My Life As a Medium
My Life As a Medium
Betty Shine
The inside story of the ‘reluctant medium’, finally available in a mass-market A-format editionBetty Shine was originally an opera singer, but studied all forms of alternative healing, becoming a vitamin and mineral therapist.Guided by spirit voices from the age of two, she became a world-famous medium. This is the story of how she became the best known medium and healer in the UK.Through her books, tapes and absent healing service, she is in touch with thousands of people worldwide.
My Life As a Medium
Betty Shine
I dedicate this book to spiritual mediums around the world. Long may they continue to spread the word and demonstrate their very special talent.
I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die,
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb
I arise and unbuild it again.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 1792-1822
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u29245a4c-732a-5647-b55a-3b83c4afc29b)
Title Page (#u9fe23a9d-6ca7-5339-a0c2-3c4ee832e4b9)
Epigraph (#uafead40f-ea0d-5a04-80a5-d1460a418b82)
Author’s Note (#u2f06b3cf-c2c1-54ae-b3a1-0acb59ec9fa5)
CHAPTER ONE (#u7ca28447-0ff3-5286-a3ba-6e6668e1187d)
CHAPTER TWO (#uade45577-d0e7-5546-b26e-caa83359326a)
CHAPTER THREE (#ua071ba64-08e3-55b8-a007-9676db973e39)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise (#litres_trial_promo)
By the same author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Note (#ulink_1ac63738-c054-534a-846a-3048cffed366)
Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the people who have allowed me to tell their stories.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_ffa8d23b-c497-5d8f-92ac-a0f97fef5a5b)
Valerie sat in the chair opposite me in my healing room, and sobbed. I had known this would happen when the communication with her father came to an end.
She had been receiving healing from me, and as she was preparing to leave I had seen a man standing in a corner of the room. He told me that he was Valerie’s father. When I asked her to sit down and explained to her what was happening, she was shocked, as she had no idea at the time that I was also a medium. Apparently, the idea of survival after death had never interested her; she had been too brutalized by this life to care about the next.
‘Would you like to hear what your father has to say?’ I asked gently.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘First I will describe him to you,’ I said. ‘He is about five foot six inches tall, of stocky build, has black hair, bushy eyebrows, a fine nose and full lips. But his eyes are his main attraction – they are twinkling and full of humour.’
Valerie nodded. Unable to speak, she had followed the direction of my gaze and was staring into the corner of the room.
‘He tells me that his name is Nathan. Is that correct?’ I enquired.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘That was his name.’
‘He is showing me a gold watch on a chain. It has a cover on the face with an intricate design and the initial ‘N’, and was passed on to him by his father. They both shared the same name. Is that correct?’
‘Yes.’ I could hardly hear her reply, and asked her to speak up. She shook herself as though relieving her body of a heavy burden.
Nathan was speaking again. ‘Will you tell my daughter that I love her, and that I am pleased the rest of the family were able to escape. Death, when it came, was a merciful release, not just for me but for all of my friends who were incarcerated in that dreadful building. The shedding of the physical body was a revelation. Looking down, it seemed that a bundle of old rags was lying there, no use to anyone, whilst my real self soared into the sky. At first there was a brilliant light, then total darkness and finally a dark tunnel. Spinning through this tunnel I saw a pin-point of light, and then I suddenly shot out into Paradise. At least that was what I thought it was. My darling, you have so much to learn, and I have appeared today to tell you that you must believe in survival. Haven’t I proved it to you? When you truly believe, your life will begin. Love will enter your life and you will be shown what a privilege it is to be able to give of yourself without expectancy of reward.’
There was a pause, and Nathan murmured, as though he were speaking to another presence. Still staring at the corner of the room, Valerie asked, ‘What is happening?’ 1 had to tell her that I didn’t know. It must have been two minutes before Nathan spoke again.
‘I have your mother here but she can’t show herself yet, she doesn’t know how. She hasn’t been here very long.’ Nathan continued, ‘She wants me to tell you that we both love you very much and you are to stop crying every night because you live alone. You must believe that you are not alone – there are so many people here who give you love and comfort. You only have to believe that and the loneliness will disappear. Your aunt, Greta, wants to send her love also. I have to go now, my darling. You must believe that life is everlasting. If you do not believe that, then life will not be worth living.’
Valerie looked at me, still crying. ‘Everything you have told me is true. I’m terribly lonely, I have no friends.’
