Receiving Messages from Those Who have Gone Beyond
by Dr. Sheila Benjamin

Have you ever talked with someone who has died? I have and so have many others. My curiosity about what happens to someone after they die has been alive within me since early in my life. I was not alone in this search.

When I was twelve years old my friends and I would get together every Friday evening to raise the dead through what we called seance. We would meet in my friend Donna’s parents' basement. The lights would be dim as we sat in a circle holding each other’s hands. There would usually be someone in the group who would have a deceased relative we were wanting to contact. Our minds would be still as we chanted the name of the person whose spirit we wanted to raise. Sometimes the lights in the room would become brighter and sometimes the room would become cooler.

I don’t know if we ever woke any of the spirits that we were calling, however, we did something. We were curious and wanted to know about what happens to someone after they die. This experience stimulated the desire within myself to know more. I believe that it was one of the first experiences outside of my religious upbringing that gave me a taste of a more supernatural side of life. I did not know at the time that I would someday be using this information to aid me in putting together pieces of my own life.

When I was fourteen years old my father died. Even though I was pretty mature and understood that my father was free from the pain that he had experienced I had lots of questions which started my search to understand the worlds that exist beyond the physical. I entered the School of Metaphysics in my early twenties and found that there was a way in which I could communicate with my father and to find out how he was doing. My Spiritual Teacher at the time instructed me to ask my father to appear to me in my dream while I was sleeping.

That night I went home and prayed that my father would appear to me. This is the dream that I had that night.

I was walking down a familiar street in my neighborhood when I saw my father walking towards me. He had a soft and warm smile on his face. I could tell that he was happy and at peace. Then I heard him say to me “I am happy where I am. You and the rest of the family have nothing to worry.”

When I woke up from this dream I felt a sense of joy and peace. The communication that took place with my father was mental. When my father appeared to me his mouth did not move. The communication that took place was mind-to-mind what is called mental telepathy. The Universal symbol here is that when someone who has physically died appears to you, the action which lets you know if their presence is really with you is when they communicate to you it is done mentally. If someone who has died appears in your dream and is talking to you with their mouth then they represent an aspect of yourself.

Most of the time when someone who has left the physical desires to communicate to one who is left on the physical plane this takes place within our dreaming time. When we are asleep our conscious mind, the part of ourselves which relates to our physical waking world and our five senses, is set aside and our soul or subconscious mind is free to communicate to us. Those individuals who have died reside, so to speak, within the subconscious mind, therefore they are able to communicate with us directly in the form of what appears to be a dream.

I share this with you because many of us as human beings have a curiosity and a desire to know that our loved ones are doing well and, most importantly, to have some experience so that we can release the fear of death, our own death. Through this experience we get a glimpse of how expansive we are as souls. There are no limits as to how we can communicate. Through the experiences that will be shared by others we can see that there is a whole world beyond our physical senses that is waiting for us to explore.

We often look at our life here on Earth as being such a definite and final experience when in truth our time here is brief and for the purpose of learning. The physical is very temporary, however there is a part of our Creator’s love that lives deep within our Self that is eternal. As a child I was raised with a Catholic religious education. I learned about Heaven as a place where God lives. It was a beautiful place with harp music, angels and where you went when your life here on earth was for the highest of good. I did my best to conduct my life in the light of God knowing that Heaven was where I wanted to be at the end of my physical existence.

I see Heaven a little differently now in the sense that I perceive it as a state of awareness, a level of consciousness. I know from my lessons and teachings that within each of us is the urge to be compatible with our Creator and so we all are desiring to get to Heaven.
Dreams have so very much to communicate to us as to the state of our conscious awareness and the changes we have to face. They can provide us with a depth of understanding that can allow us to be more attentive to our everyday and every moment experience bringing Heaven just a bit closer.•

Dr. Sheila Benjamin is a spiritual teacher who shares the wisdom of her experiences freely while guiding us toward our own revelations. Serving as president of the School of Metaphysics, this column is just a part of an extensive essay on communion with those who have left our world.