Nights among the dead

 

I am often among the dead in my dreams. They are always alive. Sometimes I remember that they died on an event track we shared, other times I don't. Sometimes they come calling. My father has come many times since his death with helpful advisories for me and the family. Sometimes my dream travels take me to new environments on the Other Side were the dead are enjoying new lives. They show me around and I learn first-hand in this way about lifestyle and real estate options available after death.
    Contact with the deceased, especially in dreams, isn’t weird or unusual or even truly supernatural. It comes about for three reasons: the dead are still with us, or they come visiting, or we travel to the realms where they are now living. The number one reason why people who are not accustomed to sharing dreams decide to tell one is that they have dreamed of a close friend or family member who died but is very much alive in the dream.
    The immense body of data on near-death experiences (NDEs) is scientific evidence of the survival of consciousness after the physical body has closed down. When you become a conscious dream traveler, you confirm through your own experience that awareness is not confined to the body and brain, and therefore is able to survive death. You are ready to learn that healing and forgiveness are always available across the apparent barrier of death, and to develop your personal geography of the afterlife.
    One of the most interesting things I have learned is that the living may be called upon to play guides and counselors for the dead. “The Silent Lovers”, which I included in my book Mysterious Realities, is a just-so story – shocking to me as it unfolded – about how I was called to play advocate for a dead man, otherwise a stranger, going through his life review on the Other Side. Yeats was right when he said, with poetic clarity, that the living have the ability to assist the imaginations of the dead.  

Art: "Houses of Death" by Robert Moss

Dreaming is practice for immortality

Dreaming is practice for immortality, perhaps the best we have available. Why? Because dreaming is traveling. We journey effortlessly beyond body and brain, into realms beyond the fields we know in ordinary life. We travel to territories in which the dead are at home. In this way we gain first-hand knowledge of the roads and conditions of the afterlife.
    In dreams, we also receive visitations from the dead. They come for all the reasons we may contact each other in ordinary life, and then some. They come for healing and forgiveness. They come for an update on family affairs. They come with warnings and information. Sometimes they need help and information from us, because they are lost of confused.
    Tremendous numbers of people who are living in the afterworld are seeking to communicate with the living. In one of my workshops, I led forty active dreamers on a group shamanic journey, powered by drumming and focused by clear intention, to visit communications centers on the Other Side where the dead gather to try to contact the living. We found them using technologies both ancient and hyper-modern, according to earthly notions.
     I found some of the dead gathered in an old fashioned seance room, trying to call the living into their space, as Spiritists or mediums seek to call up the dead. In another space, the dead were trying to text and phone and make video calls to the living. I was especially intrigued by a special courier service. The dream messengers, called Zephyrs, are slim and elegant, almost diaphanous, in uniforms that recalled winged Mercury, but capable of putting on any costume that might help them to get into the minds and memories of the people to whom they are tasked with bringing dream messages.
    We may become open to contact with the dead in many ways: through the sense of a presence, through physical anomalies, through goosebumps, with the help of a go-between like a reputable psychic or shamanic practitioner. But the easiest way to communicate with the dead is in our dreams.
     We may be catapulted into afterlife situations by a near-death experience, or brave the gates of death in a shamanic journey or a ritual of deep initiation (which always requires death and rebirth). Yet, again, the easiest way to become familiar with the Other Side and develop a personal geography of the afterlife is through dreams and then by developing the practices of Active Dreaming.
    An old Lakota saying has it that "the path of the soul after death is the same as the path of the soul in dreams." This is exact. In quoting this, I have often added the thought "except that after death, you don't come back." But that is not entirely correct. Some who have died do return to the body. I did this as a child, and so have millions of experiencers of what is now called the NDE. And the dead who have left their physical bodies behind for good return to us in subtle bodies.
    We need to know a little about what happens when we die, and before we are born, in order to live well. Death is an incredible teacher. Looking at our life choices in the clear knowledge that our story did not begin in this body and doesn't end with it can help us to develop a courage and clarity in approaching life choices that may otherwise be lacking.
    These things are too important for us to leave to hand-me-down religious dogmas, or avoid through denial. Maps from recent travelers to the Other Side are good. If you are contemplating a trip abroad, it's good to hear the opinions of others who have stayed in that hotel, or taken that cruise. But the afterlife is infinitely malleable, ever-changing, even within the battlements of the collective belief systems, so  we'll want to find out how things are for ourselves. The most reliable ways to do that are through contact with the dead, and through personal travel in the realms where the dead are at home. Both are most easily and safely accomplished through dreaming.
    You may say, why be in a hurry? We'll find out about the afterlife when we are dead, yes?
     Well, certainly. But I stand with Montaigne on these matters. Puisque nous ne savons pas ou la mort nous attend, attendons-la partout. "Since we do not know where Death is waiting for us, we must be ready to meet Death everywhere."

