[whawn]

But incomplete.

Hi Erin, I just read the post, so forgive my lateness here.

When my wife's body died of breast cancer last year, I was astonished to discover the soul survived as an entity. I had believed, with the Buddhists, that the soul energy simply dissipated into the universe.

First, at the moment she left her body, I was aware of a guiding spirit, helping her to cross. Even so, I was not convinced there was any more to the story. But two days later, she clearly and unmistakably hugged me, tightly. My sister tells me that she also got a hug at about the same time, and my wife's sister got one, as well, but was somewhat unnerved by the experience. The story goes on, with several moments of unequivocal contacts that I would not have believed before.

But, here's the crux: the state of purgatory (or 'sheol' as the Jews term it, and there are other references in other myth systems -- the river Styx and Persephone's dilemma among them) is very real. In our experience (that is, that of my wife and I), there are several levels to it, before fully crossing over, and each one takes the soul further from the material plane, and increases the difficulty of communication.

And, you were spot on with this remark: "They are still accessible, for sure, but they are less urgent about it. They’ve gone on, as it were, and are working on their own development (that’s right, “Personal Development for Dead People”)." It's something I was utterly astonished to discover, but it holds with the Buddha's essential teaching, that ignorance prevents nirvana. He was, apparently (although, since his disciples wrote 'the book' it's hard to say for sure), unaware that the unbodied could grow in wisdom.

My wife was reluctant to move on, wanting to help me and our daughter in this world, but I urged her to do what she needed to do to become integrated with the spirit.

Since then, it's harder to communicate, and her touch is much more 'thready' than robust.

I suspect that her time and mine flow at different rates. In the early days, she often spoke (to my mind) very slowly, like a 78 rpm record played at 16 rpm, and it took some doing on her part to sync up, sometimes with episodes of very rapid speech before things got settled down.

Thank you for some external confirmation. I'm certain I'm not nuts, but it's very hard to talk about this with 'ordinary' people.