Ask Raymond: Judy, Anon, Cheryl, Matthew, Emanuel, Raymond, Ken, Sayward...

First of all, Cheryl, please accept my condolences for the loss of your mother. Secondly, how wonderful that you did receive a clear sign. I hope you take that to heart and  appreciate the depth of that communication. Feathers are among the most common signs people report after the death of a loved one.

In terms of what we know about communicating with deceased loved ones: There is a literature much vaster than what I could even begin to summarize for you here.

I think a simple search online will yield great results for you. There are so many good people doing reputable work, such as one of my dearest friends Suzanne Giesemann. In April, my colleague Lisa Smartt will be interviewing and posting a v-log about Bill Philipps who is a psychic medium and just released the book Signs from the Other Side that you might find helpful.  He will be sharing an excerpt from his book with our community members as well.

Also stay tuned for my psychomanteum course that will be coming out this summer 2019.

Matthew: I am curious about your work with psychomanteums. Do the spirits need love energy to manifest? Can I hope to see a spirit for whom I have little love for? Does it help if they loved me?

The reason I want to make contact is so I can lose my skepticism. I want to know for sure that we do go on when we pass. Does this motivation hinder my efforts?

From my experience, love does seem to be an important factor in the spontaneous communications that occur after a loved one’s passing, but it is by no means the only factor.  

There are repeated reports of apparitions of people that are known to the person but maybe distantly, such as a brother-in-law or cousin—or even apparitions of people not very well liked. It is not clear why they appear.

I have seen so often that the spirits that materialize in the psychomanteum are ones not at all expected; likewise, the person that one so deeply wants to see does not manifest. It is one of the great mysteries of life and death why and when apparitions appear and to whom. I wish I had an easy answer for you about this.

Some skeptics have life-changing experiences in the psychomanteum and throughout the course of life. We have often heard from people who had NDEs whose life views were completely radicalized through their NDEs.

I also saw this occur with the psychomanteum. However, if someone walks into the experience with a completely defensive attitude, it does seem less likely that anything will occur.

However, clear apparitions appear both to those who are inclined to believe and those who don’t.

I think there are many benefits including relaxation and comfort and exploring your own imagination.  A lot of people have found that the psychomanteum stimulates creativity as well as connection to our deceased loved ones.

I recall hearing of one literary figure who as a child had a metal screen in her parents’ home, and she would watch stories emerge in its reflection. When she was an adult, she realized not everybody saw those pictures.

Scrying is a folk practice that goes back tens and thousands of years and does not fall under the authority or control of psychiatrists, psychologists or medical specialists. It has grown out of folk traditions over the centuries around the globe.

One way is known as dream incubation. This also goes back to antiquity:

Write a heartfelt letter to the person who died. Spill out your questions and feelings. Put the letter under your mattress and forget about it, and this will often bring a nighttime waking apparition from the deceased. This technique was also used in some of the Oracles of the Dead.

Ruins left behind from the Ancient Greek Oracles of the Dead.

I do not feel qualified to answer these questions, but there are many who can. Dr. Brian Weiss, Mark Pitstick and Rob Schwartz are among people whom I know and are reputable. However, there are so many who do this work.

While self-hynpnosis can work with things such as stress or even weight loss or exam preparation, it appears to me from experience, that the particular kind of hypnosis that involves regression requires a skilled and trained practitioner to guide you.  However, the gentleman I mention above may offer greater insight into this, so you may want to review their websites.

First of all, Raymond, I am so sorry that you had to be exposed to such violence at a young age and to suffer such a brutal, and devastating loss.

Spontaneous appearance of apparitions in mirrors happens frequently. It does, indeed, sound like you had some kind of shared-death experience and/or premonition. Premonitions of death are also much more common that previously believed. There is nothing wrong with you. Your experiences were very normal although the tragic circumstances were not. I imagine this is a trauma that has required a lifetime of healing–and so sorry for this loss.

From all the accounts I have heard, reincarnation appears over and over again as a theme along with the idea that we are souls who are learning lessons of love. Other experts are much more informed and prepared to answer your question more fully than I can, but many NDEers have explained to me that during their NDE, they understood that this plane is part of a learning experience that leads to our becoming better souls and people.

See my answer to this question a few issues ago. (This content no longer available)

Ken: Who and what determines that we have to return to earth to live another challenging life? Is past karma an important factor? And who are these higher beings that wipe our memory of past lives and talk us into accepting a very challenging life for our next incarnation?

I have no idea. My trouble of thinking of it that way is that I do not think of it as a matter of past or present lives. Time is a coordinate only in this frame of reality. It appears from what we hear from NDEers that when we leave this dimension, questions that involve past or present do not really have the same kind of relevance.

Someone who specializes in past life regression and research may have more answers for you. (See some of the folks I mentioned above.) 

Gary: Are NDE experiences like those of Eben Alexander, M.D. and others compatible with the idea of reincarnation, and, if so, how can we say with any degree of certainty that souls do reincarnate, rather than perhaps the memories people experience being something more akin to what Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. talks about regarding people being able to retrieve such memories from what he refers to as a “morphogenetic field?” 

Or are these two possibilities really not all that distinct from one another, looked at from a certain perspective?

I would say that this is, indeed, a very real possibility–and that you are also correct, that they may not be at all distinct. I very much appreciate this kind of approach to reflecting upon these questions–as my sense is that we really know so little, and that only by leaving the door open to alternate paradigms and interpretations (and realities) can we begin to understand them more fully.

Don’t see your question in this blog?  We may have answered it during our webinar THE ABCs of NDEs. Take a look!