CHAPTER 7

THE SPIRITUAL PLANES

The spirit that's caught in the dark lower planes

Is waiting to find release from its pains.

It hovers and hinders the people on earth

As it takes all its energy from the place of its birth.

But spirits need love no matter who they be

And we can send love to set their soul free.

We can surround them with light, and colours so bright

And show them the path that is waiting to lead.

Them into the light, and a new chance to see -

How they kept their soul bound and locked with a key.

Their chance then becomes renewal at last

And they see that their life can now grow so fast.

And once they release their bonds of the dark

Their path then leads upward with visions so stark.

They see what they've done, or failed to do

And remorse then sets in as they feel these things too.

But after a time they see what to do

To make amends then with recompense too.

So towards the light their spirit then sails

As the spirit helpers remove the nails -

That had kept them bound, and now they're free

To pursue their life in eternity.

© C. Hamilton 1998

The above poem was written to describe a soul that becomes trapped in the lower dimensions of the spiritual planes. This does not happen very often, but it does happen. We on earth have the power to help release these spirits by sending our love vibrations and also our prayers, to them. In Brad Steiger’s book Our Shared World of the Supernatural, he describes visiting a house where several entities were haunting the place because they did not know they had died. He brought with him a Dr. Matthews, who prays to the beings of Light to come and lead these lost souls towards the light and their eternal home in the heavenly kingdom. Always we must surround ourselves with the Light of Love, we are warned, before we attempt to do anything like this.

The spiritual world however, is a very real world, and those souls who do become trapped do not even know they are dead in the majority of cases, and need a bit of prompting to walk towards the light. The spirit world, or plane, resides parallel to the physical plane. There are many varying dimensions that may be called different ‘planes’. Many call this a spirit world – a place where departed souls go after they leave their earthly bodies. There has always been a belief in the after-life, and churches are no exception to this belief system, as they talk about a "better world" after one has passed away. This world is not a place per se, but another dimension where mind is the controlling force.

At a recent funeral I heard Jesus’ oft said quote: "in my Father’s house there are many mansions". I do not believe he was referring to actual places, but to many different levels of vibrations, or densities. Each soul vibrates to different energies. Some hold higher energies which are lighter and more transparent; some tend to be trapped in lower energy levels which are denser, or darker, and which therefore keep them from discovering their true Selves. Like attracts like, so when we leave this planet, we inevitably attract those spirits of like vibration. Some souls are so highly developed that their true form is pure light.

The true Self of a soul is a beautiful Light Being, radiating with love and purity. Because we tend to judge ourselves so often, we actually limit our own perceptions of what we are. It is the limitation we place on ourselves that actually holds us in certain vibrations, instead of freeing us to be all that we can be.

Once a spirit is in the light, if it feels that it needs to contact us, it can leave the higher dimensions by lowering its vibration, and visit us. This is what happens when people are "read to" by mediums and spiritualists. I have often wondered whether what the medium does read at times is from the astral body of the person and not the whole soul, but this is something we will not understand fully until we also join them in the light. The medium "sees" the spirit around the person and are able to give evidence of life after death.

Most souls move onwards in their journey after they have made the transition into the light, but it is possible for them to contact us if they wish to. Mostly this is through dreams or through little messages they leave – often not long after they have gone.

I watched an angel show on TV the other night and a young girl had died. This young girl had always had a fascination for angels. After she died, her parents found an angel book lying of the floor of her bedroom one night. A few nights later they found one lone angel cookie on the kitchen bench. They did not even own an angel cookie cutter! The young girl was giving evidence of life after death by manifesting angel treats for her parents to see as proof of her continued existence.

We lost our daughter when she was just eighteen years of age in a terrible car accident. This shock left us with our lives changed, and the change caused by this tragedy became a turning point in our lives that has, for me at least, changed my view of life. It was this tragedy which I attribute directly to the writing of my earlier book, On the Path to Enlightenment.

One of the symbols of The Compassionate Friends, of which I am a member, is the butterfly. The Compassionate Friends are a group of people who have all lost their children in one way or another. Many people equate the symbol of the butterfly with the emerging of new life from the cocoon of the old life. This has become a symbol of hope – a hope of continuing life after this physical one. Many have had some form of experience from a loved one who has passed on, which leaves them feeling uplifted and convinced of continuing life.

