Death and the World of In-Between

By S.E. Price

Follow John and Irma Winters in their personal and private attempts to face their own demise. Join Irmas struggle to understand death and its factual truth at a later age in her life, with all its implications. Meet Erica, Irmas childhood friend, who had been researching life after death for years and where the soul goes after death. Reflect on Ericas findings into this mysterious and nebulous subject called death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Feb 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781452558707

S.E. Price

Suzanne Price was born in Pembroke, Ontario Canada. She has been a student and researcher of the after-death states for many years. She extends her efforts to relate her ideas regarding what she discovered in her long search and she wishes to extend her empathy to all who traverse the ageing processes of all humanity. S. Price went to a Catholic day-school for girls, and in her adult years moved to Toronto and area, where her three daughters were born.

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Copyright © 2013 S.E. Price

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-5869-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-5870-7 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 02/07/2013

Contents

Epigraph

Forward

Appreciation

Introduction

Prelude

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Accepting Or Rejecting Information, Up To Oneself

How Often Can You Get An Interview With One Who Has Passed Over?

Chapter 4

Reincarnation: Thesaurus U.K.: [Re-Embodiment, Rebirth, Re-Creation]

Karma

Erica Speaks About Karma

Quote: Newton’s Third Law Of Motion Identifying Action And Reaction — Force Pairs

Remembering Sri Krishna’s Remembering

Suicide:

Chapter 5

Types Of Knowing

Chapter 6

Erica’s Obsession

Re: Two Stories

Chapter 7

Death Comes To Erica’s Father

Erica’s Conclusions

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Bibliography

Epigraph

Hail bright death!

Oh opener of doors!

Forward

There is nothing as devastating for an uninformed human being, than to consider the after-death-state at the very end of one’s life. This death idea is often a focus one puts off happily until the last moment of one’s life, and yet, it has implications that we never dreamed of and we might want to look into these matters in our more inspired moments. We might want to pay attention to the inner nudges that we get occasionally, which tell us to look into this matter.

Some senior citizens in the world have some physical comforts, but it seems that many become bored or are literally overcome by fear for their lives, and perhaps they have lost their life’s partner, or a family member, or a dear friend to death, and yet oddly enough, they may still show no interest in investigating the physical death-issue for others and themselves. Follow the story of John Winters Jr., who is 80 yrs. old and is dying, and the effect his death has on his wife Irma.

Sometimes it is our later years with their shocks and surprises that stimulate a belated interest in life-after-death from the examples of the deaths of relatives, or friends or loved ones, already spoken about.

Follow the story of Irma, John Jr.’s wife who asks for help from her friend Erica, to inform her of the kinds of realities a soul may experience when we die. This book is an encouragement to ordinary people who have no basic knowledge of after-death-states, to investigate many views about what happens when they have passed over to the after-death state.

There are those who may have ignored their responsibilities to themselves, through a deep fear of endings and the trepidations of new beginnings, when facing the reality of the death of their personal selves. Basically, they may have asked none of the most important questions, one of which is, what really happens when we die?

It is hoped that this book brings some peace of mind to the interested reader, and a real acceptance of the human condition and what can only be described as an attempt at putting humanity’s existence in its rightful and realistic place in this immense evolutionary journey which lies ahead for any soul, no matter what their state.

When John Winters Jr. passed away, we are confronted with John’s wife, Irma, and her reactions and questions about his death and where he may have gone, and where she might go also.

S.E. Price

Appreciation

In memory of a friend who passed away to the World of In-Between, and who managed to inspire another friend before leaving the earth.

Introduction

About this Book

Imagine that a sparkling mix of the people of the world were at a gigantic International Fair, where music and art and food were offered to the buyers from every known country in the world. Excitement and happy faces appeared everywhere, with a deep wish to share the pride of their origins and their spiritual heritages.

When sampling the foodstuffs of each special country, the buyer might notice that certain foods from certain countries seemed more pleasing to the palate than other selections. If we take the description of food as an analogy, then food suddenly jumps forward as our example of being fed.

The next idea is: who or what is being fed and for what purpose? Every country and belief system served their people with the richness of hidden wisdom and guidance for their earth lives and souls, over the centuries. Sadly, a virus was injected into this Universal Exchange and the world has been suffering since that event happened. Many wars and images of chaos were created from this virus, and the world groaned under this dividing principle.

