The Structure of Heaven

An encyclopedia of the paranormal, How Spirit is organized and how it affects your daily life

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  • About The Structure of heaven
  • Introduction
  • 1. Skepticism and Classical Physics
    • Skepticism/Humanism
    • Skepticism/Relativity and Quantum Physics
    • Skepticism/CSICOP
    • Skepticism/Why the Skeptics are Wrong
    • Skepticism/The advantages of belief
  • 2. The Human Soul
    • Why do we live in a material Universe?
    • The Human Soul and its Relationship to the Body
  • 3. God and Theodicy
    • Does God cause bad things to happen to good people?
    • Guardian Spirits and the Life Plan
    • What is Theodicy?
      • Zoroastrian Theodicy
      • Jewish Theodicy
      • Christian Theodicy
      • Why is Theodicy important?
      • Can Love conquer all??
  • 4. Psychics and mediums- an overview
    • What are psychics and mediums?
    • Why mediums can’t seem to agree about the afterlife
  • 5. The Structure of Heaven
    • The Universe according to Emanuel Swedenborg and Frederick Myers
    • A Map of the spiritual realm
  • 6. Heaven, Hell and the planes of illusion
    • Introducing The transitional plane (The Earth Sphere)
      • The functions of the transitional plane.
      • Crossing over
      • Time traps on the transitional plane
    • Evolution within the planes of illusion
      • The Summerlands and above
      • The Winterlands
    • The Hells
      • The Conditions in the Hells
      • Who goes to Hell?
      • Hell and the transitional plane
    • How spirits from different levels perceive each other
    • Vertical Stratification of the Spiritual Realm and How Spirits Progress
    • Horizontal Stratification and Spiritual Social Groups
  • 7. What happens when we die?
    • There is no external Judgement in the Afterlife!
    • Death doesn’t change a soul’s attitude
    • The life review
    • What do spirits look like?
    • Ghosts and their clothes
    • Zombies
    • Time In the spiritual world
    • Time in the planes of illusion
    • Memory in the planes of illusion
    • What’s it like to be dead?
  • 8. Spiritual laws/The Law of Divine Love
    • Spiritual Laws/The law of compensation
    • Spiritual Laws/Spiritual Gravity
    • Spiritual Laws/Spiritual Frequencies
    • Spiritual Laws/The Law of Attraction
    • Spiritual Laws/The Law of Free Will and Good vs. Evil
    • The red devil and the white angel
    • The spiritual advantage of Living in a Material World
    • Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?
  • 9. The Human Aura and Theosophy
    • The Aura as a Protective Spiritual Skin
    • The Aura and Spiritual infection (Obsession)
  • 10. Dr. Carl Wickland and Thirty Years Among the Dead
    • Dr. Wickland’s Spirit Dialogs
    • Spirit Related Insanity
  • 11. Spiritual Infection and Modern psychiatry
    • Emanuel Swedenborg’s Spiritual Insight
    • Wilson Van Dusen
    • Wilson Van Dusen’s Heavenly and Hellish Voices
    • Entities that invade the minds of the living
  • 12. Earthbound Spirits
    • Will I end up an earthbound spirit?
      • Three reasons that GOOD souls get stuck on the transitional plane.
    • Where do ghosts get their energy?
    • Human Spirit Obsession
    • Human Spirit Possession
    • Criminal culpability and spiritual infections
    • Enthrallment by the living and Hypnosis
      • Enthrallment and Abusive Relationships
      • Enthrallment: Cults
      • Enthrallment in the afterlife
      • Enthrallment by God and angels
  • 13. Angels and demons
    • The Provenance of Angelic Beings
    • The War in heaven
    • Angels and their function in religion
    • Magic and Wicca
    • Demonology
      • The structure of Hell
      • How demons infect a person or place