‘Have you ever thought about having a pet for company?’ I suggested. ‘There are so many unwanted animals around. And it would be a way of giving. When you are a giver rather than a taker you will find that your generosity will return to you tenfold.’ Then, changing the subject, I asked her if she had recognized my description of the watch. ‘Yes,’ she said bitterly. ‘I suppose some Nazi has passed it on to his son.’
‘Valerie,’ I said, ‘it is only a watch. What you have received today is worth a thousand watches. I’m sorry I have to ask, but did your father die in a concentration camp?’ It was quite apparent, having seen her father, that they were Jewish.
Tears were still running down her cheeks as she answered. ‘Yes. My mother and I escaped with my cousin, but my father was picked up at work before he had a chance to hide.’ She gave me an odd look and said, ‘If I’d known you were a medium, I wouldn’t have come for healing. I’ve always been afraid of this sort of thing.’
‘Are you still afraid?’ I asked.
‘No! But I am shocked. However, this experience has been so beautiful I shall never be afraid again. I could actually smell my father’s tobacco when he was speaking to you. Could you smell it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but then I’m used to the aromas manifested by spirit people.’
We talked for some time, and when she was ready to leave she kissed me and said, ‘I’m going home to think very carefully about my father’s words.’
It was at this point that Nathan materialized. The wonder and joy on Valerie’s face was a sight to behold. She walked toward him, arms outstretched, but as she did so, he faded. She looked at me, ‘Where has he gone?’ she asked.
I assured her that he was still there even though we were unable to see him, and that he must love her very much to make such a supreme effort to show himself. Valerie hugged me. ‘I will never forget this as long as I live,’ she said.
When Valerie had left I walked back into the healing room. It was so charged with energy that I felt as though I was walking on air. I sat down and thought about the first message I had ever received – a simple message from a mother to her daughter. Then, as I recalled the emotionally charged sitting I had just experienced, I realized just how far I had come in being able to handle the sheer power that had exuded from Valerie’s father as he gave his message to his daughter.
At this point I would like to go back to the beginning of my mediumship and share the magic of my journey with you. It was not an easy journey by any means.
I had never been particularly interested in other people’s lives, so one of my first questions was, ‘Why me?’ It was a question I was to ask myself many times over the following years. As the messages I received always made sense to somebody, I was never afraid that I was going mad. I simply was not interested, and so tried to block out the voices. Because of my lifelong interest in health, it was the healing aspect that fascinated me most – so the spirits used every opportunity to pass on messages whilst I was healing. It was almost as though they were saying, ‘If you listen to us and pass on our messages we’ll help you with the healing.’ Oh yes, make no mistake! They were prepared to bribe me.
If I had been in a giving frame of mind it would have been easier for both sides. But I wasn’t. My children had left home and, for the first time since marrying at the age of twenty, I had time to enjoy myself. Life begins at forty-five, I thought. And it did, but not in the way I had envisaged.
My main reason for trying to block out the voices was the emotional strain it put upon me. Healing was stimulating, exciting, and I had studied alternative healing for most of my adult life. I felt that I could use that knowledge in conjunction with the energies to produce good results.
Mediumship, however, was a mystery. Although my grandmother had been a medium and we all looked upon her as someone very special, it had never dawned on me that I would inherit her gifts, so I had paid very little attention to her interests. I was only ten when I was evacuated, during the Second World War, and saw very little of her from that time. The war separated many families in this way. The simple fact was that I loved being a healer but hated being a medium. Fortunately for me and for many others this changed, and this book is about my training as a medium by spirit entities.
They spent an enormous amount of time and energy dealing with my eccentricities – and I had many. Ignoring my pleas to be left alone and my threat to give up healing they continued to try to pacify me and to encourage ‘survival evidence’. For this I am now truly grateful. But it was quite a different story at the beginning.
Although I had been guided by a spirit voice from the age of two, I was still shocked when, during my forty-fifth year, my friend’s late mother spoke to me and asked me to pass on a message to her daughter, who happened to be with me at the time. When I had finished relaying the message my friend looked at me and said, ‘I didn’t know you were a medium.’ My response was, ‘Neither did I!’
In my first book, Mind to Mind, I described my visit to a famous medium and how, during the session, he had told me that I would be a great healer and that my name would become known around the world. He also explained that I was mediumistic and that I would be using this gift for clairvoyant diagnosis, amongst other things. That was twenty-two years ago, and everything he forecast has come true.