For much more on this subject, please read my books The Dreamer's Book of the Dead and Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination and Life Beyond Death.

Photo: Doors open and shut at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. By RM.

"I went to the graveyard to check that my father is dead"

The big man is rattling the French doors to my library, where I am engaged. before breakfast, in unpacking books from the movers' boxes and placing them on my shelves. I go to him with some apprehension, because he is the size of a tall refrigerator.
    "I just came from the graveyard," he announces hoarsely. I can smell beer on his breath.
    "And you are?"
    "Oh." He hastens to apologize. He introduces himself as my neighbor, pointing to a white colonial house with gray shutters beyond the creek at the edge of our property. He has heard something about my work, and thinks I can help him.
    I invite him inside, and his bulk fills my reading chair.
    He explains that his father came to visit him during the night. "For real," he insists. "Dad was there, in the bedroom, shaking me to make me wake up. But Dad died years ago. I had to go to the graveyard to check that my father is dead. I needed to make sure that he's still in the ground."
    I am tender with the big man now. So few of us, in our society, receive any guidance on communication with the dead. Yet our dead are often with us, because they stay around, close to the living, or because they come visiting. Or because we journey, in dreams or astral journeys, into their realm.
    We talk about what the big man's father may want to share with him. Maybe just a beer and a sense of continuing connection. Maybe he wants an update on the family. Maybe he has some counsel for his son, or needs help from the living because he is lost or confused, and has found that the afterlife is nothing like what he may have heard in his church.
    I suggest a simple ritual by which he can open conversation with his dead father. He agrees he'll light a candle, pull out some old photos, pour a second glass for his dad. He'll assume his father is present, seen or unseen, and say the things he needs to say, hopefully offering love and forgiveness. He'll be open to hearing what his father needs him to hear.
    He came to me later, tears in his eyes, to tell me that he had had a great talk with his father. "He put me straight on some things, and he had some information on a business situation that may have saved my ass. Funny how it's easier to talk to him now he's dead than when he was alive."
    I have been working for more than twenty years to help people understand that there is nothing weird about contact with the dead, who are alive in a world next door to us, whose borders are highly permeable. I have written books to facilitate timely and helpful communication with the deceased, including Dreamgates and my Dreamer's Book of the Dead.
    Recently I had the pleasure of reading and lending my blessing to a wonderful new book on this theme, The Last Frontier by Julia Assante, who melds a scholar's mind and extensive research with the first-hand experience of a practical mystic. I remembered the scene of the big man at the door of my library, from my first days at my previous home, as I re-read Julia's book, which explains - passionately and eloquently - why we need to "normalize" relations with those who are living in the afterworld, for mutual benefit.
Julia Assante will be my guest on my Way of the Dreamer radio show today. You can listen to the show live from 9:00-10:00 a.m. Pacific (12:00-1:00 p.m. EST) or download from the archive at http://www.healthylife.net/

Photo by the great Czech photographer Václav Chochola (1923-2005)