Perspective
Memories of Beyond
Abstract
This article crosses genre boundaries. The first part explores my personal responses to certain conflicts happening in the world, while the second part explores the parapsychology around existence beyond death.
Who am I?
I was conceived and born on an earthquake fault in San Francisco, California. I was born British and I was born Jewish. My mother’s father, whom I never met, died when she was 12-years-old: he was a Hasidic Jew. My mother had to stop all schooling when she was 12, to look after her younger siblings, as her mother had to find work to feed them. I am told Hasidic Jews are ultra-orthodox, and their name is derived from the term for ‘loving kindness.’ According to Wikipedia (1), the pious movement of Hasidic Jews was said to be founded in the 18th century. My mother always said, “There is no God, as He wouldn’t have allowed the holocaust.“ Jewish literature and prayer passed me by, however as a medical anthropologist I learnt about other cultures across the world. It was my job.
Today I stand alongside the Hasidic Jews, who stand alongside peace activists throughout the world, demonstrating for peace, to stop apartheid, genocide and murder. I feel silenced and suppressed by the local community. I was born with memories of exactly how I died in the Nazi Holocausts. I conducted research and found I was not alone: plenty of other people had memories of how they died there. Some wrote about it; others attended psychiatric hospitals. My concern today is for the people who were vapourised in the Middle-East. When there is no ceremony after death, no prayers, no rituals for grieving by the bereaved, nor for assisting the person to pass over beyond, what happens to the spirits of the dead?
On Being human
Cain and Abel, the first-born sons of Adam and Eve, started warring early. Cain murdered his younger brother Abel and was said to have be been cursed to wander aimlessly on earth. I’m fed up with human behaviour against those who they perceive as Others. I’m fed up with Othering, and with politicians’ blanket support of one side, or the other. All this lies heavily on my heart. I’m fed up as people only seem to know who they are, in opposition to An Other.
In my opinion, the idea that one set of people are The Chosen People is rubbish. We are all the chosen people. All of us: humans, animals, rocks, even blades of grass. I grieve for the peoples of colonised, dominated, occupied lands, alongside those peoples who’ve experienced trauma nearby. I grieve for those whose entire apartment blocks have been reduced to dust, where there are no traumatised relatives left for the BBC to interview. I grieve for those affected by bombed hospitals, bombed refugee centres, bombed journalists, bombed medical and aid supplies, for those who triggered that bomb and those who lie. And lie. I grieve for those who are sold a false narrative, and ordered to gather at so-called ‘safe zones’ where they are collectively bombed. Genocide? Yes.
Why don’t our leaders have clarity of thought? Why are our political leaders believed and esteemed? Where did they learn to speak with such authority? Is there some powerful overriding Egregore from beyond, which manipulates the unconscious minds of critical thinking people? Why do so many consumers believe the lies? How does it happen, this mass acceptance of ideas?
I don’t condone bombing by people of any faith. I don’t condone murder or kidnap. I don’t condone any violence, even retaliation for an-other’s violence. That’s how many humans have lived for over two thousand years. Tit for tat, an eye for an eye. It’s an old-fashioned feeling and in my opinion, not appropriate for humanity’s future. Rhetorical question: what do these sacred religious texts say about war: the Holy Bible, the Torah, the Koran? Eh? What do they say about the Ten Commandments?
Patterns of human behaviour
Given the history of persecution of certain peoples and the slavery of others, I don’t understand why so many of us can’t see the patterns in human behaviour. Given the history of the Holy Lands, I don’t understand why most Western mainstream media demonises those who react to being imprisoned in the ghettos, who have water and electricity cut off, medication and food restricted, or whose concentrated homes are vapourised. I don’t understand why our media appears to honour bullies. Why do they repeat the mantra: that it is the fault of the newly dead? Why do they repeat the mantra, that one country has a right to defend itself, when the governors and settlers of that country colonised, occupied the land, removed people from their homes and destroyed their olive trees too? What is this assumed right to attack that is defended by so many? Is it our old collective guilt about the Nazi Holocausts?
In my opinion, we are humans with minds and brains and mouths, able to negotiate. What about our hearts, can we not feel the manipulations that are happening on earth? But we seem to prefer to use our skills to create weapons of mass destruction, generate income by offering our engineering and architecture skills to communities that our bombs have destroyed. Perhaps we can be controlled as long as we are fearful.
Genocide
The 1948 Genocide Convention, brought in after the murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defined genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. I feel traumatised both by the violence that is happening and by what I perceive to be a lack of balanced media insight, by the UN requiring a total universal agreed vote in order to act and a failure of a universal political will to negotiate peace. It seems that those who aspire to offer balanced perspectives may feel bullied into silence, or threatened with losing their jobs, or actually losing their jobs. I myself have felt bullied into silence and unheard.
I am grateful the South African presidency filed a case at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, alleging ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza, due to ‘indiscriminate use of force’ (2,3). The court heard the case during January 2024, and in the UK, mainstream media remained curiously silent about the discussions (4), although the court stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire. I feel intensely angry about the current fighting strategies. I am utterly fed up with political responses in favour of war and retaliation, rather than negotiation for peace, in spite of widespread global demonstrations for peace.
