This was posted to me, I felt it needed outside views and comments from our readers.
On the Death of My Son – Part One
In Life Now and Hereafter, Aart Jurriaanse writes (all the writings of the author may be freely used and are not subject to any restrictions) –
On the Death of My Son was originally privately published in 1974 under the title Mike, with the author using Ronald Norman as pseudonym. It proved very popular and was subsequently reprinted by Turn stone Press for wider distribution in Great Britain under the title On the Death of My son. Jasper Swain however did not favor the new title, so when rights were transferred to various publishers in the USA, the name again changed to From My World to Yours.
Some twenty years ago Jasper Swain’s eldest son Mike tragically died in a motor accident on one of the national roads in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Mile who at the time was only eighteen, was accompanied by Heather, the eleven year old daughter of friends. They were killed instantaneously and apparently without suffering any pain.
Shortly after the funeral Jasper went to see Mrs Nina Merrington, who had offered him her services to act as spiritualistic medium in order to establish contact with Mike in the Spirit world.
After Nina passed into trance Jasper was startled to hear her speaking with Mike’s voice, addressing him as “Chud,” a name that only his dead son had ever used. When asked how the accident had happened, Mike said that he would place Nina in the driver’s seat, so that she could describe exactly how things had transpired (pp. 21 – 27).
She began by saying: “He has placed me in a small green Mini car. It has a peculiar gear lever, a short stubby gear lever, next to my left leg.” (The Mini had had its normal gear shift altered and a remote control gear shift had been mounted between the seats).
“It is a terribly hot day and I am driving along a very crowded road. There is a little girl beside me. Her name is Heather. She is chatting to me about her mum and dad, who are in the car ahead of us. I can see their car, approximately fifty yards away. It is grey in colour; it looks like a Rambler. It is noon and there is a mass of holiday traffic passing us in both directions.
“Now I see a black car coming towards us. As it approaches us, I see this other car coming behind it. I can see this other car clearly because it is in the middle of the road, trying to pass the black car.
Nina paused a moment and then said: “The sun is glaring on the windscreen of the black car and reflecting back into my eyes. I can see nothing but a bright silver radiance. It is blinding me.
“All of a sudden the radiance changes from silver to gold. I am being lifted up in the air, out through the top of the car. I grab little Heather’s hand. She too is being lifted up out of the car.
“We have been lifted thirty feet above the Mini. And in one horrifying second, I see the little Mini and this large car collide head-on. There is a noise like the snapping of steel banjo strings. The little Mini bounces right off the highway, right over on to the gravel verge. It is finally brought to a halt in a cloud of dust when it hits a giant anthill.
“The large car is turning turtle in mid air. Its nose flips over until it is back to front. Then it smashes down on to the road on its side. Now it skids four or five feet and finally it comes to a halt with an ear-splitting crash. A storm of metallic dust is now glinting all over the road. The wheels of this car are still spinning aimlessly.”
Nina stopped, obviously too agitated to continue.
What impressed her listeners was the fact that Mike had never seen the other vehicle until after the silver light had changed to gold.He and Heather had felt no sense of impact. They had suffered no pain. Just a gentle ascent into the air.
Nina recovered herself enough to continue: “Heather and I are still holding hands. We now descend beside the Mini. We see two crumpled bodies lying in it.
“We feel vaguely sorry that this thing should have happened to them. And we both fully understand that we are now, so far as mortals are concerned, dead.
“We are also both aware that a lot of people have begun to gather round us. They are dressed in glorious colours. We recognize familiar faces; the faces of friends who passed beyond the earth before us. We are still hand in hand; now, guided by the one who first lifted us into the air, the two of us sweep towards the skies. We drift about the two round hills known as the Breasts of Sheba.”
In heartfelt joy the three (Jasper, his wife Clarice and his second son Kevin) listened, transported by the fact that the passing had involved neither fear, shock nor suffering.
Mike now addressed himself to his brother. Some time after the smash, Kevin had noticed that dust was gathering on the bike and he had begun to clean it. In the process he noticed that the drive chain was dry. In too much of a hurry to find the grease gun, he rashly decided to take a chance with the oil can. He bungled it however and oil flowed out of the bottom of the casing and made a pool on the kitchen floor. Kevin had mopped up the oil with one of Mike’s dusters, which he promptly washed and ironed before returning it to its ceremonial drawer.
