Conversations with Jerry and other people I thought were dead

Hi alternativegran I hadn't read the book but googled it because I am a naturally curious person and thought I'd reply to you. I see Irene is a soul-centred life coach whose mission is to inspire conscious, joyous living.

If I were you, I'd read all about the book on the web, watch youtube interviews with the author, and read the reviews (I found one where the author personally responds to criticism) and I'd definitely not spend any money on it.

Thank you grannyknot,

I was intrigued but will look on you tube and try to find review where the author responds to criticism.

I did look for the medium involved but couldn't find anything recent, perhaps she went into hiding when the book became a best seller.

Hi again, here's where the author comments:
thatsanovelidea.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/conversations-with-jerry-and-other_26.html

I don't believe in mediums...

Thanks again grannyknot - It's an interesting review.

It would love to think that it might be possible have conversations with friends and family no longer around, and see life from a very different angle, but the sceptic in me says that any medium who could facilitate such long dialogues would be a celebrity by now.

Perhaps it was just a vehicle for Irene Kendigs ideas, I will search you tube for an interview with her.

I know someone who says she is a medium and who insists on telling you who is 'sitting' next to you and what they want to tell you - despite being specifically asked not to. I don't believe but it's very disconcerting.

Mediums, hoc us pocus IMO !

Goodness Nonu, we agree about something. [falling over in a dead faint emoticon]

Golly gosh Absent , I was not aware we were not in agreement about things !!

Of course things have changed !!

X

I met a medium over coffee at a conference once, (nothing to do with spiritualism), she wasn't a professional and I liked her, she was a warm and compassionate woman

She said she didn't encourage people to become dependent, her attitude was 'You have had your proof, now its time to move on with your life'

I also saw a BBC documentary on Gordon Smith and thought that he was helping a lot of people through their bereavement.

Who knows if such gifts really exist, but I felt the women I met was genuine.

My great grandmother, and great aunt (her daughter) were the last in a long line of mediums in my maternal family. I've heard it said there is a 'fey' gene in the family.

There are two kinds of 'medium' - the charlatan and the deluded.

feetlebaum!

Did anyone enjoy Beyond Black (Hilary Mantel). It was one of our bookclub reads, and I loathed it, as did a couple of others in our group, Some loved it, and found it very funny, I found it beyond the pale, frankly. The spirits and mediums were all so unpleasant, like living in a murky underworld I felt.

Feetlebaum's analysis if the two types of mediums, deluded or charlatans, spot on for that book.
Have to add though, that I don't recall my great gran or aunt being either charlatans or deluded. They were impressive, very likeable women in so many ways. I simply followed our family approach, which was they much much loved older relatives, about whom it was generally accepted they were 'a bit eccentric'.

I don't think we can write all this stuff off as hocus pocus.

"more things in heaven and earth than this world dreams of....." (or something like that)

alternativegran if these people were not good at creating a rapport with people they would not make any money out of it, would they.
I was listening to a woman rattling on in the hairdresser about why brand new houses sometimes needed a form of exorcism (from her of course) - "its the lay lines". They have a way of talking that makes it difficult for others to disagree or challenge what they are saying.

Horatio!

JessM and Feetlebaum Of course your comments have a validity, and we have all met people like the woman in the hairdressers, although part of me feels that grief is such hell that even a deluded medium or charlatan might help.

Some years ago I met an elderly doctor called Dewi Rees who told me of a study he had done on the effects of bereavement. He had intended to look at things like weight loss, insomnia, depression etc., but had not expected to be told about encounters with dead relatives, he said it was common, but no-one talked about it. No-one was writing about it either, so his study eventually became an MD thesis published in the BMJ and he wrote a wide ranging book on death and bereavement.

I think of such experiences as part of a much wider spectrum NDE's , death bed visions mystical experiences etc. We have a bible full of visions, dreams and prophecies, I am sure they must be common in other religions.

Some things aren't conducive to proof by the usual scientific methods, but they should still be explored, along with a healthy dose of skepticism!

Go Alternative Gran - mysticism, faith, fantasy, visions, pre cognitive dreaming, have been part of life for as long as we know

My training was in the Sciences. I taught Mathematics and Science, so I deal in logic. Yet, I have had experiences, associated with grief, which defy logic.
Perhaps these could 'logically' be written off as wishful thinking yet having experienced them personally I am left wondering.

I'm no scientist, I would say that I'm a cynical, fairly logical person.
I think that as humans, many of us, not all, have a deep need to believe in a god/father figure and also an after life of some kind where our loved ones are waiting for us.
NDEs and other 'visions' are part of these needs in my view, and I would never dismiss them.
Even as an athiest, I can recognise that 'need' inside me.

When we have lived with and loved one person for many years they become part of who we are. I have met several people who thought they had "seen" a lost loved-one, but who recognised that it was just their mind playing tricks and seeing what they were used to.

A bit like staring at the sun and when you look away you can still see it maybe.

I too have had experiences that defy logic and which convince me, a very sceptical, critical kind of person, that the dead sometimes communicate with us. Sometimes they intervene in dreams, to tell us something, and when in various fixes of my own making I have asked them for help, the situation has resolved in surprising ways. Yes, there are more things on earth than what we arrogant Madames je sais tout ( sorry, it's what my French friend calls me and may not be grammatically correct) dream of.

the dead know nothing! See Ecclesiates 9:5-6 5- For the living know they will die; but the dead do not know anything, nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten. 6Indeed their love, their hate and their zeal have already perished, and they will no longer have a share in all that is done under the sun.

It is Satan who wants people to believe they can live on after death - and it is his demons who speak through mediums - the mediums are people selected by demons as being suceptible to allowing themselves to be possessed - probably by the promise of riches or a great sex life?

When mediums speak soemthing taht does seem quite genuine and directly applicable it will be because living in the spirit world they have amazing abilities to rad minds or poke about in our hosues without us knowing - so yes they an know that a lost item is under a sideboard or that we have unlawful possession in the wardrobe, or that a person is having an affair, etc etc.

I wouldn't poo poo mediums. I used to work night shifts in a care home. A lady I worked with came into the room to ask me a question. "Don't look round*, she said, " there is a gentleman standing behind you". She went on to describe my grandfather who had been dead for over 30 years. She was very accurate, even the age he was when his hair turned white was correct. I had no idea that she could see 'spirits'. I was amazed. It made me a beleiver.