SOUL SLEEP
Cosmic Sleep and Healing

“As well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well lived brings happy death.”--Leonardo da Vinci

Rob is one of many who take their own lives but come back to reassure their loved ones that they are safe and well. It is remarkable that he was able to communicate just five weeks after his death. Normally, with such tragic cases, the spirit person needs time to recover from the ordeal. When they enter the spirit, they usually spend some time in a healing sleep.

There are some mediums who say that everyone “sleeps” when they enter the spirit world, and that it is impossible to communicate with the deceased until some time has passed after the funeral. I have not found this to be the case.

There have been instances where the spirit has been able to give a clear evidential message almost immediately upon entering the spirit world. For example, I remember giving a detailed message at a Spiritualist church from someone’s father. He was an amusing man and was joking about the fact that he was dead. His concluding message was, “Tell her that I am lying on a marble slab being shaved as we speak.” The lady in the audience confirmed that the funeral was to be the next day and the mortician was at that moment preparing the body.

SOUL SLEEP? - is it needed?

But many spirits definitely need to sleep and undergo a healing process when they arrive in the afterlife. A good friend of mine took his life in a terrible way, by covering himself in gasoline and then lighting a match. He went up like a human torch, and died slowly in dreadful agony. He also died alone in hospital, as he had nothing on him to identify him. I found out later that they had even made an announcement nationally on television news, hoping to find someone who knew who he was. My friend took his life because he had a mild form of schizophrenia that ran out of control when he took LSD. For him, fire was a form of cleansing.

God only knows what mental state he was in when he arrived in the afterlife.

Some years later my dead friend spoke to me through a medium. The medium’s face went bright red as he explained that he was feeling colossal heat as the spirit linked with him. My friend was able to give good evidence to prove who he was, and went on to describe what happened to him when he entered the afterlife.

The spirit told me that he went to an area of the afterlife that some have called the “halls of healing” or the “home of rest.” This is a sort of heavenly hospital where souls who have been damaged can be brought back to wholeness. If you had a violent passing, were suffering from shock, or had a lingering illness, you will spend some time here before moving on into the afterlife.

Some of the spirits who speak through mediums tell us that, when the first entered the spirit world, they continued doing what they were doing immediately before they passed over. For example, one told us that he was run over as he crossed the road. His death was immediate and instantaneous. His spirit, however, kept on walking as if nothing had happened at all! For awhile, the reality he was accustomed to around him had been maintained. For him, the afterlife included streets, shops, cars, hot-dog stands, and laundromats.

The spirit communicators who have spoken through my own trance mediumship, and also through many thousands of other mediums before me, have told us that there are many planes in the afterlife and that many of these are inconceivable to anyone living on earth. However, they have also told us that the individual survives death in a form not unlike his present mode of being. Your experience of “reality”--particularly in the initial phases of your transition to the next world--will be very similar in nature to the one you know now. For example, you will live in a three-dimensional world and time will move forward from past to present. You will experience your surroundings in a way similar to the way you use your five senses now. Communications from the dead also suggest that you will lead a purposeful existence. In fact, there is a feeling of being more “alive” than we are.

SOUL SLEEP AND THE HALLS OF HEALING

Much of what my friend said through the medium conforms to the ideas of Spiritualists and in particular with the writings of Anthony Borgia. His books were communicated to him via mediumship from 1909 onwards from a spirit person called Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, a son of Edward White Benson, former Archbishop of Canterbury. In his book Life in the World Unseen the spirit communicators describe the halls of healing as being a “stately building set among well-wooded grounds.” Within this building are various areas for different types of recovery. For example, there are special halls for people who have had a violent death, and so on. He also tells how healers wear their spirit robes, whereas new visitors to the afterlife are dressed in clothing similar to their earthly ones.

According to Borgia, as you enter the healing halls you are surrounded by a blue ray of light which gives you a feeling of tranquility and simultaneously energizes your spirit. You may feel the light as a warmth that gently soothes your pains away. Any stress that you have carried forward into the next life is washed from you. You will begin to feel strong and well.

When you are taken into this place, you will fall into a state of absolute rest similar to what we may describe as sleep. During this time there are no unpleasant dreams, or fevers, or delirium. Your soul is at one with “divine providence” and undergoes a process of healing. Many other mediums and healers have described a similar scene. For example, the world-famous spiritual healer Harry Edwards writes of how the “place of healing” has a circle of brown stone seats and the building itself is made of a strange blue stone. The contemporary medium James Van Praagh makes a similar observation saying, “The buildings seemed to be made of jewel-like substances, like mother of pearl and diamond. All the colors shone and blended in perfect harmony. The more I stared at these buildings, the more I realized that the type of tasks being done in each individual structure.”

Borgia describes the residents of the halls of healing as resting upon couches. Other accounts, such as one by occultist Yogi Ramacharaka, (nomdeplume for William Walker Atkinson) compare this slumber of souls to being again in a womb, preparing for another birth. A wistful feeling comes when the soul understands that it has, to get to this stage, fulfilled a part of its destiny. They also experience a sense of satisfaction as they approach this period of recuperation. According to Ramacharaka, the more advanced spiritual person requires a longer period of sleep, just as the higher animals tend to have a longer gestation and period of birth on the material plane. He points out that this is not a place but a “condition” or a “state.” The situation is such that no malign or harmful influence could reach or draw near those in this state of being.

Messages from Home

During your period of recuperation from the traumas of earthly life, you may become aware of thoughts and feelings being projected to you from earth, perhaps of those who mourn for you. It is a help to you when your relations and friends in the earthly plane think of you with love and affection. You will not be harmed by their feelings of grief, as this, too, is an expression of love. But the vibrations that will warm you the most, and help you to adjust to your new state of being, are those that arise from positive thoughts and feelings. People on earth who remember or think about you with love, without weeping and distorted passion, will further your progress.

We can draw lessons from this now. Thoughts of goodwill projected to those you love in the next world will help them. But sorrow and longing for the departed soul delays its entry into the halls of healing. When someone you love dies, send them feelings of joy and encouragement; for dark thoughts only act as obstacles to the joy that awaits them.