9: The Afterlife, Part 2 - Lily Dale, New York & the Spiritualism Movement

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Speaker 1: I'm just a fool.

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Speaker 2: Way and change.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to death, grief and other shit we don't discuss. I'm Kyle McMahon the afterlife. What does that mean? Is it heaven? Is it nirvana? Is it energy? Does it matter what we call it? I don't believe it does matter what specific words in our own language that we call it. We're all essentially talking about the same thing, right As we've learned there is scientific evidence for something after we pass. And as I think about Mom, I know for a fact that she's here with me. I've heard her, I felt her, and I've seen her. I was in Costco on Christmas Eve getting some last minute desserts for the family dinner I was having the next day, and all of a sudden, as I'm browsing the delicious looking fresh desserts in the bakery department, I just started crying, just out of nowhere. I had a flashback to last Christmas Eve, when I was there in that very same Costco on that very same day, and that very same department getting desserts to deliver to the staff at the hospital for Mom. That was the first time I was without Mom on Christmas. My entire life and so I had just wanted to do something nice for all of the nurses and staff that were choosing to be away from their families so they could make sure that mine was okay. And at that moment, it all came flooding back to me, that sadness and dread inside of my soul that I had felt in that very same place one year ago. Today, I had to run out of Costco and I ran to my car to compose myself. But I also couldn't just leave. I had to get desserts for Christmas dinner tomorrow. I looked and Michael's Art supply store was just across the way, So I figured I'd get myself together here in the car and then go over to Michael's for a few minutes and check out what they had, and then go back to Costco and get what I needed to get. I finally got myself to a place where I could at least be seen in public without someone calling for help at the crazy person hysterically crying at the art store, and I went inside Michael's. I did the quickest run around a store I've ever done, and believe me, I tend to be a quick shopper but on my way out, something caught my eye. I went over to the register to see what it was, and it was this little piece of paper taped right next to the register that said, you are My Sunshine. This was the song Mom had sang to me since I was born. And now, as I'm jogging to the exit of Michael's to go continue crying in my car, here staring me in the face right now is a direct sign from Mom. I immediately smiled and said out loud, you are my sunshine. Mom. I love you. And now I'm realizing that I'm kind of shouting out loud to air with tears in my eyes and this huge smile, and I look more like a crazy person now than I did when I came in, and that made me laugh out loud, which only made me look even crazier. And I decided, you know what, let me get out of Michael's and go back to the car. But there is no doubt in my mind that that was Mom. What are the chances that, in that moment, on that day, at that register, next to that exit door, as I'm trying to settle myself down from missing Mom so much, that those lyrics from a song that Mom has sang since I was born, are staring me in the face, the same lyrics we sang to each other in our last moments together. That baffled me, That astounded me. I went back to Costco and got the desserts I needed and drove home, and I thought the entire time, like, Wow, that's so crazy. Is it a grand coincidence? Some could argue it could be, and maybe that instance alone could be seen as one. But when I got home, there was a small one foot or so Christmas tree on my step with a card attached. That's strange, I thought to myself. I didn't get any notifications from my security cameras, so I didn't think much of it, and I brought it in and then I opened the card. It read, decorate me every year to remind you that Mom's love is near. Merry Christmas. The card was unsigned. I checked my security camera footage because like, maybe I just missed the notification. There were zero people or cars that showed up that afternoon on my property. The security cameras were working. They caught other things that afternoon, a squirrel and a cat. How do I explain this? What possible rationale is there? To both of these events happening simultaneously at a time when I was literally sobbing over my Mom in my heart. I think it was one of Mom's angels here on earth, and Mom sent them at that moment for that purpose. I began bawling in my kitchen out of happiness, astonished at what was happening. Thank you, Mom. I love you so much. I love you so so much. I have numerous examples of things happening since Mom passed that I just can't explain rationally. There was the dragonflies, the dragonflies that I saw so many times when I was thinking of Mom, upset about Mom, and a dragonfly would just fly over to me. There was the nightly tapping on the window of my bedroom that went on for months, just about the same time every night, right when I went to bed. It even would wake Blue up sometimes and I would check the cameras and once again, nothing out of the ordinary was showing. And the dreams, oh, the dreams that I have. They happen one or two times a month, and it normally involves Mom telling me something relating to my life. It's like that's her way of communicating with me, that's her way of telling me what she wants to tell me. And as you can imagine, I look forward to those dreams so so much, and with all of this happening, I knew there was definitely something to all of this. In my research for this series, I'd come across the documentary about this town called Lilydale in New York. Lilydale is a hamlet located in the town of Pomfret on the east side of Casadega Lake. With a year population of just two hundred and seventy five. This quaint little lakeside town isn't just a quaint little lakeside town, however. Every year, almost twenty five thousand people come from all over the world to visit Lilydale, and that is because this gated community is made up solely of mediums and healers in the spiritualist movement. In eighteen seventy nine, Casadega Lake Free Association was incorporated as a meeting place for spiritualists and freethinkers. In nineteen oh three, the name was changed to the City of Light, and in nineteen oh six it was changed to Lilydale Assembly. Its purpose was to further the philosophy and science of Spiritualism, and if you're unfamiliar, put quite simply, Spiritualism is a school of thinking that believes one's awareness persists after death, their spirit, and that that spirit can be contacted by the living, with an entire town made up of spiritualists, who, as Lilydale's motto states, is a home of mediumship and spiritual healing. Tens of thousands of people travel every year to Lilydale and the hopes of getting in touch with their own sensitivity, were even getting in touch with a loved one who has passed on. The more I read about Lilydale, the more I knew I had to go. I was being drawn to it, called to it, so off I went to Lilydale, New York. I was welcomed to lily Dale by Tom Kratzley. Besides being a dynamic healer and teacher who has worked in counseling, spiritual healing and teaching for more than thirty years, Tom is also a bit of a historian of Lilydale, and he graciously offered to take me on a tour of this historic and revered and special Tom gave me an incredible walking tour of some of Lilydale's most special places. One of these special places in the woods of Lilydale was the site where an ancient tree had fallen. It's called the inspiration stuff.

