Thought Creates Reality Both Here and in the Afterlife
World Beyond - Ruth Montgomery
I was waiting for an appointment in a hotel conference room waiting area. A rather extroverted man showed up, sat down and started talking to the women at the table next to him. He asked them if they “believe in the Lord.” He got up and started showing them pictures on his phone. He told them he was in a very bad car wreck and “Jesus saved his life.”
I have read numerous articles about near-death experiences. I have also watched numerous YouTube videos on the subject. Some people recount a trip to heaven while others recount a trip to hell. In spite of all the articles, books and videos, I never met anyone who died and returned to tell their tale until now.
Once the women departed, the man started looking around the room. He got up and started walking towards the coffee bar. Rather than pour himself a cup of coffee, he turned around and asked me if he could have a seat at my table. I nodded. He sat down. He started looking at his phone. He turned the screen toward me and asked me if I “believe in the Lord.” It was obvious that he had been a very bad accident. The car was twisted like a pretzel. He told me about the accident and how he had been pronounced dead at the scene. He said he was dead for thirty-six minutes.
He sat there staring at me, waiting for a reaction. I asked him if he saw “the white light.” He shook his head “no” and said that he spent some time hovering over his body, watching them try to remove it from the car. Once free of the car, things started getting darker. He did not say the words “demons” and “hell,” but sure implied that this is what he saw at first. I did not get to hear the rest of his story, as I was called away for my appointment.
After meeting this man, the name “Ruth Montgomery” kept surfacing in my mind. I remember having read at least one of her books in the past. Looking at her Amazon author’s page, I found myself most attracted to A World Beyond.
Ruth Montgomery credits celebrity psychic medium Arthur Ford with “exciting her interest in the psychic and encouraging her to develop a talent for automatic writing.” After his passing, he began communicating with her via automatic writing. Together they wrote a series of books, including A World Beyond, which describes what Arthur experienced and learned in the afterlife.
Here we communicate and work and grow and thrive only through thought ... our thoughts instantaneously react to whatever we wish to project. We instantly see another person or soul of whom we think. We are constantly projecting thought patterns of our own, so that wherever we wish to be, we are.
What Ford is describing is a world in which whatever you think instantly becomes real. The Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come illustrates this concept. Robin Williams’ character dies and, after lingering around trying to communicate with his wife, finally decides to move on. He then finds himself in a heaven that he created with his thoughts and imagination. This heaven is very similar to a painting by his wife, who was an artist. All of his heavenly experiences change according to whatever is in his mind at any given time.
In A World Beyond, Ford begins by telling Montgomery that they have been together in previous incarnations, sometimes related, sometimes not, but never as enemies. He explains that “each person is a continuing entity through all eternity.”
Upon arriving in the afterlife, Arthur met up with his mother, sister, and several other family members. His boyhood friend, Fletcher, was also there to greet him. Arthur explains that “The here is not different than the there except that, with no need for physical comforts, only the beauty of the world remains.” He goes on to explain that our afterlife experiences are influenced by “childish patterns of imaginative thought.”
Ford uses his mother as his first example of how thought patterns influence afterlife experiences. His mother was “of the small town evangelical pattern.” Her version of heaven was a reflection of that as “that is what she expects it to be.” He then explains that we form new thought patterns and expectations with each incarnation. Each passing is therefore unique and not quite the same as any that came before. During our current life on Earth, we create a belief pattern that will influence future lives as well as our afterlife experience.
It is not my intent to write a book report, but rather discuss concepts related to how our thoughts create reality here and in the afterlife as well. Ruth Montgomery’s book, A World Beyond, is not the only book that delves into this topic. Nor is Arthur Ford the only entity, living or dead, to claim that our thoughts and beliefs shape our afterlife experience.
A NDE researcher, who goes by “A Gnome in Disguise,” on Reddit writes,
I’ve been researching NDEs for almost 6 years now. I’ve read hundreds of them, I've spoken to people, authors, researchers one on one. Almost every single person has a unique experience in some way with some similarities mixed in. It made me realize that the 'afterlife,' what we EXPECT right after death, is defined by our personal beliefs.
