Dear Customer (name blocked for privacy),
When I was a teenager, I first became increasingly interested in near death experiences because I wanted to find out if what religion taught us is right.
Through the years, I've learned that most of the teachings are right to a certain degree (You have to remember, these teachings were brought into existence in a much simpler time, so it is natural for the explanations to be simple, too.). There is a heaven--it is the one that you have been culturally conditioned to believe in (or which you mentally believe will happen--that is why "heaven is what we make of it" is such a popular phrase).
When we die, we go through a tunnel into a white light. (One guy described the tunnel as a dark, large valley--because of this, he finally understood the words, "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil . . .").
There a guide usually meets us. It is usually a family member(s) or a friend(s)--sometimes we know them personally or sometimes they are connected through family or friends--that greets us.
Some people see a marvelous dimension with beautiful landscapes and a great city with schools of learning and some actually meet the Source (God--love, whatever).
Then begins the life review. It isn't such a horrible thing if you've tried to do good most of your life. Whatever you did, you will relive again--both the negative and the positive, and you get to feel the effects that your actions had upon all the other people whose lives you affected.
I grew up in the Catholic Church, so I was taught that there was a heaven, hell, and a purgatory.
From what I've researched, there is a purgatory of sorts. It usually happens when the soul doesn't move on for some reason. The most common reason for this is because the person doesn't realize he/she is dead. It's not a permanent state (eventually the soul will get a chance to move on when its ready), and it only happens to a small amount of people.
As for hell, for awhile there, I almost didn't believe in it or at least not as a fiery nether-region (I think that hell is a state of mind. If a soul clings to the earthly plane and refuses to move on, if it focuses more on the things that it craved and needed in life, then the soul creates its own hell by turning away from the love of God and refusing to turn to the light.).
Check out the following websites for more information:
**Heaven and hell are what we make of them: http://www.bariumblues.com/nde.htm
**Goes into whether there is a hell or not. Also goes into the various levels of the afterlife experience with very good and clear descriptions: http://www.cinemind.com/atwater/hell.html
**Describes the different stages people go through after death: http://www.mikepettigrew.com/afterlife/html/near_death.html
To answer your original question, dead loved ones sometimes stick around after death [until they're buried (They aren't still stuck in their bodies, though.)--or to help the living with the grieving process] or they come back to visit the grieving (Just because you go to heaven, doesn't mean that you are confined there. You still get to visit the earthly plane whenever you want.) and comfort them with their presence or messages. The dead can communicate best within dreams or through electrical equipment. [I've received several messages from my loved ones in my sleep through dreams, and amazingly, even one during a deep meditative state, and that was from a childhood friend that had died over 15 years ago!]
Several days after my stepfather B. died, I was at work (in another house as a nanny) when the family's radio turned on at exactly the time of day that my stepfather died. I checked the radio out and asked the family if they had programmed it to turn on, but they said "no." When my grandmother died, the television set turned on by itself (when I entered the room) at the exact time that she died. As soon as it happened, I knew my grandmother was dead. My cousin called me soon after and confirmed what I had already knew. Another strange coincidence occurred before the funeral when my cousin and I were talking about my grandmother. The song "Angel" by Sarah McLaughlin came on the radio, and we both shared with each other the fact that we'd kept hearing that song since grandma's death (It was her way of letting us know that she was still around--I still hear it every once and awhile when I think of her.).
I hope that all of this was helpful to you. As you can see, just because you die doesn't mean that you're permanently cut off from the ones that you love. We do get visitation rights.
Mic Sayre