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Speaker 2: All right. So this originally was a place where the children would come and practice their medium shift. And eventually what happened was the board thought, well, if this is attracting all these people, then you've got to put this together for the adults. So the kids were out of it and mediums twice a day. Now in the summertime, the mediums will come back here and do the same time practice they do at the first temple. Wow, they stand up here and we'll come give messages to the people here. But you come back here at night with a good group of people, and there's all kinds of phenomena he had to waitness. Really, Yeah, you actually see what somebody wants to come on, stand up here. If you start to look at them, people start to shape shift.

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Speaker 1: Wow, that's incredible.

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Speaker 2: It is a power spot for sure.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean that's what you know. I just feel this energy here. Well, you know, it's just yeah, I don't know how to describe it, palpable. I guess that's incredible. Yeah, Yeah, this place is very special. It's crazy. How Like I said, you just feel I just feel something here.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah.

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Speaker 1: Tom took me to the pet Cemetery with beautiful memorials to furry friends that have passed on. He showed me the museum, the Healing Temple, and the Fairy Village. As we walked and drove around lily Dale among the spectacular Victorian homes and cottages, Tom began telling me his own journey to lily Dale. He was a student in college when he took a trip to lily Dale with his classmates. That trip made such a profound impact on him that he returned to Lilydale on his own. From there, this special place kept calling to him.

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Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty eight, I came back here and I visited the Healing Temple and I was hooked. Okay, So then I started coming back every summer. I would spend entire summers here just working in the healing Temple.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay.

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Speaker 2: Part of my training is doing healing. It was always part of it. And then while I was in Boston, I got hooked up with an organization and I traveled around the country teaching metaphysical principles for creating the life you want that kind of stuff. Oh wow, Then that went, you know, kind of off on my own. And there are a number of little stories in a way, and I develop a counseling method which I call restructuring. Another in the more clinical term would be contextual pattern release. Okay, So what I do with people is, no matter what the issue is, I get them to talk about it and see it's impact on their lives, and then I do a regression based on what we discover on to the point of what the issue is, and they go back to the traumatic event that got it started. Wow, And while they were living the traumatic event, I encouraged them to make a new series of choices and decisions in relationship to the traumatic event. They can be maybe one hundred choices in the middle of in one session, right, But each time they do, they take a deep breaths. They're putting the physiology behind it, and they let go of let's say, get released my fear of my anger at the decision I made to do this, the promise I made to do that, et cetera, et cetera. Multi level.

