Communicating with Spirit: Here's How You Can Communicate (and Benefit from) Spirits of the Departed, Spirit Guides & Helpers, Gods & Goddesses, Your Higher Self and Your Holy Guardian Angel

By Carl Llewellyn Weschcke and Joe H. Slate

Bring Your Unconscious Powers into the Conscious Mind and Make a Life of Greater Success and Happiness

Master the Tools of Psychic Empowerment and Self-Knowledge

Become more than you are

Spiritual communication is no longer a passive state of waiting to hear the spirits speak through a medium or channel. Discover how to manifest an active state of consciousness and create direct communication with specific spirits and spiritual entities. This is a do-it-yourself book, personal and individual, so you no longer have to depend on groups and institutions for power or authority.

With clear and precise instructions, Communicating with Spirit shows you how to return Spirit to your inner self, open the doors to communication at the spiritual levels, and extend perception from material limitations toward the inclusiveness of higher-dimensional awareness. Explore yourself and the world of spirit—the answers come from within.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
• Release date: Aug 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9780738745831

Carl Llewellyn Weschcke

Carl Llewellyn Weschcke (Minnesota) was the owner and chairman of Llewellyn Worldwide, the world's oldest and largest metaphysical publisher. He played a seminal role in the rise of Wicca and Neo-Paganism in the 1960s and 1970s and has been called "the father of New Age" for his public sponsorship of occult subjects. Weschcke also served as the 7th Past Grand Master Ordo Aurum Solis.

Book preview

operations.

Foreword

A New Beginning

Everything has a PAST

Any Beginning is new, and anything New is a beginning—so what are we talking about?

Everything we do builds on the Past—but there are vast differences in what that means and how you look at it. Each person has a past, every community of interest has a past, as does every subject of interest. The study and practice of any subject involves the past of the person, of the community, and the subject—but the most important factor is how you look at the evidence.

It can get really complicated, but we’ll soon get to the point.

Don’t Let the Past limit your own

SELF Discovery and Development

You see, the Past can be a limitation to your own discovery and development. What others have said and written can inhibit fresh thinking; the opinions and statements of others—especially those recognized in any manner as authorities either directly (or even indirectly) related to the subject can act like a stop sign to your independent investigation, and if backed by the seeming moral authority of a religious leader or famous scientist may lead you to recant your own beliefs.

This is a book on Communicating with Spirit and you, the reader, comes to this point with a past that may be very minimal or pretty complex; it may include your participation in a community sharing an interest and experiences in various forms of communication with a variety of non-physical entities; and you may have previously researched the subject and read extensively about its history, its evolution into and then from shamanism and religion into new practices and technologies of spirituality, and you yourself may have contributed to such research.

Nevertheless, this moment and each coming moment is a new beginning for the simple reason that everything you now do is a Next Step that may affirm or overthrow your previous beliefs and lay the foundation for new perceptions and new understanding.

A Fresh Start

What’s past is prologue wrote William Shakespeare, but it is essential that we do not allow the past to write the future!

In other words, whatever your past interest and study has been, that was then and this is now. Now is a new beginning and we want you to see it as a fresh start. Everything that you know includes the past, and is always with you even if not in your immediate conscious awareness, but an open mind means that you don’t let the past, and most especially the opinions and biased statements of others prejudice your new study of this subject.

We are reminded of the history of St. Joan of Arc who was burned at the stake by the so-called "Holy Inquisition because she would not recant her claim that angels spoke to her. Catholic doctrine said that only its priests (male only) could do that and that all others should believe that any listening to voices of non-physical entities was to expose their souls to the unholy work of the mythical the devil himself."

In this book, we want to provide more than just a review of this subject’s history and encourage you see your own history of study and your own experiences no matter their depth of nature with a fresh new look. We hope to encourage you to participate in study and research, to use the programs and procedures we provide for your own direct experiences, and then to record and analyze your experiences, to relate them to your entire study and communal involvement, and—perhaps—contribute your findings and conclusions to the scientific community and to others as well. Share your successes, admit your failures, and be open to new sources and help.

Yes, there is a History, but there’s a New Age too!

The story of spirit communication is as ancient as is humanity itself, and encompasses much more than talking with the dead. As you will see here in chapter and text, shamans and priests (male and female), and many ordinary people have communicated with ancestral and other spiritual entities through spontaneous or induced trances and altered states of consciousness, and through dreams, omens, and divination as recorded in sacred and mundane writing, in myth and folklore, and as evidenced by ancient artifacts and in pre-historic cave drawings.

Access to Information and Knowledge

In this New Age there is nearly universal access to Information and Knowledge once available only through long apprenticeship, required adherence to theological indoctrination combined with training in specified rituals, controlled initiation into secret teachings involving specific gestures and incantations, and other elitist restraints intended to produce a hierarchical class of trained income-earning professionals.

Today’s Information Age is

replacing Hierarchy with Equality

We’ve all heard that Knowledge is Power! And it is the wide availability of knowledge through physical, psychic, mental and spiritual technologies that enables self-empowerment without restrictions of class or affiliation. Books and the Internet have replaced the old controlled access to restricted Church libraries; lectures and classes have replaced the old limited access of secret orders; conferences and digital up-dates keep us in touch with new developments; and even the news and entertainment media by-pass the censorship of church and state still rampant into the late 20th century.

But, with this new way comes new responsibilities: you have to do the work, provide your own self-discipline to study and practice, and to determine the quality and value of the resources. In the old way, you were either locked in or locked out of a particular resource that had become more of a belief system than genuine sources of knowledge and information.

This New Age is a two-way street! What you learn through study, experiment, and practice is shared with others. There are no real secrets. Knowledge thrives in democracy, and leads to innovation. And, open knowledge, innovation, and democracy require responsible and ethically rational behavior. But Liberty requires constant vigilance against the continuing attempts by elitist special interests to control progress for their own financial and political self-interests, and each caring person in a democratic society must remain alert against their attempts.