Much has been written, by myself and others, of my healing abilities, but I have never mentioned the inner conflict that I suffered as I tried to come to terms with the fact that people who were supposed to be dead were actually trying to communicate with me. And that overnight the energy floodgates had opened.
And if that was not enough, spirit forms began to build up around me. One day, whilst my daughter Janet and I were having tea in the kitchen, I happened to glance through the open door leading into a large hall. A huge funnel of blue energy had formed in the centre of the hall, and as I stared a man appeared inside the structure. He had long white hair and wore a white robe. A quick glance at Janet told me that she was wondering why I was ignoring her and staring through the door. I explained, in a whisper, what was going on and asked her to turn around. Her reaction was to tell me to close the door as she would rather not see it. I didn’t, of course, as I was completely fascinated by the phenomenon. Then the entity looked straight at me with a kindly but concerned expression. My first thought was, ‘If he is worried, how does he think I feel!’ The vision slowly disappeared and as it did so I experienced a feeling of emptiness and desperately wanted it to return. It was a sensation that was to become part of my everyday life. At the time I was upset by Janet’s refusal to share my experience. I was to find out much later that she had her own unique path to follow.
While I was relaxing that same evening, the faces of different nationalities manifested on the blank walls of my living room. The images vibrated as they continually changed. I remember looking at them in fascinated disbelief, wondering what on earth was going on. This continued for about one hour.
Retiring to bed did not help either. When I looked up at the ceiling I could see an eye, about the size of a dinner plate. This phenomenon was something I had experienced from the beginning. It was a kindly eye, and it gave me a tremendous feeling of peace. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of sleep looking at it. It was only months later, whilst looking in the mirror, that I realized it was identical to my own; this was my mind’s eye – my third eye. From that moment I was able to ignore it and my sleeping hours were restored. Three years later the eye stopped appearing, and I missed it.
Something new seemed to be happening to me every day, and there were times when I just had to get out of the house. I would drive to the nearest park and, depending on the weather, either go for a walk or sit in the car. It was on one of these occasions that I pondered over the different spirit messages I had received for myself. How was I to know whether the voices were true or whether I was listening to my own higher mind? It worried me, and I had no idea how this was going to be resolved.
The following day, whilst carrying out that most mundane of household jobs, washing-up, I had my answer. A voice repeated over and over again the christian names and surnames of both family and friends, many of whom had been dead for some time. The repetition was extraordinary. I wrote them down. It was very similar to the way I had been taught parrot-fashion at school when learning my times table. When the voice eventually stopped I looked down at the names on the paper. Some I remembered, others I did not. As I had a day’s healing ahead of me, I had to put them out of my mind at that point.
That evening the voice returned, repeating the same names three times. Toward the end many new names were mentioned. The process continued in this vein for the next two months. During that time I checked with relatives and friends, and all of the names that were unknown to me were verified. As time passed I was also given the second christian names of many of these people. Once more I had to check, and once more they were confirmed. The voice itself had no name and I was never to find out who it had been. But one thing was sure, it was the most persistent of all the communicators. If that person had ever lived on this planet he would surely have made an excellent politician!
Although the results I was having with healing were excellent, I found the survival evidence intrusive. Somehow it did not seem to belong in the healing room, although the messages were well received. But I was unhappy about it. There were so many lessons to be learnt as far as healing techniques were concerned and I needed the time to study them.
I remember sitting alone one evening, praying for the voices to stop. I had heard a child’s voice that day asking to speak to her mother, and the shock had reduced me to tears. This is how it happened.
I was healing a young woman who had been suffering with acute irritable bowel syndrome for the past two years. This was her second visit. She told me she liked being with me as I didn’t ask her questions. It was so peaceful. Suddenly I heard a little girl’s voice saying, ‘I want to speak to my Mummy.’ I looked at my patient. Her eyes were closed and she appeared to be asleep. I touched her hand and she opened her eyes. ‘There’s a little girl here who wants to speak to her Mummy. Have you lost a child?’ I asked gently.
She whispered ‘Yes,’ and then incredulously, ‘Can you hear her?’
The child spoke again. ‘Tell Mummy that the nice lady said that I could talk to her as she is so unhappy.’ I passed the message on. With myself as the mediator the conversation continued as follows:
Mother: ‘I love you and never stop thinking about you.’
Child: ‘I know, Mummy, because sometimes I can see you.’
Mother: ‘Where are you, darling?’
Child: ‘Well, I’m not sure, but it has lovely birds and we stroke them.’
Mother: ‘Who is we, darling?’