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Speaker 1: Tom's work, which he calls restructuring, is based on the foundation of psychology's contextual pattern release. His decades of study and his psychology and counseling background have allowed him to hone this talent. In fact, hypnotherapists, counselors, and psychologists alike from all around the world refer clients to Tom for restructure and this is why Tom is in Lilydale. His experiences dating back to his college days as a visitor at Lilydale pushed him directly to this career path, and for Tom, it's not so much as a career path but a calling. When we return, I sit down with Tom to discuss the history of Lilydale, its special connection to the Other Side, and the spiritualism movement of the United States. Tom Cratsley is not just a healer and a teacher, He's a bit of a historian of Lilydale, New York as well. Spiritualism is a social and to some religious movement that began in the nineteenth century and is still alive and well today. In my opinion, the biggest belief of spiritualism, especially one that separates it from other spiritual beliefs, is the belief that one's awareness persists even after death and may be contacted. And since my new friend Tom is a bit of a historian of lily Dale. Naturally, our conversation turned to lily Dale's history, and ultimately Lilydale's origins began with Andrew Jackson Davis, considered the founder of the spiritualist movement. Born in blooming Grove, New York, in eighteen twenty six, Davis lost his own mother at a young age.

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Speaker 2: At age seventeen, he became interested in Mesmerism, which was a healing modality in its day. It's not what we think of today's hypnosis. Right in its day they would use and was based on what Anton Mesmer called animal magnetism, which is you know that there's there are forces within the human body that if you play with them and work with him you can restore balance. So the French academy turned him down, but many people started practicing and working with his methodology, and it came over to the US and about the turn of that century, about eighteen hundred or so, they started practicing. And so there was a practitioner in his area in Poughkeepsie, and once or twice he was putting, they worked on him, and I guess he felt something, but that wasn't anything unusual that happened the third time the person who was working on him, he went into a deep trance state, and it was discovered at this point that he could do medical clairvoyance like Edgar Casey, using precise medical terminology, you know, and also offering cures and things and not real unusual things just the same way in case he did an right. Some of them were probably fairly standard, but some of them were quite unusual. Anyway, after about a year and a half of this, they did this on a daily basis. He was put into these trand states every day for about a year and a half, and I think that was preparing him to take these that next step to be able to see anything everything anytime he wanted to. But after about a year and a half of that, as soon as the book was written, maybe three years total, he was on his own. He could just go into that state. And I've been chasing that the rest of my life, you know, from the time I first I was like, I want that what he had. And you know who took to early spiritualism A lot of Quakers, Okay. One of the things about the Quakers non hierarchical. That's one of the things that I came to appreciate about spiritualism non hierarchical. Everyone has their own direct access to the divine and they also have an obligation to pursue that or to to make the best of it, you know, which I think is true too, you know. So that's that's one of the main main features of it. They don't believe in vicarious atonement, what is the personal responsibility that somebody died for your sins? Gotcha, right, But they believe in what I would call infinite grace, that it's available to everybody if they put themselves in the right place, you know, and it's also there, you know, if they don't get around to it here and the hereafter, it's there, you know, the opportunity. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And what does spiritualism say about death.

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Speaker 2: It's just the beginning of another phase of existence. Yeah. One of the things that the early and all the metaphysicians in the early days would talk about is vibration and frequency. That everything exists on different levels of frequency. You know, like say there's a there is a big octave of frequency that is the physical world. Then there's another octave of frequency that's the mental world. All right, It's not in the neurons of the brain, by the way, you know, it just happens to be the local expression of it. But that's why I think the medical science is always barking up the wrong tree when they're trying to like nail it down into the physical because we're beyond our physical self, right, you know.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And there's so many things that science can't explain.

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Speaker 1: You know that it's got to be something that may never be understood, you know.

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Speaker 2: That's right. And if you don't ever doing any meditation.

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Speaker 3: I have been getting into meditation.

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Speaker 2: Excellent, excellent. So you know that when you slow down all this mental activity, something starts to shift internally, right, And that's what they did in the early days with city and circles, you know, the group energy would support all the individuals there into going into deep a relaxation so that they can be open to other realms and communication from other realms.

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Speaker 1: And is that why you think seances were so prevalent then?