For us, we were given, what we believe, was evidence that life does not end at death and the energy of the soul continues on. I had had a tape in the cassette for some time. It had been there since my daughter passed on into spirit, and was still there some months later. One day I went to use the tape and it was almost totally blank, except for a few distorted sounds, interspersing the tape every now and then. It had not been moved from the tape recorder since before she died, and it had worked perfectly at that time. I had it tested, and was told that it was like a magnet had passed over it. Could it be that the energy of the spirit of our beautiful daughter, had come to visit us in our time of grief, and had unknowingly magnetised the tape, through bringing its higher energy into the room?

Late one evening, not long after her passing, my husband was sitting alone at the computer. The rest of us had gone to bed. He suddenly felt a gush of air across the room, and the door slammed shut. The hairs on his head literally stood up on end. Someone, or something, had touched the back of his neck, ever so gently, almost like a soft kiss had been planted there. Not being an imaginative person, he was totally stunned. He checked to see if either our other daughter or myself were up, and we were both in bed asleep. He knew something had happened. It changed his mind about the reality of the spirit world then and there. We could find no other explanation for this, other than that the spirit of our departed daughter, came to say her last goodbyes before she moved onward into the light.

After a soul passes over, sometimes their energy is still around on our plane, for a time at least. These souls will, with encouragement, eventually move onward to the light, and they can be helped by those here in physical form sending them love and praying for them. Even if we don’t believe in prayer it is not important. It is the energy we send out through our feelings that will help release them. Occasionally a soul will get trapped in the lower density realms of the astral plane. They seem to stay there until they find release in their own minds. Sometimes they are not bad souls, but just lost. These souls tend to get so attached to their physical bodies, that they cannot free themselves enough to discover who they really are. More often than not, their emotions are what hold them in the lower vibrations. Because these souls hold onto their emotions, it prevents them meeting with the rest of their spirit family and realising who they really are. They need to be led towards the light.

Powerful beliefs will often lead a soul to the place they expected to see on arrival in the spirit world. It takes some time for them to let go of these beliefs, and it is only after a time, that they will move onward. Certain religious sects take the longest time to reach full awareness because they have so much inbreeding of dogma and rituals that they fail to be at peace. If we pray for these lost souls, it helps to speed their journey towards the light. Their guides and helpers will come and assist them if a thought form, in the way of a prayer is strong enough to be sent their way. A soul may become so enamoured with feelings of anger, fear, greed, hatred, lust, resentment, or even attachment to material possessions, that they have enormous trouble letting these emotions go. All these lost souls really need, is a nudge in the right direction.

There are many angel-like beings, or guides, waiting to take these souls onward toward the light, but their own limited beliefs prevent them from even seeing these beautiful beings. These lost souls are not to be feared. Rather, they are to be helped to go onwards towards the light as kindly as possible. It is their ultimate destination, and often their interference in the earthly life, is just a divergence before they more onwards again. This is where so many stories of ghosts and spirits that have a frightening affect on people, originate.

The souls that get caught in the deepest lower planes, are the ones who often incarnate again without really going into the light. They are in such a heavy density, that they cannot extricate themselves from it. They will enter the body of a newborn before they have even had a chance to really meet themselves again. Sylvia Browne, in her books on the spiritual world, describes this as coming through the left door. They walk around in darkness and never go to the light. We do have a chance to help some of these souls, through meditation or through our dreams, if we can persuade them to walk towards the light.

As the vibrations on the earth heighten, those who are of low vibration will no longer be able to incarnate upon the planet. They will be moving to a planet that is still in third dimension and is being prepared for them. There they will wait, maybe thousands of years, until their souls are ready to move onwards. The vibrational shift on earth will bring the planet to such an intensity of light that these souls will be unable to stand the intensity. The time spent learning again in a third dimensional world will give them time to look into themselves and review their past lives, hopefully searching their soul, and enabling it to move onward.

We incarnate over and over again, and we learn each time from our experience. Usually the portion of our soul that is in the physical comes to learn a particular lesson. The higher aspects of it may stay behind in the ethereal world. The more times we incarnate, the more we are likely to learn, and the more likely we are to be vibrating at a higher rate. There is no judgement on lower and higher, as all souls are aspects of the beautiful light of God, and all are on different levels of experience in each of their lifetimes. The cycle of life is ongoing until we eventually reach that point where we will no longer need to incarnate into a physical existence.