Spirituality is Dynamic

Spirituality is reality in its highest form. Rather than a fixed dimension, it is a dynamic force that is constantly present and forever evolving. At a personal level, it is the essential essence of our existence as evolving souls. At a more comprehensive level, it is the energizing force that sustains all that exists, both seen and unseen, and moves us ever forward, ever upward.

While much of our growth as spiritual beings can be spontaneous and thus effortless on our part, it is only through our purposeful and deliberate interactions with the spirit realm that we attain our peak levels of personal evolvement. Aside from that, the discovery of our past personal history and destiny may well rest upon our interactions with the spiritual realm as the ultimate source of knowledge. On a much broader scale, spiritual enlightenment could result in greater understanding of the universe/multiverse and the powers that sustains them.

Our greatest spiritual challenge as evolving souls is to discover knowledge and use it for the higher good. Through our spiritual interactions, we can become empowered to achieve that important goal. Fortunately, the spiritual dimension with its wealth of growth resources constantly beckons us, but it is up to each of us to respond and access its powers. A major goal of this book is to facilitate that important effort.

Ye are Gods in the Making.

As the great American seer, Edgar Cayce, repeated many times in his reading, Ye are gods in the making, for that is the obvious purpose of our existence—to evolve and fulfill our highest potential, to become all that we can be, and thus to realize the unity of human and the universe:

As Above, So Below

Meditation

What does Communicating with Spirit mean to you?

[contents]

Preface

AFTER DEATH: WHAT? WHERE?

As Channeled from A Ghost named George*

The Importance of the Question before the Answer

In this dictation, my job is to answer a set of questions about what and where after physical death thus to describe the spirit process from an inside perspective.

I must explain that I am not a writer, but a dictator. No! That’s not right, is it? I don’t use words or images, just ideas that I push out to the channel. It’s not like a TV channel that anyone can tune into but a human personality with whom I have a sympathetic relationship. That makes it easier for ideas to become impressions and then silently transferred words. But, remember that these words are not definitive in the same way that normal human conversation appears.

And most importantly, note: the question comes first. Without a question, there can be no answer, and the way the question is framed is of the utmost importance to the quality and definitive power of the answer. I cannot go about spouting off on my own, you know. And, that’s another point: my ideas and words come through interactions with my channel’s mind.

The Physical Body is a temporary vehicle.

Look at yourself: You are not a body. The physical body is a temporary but necessary vehicle for you to occupy during physical life. The real you is an aspect of your consciousness we know as a person and identify as that personality.

Throughout your physical life, your body grows and changes and ages, and then dies. Throughout your physical life, your personality likewise grows and changes, and ages but does so differently and doesn’t die with your physical body.

At the same time, there is more than just the physical body and the personality through which you function and experience incarnate life. There is a composite vehicle composed of etheric, astral, mental and causal substances and energies that along with the physical body enable the personality to function and experience at the energy, emotional, mental, and multiple spiritual levels. This can be perceived clairvoyantly as the aura.

After Death Survival

After physical death, your personality survives in that composite vehicle, moving out of the physical body, dropping the etheric-energy body to decompose a few days later, and simply moving on to primarily function in the astral-emotional vehicle commonly called a spirit and while often presumed to be the soul, it is only an aspect of that which we will discuss later. This surviving personality sometimes returns to communicate in dreams, sometimes it manifests in paranormal activity as in a haunting, and sometimes as a spirit as in a séance. But, sooner or later, it must move on.

The Spirit Body is also a temporary vehicle.

Just as the physical body or vehicle was inclusive of that multiple composite, so does that astral vehicle include the composite of mental, causal and higher spiritual levels. That after death vehicle is also temporary just as was the physical body, and the surviving personality continues to learn and grow just as it did in the physical world but with a new mission and set of experiential opportunities specific to its new home. That temporary vehicle is made of astral substance and continues for as long as the personality lives in the astral world. The astral world is a much larger non-physical and non-spatial dimension than the physical world. You won’t find it on any map, but you do see it indicated on many drawings illustrating the various dimensions of the Cosmos: Physical, Astral, Mental, Causal, and others variously named but more often simply grouped together as spiritual.

This, of course, can be confusing since spirit and spiritual are words used both in relation to the astral world and to that group above the causal level. However, neither the astral nor the spiritual dimensions are a permanent retirement home or the heaven of religious promise. That heaven (or paradise) is an illusion of false expectations created in the faithful by their religious leaders as a reward for following commandments and theocratic laws and the orders of church leaders.

The Nature of Karma

While that giant astral illusion lives on, the personal illusion eventually—like other artificial thought forms—soon passes away. The reality, for most of us, is that we will return to live another life planned to exhaust the negative karma created during life by thoughtless action. Following orders is no excuse for the killing, rape, and other crimes executed under direction of power driven leaders. The emotion of guilt—whether acknowledged or suppressed—becomes karma that will later be recalled and acknowledged in an emotional release.

You are not your Soul

The You you know is a manifestation of Soul, but your personality is not the whole soul but one of many aspects of it incarnating life after life and occupying a series of temporary vehicles each composed of the substance of one dimension after the other. Then the essence of each of life’s lessons is abstracted and further refined until the soul is ready to progress on into still higher spiritual dimensions. The soul continues on its journey through the Cosmos, learning and/or working on behalf of the Great Plan set in motion by the Creator Source of all that is—which is better realized as Unity when not given a defining and hence limiting name.

What we forget, and What we remember

The surviving personality we knew during physical life and may encounter during its continuing astral life is constantly growing and learning, and moving on, level after level, life after life. Growth, Learning, Development, Becoming more than we were—that’s what all our lives are about.

But, just as there are stages in physical life so there are many more stages in astral life. The senior citizen stage of physical life has forgotten most of its infant stage as the personality grew and learned while moving on through its physical life cycle. The same is true of its astral life cycle, although the astral, and then the mental and causal cycles, are usually much longer. The Personality forgets because it doesn’t need those infant memories, and the same ‘censorship’ applies in all stage of our many lives in different vehicles.