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, they were really really big in the early days. And what happened was and some people would disagree with me, but this is my particular bias on it. Toward the latter let's say, quarter of the nineteenth century, there got to be a real interest in physical phenomena, what's called physical phenomenon, that is, to get things floating around in the room and all that kind of stuff, and you know, apparitions showing up. And what the problem was that that stuff can't be You can't call upon that to happen every single time, right, And so mediums got into faking it because you know, they couldn't couldn't produce it all the time. So and then of course they got they got discovered, and so that started to pull people away from it. But there was no need for that other than to show off. It was like it wasn't really And I do believe that the spiritual guide started to pull it away because it wasn't delivering the results they wanted. I believe this that all spiritual phenomena is purpose driven. Okay, now here's the important part. We don't decide the purpose. The purpose comes from a higher realm. As long as we're open to be attuned to the higher realm, then we'll discover that purpose along the way, and other phenomena will happen for us. I have an amazing story to tell you about, you know, physical My aunt after my grandmother died, had had gone into a depression, and she was depressed for about a good salad year. And near the end of that, she's in her bed as she customarily doesn't do therediant night, and then she looked and she saw a light coming from under the door, the bedroom door that was closed, and I turned off all the lights of this, and all of a sudden, my grandmother stepped through the door, and she was looking like twenty years younger. And it was perfectly that she stood because her last days she was infirmed in a wheelchair. But she stepped through tribally and she proceeded to lecture her about how she needed to get on with her life. She had good things to do and she was doing perfectly fine.

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Speaker 3: Wow.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And it snapped her depression, it snapped her grief and she went on and got married, and you know it was yeah.

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Speaker 3: So, so what you're saying is that.

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Speaker 1: They can help us, Oh yeah, in our they can help us from their realm, in our realm.

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Speaker 2: Yes, And you see it all the time. I see it a lot of times in the summer here, people would be given certain messages that somehow they and they know they're coming from either like a spouse has passed on or a mother, a father, grandparents, et cetera, that kind of tune in to what they really need, you know, and they give them, oh maybe just a sentence of advice, and it changes. It changes people. That's all. You don't need much, you know.

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Speaker 1: How do I, if I'm a spirit, how do I, as a spirit affect something electrical or something?

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Speaker 3: Is it like the energy?

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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, there's there's a way in which the frequencies that they're working at become somewhat resonant with the electrical frequencies, gotcha, you know, and resonant enough that they may not be perfectly resonant, so they're close enough in vibration but not perfectly resonant that they can cause disturbance.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I've I've had numerous experiences like that, and I'm like, you know, it was a sign for me, you know, it wasn't.

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Speaker 3: It wasn't. Oh I changed the ball, But it's not you know or whatever.

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Speaker 2: It's interesting for yours. After my dad passed and my mom was alive, the channel he changed the channels on the TV.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's just like I'm here.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, yeah. Yeah, it's a nice, nice reinforcement if we can't hear, what is it that your mom has done?

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Speaker 1: Oh? Well, the craziest thing was she hated that I had a tattoo. And she wasn't against tattoos, but for me she was. And then so I after she passed, I got a car that she had written out to me, got a buddy of mine who's a tattoo artist to scan it, and then he transferred that to paper and then just tattooed over it.

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Speaker 3: So it's her exact.

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Speaker 2: Signature, okay.

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Speaker 3: And I was nervous, like what my mom really want?

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Speaker 1: You know, I know she wouldn't really want me to have this, but I I want.

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Speaker 2: Her on me at all times.

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Speaker 1: And so I was at the gas station, might have been that day that I got the tattoo. There's nobody around, and I'm pumping gas and I hear Kyle and it was my mom, And for a second I forgot that she was gone, and so I like look around and then I'm like, there's nobody here, because I was like, no, my mom's getting gas or something, and you know, I look around, there's nobody there, and my my car's off, you know, the stereo is off, and I'm like, what is going on? And then I'm like, oh wait, it can't be Mom. You know, she just passed. So that was really freaky. Then I get in Mike, I finished pumping the gas, getting my car and start driving home.

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Speaker 3: On my phone pops up.

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Speaker 1: I had posted a picture of this to Facebook my tattoo and like, my mom was probably, you.

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Speaker 3: Know, cursing at me, blah blah blah. But I wanted to get this and I posted the photo.

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Speaker 1: It popped up on my phone Joanne has liked your photo, and I was like, wait a second, and I'm like what the hell, Like how is this? You know, I'm like freaking out. So I'm like it's got to be my dad, you know, on accident or whatever. So I called my dad and I'm like, do you have Mom's phone? And he's like no, it's upstairs. Why And I'm like, so you don't have Mom's phone with you? You weren't on mom's phone. He's like, no, I've been in meetings. It's upstairs. What's going on? And I'm like okay. And then I explained to it the story and is like that's really weird. There was nobody that has her passwords or.