      • The five stages of demonic attack
      • Why do demons want to possess people?
      • The characteristics of demons
      • Thought Forms
  • 14 exorcim
    • Major exorcisms (also called imperative exorcisms)
    • False, or fake possessions
    • How Religion Views Demons Vs. Ghosts
    • Avoiding Demonic Repossession
    • Who can Remove Demons?
    • Removing Human ghosts
    • Exorcism and poltergeist activity in disturbed children
    • Haunted Dolls and Other Objects
    • Dealing with Family and Marriage Disturbances Caused by Ghosts
    • Goodness and ghosts
  • 15. Poltergeists, Ghosts and Hauntings
    • Poltergeists versus Ghosts
    • How spiritualists view ghosts
    • How Parapsychologists view ghosts
    • Children and Poltergeist infestations
    • Poltergeists that make the news
    • Ghosts and spiritual imprints
    • Ghosts of famous people
    • Why do ghosts seem bound to the same location?
      • Ghosts and sensory deprivation
    • A Ghost Story
    • Differentiating between Human and Demonic hauntings
      • Hauntings by Human ghosts
        • Human Ghost hangouts
      • Hauntings by Demonic spirits
  • 16. All about Psychics and others prone to spiritual infections
    • 1. Psychic Sensitives
      • Psi and the human brain
      • The five general categories of psychics
    • 2. Spiritual infection and mental illness
      • Are the spiritually infected mentally ill responsible for their criminal acts?
    • 3. Spiritual infection and Acquired Negative Lifestyles
      • Spiritual infection and drug and alcohol addiction
      • Spiritual infection as a result of negative personality traits
    • 4. Spiritual infection and childhood abuse
  • 17. Criminals and Spirits
    • Why are criminals more prone to spirit obsession than other people?
  • 18. Religion and Government
    • The birth of Morality
    • Religion = Spirit + Politics
    • The paranormal and religion
    • Human Nature-The REAL reason for religion
      • Sex and Religion
      • Religion and War
      • Religion vs. Secular law
    • Religious Dogmas
      • The Catholic Sexual Abuse Scandal
    • Spiritualism
    • Why are the dark spheres necessary?
  • 19. Spirit Lies and Tall Tales!
    • Edgar Cayce
    • Edgar Cayce and Atlantis
  • 20. Suicide and its Spiritual Consequences
    • Nondiscretionary Suicides
    • Discretionary Suicide
    • Why you should never choose to commit suicide
    • Suicide Terrorists
  • 21. Reincarnation (An Introduction)
    • Spiritualism and Reincarnation
    • Allan Kardec and the Spirits’ Book
    • Allan Kardec, a warrior for reincarnation
    • Theosophy and Reincarnation
      • Madame Blavatsky
    • A House divided
    • Karma
    • Swedenborg on reincarnation
    • The group soul (the oversoul)
  • 22. Reincarnation: The evidence
    • The evidence for possession as an alternative to reincarnation
    • The early church and the history of reincarnation in the West
    • Past Life Regression
    • Is reincarnation really a part of God’s plan?
      • Why would a soul choose to reincarnate?
      • The Pitfalls of Reincarnation
      • If a soul reincarnates, what happens to the old personality?
      • The ultimate fate of old personalities 
  • 23. The Cross Correspondences
  • 24. The Fox Sisters and the Birth of Spiritualism Page 1
    • The Fox Sisters and the Birth of Spiritualism page 2
    • The Fox Sisters and the Birth of Spiritualism page 3
    • The Fox Sisters and the Birth of Spiritualism page 4
    • The Fox Sisters and the Birth of Spiritualism page 5
    • The Fox Sisters and the Birth of Spiritualism page 6
    • The Fox sisters: Original report of the Hydesville Haunting
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A Map of the spiritual realm

