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
    • Spirit Portals
  • 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 Judgment 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 
    • Time in the planes of illusion
    • Memory in the world of spirit
    • 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
        • 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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The Fox Sisters and the Birth of Spiritualism page 4

Note: The Structure of Heaven is a 325-page book that can be downloaded from Amazon.com in Kindle format by clicking here. It is also available in paperback format by clicking here.

The well-publicized phenomena in the Fox household, as well as the large public hall demonstrations, became a sensation, and kicked off a huge worldwide wave of interest in the supernatural which lasted for some 40 years.  After the initial phenomena, Kate, Maggie and Leah (who developed into a fair medium herself) were investigated over and over by various groups of both skeptics and believers.  Committee after committee examined them.  No one was ever able to prove any form of deception, although numerous skeptics were always laying traps and trying to fabricate results.  The skeptics clumsy debunking rather increased the popularity of the sisters and of Spiritualism, the newly “re-discovered” religion that virtually began with them.  

By 1854, the number of spiritualists in America was estimated to be between one and two million, and growing.  This was probably because more and more people, upon hearing about the spirits in the Fox residence, began to experiment with “spirit boards”, table tipping and automatic writing.  Some then discovered that they were themselves psychic sensitives, and they began to spread the message which caused their friends and neighbors to experiment, and so on, until a snowball effect produced a worldwide avalanche of belief in the ability of the dead to communicate with the living.  (Note: Experimenting with Ouija boards and other means of “contacting the dead” can be dangerous because it can lead to obsession or possession.  This is discussed more thoroughly by Dr Wickland in Thirty Years among the Dead, and also in my chapter on demonic possession,)

But as the popularity of spirit phenomena grew, so did the anger of the skeptics.  Ministers of mainstream religious denominations thought that the spirits were really demons.  Some people who had become disenchanted with religious hucksterism gave up religion entirely, abandoning all belief in God, heaven, and spiritual matters and became avowed materialists.  (Religious hucksterism was a real problem since religion was a serious money making business in those days.)  Materialism became a religion unto itself and competed with established religion for new disbelievers, something that continues right up to the present day.

Between 1853 and 1855, spiritualism’s popularity soared so dramatically that many of America’s most prominent writers, thinkers, atheists and scientists became alarmed, and the vitriol behind their criticisms increased to a fever pitch. Many of these people composed the nation’s elite then, as they still do today.  Their enduring skepticism, born of materialistic values, combined with their control of all forms of public media, began to bring about a slow, but relentless change in the public’s perception of spiritual matters.  The obtuseness and poor quality of the spirits evoked on household spirit boards and by untrained mediums probably facilitated the process.  

On the other side, some believers directed their interest toward a serious understanding of psychic phenomena, but many others were simply bereaved and naive people willing to spend large sums of money on psychics who held out the hope that they could contact their dead loved ones.  

A Seance: After 1848, Spiritualism spread across the world

Death and grief were constant presences in every family in 1848.  The average lifespan for laborers and tradesmen was about 39.  There were no antibiotics.  Robert Koch would not publish the germ theory of infectious disease until 1890.  Medicine had barely progressed beyond the arts of the medieval era, and an infected finger or a blister on a foot could lead to gangrene or blood poisoning and bring about an agonizing death in an otherwise healthy person.  Prior to the Public Health Act of 1848, public health measures were non-existent, and whole families died almost regularly in local epidemics of smallpox, yellow fever, cholera and influenza.  

The likelihood of unexpected death was an ever present shadow hanging over the head of every mother’s child, and the question of life beyond death was a hot topic.  The possibility that the dead could communicate with the living was something that enraptured nearly everyone.  Not surprisingly, this led to the establishment of a thriving underworld of fraudulent psychics who were in business to profit from personal grief and the public’s ignorance about the real nature of spiritual phenomena.

As more and more of the frauds were debunked, the angry denunciations of the skeptics gained additional fertile ground and the public started to become more skeptical of psychic phenomena and of psychics in general. Over the next forty years, lifespans began to increase rapidly due to advances in medicine and public health laws.  Fewer people were experiencing the grief of the premature loss of a loved one. 

 To top this off, over the years Kate and Maggie Fox had drifted into alcoholism and poverty. During their 40-year careers, both girls had developed into famous and accomplished spirit mediums.  They were able to produce many types of spirit phenomena, and they were tested at every step.  The testing continued and in their later years they were either exposed as frauds or authenticated as real depending on the biases of the investigators.  This happened over and over again and probably was a factor in their alcoholism.  The constant criticism from skeptics, the repetitive humiliating testing and the slow disengagement of the public were starting to take their toll on the sisters.

Another factor in their alcoholism may well have been spirit obsession (see chapter 12).  Well after the Fox sisters began their careers, psychic mediums began to realize that they were at the mercy of low level spirits who would like nothing better than to experience their former vices through them. Alcohol, drug and sex addictions are some of the main reasons that ignorant spirits get stuck on the transitional plane, and they are always looking for some way to “get back into the game”. They can sometimes do this by infecting the auras of psychic sensitives and living addicts. Since those early days, mediums have learned from hard experience that without spiritual gatekeepers, their brethren had a tendency to fall by the wayside due to alcohol, drugs, sex and other vices.  (Dr. Wickland tells of one such case.)  This was when the concept of a “spirit control” was born.  

Spirit controls are today called “spirit guides”. They are higher level, well-educated spirits who have overcome their earthly vices and are dedicated to helping living souls. These act as gatekeepers for the medium, protecting him or her from “evil”, or low level spirits who might take advantage of a vulnerable medium in a trance.  This is one of the reasons that modern mediums pray to God for protection prior to communicating with the other side.  All experienced mediums today maintain spirit guides.  Anna Wickland had a group of higher spirits that ran interference for her.  They called themselves the Mercy Band.  Unfortunately, the Fox sisters, who began their careers with no idea of the dangers they faced had no such protection.

Note: The Structure of Heaven is a 325-page book that can be downloaded from Amazon.com in Kindle format by clicking here. It is also available in paperback format by clicking here.

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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.

The Structure of Heaven is a 350 page book that can be downloaded from Amazon.com in kindle format by clicking here. It is also available in paperback format by clicking here.

If you have a question for me, you can email me at: author@thestructureofheaven.com. Be aware, however, that the answer to almost all your questions concerning this subject are best found by downloading the e-book or purchasing the paperback direct from Amazon.com

You can contact me directly by email: author@thestructureofheaven.com