Child: ‘My friends. I have to go now, Mummy.’ A woman’s voice took over.
‘Hello, Jill, it’s May. I thought you would like to hear from Gemma. We’ve been worried about you.’
Jill’s eyes widened. ‘I can’t believe it! May was my aunt. She died about ten years ago.’
May then continued, ‘I look after the children, and Gemma has been with me since she arrived. She is a very happy, lively little girl and much loved. Now I must go.’
Jill was crying and questioning at the same time. I sat and held her hand.
‘Why did your little girl call May “the lady” and not auntie?’ I asked.
Jill wiped her eyes. ‘Gemma was only two when my aunt died. She didn’t know her.’ She frowned then, and said, ‘It is strange. Gemma died exactly two years ago today.’
I smiled. ‘Obviously it was a treat they had planned for you.’ ‘I had no idea you were a medium,’ Jill remarked suddenly. I smiled and said nothing. Jill left.
If I had been truthful I could have told her that I didn’t want to be a medium. That I had found the whole session a terrible strain. I re-learnt a valuable lesson that day. The truth is sometimes a cross we have to bear alone so that we can ease the suffering of others.
After Jill had left I sat alone, going over and over the conversation she had had with her daughter. The little girl’s voice was in my head and I couldn’t get rid of it. The sadness overwhelmed me. I prayed that the voices would stop. Two weeks later Jill asked for a healing session. Although I gave her an appointment, I dreaded seeing her again. When she arrived I could not believe she was the same young woman. The pallor had gone and her previously dull eyes were shining.
‘Betty,’ she said, ‘I haven’t come along hoping to hear from my daughter again, I just want to thank you for the precious gift I received last time I was here.’ She laughed. ‘I haven’t suffered with my bowel since, and I know that my daughter’s visit has cured me.’ As an afterthought, she went on, ‘With your help of course.’
Whilst I was healing Jill, a spirit child built up in the room. It was Gemma. She was smiling, and although she didn’t speak I was able to give Jill an accurate description of her. Jill never looked back. Because she now knew that Gemma still lived, albeit in another dimension, it gave her the strength to rebuild her own life.
Was I being shown the link between healing and survival evidence? Did they sometimes have to go hand in hand to get results? At the time I did not know what to think. All I knew was that things were moving too fast for me and I just could not take it all in.
One night I awoke with a start. I could hear a rushing sound, like a waterfall. Then as the sound receded I saw the most beautiful coloured pictures being projected on to the wall opposite my bed. The first scene depicted a small village with white houses and a dusty track. Behind the village were hills, and just above the hills was the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen. The sky was a mass of many different colours. As I stared, the scene slowly changed. This time it showed a valley filled with people crouching on the ground, obviously listening to the figure standing before them. I could not see the face of the figure as it was half hidden by a white cowl. The scene changed again, and before me was a beautiful waterfall and the same rushing sound that I had heard on awakening. And then a voice said, ‘Everything is possible.’
As my bedroom returned to normal I tried to leave my bed. At this point I needed to make myself a cup of tea – perhaps with a tot of brandy! But I could not move. The whole of my body felt like lead. Eventually, I was able to sleep. The leadenness, I was to find out later, was due to the mind energy having practically left the body, as it does with shock or deep sleep, and until it slips back, the physical body is helpless. These visions have continued, and all have a spiritual significance. I love them and would hate them to disappear altogether.
It seemed that the more I tried to reject the voices so eager to pass on messages of survival, the stronger they became. Healing sessions were usually of an hour’s duration. I felt that anything less than that would lead to a sense of urgency, and when people are ill they need time to talk. When survival evidence came through, the session obviously went on for much longer and this worried me a great deal, because my clients liked the confidentiality that I gave them. I did not favour the packed waiting room. It might give the appearance of being successful, but it does little for the sensitivities of the people who are forced to share their space when they are at their lowest ebb. As I could not stop the flow of spirit voices I had to arrange my diary accordingly so that my appointments did not overlap.
This worked quite well until four friends, who all had health problems, asked if I would mind if they stayed together whilst they each received healing. I reluctantly agreed, although I thought at the time that the room was far too small for all of us. It seemed, however, that the spirit world thought it could hold a few more! As I healed, survival evidence poured through. It must have looked as though I was giving a command performance! As usual there was a mixture of tears and laughter, especially when an uncle, who had been a professional comedian, came through. His niece said, ‘I cannot believe he is still telling the same old jokes.’ Another of the friends had lost a watch and was told to look under the wardrobe in her bedroom. She called later to tell me that it had indeed been there. All of this happened during the evening and they were my last clients – but what if it had happened during the daytime? They had overstayed their time by two hours.
