The following excerpts are from a book entitled
The Afterlife Revealed by Michael Tymn. His description of the afterlife closely parallels what the Baha’i Faith teaches although it goes into much more detail. I found it fascinating so I wanted to share it with everyone here. Unfortunately, the book is not online to read, so I had to type this up.
“All major religions teach that in some manner human consciousness survives bodily death and sooner or later is awakened in a nonmaterial environment. Nirvana, Gan Eden, Heaven, Paradise, Sheol, Purgatory, Hades, Gehenna, and Hell are some of the names assigned to afterlife destinations. These environments ranged from indescribable and incomprehensible bliss to unspeakable and unimaginable torment. Seemingly, a life of love and service should result in a blissful state, but some major belief systems hold that even a life devoted to love and service is not enough to warrant the blissful environment in the “afterlife” if the individual has not bowed to the proper Savior or God or has not fully subscribed to the particular dictates of its particular dogma and doctrine. The predominant religious thinking seems to be that we end our earthly lives being labeled either “righteous” or “wicked” – no in-between – and our new environment is either positive or negative.
In the blissful state, we should find, according to some religions, souls who led selfish and hateful lives but who repented on their deathbeds or “found” their Savior just before dying and suddenly became righteous. Among the tormented, we should expect to find souls who led righteous lives for most of their years but who transgressed just before dying or never recognized their Savior.
It is difficult to reconcile much of what major religions consider the proper station in the afterlife with the loving, forgiving, and just God they see as governing that afterlife.
In John 14:2, Jesus says, “In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not soI would have told you.” Greek scholars tell us the Greek word translated to mansions originally meant a stopping place or a temporary abode. The usual orthodox Christian interpretation is that is that Jesus was referring only to Heaven. However, modern revelation suggests that Jesus was referring to the whole spectrum of the afterlife, from what is termed Hell on “up” through different realms or planes or spheres until we reach Heaven. This is somewhat consistent with the Buddhist view holding many states until reaching Nirvana or true Heaven and it is the primary lesson coming to us through Spiritualism. These states are also referred to as spheres, planes, realms, dimensions, and levels of vibration. They involve moving from darkness in the lower spheres to overwhelming brightness on the higher ones. The third sphere or plane, referred to by Spiritualists as “Summerland,” is said to be where the average decent soul finds him- or herself immediately after death. The conditions there are said to be much the same as on the earth plane.
Emanuel Swedenborg* wrote that he discovered infinite diversity in “heaven” and “countless communities” during his clairvoyant explorations. Like Swedenborg, Edgar Cayce, the famous American “sleeping prophet” of the last century, also told of taking a tour of many realms during one of his out-of-body experiences. He described how he encountered a stream if light he knew he must follow. In the lower or darker realms he saw “forms” that were floundering or lost and seeking the light. As the light grew stronger and stronger, he arrived at a place where individuals appeared much as they do today. Some seemed content, while others were striving for greater knowledge and light.
As discussed in Chapter I, Dr. George T. Dexter, A New York physician, reluctantly became a medium and began receiving many profound messages from Swedenborg and Sir Francis Bacon. On May 22, 1853, Swedenborg communicated that the moral condition of the spirits of the lower spheres does not appear to differ materially from the moral condition of the unprogressive man in our world. “They many, it is true, have moments when their spirits yearn for the brighter spheres beyond their dark plane, when conscious of its birthright, the soul awakens to a sense of its own degradation, and realizes its true situation,” he wrote through Dexter’s hand, “but they live and act as unprogressive man does, daily performing their accustomed round of malicious action, and carrying out the designs of their blunted perceptions; and it is not till some event, out of the ordinary occurrences of life, arouses them completely and opens their understanding to the reception of truth, that they begin to progress. There is so little difference in the whole action of spirit-life from your life, except that one step forward has been made – I do not refer to higher spheres, of course – that the correspondence is almost exact. (1)
Swedenborg went on to say that spirits in the lower spheres live as if they do not realize there is anything beyond their own misty dwelling places, and as if they are incapable of being impressed with good and true.