This book refers to certain selected sources of information from chosen cultures of acquired wisdom that swam in the stream of life through the centuries of the Common Era. There has been no forgetting of the special benefits of wisdom and spirituality that came from various sources around the world. Only the author’s taste for certain food, and symbolically, the food of certain cultures and philosophies influenced the author’s choices of reference in this book, but it is certainly accepted also by this author, that all cultures and all times had special wisdoms and sacred sayings that instructed and strengthened the people of the times.

This author claims that there is no person mentioned by name in the book that reflects the total personality of any one person in the world today, and the names are considered accidental. The same claim can be applied to the living spaces for our main characters John and Irma Winters, and Irma’s friend Erica. No attempt has been made to encourage copying any special attitude from the characters of this book with the intention of persuading the reader to choose any particular philosophy or religion that exists in the world today. The whole story is but an attempt to nudge the reader into their own actions in life that might relieve any personal tensions regarding the death-issue. Whatever the reaction of the reader might be, the author claims no responsibility.

S. E. Price

Prelude

In the small town of Echo Hollows, Ontario Canada, nestled in the Halton Hills, just north of Toronto Ontario Canada, John and Irma Winters had lived happily and peacefully in this small farming town.

Echo Hollows had its history of generations of Irish settlers who had escaped the horrific cholera infestation that plagued Toronto in 1847.

The great Potato Famine of the 1840’s had also scourged Ireland brutally, but as is always the way of things, the Winters family had been favored survivors, and had waxed strong and bold with this opportunity to settle in Canada.

Many were the trials in overcoming the odds of poverty and starvation. Generations went by, and one century flowed into another and every generation saw an improvement in their circumstances, physically and financially.

The story of Death and the World of In-Between begins with the illness and death of John Winters Jr., and ends with some understanding of John Winters Jr.’s wife Irma, about what happens when we die and where we go when we die.

Chapter 1

John Winters Jr.

It was Winter-time, and was the Season of the Sleeping Earth, and John Winter’s Jr. was 80 years old and was dying. He coughed into his handkerchief and spat out a wet, thick lump of sticky mucus.

The coughing went on for about five minutes and then he lay back on his pillow and literally sucked in a large amount of air. This brought on another round of coughing and he trembled with the effort to stop the cough which created a great pressure on his heart.

Sweat ran down his forehead and he weakly wiped it away with an old handkerchief that his wife Irma had brought from home. He had been told that he had, a bad bout of pneumonia but was being looked after.

Oh the memories of my life, John thought they just never stopped pounding away at my brain, and as if in a passive trance, he watched scenes of his life pass in uninterrupted movement somewhere in those unknown memory banks in his brain; it was like watching a documentary of someone else’s life, and yet, for all this hard thought-watching, he realized it was his own life he was seeing and thinking about. John Jr.’s sigh was hoarse from the intense coughing, and it was the sigh of a very weary man, and then dimly he realized almost as an after-thought that he had become extremely tired. He closed his eyes and the scenes just went on and on in his mind again.

He was the 7th child of Matilda and John Winters Sr., who were the children of the WW1 people of the time, and they all had come from a farming family on this apparently sad and mixed up little planet called earth.

John Jr. was the baby of a wolf-pack of seven boys and had watched his brothers Amos, Ted, Jack, Matt, Chris and Bart, go through their manly learning years, and he reckoned wisely that some of them had done well, and a few of them had played hooky with their lives, but he realized, they had all done the best they could.

Anyway, they were all dead now, he thought, except for himself being the youngest of that brood, and who was now eighty years old. He was lying on his hospital bed surrounded by a life-time of memories, some of which were invited by him of thoughts and attachments and endearing times, and other thoughts were definitely not that encouraging or great.

He had often wondered about all the things that went on over the years in his life, and he even wondered about how his brothers were doing presently in the after-death world, but then he got distracted by his thoughts and their complicated meanderings and he lost his focus of remembering his brothers’ special traits and developments. Oh God I am so tired, he thought, I just want to sleep, he said to himself.

He smiled a weak smile of the aged and tired, and remembered how he had such a rich life, with lots of action and excitements, and there never was a dull moment anywhere that he could remember.

However, John Jr., also realized deep down in his reasoning parts, that he would be gone soon, but then, often there was an annoying question which kept popping up in his mind and this was: "Where was he going anyway? And, What in him was going to that "where place?

Geez, he thought, here I am, on the edge of a new frontier, and then he realized that he did not even know what was going to happen to him when he died.