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Speaker 2: You know what, unexplainable.

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Speaker 1: But I thought it was really ironic that that is the.

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Speaker 3: One she liked, the one for the you know, posting the tattoo of.

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Speaker 1: Her you know what I'm saying, of all the things she could have liked. And it happened right after I heard her say, Kyle, you.

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Speaker 3: Know what I mean?

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Speaker 2: Got it?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, purpose so weird and or not weird. I mean, it's awesome. So that was like the biggest thing so far that has happened.

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Speaker 2: Great, Yeah, that's great. Yeah, those things you don't forget, no, no.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, that is a very clear sign to me that she is here with me.

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Speaker 2: I was eight years old when my grandmother died, the same grandmother that the aunt was in depression over. And she was laid out in her home right and I was at the other ant's house about half a mile down the road. They lived out in the country, and I'm walking in the fields to get from one house the other and my grandmother I could hear her really talking in my ear, and at eight years old, I was freaked. Yeah, So I started booking it, and I never told anybody about it until years and years later, and it turns out that she did the same thing to about eight grandchildren.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's incredible.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, I can't not believe that. I mean, it's unexplainable.

00:27:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's about the real, real experience.

00:28:01
Speaker 1: Tom gave incredible insight into the spiritualism movement and how they see the afterlife as just another plane, just like the one we're on now. Nearly every religion in the world has some sort of afterlife, whether it be called heaven, Hell, Valhalla, purgatory, or any other number of names for what is essentially the same concept. Other religions believe in reincarnation, where the soul enters a new physical body. There are also schools of thought that believe that when we physically die, so does our soul. We just simply cease to exist. What can't be denied, however, is the experiences of tens of millions of people around the world and throughout time that have had some unexplainable occurrence where they believe they've come in contact with someone on the other side. A Pere research study done in twenty twenty one shows that seventy three percent of US adults say they believe in some sort of quote heaven, and that's no matter what religion they subscribe to. If any and only sixty two percent believe in some sort of hell, then just seventeen percent say they don't believe in any sort of afterlife at all. From the earliest societies, even before organized religion, we see through their artifacts that even they believed in some sort of afterlife that's been consistent throughout time, no matter what area of the globe you look. In fact, today, in that same Pere research study, seventy two percent of US adults say it is possible to experience feeling the presence of someone who has died, and forty four percent say they have experienced the presence of someone who has died. Why is the such an important topic for the vast majority of the entire humankind? In my opinion, that belief in what happens after our lives as we know them end helps guide us in our decisions during that life. If one believes in a higher power that condemns you to an eternity of suffering, unless you live by a certain code, you're probably more likely to follow that code. If one believes they'll be reunited with their loved ones who have passed on. There's comfort in knowing that we have safety and love waiting for us there, and science can tell us a lot. Our global society as we know it today wouldn't exist without the efforts of the scientific community. But throughout all of this time, science still can't give us a definitive answer for what lies on the other side of this life. Science cannot explain how someone who has died on an option operating table and been revived was able to describe in detail what was going on on the hospital floors above them, and in some cases, what was going on to their body while they were clinically dead. Science cannot explain the growing documented cases of after death communication around the world, and science can't explain how these have happened throughout time. Maybe one day we will know what happens on the other side and why, or maybe we won't. But I can only go by my own experiences, which can't be denied or debunked, And that's why I believe in the afterlife. Next time on death, grief and other shit we don't discuss, we continue with the discussion on the afterlife as I remain in Lily Dale New York to talk with Reverend Angela App, a medium and teacher who was able to communicate with loved ones who have crossed over. We discuss her experiences as a medium, how spirits come through, and what she's learned from talking to so many grieving people and their loved ones on the other side. And I get my own reading, Will my mom come through?

00:32:31
Speaker 3: He'll soon be free from me. Every try to spool, will read.

00:32:44
Speaker 2: Beneath the side.

00:32:49
Speaker 1: I'll drop the cry.

00:32:53
Speaker 3: So silve Denaia.

00:32:57
Speaker 2: And enter.

00:33:02
Speaker 1: My home with God. I'm going to see Rember the she said she'd be me when I come. I'm just school for Jordia.

00:33:32
Speaker 2: Come to school, win Over.

00:33:41
Speaker 3: Am to the school when for Jordia, I am jo school

00:33:55
Speaker 2: Whover