The reason we do incarnate in a physical body, and the reason so many are eager to enter new bodies, is because we learn faster in this physical existence because we have to face the duality of positive and negative vibrations.

Gary Zukav in his book Seat of the Soul, explains it this way:

"Unlike animals, or in Nature, Man has an individual soul. You are an individual energy system, a micro of a macro. Part of the chain of evolution within our earth is the process of advancement. There comes a point when the physicalness experience no longer serves the soul’s awareness, and therefore, the soul chooses to learn in the non-physical realm. Our non physical Teachers are from these levels of Light. These entities are teachers to our plane. They do not, for example have the splintered personality aspects that we have. They do not have shadow sides, so to speak. That is the difference between that which is whole and in Union with God/Light and that which is growing into it.

"Duality only exists in certain levels and not in others. Spirit Guides are teachers to our plane, Earth. We are therefore, destined to evolve beyond the nature of duality. Duality is that which is understood in time and space. As you evolve beyond that, and also when you leave your physical body and journey home to your non-physical plane of reality, you will not exist in dualism.

"A soul has no beginning and no end. Consider that the ocean is God. It has always been. Now reach in and grab a cup full of water. In that instant, the cup becomes individual, but it has always been, has it not? This is the case with your soul. There was the instant when you became a cup of energy, but it was of an immortal original Being. You have always been because what it is that you are is God, or Divine Intelligence, but God takes on individual forms, droplets, reducing its power to small particles of individual consciousness. It is a massive reduction of power, yet the power is as full in that droplet as it is in the Whole. It is as immortal and as creative and as expressive, but in its tinier form. Its energy is reduced appropriately to its form. As that little form grows in power, in selfhood, in its own consciousness of self, it becomes larger and more Godlike. "

So, each soul, when it leaves its physical existence, is going back into Itself. It is re-joining that part of it that it left behind before it formed its physical body. This re-joining may take many years of our time before it actually reunites with the totality of its true Self again, as it will reunite with aspects of itself until it becomes whole again. Depending on the spiritual advancement of the soul, this may happen instantly for some souls. We will all eventually meld back into the All-That-Is, which is a compound of everyone and everything, taking with us our experiences and our personalities into the whole. This may take many, many lifetimes.

Our basic essence is Love. Therefore it is by experiencing love that we are fulfilling our purpose in coming to this physical body. On passing over, a loved one will reach out to us on our arrival in the spirit world and take us towards the light. This light has been written about in many books. Those that have had near-death experiences (NDE) have seen themselves travelling down a long dark tunnel towards the light. But those that have returned to their physical bodies were either given a choice to return, or told it was not their time and they had to come back. Those that have come back to tell us about it have said they didn’t want to come back, as the place they visited was so beautiful and so peaceful. This seems to have been universal - despite cultural, religious or any other differentiating backgrounds, or barriers, we humans seem to put in place.

In Dolores Cannon’s book Between Death and Life, there is a description by one of her clients who describes the death experience as such:

"People should not be afraid of dying. Death is no more to be feared than breathing. Dying is as natural and as painless as blinking your eyes. And that’s almost the way it is. At one moment you’re in one plane of existence and you blink your eyes, so to speak, and you’re in another plane of existence. That’s about the physical sensation you have, and it’s as painless as that. Any pain you feel in the process is from physical damage, but spiritually there is no pain. Your memories are intact and you feel the same, as if your life is continuing. Sometimes it takes you a little bit to notice that you’re no longer connected to your physical body, but usually that is noticed right away because your perceptions are broadened to where you can perceive the spiritual plane without the veil in the way. This is the clouded mirror, as some have likened it to. What happens is that at first there is a period of orientation. You are still very conscious of the physical plane but you are exploring and absorbing the sensations of being aware of the spiritual plane, until you get used to the fact that you’re really on the spiritual plane and you are comfortable with it."

There is enough written about the fact that our lives are ongoing and there is truly nothing to fear in dying. In fact, we return, by choice, time and time again, to remedy any situation we may feel we need to remedy from a previous life on earth. This has been well documented in many books. But as the earth is changing - it is actually rising to a higher vibration and we will find the need to re-incarnate less important. In fact, many are choosing to incarnate now, as this is a most important time on planet earth.