However, those forgotten memories are recorded first in the Subconscious Mind and then in different detail in the Akashic Records. What we may need to remember can be recalled through the psychic technology we know as Past Lives Regression using self-hypnosis or deep meditation. Regression can bring together many skills and past knowledge that can be of practical benefit in one’s current life.

Know what you need, and it will be given onto you!

Decaying Remnants

After a time the spirit encountered in a séance loses connection with the surviving personality as it moves on, leaving behind a decaying remnant—not of the astral vehicle but of the thought form automatically created during that period in response to the active communication between the surviving personality and the earthy communicators.

A Ghost

Astral substance is very sensitive and reactive to thought and emotion, and it is this fact that accounts for much paranormal, magickal, and religious supernatural phenomena.

This is a challenging concept to try to explain even for a ghost as Carl fondly calls me. A real ghost is rarely the astral vehicle of the surviving personality but is rather an impression initially created out of the lowest level of astral substance through poltergeist-like actions involving mostly human emotions—fear, love, remembrances, excitement in relation to mystery, hope, and more—and then sometimes, but not always, reinforced by identification with a known person and memories associated with that person.

As long as the ghostly impressions continue in the memories of new generations of descendants or of tourists in famous haunted castles, etc., the phenomena will continue, and even change character in reflection of new stories. When there is no continued reinforcement, the ghost eventually dies.

Why Spirits of Famous People get Dumb with age

While the surviving personality occupies a living astral vehicle, active communications between the physically living and the astral living creates a thought form impression of the astral vehicle. When the spirit moves on—as it must—it leaves behind that thought form which has recorded conversations and memories so that further communications seem, for a while, to be as real as they were previously but in actuality they come from a decaying astral remnant. The decaying astral remnants of the spirits of famous historical figures will last longer than others but a time will come when those decaying remnants will no longer reflect the brilliant and loving personality you may have known during the physical life and early astral phase. It is then that séance spectators will wonder at the seeming naiveté or even dumbness of the decaying remnant of even the most vivid of famous historical personalities. The answer is that those Spirits have moved on.

Where is the Land of Oz?

I refer to the fictional Land of Oz, located somewhere over the rainbow for a reason. Fantasy and Fiction—like Myth—are stories created in and with the aid of the imagination. The imagination is the key to the Inner Worlds, and these Inner Worlds are where we enter the Astral World and the other Cosmic dimensions.

It’s all in your imagination is more meaningful that usually credited. Beings, Spirits, Forms, and Places have a real and continuing essential life in the astral, but there are also temporary experiential creations and impressions of astral substance that are experienced as just as real to the astral traveler but can be blown away by an act of will, or that otherwise will fade away without energy input.

And, more important, that which is created on the astral and properly energized can manifest in the physical world. Sometimes this is more or less seemingly miraculous or magickal, and in other ways can be seen as a simple process in the nature of an idea on the astral being converted to a blue print from which a physical creation is composed. Even though not miraculous it did originate on the astral.

There is a real and a subtle connection between the essential astral dimension and the astral world of our experience. Dorothy, in the fictional Wizard of Oz, traveled to the astral land over the rainbow via a physical whirling tornado, but she returned to physical Kansas by closing her eyes and clicking her heels three times. Here we are presented with a seemingly real (the essential) land over the rainbow, but it is an act of imagination to return from the essential astral dimension and the experiential one by means of an act of imagination.

What’s real?

Both the essential and the experiential astral worlds are real, but we have to shift our concept of what’s real away from the outer world to the inner world. We are conditioned to think that the outer world is the only reality but we fail to realize that everything we physically sense in the outer world is just a set of vibrations, and that these are transmitted via nerves to sections of the brain where they are translated into the sight, sound, taste, taste, and touch that define the outer world for us. Reality is what we perceive or make out of those vibrations.

The Shamanic tornado

A long time ago, a little known American occultist named Ophiel told Carl that the author of the OZ books was a brilliant occultist. What he didn’t say was that what Dorothy Gale experienced in the whirling tornado carrying her out of physical Kansas to inner world Oz represented a typical shamanic method of inducing trance by which one can access the inner worlds. The dizzying dance of the Whirling Dervish leads to a mystical state of consciousness that opens the door to astral travel.

The three clicks of Dorothy’s heels signal the return to ordinary consciousness. Everything happens in three’s means that the episode comes to an end.

To understand spiritual realities, we have to reverse our normal concepts of the outer world, thinking spatially of heavens above, and instead turn inward to find spirit, the astral, heaven, and Creative Source. The physical universe spreads out before us in infinite Outer Space; while the Cosmos spreads deeply within infinite Inner Space. Realize that it is only the physical universe that occupies physical space.

The boundary between inner and outer is the Wizard’s domain

We use psychic science and technologies to explore inner space, and physical science and technologies to explore outer space. We are the boundary between inner and outer and it is with our Wizard’s techniques of hypnosis/self-hypnosis, meditation, magick, divination, shamanism, mediumship and channeling that we probe inner space and bring back experiential knowledge into our conscious realization.

You have the potential

Each of us has both the potential and the obligation to become wizards able to function between the worlds and bring back the knowledge and know-how of the gods to empower each person to become more than she/he is and all he/she can be.

Life is a fascinating, rich and rewarding journey that we all make. Each of us can make that journey also magickal and miraculous and transform ourselves and the world we live in.

—George

Who is George?

*Who is George? I frankly don’t know, but I know that he is not a traditional ghost haunting just a particular location.

I first encountered George when I purchased an old and very large stone mansion on our city’s prestigious main residential avenue. The house had been built in the late 1800s by a lumber baron, and later occupied by a succession of wealthy families until one of them donated it to become an art school and gallery from whom I purchased it when they moved to a larger and more modern facility in the main downtown area.

I had attended evening art classes there, and heard stories about George as that strange gentleman in evening clothes wandering the halls, but I never encountered him. When I was buying the house I was warned of several ghostly manifestations over the years, including George seen dressed formally in evening clothes and Martha who could be heard banging pots and pans in the kitchen when no one was there.