The view I have chosen in this book is a sort of synthesis of Swedenborg and Myers.  Myers speaks of planes, while Swedenborg speaks of spheres.  I use the terms sphere and plane interchangeably, higher spheres and planes being brighter and closer to God and lower spheres and planes being darker and further from God.  

The composite approach I have taken is consistent with many historical and modern sources as well as biblical interpretation.  Mostly, however, it’s a composite of Frederick Myer’s mid nineteenth century interpretation of the heavenly planes and Emanuel Swedenborg’s mid eighteenth century interpretation of the heavenly spheres.

The planes of Color, Flame, Light and Timelessness were not experienced by Myers himself, and appear to be beyond any form of  coherent human understanding.  We never receive any direct communication from these planes and therefore, planes higher than the planes of illusion can not be discussed in this book in any detail, however, they are exceedingly important because it is toward these planes that all the souls residing in lower planes eventually wish to (are destined to) evolve.

Frederick Myer’s + Emanuel Swedenborg

As you can see from the diagram above, the earth (which actually represents the entire material universe, stars, galaxies and all of the space in between) is simply a material sphere within a much larger spiritual milieu.  The blue lines represent spiritual planes, but the number of planes represented in the diagram is not important.  The point is that the spiritual world has a definite stratified structure, and the material world exists within it in a neutral, gray spiritual area.  

What Myers calls “Hades”, or the second plane, I have chosen to call the transitional plane.  It is represented by the single horizontal line that runs through the center of the earth in the diagram.  The transitional plane is more commonly referred to as the “earth plane” or the “earth sphere”.  Catholics call this plane Purgatory.  I have chosen the term “transitional plane” to avoid the connotations and confusion inherent in these terms.  The transitional plane (earth plane) is a spiritual plane and does not refer to the earth itself.  It is simply the spiritual plane closest to our material world.  The transitional plane occupies the same “space” as our material universe and invisibly interlaces with it.  None of the other heavenly (or Hellish) planes make direct contact with the material world.

The heavenly planes start from just above the transitional plane in the center of the diagram, and go upward all the way until the highest heaven which I have labeled the Consciousness of God.  The darker planes start from the transitional plane, and descend downward into the darkest realms which were originally labeled by Swedenborg as the Outer Darkness. The transitional plane is represented by the thin blue line in the center of the diagram that bisects the earth, but it is a hugely important part of the spiritual realm.  It is the dividing line between the brighter planes above, and the darker planes below, but even more importantly, it plays a large role in our daily lives. 

The transitional plane is the plane of the earthbound spirits, and it lies outside of the mainstream sequence of the spiritual realm. 

Let me repeat that because it is an extremely important point.  The transitional plane, most commonly called the earth plane and the plane of earthbound spirits lies OUTSIDE the mainstream sequence of Spirit.  Souls can evolve within the mainstream spiritual realm, but they cannot evolve while existing on the transitional plane!!! 

Unfortunately, the transitional plane lies in such close proximity to our material earth that it has become the source of the vast majority of earthly folklore about ghosts, demons, haunted houses and “poltergeists”.  It is also the source of most of the information that shows up on cable TV shows about the paranormal.

The dotted white vertical arrow on the left side of the diagram illustrates the extent of the planes of illusion.  These planes are where the mainstream sequence of the spiritual world begins.  In order for a soul to enter the mainstream sequence where their spiritual evolution can begin, each spirit must first make the decision to exit the transitional plane.  This process is often referred to as “crossing over” or “going into the light”.  

I have chosen the term “planes of illusion” because the term “illusion” fairly well sums up the mechanism by which the spirits there create their own realities.  When I speak of illusions, I am referring to the illusion of material objects.  In fact, the perception of a material environment can persist even into the higher realms above the planes of illusion, depending on each individual soul’s particular needs at any given time.  The illusion of matter is really only a crutch that helps the spirit to evolve.  In the higher realms, the need for material objects evaporates entirely, and the soul can evolve quite nicely without them.  

This book concentrates on the planes of illusion because these are the planes from which we receive all of our spiritual communication.  Stainton Moses referred to these planes as the spheres of probation.  Souls in the upper spheres are too busy concentrating on much larger matters, and generally have no desire to communicate with us. 

