QA177 QUESTION: Ever since I was a little girl, brought up in a Catholic convent praying for the dead souls – which I have done ever since then – it has happened that I feel a contact, and I really don’t know what to do with it. I feel that somebody is watching over me. I have a contact with somebody who I know has died maybe in the 50s, and I know he was more or less a well-known person. His name is coming up all the time. I always have to think of it. I don’t know why. I find myself asking him various things – asking him for help. Is this only imagination or is there truth in that?

ANSWER: Well, there may indeed be truth, but my suggestion would be this: that you should less be concerned with asking this person for your help. Maybe his contact with you is that he, for one reason or another, wants help from you.

QUESTION: Yes, but I keep praying for that.

ANSWER: That is fine, but I will also suggest that you open yourself up inwardly, not to a specific individual but to your own innermost spiritual self, and get the help from there. Get the help from there, because otherwise you may get lost on dangerous ground that alienates you from your own center of being.

Communicating with others in the realm of the spirit is not a healthy pursuit, unless it leads directly to the finding of your own spiritual center. Ask yourself questions and know that there is an innermost wisdom in you that can give you the answers you need most. If you’re really open – inwardly open – you’ll get the answers there.

You may then also get answers that you speak to such souls who may be around you, not only praying for them but advising them to let go of you, for their concern and contact to a human being is not healthy for them.

QUESTION: May I ask why not?

ANSWER: It is not healthy because it is very often that spirits are still very earthbound and they cannot elevate themselves. They cannot bring themselves in their own inner development to see what they have to see, and they attach themselves to human beings, into the whole Earth sphere. This is not a healthy state.

For example, a person may die – a person who has never believed that you go on living – and may at first not even know that he is dead, and finds to his consternation that he cannot reach other human beings. They do not hear him. And he tries and tries and tries, and it doesn’t occur to him that there is another life, there’s another world, there’s another state of being which would be more furthersome and more happy for him. The remaining in contact with the human sphere and human beings is a suffering for them and holds them back.

QUESTION: I understand, but why is it that this could be dangerous ground for me?

ANSWER: It is dangerous ground to communicate unless one knows a great, great deal about the laws of this communication. It is very easy to get lost. It is very easy to confuse, to not determine what comes from where. It is a tremendously complex thing. Anyone who is involved with real spiritual growth will not dwell on this matter of psychic communication with deceased people. It is unhealthy for both the disembodied spirits as well as for the people. And it can lead to tremendous confusion. These are facts.

In some instances, when there is a lot of knowledge and a lot of guidance and a lot of understanding of the laws and dynamics involved, it is a temporary state of development that leads to a communication with your own innermost spirit, which is the real goal – not to communicate with other spirits. Do you understand what I mean? This is a good advice.

QUESTION: You have just said something about being someone who is still earthbound but doesn’t know he has died. {Yes} And he has difficulty contacting his fellow men. Right? {Yes} It’s funny, I somehow have that similar feeling. I do. I don’t accept the fact that I will die. And I have not gone into that phase when I feel comfortable being what I am. I think it does stop me from communicating with other people.

ANSWER: Yes. This is very true. The phenomenon that I just talked about applies on any state to many, many individuals. But it is not very likely that when you die, you would be in such a state, because you will find out that you are dead. You have heard about it and you may not quite accept it, but you also do believe – or hope it is true – that one does not cease to exist simply because one has shed the physical body. So in your case, it would not have this particular effect.

But there are innumerable human beings who go through a whole lifetime and completely negate even the possibility that such a thing may exist. And then they suddenly die without ever having given the matter thought, or opening a door.

Sometimes people do believe, but their belief is geared to very religious precepts. And then the idea is so completely different; it has such a different feeling of being real and almost human and there is nothing religious and there’s neither hell nor heaven in the way one imagines it.

It is a same kind of state of mind that one had before. One cannot imagine that this is what is called death. It is just like you described in yourself. You cannot really imagine that you are alive, in a way. It still does not have reality to you yet, in that sense.

QUESTION: Regarding the previous questions on spirits, if one is possessed by a spirit and wants to disengage oneself from it, how does one go about doing this?

ANSWER: The best way to do this is to find out what aspect in one’s own makeup makes such a possession possible. It is always the self that is involved. And as long as one treats it as though it has nothing to do with the self and one’s own character, and it is just like a coincidence, and you merely entreat the other spirit to leave you, you are bypassing one of the most important aspects for your own self-recognition.

There must be very specific elements in you that made this possible. And this must be solved. And if you cannot discover this, you should definitely seek experienced help, possibly psychological help, but one that does make room for the spiritual realities as well.

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