In real life there had been two deaths associated with the old house. The first was an unfortunate immigrant servant girl who had gotten pregnant (so she said) by the chauffer who then wanted nothing to do with her. Depressed and alone, she hanged herself in the stairwell between second and third floors. This supposedly was Martha. The second had been an associate of the art school who (it was said) had been falsely accused of theft, and likewise committed suicide. This supposedly was George. I was told that neither name was real, but somehow was inspired and had stuck through the years.

After purchasing the old place, at first I came there at night to start renovation before moving in. My first work was to sand the floors badly scared from moving art displays and furniture about, getting rid of false walls in front of the seven fire places and parts of the seven bathrooms, and dividing several of the bedrooms. There were no floor plans left, and I needed to draw my own to know what I had to work with.

Working there at night I heard plenty of noises—sounds of someone walking about, doors slamming shut behind me, windows being opened (which I then had to close and lock), along with the squeaks and groans of an old and still empty house. I got into the habit of calling out George, it’s just me more in fun than anything else. But it seemed to have the effect of calming things down.

Once I knew what I wanted to do, I hired two excellent all-around workmen to install wood paneling, build library book shelves, restore plumbing, add new lighting, tile the kitchen, pantry, and the old ice room, add storm windows and screens, refinish wood, change over from oil to gas heat, and repair the immense north facing skylight over the third floor studio (the original ‘ball room’). Then I moved myself in, while continuing renovation of the living areas, and moved the then small business of Llewellyn Publications into the old kitchen and ice-room, and large parts of the basement and the garage space in the carriage house on the alley behind the house. The house and the carriage house in back totaled 32,000 square feet of space. I rented out two apartments in the carriage house that had been servants’ quarters to help pay the heating costs.

Now, most of the ghostly manifestations had ceased and I thought fondly of George and sorry for Martha. Still, occasionally, I saw odd lights and swirling energies, and the cat would stare at empty spaces. None of this was attributed to George.

Living alone in a big house, empty except for me at night often working until midnight and later, I got into the habit of talking out loud—essentially voicing problems and questions to George, and often getting answers—not as spoken words but as thoughts and feelings that made sense. I never debated as to whether this George was the old George, whether he was a spirit or just an imaginary friend, or even my Guardian Angel or Spirit Guide, or if I was creating a splinter personality. George was a convenient foil and I enjoyed having a companion other than the cat.

Llewellyn soon grew to the point where I had to purchase a building in downtown Minneapolis where I also created the Gnostica Bookstore and the Gnostic School for Self-Development. We also sponsored the Gnosticons bringing lecturers from around the world, many of whom were or became Llewellyn authors. We also developed and published Gnostica Magazine which later reincarnated as New World of Mind & Spirit.

After Sandra and I married, and son Gabriel (Gabe) came along we decided it would be better to raise our son in the country. We bought a beautiful home on a lake outside of nearby Woodbury. And, to my surprise and pleasure, George moved with us. Later, we moved again because Woodbury’s population suddenly exploded and became a city, and we moved again, to our present home on a bluff overlooking the Mighty Mississippi River just ten minutes from the new Llewellyn campus we’d built in Woodbury to accommodate the company’s continued expansion.

With each move, George came along. I mention all of this simply because by any definition George is some form of consciousness that is a recognizable spiritual entity. Today Llewellyn is well managed by Sandra, Gabe, and a capable and experienced staff. With advanced age I’ve become handicapped with severe arthritis and work primarily at home. I am today a researcher and a writer. I still sometimes talk out loud (perhaps not politely) and voice questions I’m thinking about, and sometimes I address specific questions to George. When I do, I usually get ideas and impressions in response. I don’t hear him answer with words nor does he move my fingers on the keyboard. When I write in response to these ideas it is with a writer’s voice different than my own. Many writers have this experience when using pseudonyms: the pretend person does take on a personality of her own and soon seems to possess knowledge outside that of her creator. George, however, is more than a pseudonym, and regardless of his true nature—whether as part of my consciousness or a spirit, or guide, a living thought form on the astral, or anything else, he is a friend too. I still call him a Ghost named George because that’s now his name, not a definition nor a pseudonym.

Now, for one point: As will be further explained elsewhere and in Chapter 14 in particular, in such subjective conversations with a seeming external entity, it is important that you objectify the entity as if external to yourself even if you believe (know) it is part of your own consciousness. Why? Read the book! Well, really, it reduces the hazard of obsession and ego-inflation which is potential in all psychological and spiritual work.

—Carl

Meditation

You are not the Physical Body

[contents]

Introduction

Spirit, and The World of Spirit

Survival After Physical Death

Most people do not really believe in a world or dimension of Spirit. While many do believe in something called Soul (or Spirit) that survives the death of the physical body and that may go on to a place called heaven or, alternatively, to other dimensions that culminates in rebirth (reincarnation), they give little thought to either Soul or the Next World, until—perhaps—when their confrontation with death is imminent.

Rather than think about it now, at most they leave it all to Fate or Faith with the same blind acceptance of things as they are rather than showing any concern towards acting now to make a Better World for tomorrow and generations to come, or even to assume some responsibility of their own health and well-being.

If you place all responsibility for your life on someone else—whether doctor, lawyer, fireman or chief, or politicians, preachers, guardian angels, or God/Goddess/Creator, etc.—nothing really changes for your soul while your physical body merely gets older.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way!

You can take charge of your own life to the degree that you are willing to learn, and then to act with knowledge and acceptance of responsibility for your actions. You can learn more about yourself than any doctor or other person, and you can work in active partnership with such a trained person if they are willing to work with you rather than as the single authority of doctor knows best.