Mike now informed him that he had watched the proceedings like a hawk and warned his brother that if he ever made another mess like that, he would clip him over the ear!
This left Kevin devoid of further speech because this episode had occurred long after the funeral and no one knew about it save himself. Yet Mike had not only seen everything as it happened but he was giving him “a swift bounce” for good measure!
Mike next turned to his mother. “I am so glad you’ve begun to accept what has happened,” he told her. “Never allow yourself to mourn. When you do, it vitally depresses me in this world. Send us your love, send us your happiness; these we can use in the service of our Father.
“The other morning, just after sunrise, you left the bedroom and went down to the garden in your dressing gown and you picked a single, perfect white rose. I was with you then and I surrounded you with all my love. Mum, if you do get depressed again, go out into the garden and pick another flower. I shall be there with you again.”
Jasper and Kevin knew nothing of this, having been asleep when Clarice had gone down into the garden. But in the weeks that followed, whenever Clarice went alone to the garden, Jasper and Kevin would notice that no matter how somberly she would leave the house, she would come back later with her eyes sparkling and her face transformed.
Mike continued to his mother: “The only real bust-ups you and I got into were when you made me study half the night for those exams! I appreciate why you did it but if we’d only known what was going to happen, there’d have been no need for you to take such a bloomin’ great broomstick to me!”
Jasper, being the easy-going man he was, had always allowed Mike and Kevin to make their own rules at school but Clarice knew that Mike was not particularly dedicated to heavy-weight studying and she make it her business to keep his nose to the grindstone.
“Mike where are you now?” Jasper asked him.
The reply came instantly: “I am surrounded by the love and the peace of our Father, Chud.”
“But where are you? What world are you in? Can you tell me?”
“I’m in a world that looks pretty much the same as your world, Dad; only there are different laws up here.
“When I say laws, I don’t mean the laws that govern the behavior of the people here. I mean the laws that govern thought.
“Mike, tell me more about that world. How do you get there?” Where does it exist?”
“Dad, everyone comes here through the gates of death. You have to rearrange your values to appreciate its virtues, though! While you are still on earth, your thought, your intentions, everything you do, gives your soul a certain rate of vibration. For argument’s sake, let’s suppose your soul is vibrating in a fifty megacycle band. When you die and manifest here, you would go straight to the part of our world which vibrates at fifty megacycles. By the same token, if you’re a slow-thinking sort of bloke, who can only vibrate to fifteen megacycles, then you’ll become part of this world in the fifteen megacycle range. It’ll all depend on your rate of vibration, see?
“Therefore you yourself select the kind of scenery that will await you when you arrive here.
“The worlds above us are even richer in light and happiness. If I go up there (and I can) I find it too bright; the light hurts my eyes. And the vibrations are so refined that I can’t respond to them! So I reverse gear and return to this world – which suits me just fine!
“The planes below this one are denser, dimmer places. If I go down to them, it becomes murkier until it is so creepy that I scoot back here where I belong!”
On the Death of My Son – Part Two
Jasper continues his account on the death of his son, Mike –
“These worlds that you refer to Mike … ?
“Not so much worlds, Dad, as planes of existence. Though we have the sun and the skies and acres of beautiful flowers here, we don’t have rain, as you know it. Nor is there any blight to destroy the beauty of the trees. They look exactly the same as they do on earth. With one big difference, however. Here, they are all perfect. There are no high winds to warp and twist them. There are only gentle breezes. It is always coolish-warm, if you know what I mean.
“My greatest joy here is my sense of perfect freedom. We can go wherever we like, whenever we feel like it; this world is infinite.
“And though everyone you meet on this plane is at the same stage of development as yourself, he is still a rugged individualist in his own right; just as he was on your earth! Everyone has his own way of looking at things and his own way of speaking his mind! When you discuss anything here, you always learn something new because the bloke you’re talking to has such an original attitude. As I said, thought is all-powerful here. For example, if I want to own a brand new Jaguar, all I have to do is visualize the car in my mind and it is created right there before my eyes, out of the thought-energy of this world!
