Ghosts Among Us - James Van Praagh [6]
Eventually, I began to see ghosts again, just like when I was a kid. So I started doing my own individual readings, first with friends and then with referrals. After a year, the readings had become a full-time job, and I had to make a choice. Was I going to quit readings to pursue TV, or was I going to quit TV to pursue communication with ghosts? Needless to say, I quit my day job in show business and became a full-time medium. That was almost twenty-five years ago, and it has been a wild ride ever since.
Having traveled around the world, I can say without a doubt that ghosts are among us everywhere.
TWO
Leaving the Body
In my field of work, I am constantly asked the same questions over and over. What is it like to die? Is there really an afterlife, and if so, where do we go? Is there any pain?
Death is the great unknown. By the time our end draws near, we have developed so many preconceived notions about death and dying through religious and societal beliefs that we have no true understanding of the event. Even though each person’s death experience is an individual one, based on my communication with spirits, I can tell you that there are some incredible similarities in making the transition.
No matter what factors are present at death—homicide, suicide, explosion, accident, old age—there is one constant that remains. There is no pain when you die. I can never say this enough to people. In fact, it is this absence of pain that confuses many of the newly dead because they do not realize that they have died.
No one ever dies alone. When we pass out of our bodies, deceased loved ones are always there to greet us. We may not have seen these people for many years, but the love bonds we experienced on earth are still very much continued on the other side.
Many experience a sense of being surrounded by a brilliant light and being pulled through a tunnel. People describe the light as God, or an all-knowing being. Some feel that the light is pure peace, joy, and love. Instead of a light, some ghosts describe being surrounded by a glorious display of celestial colors like nothing they have ever seen.
There is an immediate sense of not being limited to the physical body. The life once lived simply falls away. In its place is an awareness of a “newness” to life.
Finally, when we stand at the doorway to death, there seems to be an immediate altering of time and space. Ghosts are in a timeless, ethereal, transparent dimension. Earth time may be passing, but to a ghost everything is happening now.
NO PAIN
Why do we escape pain at the very end? Can our spirits be aware of our impending demise and therefore shut down our pain receptors just before we die? It seems as if the Universe has indeed provided some sort of shutoff valve in our brains that goes into effect just before we leave our bodies. A person enters a blackout period and loses consciousness and memory. When I ask spirits about the violence of an accident, or about a bullet entering their flesh, or about their death by heart attack, they often respond that they don’t remember the impact of the disaster. Instead, their first memories are of their loved ones. In one way or another, each has said, “I wish my [wife, husband, mother, father, daughter, sister, brother, son] knew that I was still alive.”
That was the case with a young male ghost who appeared in one of my New York workshops.
“This is a young man about seventeen or eighteen who gives me the name of Sam and tells me he was crushed in a car.”
A woman named Debbie jumped out of her seat. “Oh, my God, that’s Sam. That’s my Sam,” she shouted.
“He wants me to tell you not to cry for him. He is saying that he is alive and fine.”
Debbie held tissues up to her nose as she nodded up and down.
“He wants you to know that his body flew out of the front window.”
She nodded again, and I continued.
“He is telling me to let you and everyone else in the audience know that he