When they had gone I sat quietly in the healing room, feeling thoroughly exhausted. Leaning my elbows on the healing couch I put my head in my hands and wondered what was going to happen next. I felt that I was being knocked sideways as each individual experience gave me more problems. Then I heard a voice calling my name. It was repeated three times. Silence. A few seconds passed and the voice said, ‘You must have faith, trust us.’ I stood up and threw my arms out and shouted, ‘Trust who? Who are you?’ Silence. I was so annoyed that I began to tell them just how I felt. ‘How do you think I feel?’ I said dramatically, still throwing my arms around. ‘Every day something different happens. I’m trying to give people privacy and then voices clamour to give survival evidence and it completely messes up my schedules, and tonight I have had to work myself to death trying to please.’ Still ranting like a drama queen, I went on, ‘There must be someone else you can go and bother, for Heaven’s sake!’ At the end of this tirade I felt wonderful, having released all the frustration of the past six months. Perhaps that had been the reason for the silence. Nothing made me more angry than a one-way conversation, spiritual or otherwise. I had found out the hard way that onesided conversations meant trouble. As I left the room, I prayed that I would be given a peaceful night’s sleep. This was granted. Perhaps my ranting had done some good after all.
Another, more personal problem was worrying me. People who I had thought of as friends were avoiding me, and one day I had the opportunity of asking one of them if there was a problem. He looked shamefaced, and told me that when he had told his mates in the pub about the wonderful survival evidence he had received they had ridiculed him. The bottom line was that he could not cope with this, and so had decided to stop seeing me. I argued that I had not changed, but was exactly the same person that I had always been. A trifle more perplexed perhaps, but the same.
‘Betty, the majority of people think mediums are frauds,’ he said.
‘And your friends think they’re the experts, do they?’ I was furious.
‘Why did you tell them in the first place?’ I asked. ‘You must have realized they would laugh at you.’
‘Well, I must confess I was pretty bowled over by what had happened, and wanted to share the experience.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve been an idiot, haven’t I?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘But I think you’re being a coward.’ Upset, he turned around and left.
A few months later we talked on the phone. He told me that he had needed time to think about what I had said, and laughingly agreed that he was a coward at heart.
‘I am so intrigued, I can’t keep away,’ he confided. Eventually, the survival evidence, clairvoyance and healing won him over. He was to admit later that it had completely changed his life. During this time there was one question that he repeatedly asked. ‘As a believer, will I have to change my ways and become a goody-two-shoes?’ ‘Well if you do then I’m in serious trouble,’ I replied.
It was a thought that frequently passed through my mind, especially as my clients were obviously in awe of me. Like my friend, I did not want to change. I had led an extremely eventful life and I was the sum total of every experience I had ever had. And yet the thought continued to bother me.
My mother was religious and belonged to the Church of England, and so I had become part of that Church from my birth. After much coaxing from my mother, I was confirmed in Southwark Cathedral when I was nineteen. I was already beginning to feel disenchanted and hoped by making this commitment that things would change. It is only later in life that one realizes that it is not that easy. Eventually, after much soul-searching, I stopped being a member of the Church. And from that time on, I felt spiritually cleansed. In retrospect, it is obvious that it was part of the Grand Plan that had been mapped out for me. But here I was twenty-five years later, with yet another spiritual dilemma. It had to be solved if I was to have peace of mind. And yet, as with so many problems we have during our lives, this one was going to have to be put on hold.
Throughout the first year of my mediumship I tried to make all sorts of pacts with the spirit world; some worked while others did not. I could not understand why this should be so, and continued to experiment. It was through trial and error that I began to see a pattern emerging, and this was confirmed through survival evidence.
One evening I was healing a woman who was crippled with arthritis. Halfway through the session a spirit voice told me that he would like to speak to his sister. I passed the message on and the woman was delighted that her brother was communicating. With myself acting as the mediator, the communication was as follows:
‘Hello, Joan, we heard you were in trouble. I was elected to speak as we were so close when we were young.’
‘Bert, it’s so lovely to hear from you but who are the “we” you are speaking about?’
‘Oh, Mum, Dad, Ivy, Flo and many others who loved you.’
My patient began to weep. She said, ‘I am in such pain, I wish I could be with you.’
‘Joan, you will never be well until you have released all the hate in your heart. It is crippling you.’
