Recently I came across an American spiritual written by W.A. Fisher in 1922, which seems to have been inspired by traditional African-American hymns. Though an alternate version exists which contains conventional Christian imagery, the authentic version strikes me as having much in common with NDEs and the teachings of Spiritualism. Possibly Fisher was influenced by…

One of my favorite quotes is Edith Hamilton's translation of some lines from Agamemnon, the first play in Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy: He who learns must sufferAnd even in our sleep pain that cannot forgetFalls drop by drop upon the heart,And in our own despite, against our will,Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of…

I haven't read too far in it yet, but so far I'm really enjoying the writings at this Web site devoted to Buddhism.   The site offers this description: This small booklet was compiled and edited from talks given by Venerable Ajahn Sumedho on the central teaching of the Buddha: that the unhappiness of humanity can…

As regular readers know, for some time I've been annoyingly fixated on the question, "What is the real you?" In other words, what part of us is ultimately real and lasting? If you listen to nondualist mystics like Eckhart Tolle, you get the impression that the real you is an impersonal witness, pure awareness stripped…

Here's a brief excerpt from Chapter 4 of The Last Crossing, by British medium Gladys Osborne Leonard. It bears on the topic of the "soul body" or etheric body, which we looked at in an earlier post. It's also relevant to our discussion of spiritual healer George Chapman. Under our present condition of ignorance as to…

In Chapter 15 of his book On the Edge of the Etheric, Arthur Findlay summarizes his view of the relationship between the physical body and what he calls the etheric body. This information was conveyed to him by the medium John C. Sloan. Anyone familiar with spiritualist teachings will not find very much that is…