Watch enough NDE videos and read enough articles and you begin to realize that not everyone has a pleasant experience. Like the man I met in the hotel conference room, not everyone sees the “white light,” or arrives in some heavenly paradise. Not everyone is greeted by friends and family. Some experience something quite different, at least at first.
In an article titled Hell and the Near-Death Experience, Kevin Williams writes,
As with heaven, near-death experiencers have witnessed numerous variations of hell realms. These hell realms are not for judgment nor punishment, nor are they eternal. They are states of mind which act as a “time out” condition for reflection, education and purification of negative thought patterns. We can also witness numerous manifestations of these hell realms right here on earth. You can see people rotting away in prison; alcoholics passed out on Skid Row; addicts out of their minds in crack houses; people killing each other out of hatred; unsatisfied people living in luxury; all kinds of hellish conditions involving unnecessary suffering. While hell realms can be seen on Earth, they are merely a reflection of the inner hell within people.
A near death experience can change one’s beliefs and the course of their life. This is likely the purpose of these experiences. The man who I met in the hotel conference room seems to have met up with Jesus as he said, “Jesus saved my life.” Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to grill him as I wanted to, but I imagine that his meeting with Jesus came after his experience with darker forces that he seemed to perceive as demons and hell. Only he knows what this was all about, but it is safe to say that it influenced his beliefs and changed is approach to life.
Kevin Williams quotes Margaret Tweddel on his site in relation to beliefs and the afterlife. Margaret Tweddel was a clairvoyant who helped the British RAF trace missing pilots down during World War II. She is described as “a deeply religious person, a spiritual counselor and a healer.” In addition, she had the ability to receive telepathic messages from beyond. A friend of hers asked her to contact her deceased father, who then provided them with detailed information about life on “the other side.” These messages were compiled and published as a book called Witness From Beyond, in 1975. According to Tweedel,
As there are degrees of heaven or hell on Earth, so there are degrees of heaven or hell in the spiritual world. The spiritual state of being you have on Earth is the spiritual state you take with you to the world beyond when you die.
There is no sudden metamorphosis from an idle person into an active person, from a nonreligious person into a religious person, from a money-centered person into a God-centered person. This is not an automatic thing. Your personality - your likes and dislikes, your hopes, your fears - are still attached to you, although in a more nebulous form than when you are on Earth in a physical body.
I see people come over. They arrive and have high hopes that everything is going to be different for them. However, nothing can be different for them because they have brought with them what they are…
This message, that we create reality via our thoughts and beliefs, can be found in many articles, books and other sources throughout time. We can heed the message and create something positive for ourselves both here and in the afterlife, or we can choose not to.
Now, here is where the creating part gets really serious. Your thoughts, if you think them over and over, and assign truth to them, become beliefs. Beliefs create a cognitive lens through which you interpret the events of your world and this lens serves as a selective filter through which you sift the environment for evidence that matches up with what you believe to be true.”
Books by Ruth Montgomery:
Strangers Among Us (1982), Here and Hereafter (1983), Threshold to Tomorrow (1984), A Search for the Truth (1985), The World Before (1985), A World Beyond (1985), Companions Along the Way (1985), Born to Heal (1986), Aliens Among Us (1986), Herald of the New Age (1987), and The World to Come (2000).
Suggested Reading:
Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives - Dr. Michael Newton
Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives - Dr. Michael Newton
In the extraordinary 1996 movie, "Arrival." based on Ted Chiang's novella, "Your Story," many layers of life, overarched by nonlinear time are depicted in an extraordinarily beautiful and challenging pastiche. I find it remarkable that what seems like an irreducible exploration of life is woven into a bounded work of art. This relates to "Thought Creates Reality. . . And more! It was a deeply spiritual experience for me.
I very much appreciate this article and I am grateful you took the time to do research and inform readers about various sources. Many years ago, I experienced what was later described as an NDE. Eventually I came across the research that was being conducted by Kenneth Ring. One thing I learned was that Christians often talk about Jesus after an NDE, but Hindus may speak of Shiva. Of course this reflects the point of your writing - and affirms your insight.
As you sum it up: "We can heed the message and create something positive for ourselves"...