‘I can never forgive him for what he did to me,’ she replied.
‘This hate is not hurting him, only yourself.’ Bert paused, then continued, ‘We cannot help you until you help yourself.’
For the next twenty minutes they enjoyed a private chat about their lives until Bert said goodbye. I asked my client who the ‘he’ was. She told me that it was her ex-husband, and that he had made her life hell.
Joan visited me again a fortnight later. She walked into my healing room, twirled around and said, ‘Look what you have done for me. My arthritis has gone.’
On questioning her about the last two weeks I found that she had rid herself of the hate she had inside her by mentally sinking into a bath and watching the black hate being released. Then she ran the water until it was clear.
‘So you have actually cured yourself,’ I said. She looked at me in silence for some time. ‘I suppose I have,’ she was perplexed. ‘But it was so easy.’ I smiled. ‘If I had all those people rooting for me in the spirit world I would find it easy. I think the evidence you received has been a valuable lesson for both of us.’
She visited me again a year later to tell me that she was getting married and was going to live in America.
It was a simple message, but a powerful one. Working in my capacity as a medium or healer I could not always be successful if the spirituality of the client had been badly affected in some way. I began to give myself mental exercises for cleansing, and felt so much better that I passed them on to my clients. It was whilst I was sitting at my healing couch writing them down that I heard a voice say, ‘We are going to try something.’
My hand moved rapidly, as I drew face after face on the blank paper. There were priests, nuns, clowns and children, and they were not all English. There were many foreign people with ornamental headdress. The drawing stopped as rapidly as it had started, and I was completely dumbfounded. I had never been able to draw at all, and here were most professional sketches. I tried to carry on, but I could sense that the force had left and with it my artistry. These sessions continued for about three weeks and I thought that I had found another talent. I was thrilled. Unfortunately, it left, one day, never to return. I found out much later that a medium is tested in many ways, and a spirit artist had obviously wanted to work through me but had found that I was not the right material. I could have told them that to begin with!
I was still being urged to give straight sittings and although my clients were extremely happy with the results, I myself did not particularly enjoy the experience. It was too inactive for me. As most of the sitters needed healing, I was able to persuade them to have healing whilst giving them survival evidence at the same time. They were delighted with the results, and this method suited me.
My mediumistic abilities enabled me to work in conjunction with a team of spirit entities, including doctors who had taken it upon themselves to train me. As in any teacher-pupil relationships we had our ups and downs. I was convinced at one stage that healing was purely magnetic, and that the spirits did not have anything to do with the healing. The team were quick to react to this.
First there was the blind man who told me that when he and his wife arrived home after healing, all the lights in their house were on, including the spare room which they never used. Also, the curtains in the bedroom were closed at night and opened in the morning.
Then a woman client told me that she had felt someone manipulating her arm in the night and found when she woke in the morning that her frozen shoulder had been cured.
A friend who suffered from migraine mentally asked for my help during an attack. After a few minutes she felt hands on her head and shoulders and fell asleep. When she awoke, the pain had gone and she never suffered another migraine.
And so it went on, until they had convinced me that there were spirit doctors and they did work through me. But one day whilst meditating I received this message.
Having experimented with the idea of healing being purely magnetic you have been given evidence that this is not entirely correct. But you have found out for yourself that life force is magnetic. You will find that spiritual power and life force interact all the time and it is impossible to separate the two. You were partly correct. We would like you to continue with your original ideas and when we feel that you are on the wrong path we will gently guide you back on to the correct one. You are a free spirit and will always be so.
I was glad to hear that. I hated the thought of being manipulated and sometimes the idea disturbed me. It was only the successful healings that urged me on. If so many people were being given a new life by this incredible force then what I was doing must be right. But somewhere in the corners of my mind I occasionally felt uneasy. Sometimes, I was not quite sure if the ideas I had were mine or theirs, they were so mixed up.
Other aspects were also worrying. Although I have been an avid reader all my life there were certain subjects that did not interest me, and one of those was golf. Yet when a group of friends discussed golf I found myself making suggestions that would improve their game. They were astonished, and so was I. But trying these tactics later they found them to be extremely helpful.
The same pattern was repeated whenever there was a particular topic being discussed. People who did not believe in mediumship or healing gradually began to phone me for advice, and I began to give my friends psychic consultations. Between us we monitored these consultations, which were to prove extremely accurate.