Many Souls Here Now

Scientists are telling us that the world is becoming overcrowded. Many, many souls are seeking to be here now, because there is an opportunity for their growth like never before. This is one of the greatest chances for soul evolution ever experienced on Earth.

We are being given an opportunity now to release many of the fears that have had the spiritual plane trapped for thousands of years. This is a wonderful gift. As we release our negative feelings while in the physical body, we are creating opportunities for those in the spirit plane to do the same. This physical plane is denser, and the lessons learned are so much easier in physical form because we have the greater difficulties to face. As we lift ourselves up to higher and lighter vibrations, we are also assisting those on the other planes to raise their vibrations.

This is such a wonderful opportunity to help our loved ones and those who have shared this planet with us in the past.

I have had many experiences where I have been teaching others in my dreams. I remember reading once about Edgar Cayce, the seer from the first half of the twentieth century. He spent many hours talking to groups of people about his experiences. He had an uncanny way of knowing, not only how to cure physical illness, but he also was able to see into past lives, and even into the future of one’s present life. One day, he was lecturing to a group of people, and he looked up a saw a large group of Jewish people in the back of the room. He noticed they were different. It was only later, when everyone left, that he realised these people just vanished. He then came to the realisation that these people were in spirit, and had come to learn from his lectures!

Dreams

The world of spirit is very real to me. I know that I have interacted with other souls during my sleep state. Sometimes I have felt tremendous love. There always seems to be someone talking to me, as if it is a guide, leading me and showing me things. Sometimes we face our worst fears through dreams. It all seems so real at the time. In fact, often it is more real to me than my waking life. I have been told that we are releasing many of our fears through our dreams. It is a time of great emotional release, and for many of us, this is what is happening to us in our dream state. It is by facing our fears in the Dream State that we can overcome them. I remember reading a dream diary my daughter had left behind. In it she described a dream she had where she was running away from a monster. Suddenly she turned and faced this monster, and it put out its arms and said, "I only wanted to be loved".

When we dream, we are often facing ourselves, or other aspects of ourselves, in the dream, even when it reminds us of someone else. It could be an aspect of that person that reflects a hidden part of own personality. The part of our personality that needs to be reviewed is often shown as a relative or friend. The other people in the dream are nearly always representing a part of us.

Sometimes we dream of a lost loved one, and that is because we are interacting with that loved one on the astral plane. It is possible, when we are in our dream state, to travel to the astral plane to meet with loved ones. This happens almost every night when someone close to us has just passed over. I often dreamt of my late daughter, especially in the months and years immediately following her passing.

The message from a dream will usually always hold a purpose for our highest good. We are being pushed and prodded by our guides and loved ones, to follow the path that was our original goal in coming to this life. I often find the dreams I have being prophetic, with feelings or moods that will happen in the day ahead. This has been the case so often that I feel it is guidance and I usually try to go with the flow rather than fighting the waves. If I have dreamed very emotional dreams, that emotion follows me throughout the day. If the dream has a happy ending (and I try to go back to sleep to make sure that it will), it alters the course of the day for the better.

Messages from the Other Side

James van Praagh, relates some instances where those spirits that have departed, have messages for those left behind. Sometimes it can be a need on the part of the soul to ask for forgiveness, or to explain something they now understand that they did not understand while on earth in physical form.

For example, one spirit came to van Praagh explaining that she needed to talk to her daughter. She told the daughter that she now understood the reason for her incapacity in life. She had suffered from agoraphobia nearly all her life. She saw a past life, after passing over, where she had lived in a castle. She had been warned not to leave the castle, as her father’s enemies would use her to hurt him. She left the walls of her father’s castle, against her parents wishes, and been killed tragically by these men. Her cell memory had remembered that it was dangerous to leave the four walls of safety, and she had carried it over to her last life. Although the memory was not with her in this life, the emotion and feeling were still in her cellular memory, and her soul remembered the experience, so, she had felt she could never leave the house. It was a great revelation to her, on passing over, to understand why she had suffered such incapacity.