“But we would think twice before doing that because it means having to think in three dimensions! If I were to visualize the car as it looks in a magazine, that’s exactly what I’d get! I need to think in terms of the width of the car, the interior of the car, all the fittings and where each rightly belongs. But Dad, the minute you think of it correctly, there it is! The difficulty is to concentrate completely on the whole car, exactly as it exists.
“If we are far away from one another and we want to make contact, telepathy is the accepted thing here. I merely have to think of the fellow I want to speak to and bingo! he’s right there! We contact each other as easily as you use the telephone … except that we don’t need a phone!
“If someone wants to talk to you, you first hear him in your mind. If you want to go to him, you merely exert your will and in two ticks you’re right there! Takes a bit of getting used to but it beats TV by a mile! You see how perfect everything is?
“This world is the right one for me at this stage of my development but as my vibrations become more refined, I shall be able to visit the higher planes with ease. One day, I may even find that a higher plane suits me better than the one I’m in. We all progress this way. As we grow in spirit, we ascend to the next plane; the two processes work hand-in-glove.
“When you want to study the law and learn how it operates, you go to the Hall of Logic. There are many Halls of Knowledge and Wisdom here. You can go to any university you choose, though the lectures are all very informal; you can discuss the subject with the lecturer, face to face. You can stay all day if you like, except that that could be forever because we have no day and night here!
“We can travel from one end of this realm to the other as fast as lightning. Our bodies never get tired. Illness and sickness don’t exist here. This is a world of perfection.”
All this information took Jasper some considerable time to digest and his next question was: “Mike, if you are safe in the infinite domain of God; where is Hell?
This was met by a burst of hearty laughter.
“Gee, Dad,” answered Mike, “I’m afraid there’s no such place! My Father is a father of love and compassion. He can’t, He would never permit one of His souls to suffer and Hell would be a place of suffering. I guess it only exists where you are now! Lovingly preserved in aspic by the sanctimonious.
“There is a more realistic law, in both our worlds, that has just as many teeth! Don’t try to identify white until you have learned to identify black – and vice verso – because only then will you know what black and white are! That is why you mortals were put on earth in the first place, Dad; to learn by trial and error. But because you will go by the letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law, you keep coming unstuck! Yet how often have you seen that same law in action, Dad, and sworn by its infallibility?
“When you and I used to talk together, you used to call it the law of the boomerang. But it isn’t triggered by material cause and effect, it is triggered by the intent in your heart!
“For example, suppose you are driving a car too fast and a little child suddenly rushes out into the road and you knock her down; by earth law you would be frogmarched off to the nearest jail. But according to divine law, genuine remorse for having hurt the child can wipe the slate clean. If you didn’t cold-bloodily set out to hurt her, what can you be punished for?
“Mind you I shouldn’t use the word ‘punish;’ the proper term is ‘just desserts.’ Who should understand that better than you? You taught me that ‘as we sow, so shall we reap!’ And from where I sit now, I can see that law operating twenty-four hours a day in your ‘best of all worlds!’ The only thing that puzzles me is why human beings still persist in denying its existence!
“There are no law courts here, by the way Dad, because everyone of our laws operates within our hearts. Until we accept the fact that all negative thinking must always end in tears, we continue to create our own suffering. You’d be surprised how quickly I learned that the condition of my heart reflects the world around me! Now I would be willing to bet both our shirts Dad, that the really real world, the truly true life, is here where I am. Your mortal world is more in the nature of a kindergarten where you and the other nut visit affliction on each other as a salutary lesson not to do it in the wiser worlds-to-come!
“The basic trouble is that most of you mortals will insist on existing rather than living. You trip over your frustrations until you can barely stumble from pillar to post. Why else do you think the eastern races use the lotus as a symbol of spiritual beauty? The lotus grows in the slime of stagnant swamps but out of the muck rises the pure white blossom. Man eventually learns to distinguish beauty and truth from the misery and evil that surround him. And only from the acceptance of beauty and truth comes the wondrous return to the bosom of the Great One.”
This is just extracts of the book.