He remembered that he had been taught many ideas in Catholic Catechism so many years ago, but it seemed like such a distant learning now, and had a vagueness about it that made him want to ignore those thoughts in his present condition. He yawned and sighed a bit and thought dreamily, that he certainly felt tired even if his mind was busy.

In that instant, John Jr. recalled his personal conviction that his religion was just too vague about many things connected with death and passing, and he could not imagine himself sitting near God’s throne for an eternity and this old learning now seemed such a ridiculous idea, as was implied romantically and idealistically in his religious instruction of the past.

After all, he thought, I have been a man of action, and eternity was a long time in human years, and wouldn’t God want me to be doing something about helping someone out, or whatever one did when one passed over? Then, John Jr. wondered seriously, Should people take the word eternity’ with a grain of salt?

He wondered if they had a new method to describe eternity now in a very different way.

Then he realized that he did not have an answer to his own questions, and felt that he could not ask a local priest about the subject either. He had remembered that it was said that dying was part of God’s Will, but "what was the true and real Will of God?" he had asked himself with inner intensity.

Another question floated through John’s tired mind: Was there a secret meaning to this idea that he had been told to respect so reverently? He asked himself a series of questions endlessly, in that sterile and boring hospital room. John had never had his questions answered in the past and he realized poignantly that he had left things way too late, as if things would just take care of themselves whatever that was, and then came a sigh of disappointment inside for having ignored this very important but disturbing phase of his life.

John looked at his situation with impatience, and again continued his dialogue with himself and concluded that this dying experience was an unknown experience for him personally, and he felt a bit odd and uncomfortable, and ever so vaguely he felt uneasy too.

He remembered that he had spent his whole life as a farmer; that he had even gone to church on Sundays like everybody else in the community, but being truthful with himself, he acknowledged that he had never listened to the Sunday sermons and had never had an interest in what happened to anybody’s soul when they died not even his own, and that he had just been too active and too busy and too curious and way too young and involved in other parts of life, to care much about the death of any human, including himself.

I hardly believed in this soul stuff anyway, he thought; and then he would often think to himself, so maybe we just dropped and disintegrated on the ground, and our bodies or what was left of them, were just dumped in a grave and that’s the end of the story.

Reminiscing again about his past, John Jr. thought about his past years, and watched himself perform in these memories, all the conditioned actions from instructors of superior age and experience, and he remembered that he had just been full of the energy and the ignorance of untried youth and, he finally concluded that, youth always felt invincible, as he mused for a time with a sigh. He smiled a bit when the thought came that it was very much the past of his life right now, and who really cared anyway? After all, he thought to himself, just look at the speed of things happening in the world right now, it was shocking!

Then he thought realistically and sadly, that he was now at another stage in his life and he sincerely believed that he was close to leaving the world as he knew it.

John Jr.’s weariness had got hold of him again, and it slid into his arteries and veins and muscles, and he felt his physical strength waning, and his mind and thoughts slipped into a world of rest and sleep, where he no longer participated consciously with these heavy but demanding thoughts, and so he had a restful nap for a few hours and awoke with the feeling of being in an unfamiliar and strange place.

Having become disinterested with his tiring thought-processes of the past few hours, John Jr.’s gaze wandered, and he stared at the hospital room ceiling in the same room where he had been brought when he had passed out from lack of oxygen. He had pneumonia the nurse had said, and that he was being taken care of.

I sure don’t remember coming to this place, he reflected, and he remembered that he woke from his unconscious condition with an IV drip in his arm, and the uncomfortable feeling of being watched by a group of friendly and curious people who seemed to be floating in the air around his bed. Never had he seen such a sight before, and who the hell were these people anyway?

I must be hallucinating or something, he thought, and I better not tell anybody about this weird experience he thought again, drugs do stupid things to the brain, and I will be considered as having a hallucination or an ordinary Senior’s Moment, for sure.

Then John’s focus snapped back to the present reality, and he vaguely remembered that Irma his wife, now seventy-two years of age, had been by to see him earlier in the morning and the grand-kids had dropped in to say a quick hello and then they had drifted off to other activities of the day. He didn’t remember much, since his consciousness kept fading and clearing, and fading again quite often. But he was pretty sure that the grand-kids had come to see him at some time that mid-morning.

After lunch, when Irma had popped in and told him not to worry about the cows because their neighbor Jim had come and offered to feed them, he actually did feel great relief and comfort.

What a nice guy Jim is, thought John, and he felt a great sense of stability and safety that things were being looked after, even though it was not himself who was doing the work on the farm.

