The influence of grief on the deceased

- 7 - Mrs. Silbert entered a trance and the son simply said words to his mother that touched her wounded heart like balm. He told her that she would have committed a serious crime by committing suicide and that her soul would have ended up in sinister regions, ergo a long way away from his soul. She would have had to atone for this sin, because nobody has the right to shorten their life by even one hour and he literally told her: ‘Why do you cry over me? I am in bright spheres and I am so happy that I wish for nothing. Or do you want to bring me back to the valley of tears that you call Earth, a place that is a veritable hell? The power of your thoughts dragged me once again back to my physical form and it was doubly difficult for me to free myself from it again. You kept me bound for a long time. Fulfil your duty on Earth and I will expect you when your time has come.’ Mrs. Silbert woke up and saw a changed woman in front of her. Her eyes expressed a new vitality and she seemed to be filled with new energy. She departed with words of thanks. She later returned with her husband and he couldn’t thank Mrs. Silbert enough. They were both happy now and consoled with their fate that had seemed so hard and cruel to begin with. They turned into frequent visitors and they kept in contact with their son.” 7. Prayers delay the Dying Process The following example, given by the American Dr. Moody in his book “Life after Death”, also show that thoughts, and above everything else, prayers have an influence on the dying process. Moody writes (7, P. 88): “In a few isolated cases, the affected presented the view that they had been brought back from death against their own wishes through the love and the prayers of others.” For instance, in the following case: “During her last illness, it dragged out for a very long time, I was with my elderly aunt and helped with looking after her. All in the family prayed for her so that she might regain her health. Her breathing stopped a number of times, but she was brought back again and again. One day she opened her eyes and said to me: “Joan, I have been over there, over there in the hereafter. It is wonderful there. I would like to remain there, but for as long as you beg me to stay and live amongst you, I cannot do so. Your prayers keep me here. Please, do no longer pray for me.’ All of us refrained from praying and she died shortly after.” A similar example comes from a doctor in Utah/USA (8, P. 83): “A five years old boy who suffered from a malignant brain tumour had been in a coma for three weeks. Members of his family had been with him virtually all the time. They stood around his bed and almost constantly prayed for his recovery. This was only interrupted by short breaks so that they could eat and have a rest. At the end of the third week, the pastor of their church community entered the sick room and told an unusual story. The little boy had talked to him in a dream: ‘The time has come for me to die. You must tell my parents to no longer pray for my recovery. I must go now.’ The pastor nervously contemplated how he could give this message to the family. It still played so powerfully on his mind, he said, that he could not ignore it. ‘It is as if he was standing in this room, talking to me face to face.’ The members of the family accepted the dream of the pastor as a message from their boy. They prayed, they stroked his seemingly lifeless body and they said to him that they will miss him, but that he was now allowed to die. The boy suddenly regain consciousness. He thanked his family for letting him go and he told them that he would soon die. He died the next day.”