A little girl spirit came through the medium to try and contact a lady in the audience. It took some time to realise the recipient of the message. A woman in the audience suddenly spoke up on hearing that the little girl had been knocked down by a car while chasing a ball onto the road. She had been on her way to work one morning and a little girl had run out in front of her car after the ball. The poor lady had been mortified by what had happened and had blamed herself for it, carrying guilt in her heart all the while. She had gone weekly to the child’s grave with flowers. The child came through to give the poor lady evidence that she was still alive, and there was no need for her to blame herself any longer. She was told that she should forgive herself, and let go, as it had been the child’s time to go. The poor woman broke down in tears.

Another young man received a surprising reading when the spirit that came through for him was an old janitor from his primary school days. This janitor had been like a guardian angel to the lad as a young boy, saving his, and his friends’ lives, when a fire broke out in the school after an explosion. The spirit came through with such urgency and asked to speak privately to the young man. Apparently the young man had been on drugs, and this was a warning that if he didn’t stop, his life would be ruined. It shook up the young man to such an extent, that he not only gave up taking drugs, but also became a guardian angel to others. He began lecturing in Narcotics Anonymous, and has been instrumental, in turn, in helping others, just as he had been helped not once, but twice, by his own guardian angel.

Spirit is always at hand, guiding us and prompting us. We are never alone, no matter how often we feel we are.

One channel I received was telling me just this:

Dear one, you are never alone. All your life there have been presences around you, helping you and surrounding you with their love and attention. They never interfered, but sometimes they ached to. Their arms where near you, just waiting to reach out and embrace you, but you did not realise this and you kept them at a distance. All that you had to do was ask. It is as simple as that.

Loneliness is only felt when you separate yourself from your Self when you let yourself part by pushing away that which is always meant to be a part of you. Every part of your many aspects is connected - much like electricity is always connected and only has to be activated for many things to begin to happen. When you turn on a switch which has many plugs attached to it, you can turn on a multitude of attachments at the same time, and light up appliances all over your place at the same time. And you know that all electricity is connected. It runs through all homes in all cities in all countries at the same time. Therefore it is always there. It is only by turning off switches that you cut yourself from this source of electricity (unless there is a power blackout - laughing – which of course is like others taking this source from you but in fact this is not what happens)...

So you see, when you turn off your "switches" you push away the connection that has always been there for you. In all your years, how many times have you called on us? It has been infrequently compared to the many times we have waited and watched and wanted to comfort you. You are NEVER alone. In your quiet times of solitude that is when we come closest to you. We whisper in your ear, we light up the light in your head, and we hold your hand and comfort you. We send you love from our hearts to yours, and we envelop you in this love like a cocoon enfolding the chrysalis. All we do is love you. And we are always there.

When you separated from the source, you never really separated. There was always an invisible thread of light, which held you to us. We are spirit beings of light and we are connected to All-That-Is by other beams of invisible light. We hold you in those beams. Even in your deepest, darkest hour you will find us there. When you are desolate, deprived and sad, you will find us waiting. When you are isolated and imprisoned, you will find us beside you. When you are ostracised by society, and thrown out of home, you will find us holding out our arms to comfort you. The road you travel seems lonely, but it is only in your perception. There are many hidden prizes waiting for you along the way, that have not yet revealed themselves. Be observant as you walk your path, and you will be surprised and delighted at what will appear before you. We are waiting there, holding these presents for you, and holding you in our presence. Know, always, that you are loved. I am Astara.

The veil that has been around the world for so long has thinned, and this has affected both sides of the veil. Thus the higher beings in spirit wait, always, to contact us and assist us. Those planes where spirit resides, are where we were prior to choosing our present incarnation. Now many of the souls coming to this world are bringing with them a new gift. They are bringing with them the memories of where they are from and what their purpose is while on earth. These children are referred to later as the indigo children.

At the time of the earth’s final transition, it will just seem to those who are still in the old energy that others have just disappeared. Those who will be living on a higher level of vibration will no longer be visible to those in the lower dimensions. Those newly living in the higher dimensions will be able to see and communicate with those on the higher spiritual levels of life, and those in the spirit world who have finished their life on earth and moved on. They will also be able to lower their vibrations at any time to help those who are still struggling. There will be no longer any separation, as all things will be as one.

Those who have lost a loved one through so-called death will no longer be separated from them. And as the dimensions thin, there will be more and more contact with those in the spirit world. We will be able to feel them close to us at all times if we wish it. Separation will be a thing of the past.

Chris Hamilton -