Psychic Empowerment & Self-Knowledge

Ultimately we are talking about Psychic Empowerment—the very real ‘potential’ you have to better know you own body, mind, and spirit than anyone else no matter what their training or credentials may be. But, it is only ‘potential’ until you do activate the power and skills involved in becoming more than you are! That’s what this book and the others in this series of Personal Empowerment Books intends to do. We are not suggesting that you NOT seek medical (or other professional) advice or help, but we ARE encouraging you to gain self-knowledge and better understand your own self and needs to act intelligently so that you may avoid a future medical (or other) crisis and able to give your care provider (or other advisor) better information to better work with you.

You do have the psychic awareness to know these things, but you have to acknowledge it and learn to use it! And, it is indeed worth it because you then become more than you on the road to becoming all you can be!

These words and thoughts may seem strange here in a discussion of Spirit, but we have to try and understand what or who is Spirit. If there is a World of Spirit then where and what is it? Is Spirit the same as Soul? Is the World of Spirit the same as Heaven, or is the After World something else?"

Let’s clarify something right now, here at the beginning of this book on Communicating with Spirit and Psychic Empowerment. You are not going to get any real answers by merely turning to quotations from the Bible or any other sacred literature or the writings of spiritualists, shamen, occultists, religionists, psychologists or parapsychologists, agnostics or atheists, anthropologists or archaeologists, philosophers or historians, or even your present authors—unless you relate their words to your self-understanding and integrate their meaning to you with your self-knowledge and purpose in this life.

The Answers come from within

All these resources can be helpful, but real answers are those in response to your own questions, and that you work hard to understand in relation to your own experience and self-determined interest and research ‘filtered’ through your mind. You are reading this book because you want to learn and know certain things, find particular answers, and then to do something based on your new knowledge. Action makes the difference!

The first thing you must do is to state to yourself what you are seeking. In that regard, we earnestly recommend that you start a journal or notebook that you will use throughout this particular journey, really an adventure. And start by writing down what it is you want to know regarding Spirit and Spirit Communications and what you hope to accomplish.

What, and Who is Spirit?

We do, however, need to define for ourselves the terms we use within a meaningful and unambiguous foundation for our discussion and exploration of Spirit Communication. Of course, we can and should tap into respected and genuinely secular resources to refine these definitions in the context of our usage. And, to make this specific and useful, we will add them to the Glossary for this book so that we can constantly reaffirm their meanings as specific to our discussion.

For most people the answer is that a Spirit is the person formerly living in a physical body and now living in a non-physical body or vehicle in the Next World also called the Spirit World. But for Metaphysical* Researchers and an increasing number of psychologists and paranormal scientists, the entity called a spirit** in séance and other Spiritualist phenomena is better understood as the surviving personality of a deceased person in transition to another dimension, temporarily occupying a vehicle composed of the substance of the currently occupied dimension.

* The words Metaphysics, Metaphysicians, etc. are increasingly used as alternatives to Occultists, Esotericists, Seekers, and Spiritualists to avoid typical negative confusions with the prejudicial usage by theologians, preachers, and even scientists who really know little about the subject matter. In addition, Metaphysical has become a common trade term in the book industry for the full range of subjects from alchemy through yoga that all in various ways involve the concepts of Spirit and Spirituality. At this point, we see no need to define Metaphysics as your dictionary or the Internet does a good enough job.

It may all seem a bit convoluted and confusing at the moment, but clarity will come with understanding as we further progress in this discussion.

** As always, we face a problem of word definitions in non-fiction writing because English, the world’s dominant language, often uses and abuses the same word for a range of different meanings. Spirit is one of those that has been used both as the vehicle for personality in the so-called next world and also as an alternative for personality and soul, and for the inner nature of various things, ideals, and beliefs—often leading to further confusion as, for example, when we speak of the Spirit of Liberty we can mean either the ideal of Liberty or an actual deity (Goddess) called Liberty, or we may be referring to our belief in Liberty as a political necessity for advancing human civilization or that our goal is to achieve Liberty from political or sectarian religious domination.

The Surviving Personality and its Astral Vehicle

In other words, we are saying that it is not a spirit who manifests through a physical vehicle during what we call life, and it is not a spirit who manifests through a spirit vehicle but what we will first call a surviving personality and then later arrive at an understanding of a higher entity we call soul that partially incarnates as a new personality (with memories of its previous personalities) successively occupying new physical-etheric,*** astral-emotional, and mental-causal vehicles before moving on to further advance in non-physical life, or to reincarnate in the form of a new personality manifesting successively—again—through new physical, astral, mental, and causal vehicles that provide further growth opportunities.

*** We’ve compounded (hyphenated) the initial reference to the physical-etheric and other vehicles in the last paragraph because that will be helpful in understanding their primary manner of manifestation. In each of those groupings there are seven sub-levels of which each relates to particular energies and substances that uniquely characterize the denizens and functions potential to those levels as active consciousness as specifically focused at those levels to benefit from their unique opportunities and limitations. Reference to the tables in the Glossary will help clarify these concepts.

During what we call life, the personality functions through all these vehicles (physical-etheric-astral-mental-casual-spiritual) simultaneously but with different levels of awareness and purpose. In this life, the primary focus of consciousness is through the physical (biological) vehicle. After death there is movement into the energy aspect of the physical known as the Etheric Double from which it quickly moves on to focus through progressive levels of the astral vehicle with degrees of emotional awareness, and then to the mental & causal vehicles. It is an astral-mental-causal unity primarily focused through the astral vehicle commonly called spirit in the séance and other forms of spirit communication.

We can see now that Spirit is used with little specific definition. Our interest is in the surviving personality and two important clarifications are made here:

The personality is not the Soul of the person. It is descended from the Soul, and eventually returns to the Soul and contributes its life lessons to the ‘wholeness’ that the Soul is becoming.

The non-physical body that ascends from its former ‘home’ in the physical body before death and continues on as a ‘vehicle’ occupied by the personality after death is better known as the astral vehicle.

In the same sense, the former physical body likewise served as a vehicle (or some esoterics prefer the term envelope), and the personality will eventually transition from the astral into a mental vehicle, and then into a causal vehicle.

