Our society has a knee jerk reaction to this subject. It is that nobody knows anything, all the reports of life after death are bullshit, don't believe what you can't see with your own eyes. Then when you come across a Lisa Williams or John Edward on tv communicating with dead people, the knee jerk reaction is that it is all bullshit, either that Lisa and John are phonies or that they are full of it. I call it a knee jerk reaction because the negative conclusions about them are not coming from people who gave them an impartial and open minded viewing, but rather from people who were prejudiced against them in the first place, thinking it can't be real, so therefore it's not. That's closed mindedness. Case closed before evidence is presented. Just mock the evidence and toss it in the garbage. Come on, we know better, we know it's all baloney. Most people are like that.

Some of us have come to the opposite conclusion. My own conclusion is that both Lisa Williams and John Edward are exactly what they say they are, and that Lisa is in such close communication with "dead" people that she needs to wear a hat to block them from constantly bothering her with their communication, the hat being her way of putting a "closed for business" sign on her head.

I'd go so far as to say that anyone who watches an episode or two of Lisa Williams for themselves, watches her and her clients, and fails to realize that it is all genuine, has to be pretty thick, because there never have been actors that convincing. Katharine Hepburn and Marlon Brando couldn't pull it off. The sincerity is unmistakeable. The intimate information is unmistakeable. It's often a "nobody knew that but us" thing. The only excuse for not concluding that Lisa is for real is that you are way too prejudiced to believe otherwise.

But there are people who give information that goes beyond what Lisa and John are doing. Michael Newton, for example, gives two books full of information on the place we go to after death. I don't expect 100% accuracy in anything, but I think there is a good deal of truth in his books. I don't hesitate to believe that he has it all slanted, because he's looking into a dark room without a flashlight, but I think he has a lot of truth in there too.

Now along come the Michael channels. I'm reading a book by one now. Shepherd Hoodwin is the author and channel. He allows non-physical spirits to speak through him. And he's giving lots of information about what lies beyond the grave. He goes even beyond Michael Newton. He tells us in effect that Michael Newton's information is about one of the planes of existence, the astral plane, where we go after death, where we were before birth. But there are other planes beyond the astral plane. There is the causal plane, and there is the Tao. I think there are others as well, but I haven't seen his descriptions of them.

It's so easy to label it all as bullshit, and maybe it is. But I'm not a knee jerk anything. I want to give it a fair chance, though I don't necessarily know how. Just because something is utterly beyond our experience doesn't mean it is incorrect. Maybe the Michael channels are real, and maybe the stuff in this Shepherd Hoodwin book is largely accurate.

I won't know for sure until after death, and then either I'll know or I'll be obliterated and won't care.