Since I first started exploring the Other Side, I have been blessed with amazing helpers and guides. These spirit people range from a nineteenth-century slave to an American soldier in the first Gulf war; from a sixteenth-century cloth dyer to a twentieth-century physician—and a couple of rock-and-rollers. From when I first met each of them, and learned their astonishing stories of what their lives were like over here on this side, and what their lives are like on the Other Side, I knew I wanted to document their experience and add it to the record.
It's not like I'm an expert on the Other Side. As long as I have living senses, there's a limit to how much I can understand. I don't feel like I have a definitive answer to any single question about life on the Other Side. On the other hand, my spirit friends have generously shared a lot of information about what their lives are like. I didn't approach this book as a study where I asked a number of different people the same questions—I just talked to my friends, and then wrote their stories down.
What your prayers accomplish on the Other Side?
Prayer is an immensely powerful form of energy. Several of my spirit friends explain exactly what prayer can accomplish. This is something that anybody in the whole world can do.
How energy operates over there?
What's it like to be in a dimension that consists of energy with no physical form? Who are you connected to when you get to the Other Side? Who do you have access to? Does your religion determine what you experience over there, or are there other factors? Again, my spirit friends relate their experiences.
What people do all day over there?
You can read about what some of the spirit people I know do with their time. Okay, time itself is an interesting concept. I've been told that it operates very differently over there, and several spirit people take a crack at trying to explain some of the differences.
You know, basically, what your options are over there?
Each of my spirit friends lives a richly detailed life. It seems to me that pretty much anything you can think, you can do over there. They've thought of things that never would occur to me—and then done them.
What it means to have been famous over here, once you get over to the Other Side?
I happen to have access to a couple of experts on that subject . . .
Look, I don't ever want to think of myself as the paparazzi of the spirit world, so I've never gone looking for celebrities over there. Spirit people, no matter how famous they were, deserve their privacy, just as celebrities over here do. Nonetheless, George Harrison came to visit me one February evening, followed shortly by John Lennon. Yes, of course I was astonished! So much so that I just stood there with my mouth hanging open while George said a few kind and considerate things to me.
Why did George Harrison and John Lennon choose me to talk to? After all, they probably could have connected with any medium in the world. Why they chose me makes a pretty interesting story all by itself, and speaks volumes about the nets of connections that operate in so many amazing ways in our lives, both here and on the Other Side.
Actually, George and John had their own ideas about how I might be of use to them when they first approached me. That didn't work out too well, because it turns out that I'm not very good at following somebody else's agenda. But even after they learned that, they stuck around to tell me what's important to them, and what their lives are like over there. Did you ever think that there might be Beatles fans on the Other Side? Well, there are. Do you think there are other ways that being famous over here influences spiritual development over there? Oh, yeah, there might be.
George and John were both very spiritual guys when they were over here, and they still are. Do you remember John Lennon? He always had an opinion to share, and he still does. And they are both very human. George and John were fierce about not letting me portray them as being more wonderful than they are, which meant that I had to get over my gigantic fan crush and learn to treat them the same way I treat my other spirit friends. They share their lives and ideas with great honesty, and give us an idea about what it means to cope with being dead after you have been that famous.
Although George and John have amazing stories to share, they are no more amazing than the ones my other spirit friends tell—from a young woman in fifteenth-century France who lost her life to the Inquisition, to a New York City drug dealer who located his heart after he died. They all want to teach us something by describing their lives.
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