It must be noted that not all Spiritualists and other readers interested in the subject and practice of Spirit Communication believe in reincarnation, nor is that belief necessary within the context of this book. While, perhaps a majority of our readers are either believers or are open-minded in regard to the general subject of previous lives, it is not the dominant theme of this book and mentions will only be occasional.

Reincarnation & Life’s Lessons

It is in the causal vehicle that the experiences of the incarnating personality are abstracted and absorbed as life’s lessons into the Soul, and joined with lessons from previous lives. That personality we experienced as Self dissolves just as the physical body did. Particular memories from previous lives can be recalled through Past Life Regression techniques but with increasing abstraction as time passes and memories fully become lessons. The Soul’s knowledge derived from lives’ lessons becomes further abstracted to lay the foundations for coming lives’ plans.

Even so, the causal vehicle is not itself the soul, but rather a kind of final vehicle.

Spirit Guides, Guardian Angels,

Nature Spirits & Elementals, and more

Along with spirits (surviving personalities) of so-called Dead People, there is a long tradition and history of other entities manifesting through this same non-physical world: spirit guides & teachers, guardian angels & invisible helpers, and special classes of nature spirits & elementals including fairies, gnomes, elves, sprites, and more; angels and ruling spirits of places & forces; higher intelligences variously called archangels, ascended masters, inner plane adepti, and many other names and forms from different cultures and times. There are also astral travelers (living persons projecting out-of-body), consciously and un-consciously created thought-forms, mythic and deific images empowered by ritual and prayer, and a great many more forms and beings including religious entities & powers, gods, goddesses, etc. that we will discuss in due course.

Before going into great detail, we want to step back and firmly establish that the human personality we identify with is neither a product of the physical brain nor a mere biological product of the physical body. Of course physical life has an effect on personality but is always important to distinguish effect from cause. What we call Spirit is just the same personality occupying another body that happens to be non-physical rather than physical. And to avoid confusion we prefer the word vehicle to that of body for the obvious reason that we readily perceive a vehicle as a temporary conveyance. The spirit vehicle is itself not the personality of a formerly living person inhabiting a physical vehicle, and the vehicle itself—just as with the previously inhabited physical body—will return to its native substance once the occupying personality moves on to its next vehicle in a yet higher world. More about that later.

But there is another point to establish as we relate this personality to the body or vehicle in which it manifests: The personality itself is not limited to or defined by the vehicle. As previously mentioned, the personality has other vehicles to use as it progresses through its Cosmic Life following a plan of developmental evolution (not the Darwinian biological evolution but a continual progressing evolutionary development of cosmic nature). Within each of its temporary conveyances, it focuses its conscious awareness to the then primary vehicle while there is also a mostly unconscious awareness of its next successive vehicle as well as one derived from ALL its previous vehicles of Past Lives.

Each of these vehicles progresses in substance from physical to astral, mental, and causal, and each of these primarily manifests in a world or plane (dimension) made of the same substance as that of the vehicle, and each such world has its own particular laws, rules, and energy determining the functionality of the occupied vehicle.

The most important of these rules as they affect the transiting personality and its work is that actual manifestation proceeds from higher to lower. We can sum it up most simply as Thought moves downward from the mental vehicle and world into Feeling (Emotion) in the Astral (so-called ‘Spirit’) vehicle and world, and thence downward into the physical vehicle and world of Action.

From Mind/Thought to

Emotion/Feeling to Action/Reaction

Equally important is the realization that while incarnate in the physical vehicle, the personality also functions in the astral, mental, and causal vehicles operating together but with the physical predominant. After physical death, the personality becomes primarily focused in the astral vehicle, but is still united with the mental and causal. And, later, it casts off the astral to center in the mental, and finally in the causal. With each level, the opportunities of experience and learning change.

An even greater realization is that you don’t have to die to consciously focus, experience, and work in and through the astral, mental and causal vehicles. It is this expansion of consciousness and extension of focused awareness that we call psychic empowerment. Psychic empowerment comes as you successively become more than you are and all you can be.

What, and Where, is the World of Spirit?

What some call the Afterworld is better understood as the astral world, and it is important to understand that the astral (also referred to as a plane or dimension) is much larger than both the physical/etheric and the mental levels. In using this word level we generally mean both the vehicle and the world of its manifestation. Each level (both as vehicle and world) is unique in substance and energy, and the laws of their manifestation. Just as there are physical laws so there are astral, mental and causal laws describing the way things function at those levels.

Within that understanding, most of what we call spirits and the spirit world occupy only a narrow range of the sub-divisions of the astral world. Because spirits are the familiar term for the astral manifestations of the surviving personality of the deceased person, we will continue to use that terminology for the major portion of this book, and carefully distinguish from those discussions involving communication and interaction with other non-physical and specifically astral entities and phenomenon.

Rules of Spirit Communication

Spirit Communication follows certain rules and has distinguishing and characteristic phenomenon that differs from clairvoyant vision of nature spirits, elementals, and other more-or-less permanent denizens of the astral world. And there are also differences in forms of communication and interaction with angels, archangels, mythic and religious deities, with Great Teachers and Ascended Masters,* and perhaps yet other greater beings.

* This word, master should not be confused with ruler. This Master is used in the sense of one who has mastered a subject, skill, or level of being. A Master of Botany is one who has become expert in the subject and now can teach it. An Ascended Master is expert in Life Science to the level of being a teacher or guide.

Of all the other of these entities, perhaps the most important and useful to us are those very specific powers and intelligences contacted through prayer, magick, shamanic and other extensions of consciousness, and that form of invocation also known as worship in mostly non-monotheistic religious and spiritual practices. Such worship is not posturing before a graven image or praying (or begging for help) to a far distant heavenly deity, but a bringing within of all the attributes, symbolism, and energies focused into a specific deific image that is alive on the astral level of universal consciousness.