On September 25, 1853, one of the circle sitters, a Mr. Warren, asked Bacon what impelled spirits in the lower and darker spheres to choose to go there and remain indefinitely. “The reason is obvious,” Bacon replied. The great law of like attracting like obtains throughout the whole of the spheres. When a departed spirit enters into the spheres, he is at once attracted where he finds congeniality of place and persons. They could not be happy in the bright spheres. They could find no enjoyment where there is either virtue or goodness. Thus their first efforts are to locate themselves where the acquired attributes of mind in all its workings may be gratified. Their bodies are gross and their minds still grosser. (2)
Bacon added that there is in this condition of both body and mind a state which rejects magnetically all above and they are compelled to take a place appropriate for their moral advancement or lack thereof. He said that the law of affinity is manifest as much in the higher spheres as in the lower, and that no spirit can become bad all at once or good instantly, adding that the law of progression and retrogression is in full force in all spheres.
Within two or three years of the communications coming through Dr. Dexter, Professor Robert Hare received similar messages. As he came to understand the afterlife environment, there are many graduations between the lowest degree of vice, ignorance, and folly and the highest degrees of virtue, learning, and wisdom. When we cross over to the other side after physical death, we take our place based on what Hare called a “moral specific gravity, “ as discussed in Chapter V.....
As soon as he was convinced that the phenomena were credible reports from spirits of the dead, Hare began asking about their abodes, their modes of existence, their theological doctrines, and diversities of their situations. He was told that there are seven spheres, the terrestrial sphere occupied by humans being first, while the second sphere is where depraved spirits find themselves until they can begin the process of purification that allows them to ascend to higher spheres. When spirits reach the seventh sphere, they are entitled to enter the supernal heaven. He was also informed that there are no visible boundaries between spheres, but spirits have a peculiar sense which makes them understand when they are passing from one sphere to another.
“The most favorable idea of heaven given in Scripture seems to be that which identifies it with Paradise,” Hare, wrote. “In other words, a most beautiful garden. But who would conceive an eternal residence in one garden, however superlative its attractions, as desirable? The idea of the spheres assumes a succession of gardens, with every pleasure, every joy of which the human heart and intellect are capable; and beyond those gardens the whole universe is open to us, and an ultimate ministration as angels under our Heavenly Father.” (4)
Hare’s disincarnate father further explained that the spirit goes to a sphere for which it is morally and intellectually adapted; thus, the first sphere above the terrestrial one, i.e., the second sphere, is the abode of “degraded” spirits, meaning not only evil spirits but “misdirected” ones as well. He pointed out that there are millions of such spirits in the second sphere, what religions call Hell, Hades, or Purgatory, who are groping and unable to free themselves from the fetters of earthly conditions. This sphere is said to be the sphere of as many spirits as all the five spheres above it. Nevertheless, contrary to the teachings of many religions, the spirits on this sphere are not permanently confined there as “onward and upward” is the motto of the spirit world. Sooner or later, spirits from higher levels are able to reach them and help them see the light.
Because of the barriers spirits much overcome in communicating with the material world, the senior Hare warned his son to discern the messages and not take everything literally: As there are no words in the human language in which spiritual ideas may be embodied, so as to convey their literal and exact signification, we are obliged ofttimes to have recourse to the use of analogisms and metaphorical modes of expression. In our communion with you we have to comply with the peculiar structure and rules of your language; but the genius of our language is such that we can impart more ideas to each other in a single word than you can possibly convey in a hundred.” (5)......
Each sphere, the senior Hare said, is divided into six circles, or societies in which congenial spirits are united and subsist together according to the law of affinity. While these spirits generally agree immoral and intellectual matters, there are individual differences and some disagreements. Spirits united by ties of consanguinity and marriage may or may not be linked together in the spheres and in the same society. It depends on the affinity between them, including the level of advancement. However, a spirit in a higher sphere can pass to a lower one to visit with loved once. But a spirit can never ascend to the higher spheres until fully prepared for such a transition.”
(Michael Tymn,
The Afterlife Revealed, pp. 6-11)
(Continued on next post)