Again, his persistent mind pulled his focus back to the actions of his years as a son, a boy, a brother, an adult, a farmer, a parent, and a husband, and then he had thoughts of his farm, his products and his attitudes to all of the above.

Somehow his mind seemed to be playing tricks on him now, because it sent him images of old forgotten times and his attitudes about himself, and his family.

Sometimes in the mixed jumble of images, he had recurring dreams of all of his brothers smiling and waving at him and then they were gone. Oh God he thought, What is going on and why are my brothers here in my dreams, and why are they are waving at me?

Then feeling exhausted from this barrage of memories and personal images, John fell into another deep sleep. He slept away the rest of the morning, and was roused by the sound of clinking dishes nearby, and opened his eyes to the presence of a hospital assistant who was delivering his lunch.

Oddly, he had no appetite, and someone whom he could no longer see very well without his glasses, had helped him eat a tiny portion of his lunch.

Exhaustion came again from another barrage of memories about his farming years, and he had even remembered how some favorite living creatures had stood out in his emotional life such as the beautiful old horse he had loved because of the wonderful service he had got out of old Brownie.

Their relationship of trust and dependability and Brownie’s good physical strength, floated through his mind and he felt great satisfaction, and even a twinge of love which made him nervous somehow. After all how could one love an animal? Folks never spoke of these things, he mused, but realized that some things you just don’t have to talk about, they just are somehow.

Then to his surprise, a singular tear ran down his cheek just thinking about it all, and he wiped his cheek with a corner of his crumpled bed-sheet. Maybe he thought, animals actually stand for a symbol of our own bodies, which we love, or hate, or are indifferent to, in some way.

Maybe, that is why humans have such troubles letting go of their bodies at death because we come to love our human bodies that we have become familiar with and the amazing way they held us up and allowed us to do things: After all, John Jr. thought, our physical bodies do give us a personal identity and a sense of freedom and even a name, that we often come to love too much, it would seem.

In a more serious tone John thought, Maybe it would have been nice for our Maker-God, not to have given mankind such a fixed awareness of their physical identity, because it was surely upsetting to realize that human souls had a body they would lose, and that when the body got old or sick, it just died off like all organic things. John was surprised at such an insight, but felt he had made a valid realization.

John Jr. even wondered if he had enough time left to find out more about man and his soul, and he then remembered that he had heard sometime in the past from an enthusiastic friend who had been curious about all these things, that it was the soul which owned a physical body, and the body did not own a soul, and of course the ultimate question of his friendly talk was: where did that supposed soul go when the organic body ended.

Always having a practical streak in his nature, John Jr. sighed, and realized that he was sure that his time was short and most likely he would just have to face the consequences of his own indifference about this seemingly complicated matter of death. Time was just too short now, and he hoped that he would in some future out there in the Universe, have the wisdom to study this idea of death more deeply, and have the freedom to think long and hard on such a subject.

Right now though, he had feelings of remorse for ignoring all these facts, but he knew deep down that he also had to deal with an attitude within himself that could only be described as skeptical and agnostic, even atheistic, and very, very stubborn.

He wanted proof about serious things that most people could not even see with their earth eyes and his mind thought of the amoebas under a microscope for a scientist or biologist and how invisible they were to the physical eye if the eyes did not get assistance from a microscope. But, to his weary mind at present, anything that had the name soul tied to it was highly suspicious and even ridiculous.

He remembered thinking to himself, "Why even bother with such fancy words that philosophers and religions of many kinds spew out to their congregations? Let me see a thing first and if possible let me touch a solid thing. Any existence-related idea, that demands faith, just does not seem appealing. Such thoughts did not get John Jr. into a happy state of mind but bothered him deeply, because he realized that his stubbornness and refusal to budge on certain ideas, were really evident in his whole past character and he wondered if this was a good thing for him to be, or was there some other concept he had not considered deeply that would help him ease into this death phase of his existence without any pangs of fear and nervousness.

Were the old philosophers and priests of some ancient religions correct? he asked himself. This was a question that he was sure he had no time to indulge in, because his physical circumstances told him that he was on the edge now. In the past he had seen the animals on the farm before their natural deaths ensued, and he now recognized the physical signs in himself.

This personal death-idea was something he had never questioned or thought about before for himself, but now it seemed to have a kind of important reality in it somehow, though his concept of the word reality seemed vague and quite puzzling, even confused.

These thoughts were something he