Spirit Communication is more than just conversation with dead people who eventually move on, and definitely more than just interesting psychic phenomena. All interaction with the astral world and with higher worlds is consciousness-expanding and empowering experience. We grow not only through learning material facts and rational thinking but through Mind-extending experiences and what we call Psychic Development, Training, and Empowerment. Growth is always a matter of attainment. We become able to function at higher and greater levels of consciousness, and every spiritual and psychic experience and skill brings us ever closer to becoming more than we are and more of the whole person that is our destiny.

The Spirit World is real, but Spirits of the Dead move on to continue to live in this and higher levels, constantly experiencing and growing. Communications with a particular surviving personality change in character over time. The person you knew if life slowly loses it and no longer gives you the wise advice you once expected. That surviving personality has moved on leaving behind an astral shell that slowly decays in the same way as the physical shell and then etheric shell decays once the living personality moves on.

Communicating with Spirit

We do need to make a distinction between Spirit Communication and Communicating with Spirit. In the first we are communicating with various spiritual entities by various means often involving intermediaries of mediums, guides, channels, and such tools as spirit boards, writing instruments, pendulums, etc. In the second, we are communicating by means of Spirit, that quality or power innate to every person.

Spirit Communication is not just conversation with dead people but can ascend into communication with higher beings known variously as Guides, Teachers, Guardian Angels, Ascended Masters, Inner Plane Adepti, and—perhaps a strange thought at first—your own Higher Self. With each higher level we move from Spirit Communication toward and ultimately only to Communicating with Spirit, i.e. Spirit to Spirit by Spirit.

The Inner Worlds are far greater in size (an inappropriate measure) than even the whole physical universe. Just as you are learning that you are much more than the surface personality you think of as your own self, so can you also learn to communicate with these various selves that make up the whole of your Personality (the Lower Sub-Conscious Self, the Conscious Self and the Higher Superconscious Self).

And, just as you can communicate—for a time—with the spirits of dead people, so can you learn to communicate with these Guides, Teachers, and other Higher Beings. Humans have been communicating with spirits of all kinds for many eons through recorded history and before as known to us through lore and myth.

The communications ‘technology’ is essentially the same but with minor variations indicated by the nomenclature. Mediumship, Channeling, Astral Travel, Clairvoyance, forms of Meditation, Mysticism, Shamanism, Visions, Invocation, Worship, and others are all forms of Trance and Altered States of Consciousness that we will be discussing in the following chapters of this book.

We do talk to ourselves and sometimes hear ourselves talk in sleep or various altered states. Sometimes you may find this scary, but you can learn to direct the conversation and then benefit from those memories retained in the subconscious mind, and the wisdom and intuition of the superconscious mind, all related interactively with the knowledge and purpose of the conscious mind.

And this is a major point: interaction means a two-way conversation in contrast to rote prayers prescribed in most sectarian religions. Spirit Communication is not a religious practice and is, in fact, condemned by much of Christianity and Islam. But Spirit Communication is not wrong, and those that condemn it are only trying to protect their turf in asserting a monopoly in which the designated clergy are the only officials authorized to communicate with the spiritual world. Unfortunately, they threaten others with irrational superstitions and even dire threats intended to keep their flocks of sheep under control and paying their dues.

You, readers of this book, are free people, not enslaved in spirit any more than the many once enslaved as property. You are free to learn, and in taking this opportunity of learning you are also taking responsibility to learn to communicate well and to protect yourselves from psychic residues left by such malicious intentions and from the psychic residues left by decaying shells in the same way you need to protect yourself from the bacteria of decaying physical forms.

Psychic Self-Defense is simple to learn and practice and most people do it automatically as simply as washing hands. Simply visualizing your protective aura will provide inner strength and a spiritual barrier against these things. A simple form of this is a common practice in most spiritual procedures, and it is included in the following chapters.

Some Answers to Questions

Why is Spirit important?

Spirit is itself a dimension of consciousness that we all possess, just as there is physical consciousness, emotional consciousness, mental consciousness, so is there spiritual consciousness.

Physical level consciousness is defined by the perceptions of the five physical senses that can and should trained, further developed, and experienced not only at the physical dimension but at each of the higher dimensions which are perceived as enrichments of the basic five.

With each higher dimension, other senses become available, including those of movement through time and space, and beyond the apparent limitations of time and space, and of "Self" through consciousness itself.

We evolve through the perception of Self through all dimensions.

What is the significance of spirit communication today—what’s new?

With the Changing of the Ages—from three animal signs of Taurus the Bull, (4700 BCE to 2500 BCE), Aries the Ram (2500 BCE to 300 BCE), and Pisces the Fishes (300 BCE to 1900 CE) into the Human sign of Aquarius (1900 CE to 2100 CE)—we are transitioning into a major shift in the nature and experience of consciousness itself.

The Animal period was characterized by objective wars (butting heads) for control of territory and subjective wars (swimming in opposite directions) for control of belief.

The Human period is characterized by extended awareness at both objective and subjective levels (conscious and subconscious) of consciousness.

What does it do for us? What will this book do for the reader?

The Animal period was ruled by Emotion, the Human period is increasingly ruled by the Mind. Instead of feeling, we move to thinking, from irrationality we move to rationality, from religions of mass violence and domination we move toward personal spirituality and psychic development.

With the shift in consciousness toward mentality we move away from the bigness of corporate domination, mass production, and the politics of greed and party control toward that smallness of high-technology, family proprietorships and personal production, and the politics of responsibility and citizen democracy.

This book returns Spirit to the person, opens the doors to communication at the spiritual levels, and extends perception from the material limitations towards the inclusiveness of higher dimensional awareness.

How does the New Age of Aquarius change Communication?

It’s a New Age that is personal and active. Communication of all sorts is direct, concise, and interactive. Communication is inclusive and aware of higher dimensions of consciousness. Our understanding of Spirits is no longer limited to spirits of the dead but recognizes a vast field of spirit entities and the Human Spirit (not soul) that is part of the subject matter of Communicating with Spirit. Spirit, and spirits, are everywhere, in all beings and all things.