The planes of illusion consist of the Winterlands and the Summerlands (see map above).  They are separated by the transitional plane and represent the lowest “heavenly” planes within the mainstream spiritual hierarchy.  Both the Winterlands and the Summerlands are where the majority of souls end up after they cross over into the mainstream sequence of spiritual life.  They present varying degrees of comfort for the souls that live in them.  Both regions are further subdivided into ascending levels (in the Summerlands) and descending levels (in the Winterlands) based on spiritual evolution.  I will refer to these sub-levels as separate planes, because, in the words of Emanuel Swedenborg, “There are many heavens and many hells”.  These are collectively the areas of the mainstream spiritual world that are in closest proximity with the plane of matter where we live.  

Sources describing the spiritual levels above the planes of illusion are inconsistent.  These higher planes are what Stainton Moses called the Planes of Contemplation.  We don’t get much real channeled information from them, and spirits claiming to be from the higher planes are probably just lower spiritual conmen. 

Most of the self-described “higher” spiritual sources tend to voice opinions consistent with the “political correctness” of their day.  This, of course, varies from era to era.  These putative higher spirits generally offer all sorts of heavenly advice on current political and religious doctrines that appear to be based on their own earthly beliefs.  That’s why so much channeled spiritual “wisdom” sounds more like pop culture as seen on daytime TV.  See chapter 19 about spirit’s lies and tall tales. 

I don’t doubt that the higher spheres exist and that the conditions there are infinitely more challenging than those on the lower planes, however souls occupying these realms live in ineffable (indescribable) conditions and they would have little incentive to communicate with the spiritually infantile souls living in the world of matter.  Thus, I have chosen to confine the majority of my discussion of the spiritual realm to the “lower reaches of heaven”.  Information about the transitional plane and the planes of illusion is much more ubiquitous and consistent.  It often comes from the souls of persons who have died within recent memory, or recent historical times, and much of the “personal” information pertaining to the spirits themselves can be confirmed by living persons or currently available records.  

By the time that the spirit of Frederick Myers dictated his posthumously channeled book, The Road to Immortality to Geraldine Cummins, he had advanced beyond the planes of Illusion into the fourth plane, the plane he calls “the plane of Color”. He had dedicated much of his later life to research into the afterlife, and this book was a sort of “good bye” gift to humanity.

In The Road to Immortality, he describes the fourth plane and the planes beyond, however, his descriptions are necessarily superficial since the environments on these planes are beyond earthly description. He does, however, make it clear that as spirits progress, they cling less and less to earthly matter, creating environments with progressively finer forms until they abandon matter altogether in the highest planes. Another source I trust is Stainton Moses. His information, based on his band of controls, has the “ring of truth, (in spite of the awful hatchet job done on him by CSICOP in the pages of Wikipedia), and it is largely consistent with Frederick Myers. 

There are also few accounts about existence in the hells beneath the planes of illusion and much of our information about conditions there are based on observations gleaned from the long history of ghosts, hauntings and exorcisms.  Mainstream religions, especially Catholicism, have compiled centuries of information based on experiences of qualified exorcists and demonologists, and I draw on these sources as well.  

Having said all this about the structure of the transitional plane and the hells below, the actual relationship of the hells to the transitional plane is still somewhat equivocal.  While the transitional plane is definitely NOT a part of the vertically stratified higher celestial planes starting from the Winterlands up, the same cannot be said for its relationship with the lower planes.  In some literature, the transitional plane appears to be a less negative, sort of a surface layer of the hells.  Think of the hells as being a deep caldron of simmering evil souls, with some of them bubbling up to the transitional plane before sinking back down into the depths of the caldron where they belong. 

Heaven, Hell and the Planes of Illusion >>>>

<<<< The spiritual world according to Myers and Swedenborg

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Science, Math and God

Science, Math and God is the companion book, originally written as a preface to The Structure of Heaven. It's a book that explains why the skeptics are wrong, and why modern science no longer rules out the paranormal. Learn why God now has a place to live. (Also available as an eBook and paperback at Amazon.com)

The Lower Reaches of Heaven

The Lower Reaches of Heaven is a modern rendition of an of an old book; Thirty Years Among The Dead by Dr. Carl Wickland. It is essential reading if you want to understand Earthbound Spirits and the dynamics of their environment. It also contains lots of editorial comment and historical facts, as well insight into how ghosts think.

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