Pope Francis asked for a ceasefire in the Holy Land in his Easter message. Hospitals in Gaza were ransacked under the pretence that terrorists chose to hide there. The United Kingdom and the United States continued their Zionist perspectives until the bombing and murders of seven people in World Central Kitchen vehicles with their rooves painted with the logo of that aid agency triggered a change in attitude. There was a pause in thought. In April 2024, three British people died and the UK national media changed their tune. The Israeli government admitted it was ‘a grave mistake,’ sacked two senior military personnel and reprimanded three others (5). Israel was asked for an independent investigation. Meanwhile, the West continued to confuse anti-semitism with anti-Zionism and criticised politicians who spoke out.
Parapsychology around existence beyond death
I fear for those people who die suddenly, as a result of bombing or gunfire, and the memories they might bring back to earth with them, once reincarnated (6). I’d heard various people say, “The angelic realms are supporting the deceased together as one group”. Also, that Jerusalem is believed to be a portal of spiritual consciousness and an energetic focus point for our earth.
Memory carry-over
My concerns come from when I was younger, having had technicolour visions of being in a Nazi concentration camp, in a previous life, and murdered with others in the gas chambers at Dachau, years before I was born. I was born with memories of how I died, and with attributable physical problems in this life. As an adult, I became interested in how the mental health of the living is affected by the way the dead had died. I conducted research and found that there seemed to be many people like me with such memories (7). The current war situation triggers me, and I feel as if I’ve been pole-axed: old stuff, which I thought was long healed. It broadens our perspective on trauma if those beings who are beyond death, are considered. The consequences of so many dying at once are unimaginable, for me.
Unexpected death
To my questions about memory carry-over of people who die unexpectedly, Palden Jenkins replied in a personal communication in October 2023:
“I have been doing some psychic work on the other side, working with people who have died, and here’s an interesting observation: the ‘angelic operation’ to deal with the influx of hurt, deceased souls is ‘one operation’, and the deceased are all being treated together.”
I asked a similar question about beyond being dead, to colleagues at the BSMA (the British Spiritist Medical Association). The admin team offered information gleaned from the writer, Allan Kardec (8) and others. I asked, “Can anyone advise me on what is currently happening to those thousands of people who’ve been slaughtered recently? What kind of spiritist support is there for their souls?” Cristiana responded and spoke about spirit responses to earlier wars. She said: “I believe the situation is similar to what happened during the second great war, described for example by André Luiz in the book, ‘The Messengers (9). The spirit of the victims is rescued and taken to ‘hospitals’ in the spiritual world.”
Before the conversation with Palden and members of the BSMA, I’d seen the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on the topic of war and sudden soldier death. Mirra Alfassa, known as The Mother in Pondicherry, had deeply clairvoyant skills, and received psychic insight:
“I had seen this during the First Great War, towards its end, when people used to live in trenches and were killed by bombardment. They were in perfect health, altogether healthy and in a second, they were thrown out of their bodies, not conscious that they were dead. They did not know they hadn’t a body anymore…”
She continued:
“I saw clearly a being, with a part of the head cut off, in a military uniform (or the remains of a military uniform) approaching me and suddenly flinging himself upon my chest… (10)” Years later, Pondicherry psychiatrist, Dr. Soumitra Basu (11) proposed that sudden death through war, created a gateway through which illnesses may invade individuals and populations.
A way forward
What triggered a change in attitude in the West? Three aid workers were killed in Gaza (compared to 33,000 Palestinian Christians and Muslims in the previous six months). That shifted media attention. It seems it is not enough for our civilisations to treat mental distress on its own, as if it is only biological or emotional and still sell weapons for mass destruction and then blame others for using them. Perhaps we might rethink human morality, and acknowledge multiple responses to incidents. Could our politicians now speak out, to stop violence, acknowledge plural collateral effects, and the damage war does to humans and discarnate beings? Let us work together, invoke the Mother’s Light to offer prayers to honour everyone alive and in spirit, so they become ancestors and not ghosts. Finally, perhaps it is the women of every culture and faith, and the good men who unite powerfully to acknowledge the futility of war, and suggest strategies for talking together to negotiate peace.
Acknowledgment
Thank you to Palden Jenkins and Zelda Hall for your comments.
References
1. [Online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasidic_Judaism [Accessed 9th May 2024].
2. [Online] ICJ 28/12/23 Available from: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf [Accessed 12th May 2024].
3. [Online] BBC News, 29th Dec 23 Available from: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67844551 [Accessed 12th May 2024].
4. [Online] The Guardian, 11th Jan 2024. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/jan/11/south-africa-accuses-israel-of-genocide-gaza-the-hague-international-court-of-justice [Accessed 12th May 2024].
5. [Online] BBC Verify, 6th April 2024, Gaza aid convoy strike. Available from: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68714128 [Accessed 12th May 2024].
6. Tobert N. Wider Collateral of War: Spiritist Effects on Human Wellbeing. NAMAH October 2022; 30:3; 31-37.
7. Tobert N. Spiritual Activism Informed by Psychic Experience. In Woollacott, Lorimer (eds) Spiritual Awakenings: Scientists and Academics Describe Their Experiences. Arlington US: AAPS; 2022.
8. Kardec A. (Duncan JA Transl.) The Gospel According to Spiritism. London: Two Worlds Publishing; 1987.
9. Xavier FC. The Messengers. Brasilia: Conselho Espirita Internacional; 2008.
10. The Mother. The Collected Works of The Mother, Volume 5. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Truist 1976, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust; Volume 5. Pondicherry: p. 182.
11. Basu S. Meditations on the Current Pandemic. NAMAH July 2021; 29: 2: 33-36.
“All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal,” John Steinbeck, 1958.
Dr. Natalie Tobert is a medical anthropologist and author based in the United Kingdom.
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