Nine months into my first year of mediumship I was to discover yet another gift. In conversation, whenever a name was mentioned, I seemed to know everything about that person and was able to give a detailed account of their personality. When asked about this ability and where the information came from, I had no answer. All I could say was that it was, ‘a kind of knowing’. Now, of course, I know that it is an ability to tap the Universal Mind. Twenty-two years on I am still using this talent to help friends.
One memorable consultation was with an amateur golfer. His ambition was to achieve a hole in one. The words came before the thought as I explained what he had to do.
‘Take a long look at the direction in which you want the ball to go and visualize an energy beam from the middle of your forehead to the hole. Then “see” the ball going into the hole. If you have any doubts at all it will not happen. Just “know” that it is going to happen.’
My friend laughed, ‘That sounds even more difficult than trying to get it in the normal way.’
‘If you simply “think it there” it should work.’ We were both laughing at this point. He agreed to try, though we were both doubtful.
A week later I answered the door to find him standing there with a huge bunch of flowers. He shoved them into my arms, and raising his hands above his head, shouted, ‘You’re a bloody marvel. It worked!’
He then explained in detail how he had carried out my instructions to the letter and got a hole in one on the first try. Grabbing my arm be propelled me inside and told me that he wanted me to be his personal consultant. I declined. But over the years he was able to achieve his ambition five times.
I enjoyed the mixed consultations with my friends. They were always happy events and there were no great expectations, it was just fun. Nevertheless, we were all pleasantly surprised at the outcome of these meetings. For me it was a time to relax, away from the pressure that was being put upon me by requests for healing and sittings.
At the end of the first year I still found sittings difficult. The communicators themselves were very coherent most of the time, and I was at ease with the two-way conversations. The difficulty arose from the emotions that were released when the contacts came through. A sitting would sometimes leave me feeling completely exhausted.
When I had been healing it was quite the reverse and I felt exhilarated. It was to be some time before I could work out why this should be so. I was also saddened by the fact that I did not seem to have a life of my own any more. I was trying to please too many people at the same time. However, I was so fascinated by the phenomena that were becoming a daily occurrence that I could not, it seemed, cut the cord.
There was one thing, though, that angered me during this period, and that was the intolerance shown to mediums and healers. The word ‘medium’ seemed to bring out the worst in people. I was ‘told’ by Christian friends that the devil was speaking through me. I replied that if that was the case then he was pretty well-informed and extremely intelligent.
‘Of course he is,’ was their reply. ‘That is why he is so good at hoodwinking people.’
‘You know him personally, do you?’ I asked.
‘Yes! We know him as well as we know Jesus Christ,’ they said.
‘Describe him,’ I asked. They faltered, and then said, ‘He can take on any image.’ Laughing, I remarked that he must be very talented. They were furious. ‘We’re trying to help you. This is no laughing matter.’
‘If you are right, then why does he give so much pleasure to so many people?’
They were angry and tried to interrupt, but I held up my hand to silence them. ‘No, hold on,’ I said. ‘All the messages I have passed on to people from relatives and friends have given them such happiness. In fact they have all told me that it has changed their lives for the better. In many cases it has taken away the fear of dying.’
‘They are being lured away from Christ,’ they replied.
I tried to bring some logic into the conversation. ‘If the church preaches that there is a life after death, then surely it should not be too much of a surprise to anyone that the survivors try to contact us to confirm this.’
‘We have already told you, it is the devil mimicking them.’
We had come full circle and I decided to end the conversation. It was then that they attacked the healing. ‘You can only be healed by a priest,’ I was told. It did not seem to matter to them that the priest giving the healing may not be a natural healer. ‘Jesus Christ would be working through him,’ they said.
‘But surely the Church preaches that Christ is within all of us,’ I remarked.
‘He is,’ was the reply. ‘But he will only work through those who have been ordained.’
I suggested that we should stop at that point, and they left. I believe that everyone should have their own point of view as long as it makes them happy, and I do not believe that you should try to force your opinions on others. This usually brings unhappiness.
I had been thoroughly grounded in the church’s teachings, and many of them did not make sense to me. The spirit teachings did. The healing continued, and so did the mediumship. I did not know then that the second year was going to be even more incredible than the first.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_61240e1d-0f36-5404-8d78-be6aa69b374e)
At the end of 1973, my energy had increased one hundred per cent. I felt like a time bomb waiting to explode. Subtle, yet tenacious, the spirits were there watching, guiding, protecting and, at times, an absolute pain.
