Did you know you can be of assistance to those who have recently died?
This three-part series explores the nocturnal out-of-body experience (OBE), how you can help the departed during sleep, and ways to help them while you’re awake.
Part 2 of 3
How You Can Help the Departed During Sleep
You may volunteer during your sleeping hours to help the newly departed “cross over” into the higher realms. You could do this on your own. You can also team up with others to do this work.
You can cooperate with discarnate souls in the mid astral realms to help the newly dead—or those who are stuck in the lower realms—to rise higher.
Have you ever dreamed of a loved one who has died? It may not be a dream. It could be an actual meeting on the astral planes, which you can visit when your body is asleep.
Why is sleep a good time to contact those on the other side?
[P]arapsychological research indicates psychic abilities are enhanced by [altered states of consciousness], such as the cusp of sleep (whether just waking up or falling asleep), dreams, meditation, hypnotic trance, and partial sensory deprivation, to name just a few. In addition, the rational, skeptical part of the mind is on break, preventing it from interfering.
—Pamela Rae Heath and Jon Klimo, Handbook to the Afterlife
How do we help the dead while we sleep? Annie Besant advises, “Think of your loved dead, fix your mind on them, and in the hours of [bodily] sleep, … you shall be with them and may give them much help.”
As you are falling asleep, think of a recently deceased loved one, or of helping such souls in general. Couple these thoughts with a desire to help them progress. Keep at it successive nights, and then pay attention to the dreams that awake you.
There are no special tricks for receiving the dead in your dreams other than to know that it happens and be open to the experience. You can mentally ask them to come visit as you fall off to sleep. If you like using visualization, you can even imagine setting up your kitchen table with some coffee or tea and cookies and opening the door, specifically inviting whom you want to come see you.
The real trick is not so much to get them to come as to remember it afterward. As with any dream work, it helps to keep a pen and pad of paper by your bedside, so you can write down what you remember the moment you wake up, without delay.
—Pamela Rae Heath and Jon Klimo, Handbook to the Afterlife
Team Up with the Departed to Help Those Crossing Over
It’s easier for the living to remain close to the earth realm, where newly departed souls enter the afterlife. Therefore, you could team up with those who have recently died to help others who are crossing over. This is especially helpful for those who have died suddenly, unprepared.
Such teams assist newly dead souls to understand where they are and what’s happened to them. They also help to locate and enlist the aid of souls in the higher realms who cannot draw as near to the earth plane to receive newcomers.
These deliverance teams run an “escort service,” so to speak, educating and leading the newly dead toward the planes of light. The living and the recently departed help other newcomers by connecting them with the spirits on the higher planes, who then receive them and take them higher.
If this interests you, in your prayers and before you go to sleep, express your desire to be part of this group of helpers.
Why are the living and the recently dead better able to help those crossing over than are the inhabitants of the higher astral realms?
The Etheric Bridge
In The Life Beyond Death with Evidence, Rev. C. Drayton Thomas explains that, “It is a no-man’s land between the two conditions.” By two conditions he means the mortal, physical world, and the heavenly realm, or higher astral planes.
For living earth people to communicate with people in Spirit, they must connect through the bridgeway of their etheric body.
The etheric body enables them to hang out on the borderline between the realms of matter and Spirit. Crookall confirms this:
The etheric body is a necessary link or bridge between the living (who use a physical body) and the normal dead (who have shed the etheric and use only the soul body).
—Robert Crookall, During Sleep
The Living Are Better Able to Communicate with the Dead
Earthbound spirits reside neither in the physical world nor the higher astral planes. Crookall explains that it’s difficult for spirits in the higher astral planes to “penetrate the shell of thoughts of an earthbound spirit.”
But if a mortal who is psychically sensitive will help the earthbound spirit to understand that there is a higher state for them, and encourage them to reach for it, they may be helped—and put themselves within the realm where those spirits who dwell higher may receive them and bring them up.
—Robert Crookall, During Sleep
Since the living still possess an etheric body, they may act as the staff of a “halfway house” during their sleeping hours. They’re better at communicating with and helping the newly dead who are still earthbound because they have not yet shed their etheric bodies.
The soul body is connected to the physical body through what is called the “silver cord”—the energetic bridge to the etheric body. Because of this connection, the living feel more familiar to those who have just crossed over.
Crookall explains further:
The body of those who have just died includes not only the astral or soul body, but it is still ensheathed in the etheric body, which is a link or bridge between the soul (the instrument of thought, will, and emotion), and the physical body (the instrument of physical action). As long as the newly dead retain their etheric shell, they are easily affected by the thoughts and feelings of the living, because they also have etheric bodies. Angels*, and humans who have shed their etheric bodies and crossed over entirely to Paradise conditions [mid or upper astral planes], no longer possess this bridge and therefore find it difficult to impress and help the newly dead.
If you want to be of service to God, pray that you may be able to cooperate with the receiving angels* to help the newly dead shed their etheric sheaths and cross over completely to Paradise. We are needed to lift passing souls into the arms of the angels*.
—Robert Crookall, During Sleep
*By “angels” here, Crookall means departed humans who have crossed over into the higher astral realms.
How We Can Work with the Angels
Mediums Doris and Hilary Severn asked an earthbound spirit, “Why come to us? Why not ask the angels [for help]?” The spirit answered, “Where are the angels? We have not seen any! You are nearer to us.” (The Next Room)
Although the “angels”—departed souls in the mid astral realms—are seeking those in the lower astral planes, sometimes (although rarely) the newly dead cannot find them. The recently departed are closer to living humans who are psychically sensitive.
We can help the newly dead to look toward the light, and we can help direct those who have fully crossed over to find these lost souls.
Coming from the earth plane, and because we mortals have a spirit nature that is nearer to the physical than spirits in Paradise, the higher souls can use the living to create a chain from the higher realms to the lower.
—Robert Crookall, During Sleep
If you want to help the newly dead, set your intention to help them during the hours of sleep.
Next time, we’ll learn how we can help the dead while we’re awake.