Spiritual Communication is no longer only a passive state of waiting to hear the spirits speak through a medium or channel, but increasingly an active state of conscious and direct communication with specific spirits and spiritual entities.

Spiritual Communication today, in all its dimensions, is unlike mediumship and so-called prophecy of the past 7,500 years. While intermediaries (mediums and channels) are still used, more and more we move toward direct Spirit to Spirit communication involving the raising of one’s level of consciousness to harmonize with that of another entity.

Communicating with Spirit is a do it yourself movement, personal and individual, no longer dependent on groups and institutions for power or authority.

Some Things to Think About Throughout the Book

The following suggestive thoughts and questions and are intended to encourage the development of some degree of overall perspective in your own frames of reference.

TABLE

FIFTEEN TYPES OF SPIRITS

Surviving Personality: That part of consciousness now primarily resident in the astral body after death of the physical body and the disintegration of the etheric double.

Historic Persons: Entities in the astral world responding to calls to the deceased that may be an astral incarnation/thought form of memories resident in Universal Consciousness? This might be especially the case of famous people like William James or Abraham Lincoln.

Guides: Higher evolved souls returning to the astral plane to function as guides connecting persons living on the physical plane to the surviving personalities on the astral plane?

Helpers: Higher evolved souls manifesting as helpers in the astral world? What distinguishes a guide from a helper?

Animal Spirits: Survivals of pets? Of Wild Animals? What about Shamanic Power Animals" and God and Goddess of the species, Lord and Lady of the herd?

Spirits of Place: Astral forms of varying complexity and power existing naturally around springs, lakes, rivers, mountains, etc., and that may be further developed by human recognition and worship.

Nature Spirits: Elementals and other Astral entities that live on the astral plane, that influence non-human life on the physical plane, and that may appear to humans as gnomes, sprites, salamanders, etc.

Angels & Archangels: Mental and Spiritual entities that originate at higher levels but manifest at the astral level to communicate with physical entities primarily through their astral bodies. Some are attributed as powers and rulers of cosmic forces and magical functions.

Deities of Place: Thought forms constructed of astral and mental forces to rule a city, state, or nation, and embodying the character and ideals of the inhabitants. They may be purely non-physical as expressed in the Spirit of America, or they may develop around a physical symbol such as the Statute of Liberty. Every place—particularly when given form by a structure (such as a church building)—has a deity formed out of the collective intention of the designers and builders, the and attention of its users.

Group Mind: Every human grouping (and even of animals as in herds) of two or more forms a collective intelligence that embodies the team work of the group. It attracts intelligence from spirit above and allows the group to function as one. The Group Mind can be formalized by giving it a name (the ABC Corporation, the ABC Board of Directors, etc.), representing it with a symbol or logo, and energized it by establishing a group mantra used to open and close meetings, etc.

Inner Plane Adepti, Ascended Masters, etc. Ascending humans taking on responsibilities to guide ideal human interests from behind the scenes"—such as a nation, perhaps the United Nations, perhaps an institution like the Catholic Church, etc. It may not mean that these adepts are themselves guided by the highest ideals rather by their own ideology.

Deities: Gods & Goddesses, and other deific entities. Are they created and nurtured Mental or Causal level thought forms carefully constructed to embody very specific natural forces, human aspirations and needs, spirits of places, etc.?

Higher Self: The highest level of self-hood corresponding to the Causal Vehicle, and sometimes identified as one’s Holy Guardian Angel.

Soul: The highest level of individuality that itself does not incarnate, but send fragments of itself into incarnation via the Causal Vehicle.

God: We don’t know if there is a real single creative power external to the Cosmos or one that is internal and collective of all Life, or none at all—but we can see that the same process involved in creating a Group Mind and a Deity of Place would result in a monotheistic Jehovah or Mother Goddess or Father God of human creation regardless of cosmic reality. It is obvious that the God of Biblical scripture and major mythologies is of human origin with human characteristics of jealousy, love, hate, greed, etc. Such a God may be built around a once living person or a mythic person, and given a specific personality by a religion’s founders and administrators for the purpose of controlling a people. Once formed, the God becomes greater than its creators.

TABLE

FOUR DEFINITIONS OF THE SPIRIT REALM

Other names for the Subtle World that otherwise we consider either as just the Astral Plane, or the Astral, Mental, Causal Planes together—sometimes with others that are permanent. Each plane is accessible to the human psyche during life and afterlife, but awareness on any level is dependent on maturity, particular technologies, unusual circumstances, etc."

Where God lives.

Where we go after death: Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Paradise," etc. the location of Summerland, etc. (Most esoterics place it in the lower astral world.)

Where Souls come from.

Different sub-planes for different levels of entities, different levels of astral substance, and different levels for energy and functions?

TABLE

FOURTEEN BASIC CONSIDERATIONS IN RELATION

TO COMMUNICATION WITH SPIRIT (CONSCIOUSNESS)

Consciousness is universal—in all things.

In some sense, Consciousness and Spirit are the same thing, and both may also be Divinity.

Since Consciousness is all things, people, spiritual entities Divinities, etc., how do we communicate with them? Perhaps Spirit to Spirit?

Each unit of consciousness has a unique set of characteristics centered about a core vibratory state that—for simplicity—we identify with a NAME, or a WORD for groups of similar entities, units, or things.

While all units are distinguished by sets of characteristic, those of higher entities become more and more complex and require additional efforts to distinguish units of a similar class from one another in addition to their NAME. However, those in a class share similar characteristics and through these correspondences we can find cultural twins.

We can observe (and study) a lower entity by lowering our own vibratory state, or bridging from higher to lower by means of a tool. That tool, unfortunately, may be very limiting in regard to all the connections that unit has with others in a surrounding territory.

We can communicate with a higher entity by raising our own vibratory state, or bridging from lower to higher by means of a tool, but that tool will also be limiting and communications may be distorted or actually off target.

Thus, tools may be helpful but sometimes will prove inadequate in transmitting or receiving the desired message