in freedom it is not easy to understand what this actually means. Nevertheless, Rudolf Steiner also expressed himself in a similar way when discussing suicides saying that after death, the suicide craves to be reunited with the physical.

The reason for this apparently, is that with all violent death the soul is quite unprepared for the separation from the corporeal. By contrast, in a death that is prepared by illness, the soul is able to discard the physical body (and a few days later the life-body) in a harmonious manner so that a powerful craving for the physical realm does not occur.

Even a seemingly sudden terminal illness will result from a gradual preparation. Although most of us are not used to consider ill-health as a positive element in our lives, Louise Haye and others have pointed to the fact that illness has a spiritual mission to teach us something about our inner relationship to life. Here we see another positive aspect of illness: it can prepare for experiences that take place after death.

Through clairvoyant research, Steiner was also able to describe one of the dangers connected with suicide when this takes place in youth. For during the course of a normal life a highly, significant spiritual event takes place between the ages of 28 and 40, which the young suicide runs the risk of bypassing. Although this event takes place largely in the unconscious, those who are aware of it in advance may be able to detect something of its effects. It involves a meeting with an exulted spiritual being who teaches us how to penetrate, or even transform our earthly experiences (which are transitory events) in such a way that they can build up something lasting for the spirit. Particularly after death, when the soul reviews its recent life, this meeting gives the soul much strength and is especially effective in forming the quality of the next incarnation. For those who die before the age of 28 this event takes place at the time of death - but the suicide runs the risk that it may not occur. In such a situation a young suicide would be unable to work with the life review in the same way as others.

There is no doubt - suicide is a painful aspect of life that makes us acutely aware of individual suffering. And while that suffering may sometimes be tinged with an element of self indulgence, surely no human heart can fail to be touched by deep feelings of compassion for all those who are driven to such a fate. If therefore we wish to reach out in feeling to those departed friends whom we may imagine, through suicide, are suffering the hell that Ritchie describes, then surely we shall feel the urge to send out to them loving thoughts of forgiveness, so that they can be set free on their spirit path. To those who have chosen the path of euthanasia, perhaps we shall be in awe at their courage to exchange one type of suffering for another, unknown. And perhaps for those who have fled this life before the age of 28, we will want to consider whether we could make good or even accomplish some of the tasks that they were unable to achieve - and perhaps to pray that they will forgive us for not being aware of them in their time of need.