My personal belongings were beginning to move around the house of their own accord, and sometimes disappeared altogether. It was frustrating and time-consuming trying to locate them. Like naughty children, the spirits seemed to be testing my patience, and I could see no sense at all in their behaviour. If there were mischievous entities trying to lighten the atmosphere they did not succeed, and their actions always made me angry.
I confided these peculiar happenings to a friend who was helping with some odd jobs around the house. He laughed, and told me that it was just my imagination. When he next looked for his toolkit it had gone, and he accused me of having moved it. I assured him that I had done no such thing and we spent the next hour searching for it, but to no avail. He was extremely agitated by this time and went back into the room in which he had been working to fetch his coat. There, in full view, was his toolkit. Sitting on top of the bag was a St Christopher medal he had lost earlier that year. His face was an absolute picture.
When he left, he said, ‘I will never again disbelieve the stories you tell me. Today I have had proof positive that there are things that ordinary people may never see, feel or understand, but they are there. Somehow, it’s a comforting thought.’ He hugged me and laughed. ‘I’ve learned a valuable lesson today. I don’t know everything.’ ‘Nobody ever will,’ I replied.
On another occasion a female friend asked me if I could locate her wedding ring, which she had lost the previous day. I closed my eyes and asked for help in tracing it and a few moments later was given the location. It was in my own bathroom! We decided to investigate and to our amazement found the ring lying on the side of the bath. My friend was shaking. ‘Betty, what on earth is going on?’ she asked. ‘I lost this ring in my home and it turns up in yours.’
‘I have no idea,’ I replied. ‘This is the family bathroom. It’s never used by anyone else.’
In that instant a woman’s voice came through to me. ‘Tell Jim he must not use his car until he has checked the brakes.’ Jim was my friend’s husband and I gave her the message.
‘Who was she? Did she give a name?’ she asked.
‘No, she didn’t,’ I replied.
‘Don’t you think that is a bit odd?’ I laughed, and said, ‘She certainly didn’t hang around, but I do think you should ring Jim and warn him.’
She did so, and a look of complete bewilderment came over her face as she spoke to her husband. She replaced the phone.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she told me. ‘He said he’d had a strong feeling that something was wrong with the brakes so he took the car to the garage to have them checked. He is waiting for the result.’ My friend smiled. ‘He is a real sceptic, you know. Perhaps this will make him think.’ The next day she called to tell me that the brakes had been stripped on one side and could have caused a serious accident.
Two weeks later, the mysterious voice contacted me again, and told me that she was Jim’s late mother. This time she wanted to give him some advice about his business. Her prophecy was later to be proved correct and prevented him from losing a large amount of money.
Whenever I felt the need to be peaceful, I would go into my healing room. By the simple act of walking into the room I was transported to another world a world of love and beauty and forgiveness. It was so easy to close my eyes, daydream and just drift off. For as long as I can remember I have used this easy way of meditating.
One day, however, an unfamiliar voice interrupted my reverie by calling my name. As he spoke I began to feel light-headed, and felt myself drifting into a deep trance state.
‘There will be great changes in your life,’ he told me. ‘You are being taught by the finest minds. Do not argue with them.’ There was a pause, then he continued, ‘The path you are on was of your own choosing.’ I tried to ask questions telepathically but my mind was not functioning. When I was finally able to think logically the voice had gone.
On opening my eyes I could see a white haze swirling around the room, forming intricate patterns. It disappeared finally into a whirlpool of its own making, and I wondered whether I was being shown the door from one dimension to another.
Still feeling sleepy, I thought about his remark that the path was of my own choosing. If this was true, and there was no reason for me to suspect that it was not, why had I selected it? Why had I pursued a singing career? Why had the events of the last year all come as such a shock? There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but the answers were not forthcoming at this time. Nevertheless, I did agree with the first part of his message. It was quite obvious that I was being taught by the best when I was healing.
It was during a healing session that I was shown another aspect of mediumship. I was with a woman who had recently lost her brother. She told me that there were only three members of her family left, and that this had left her in a very depressed frame of mind. As she was speaking I could feel a presence in the room, and a man’s voice said, ‘Tell her it’s her brother Jack.’ I passed on the message, and asked whether he was the brother who had just died. She told me that Jack was her eldest brother and that he had passed on three years ago. It was Barry, the youngest, who had just died.
Jack spoke again. ‘I want you to concentrate, so that my sister will be convinced we have survived.’ I presumed he meant himself and Barry. Then, in my mind, I was shown a photograph. There were about ten people in the picture and I could see them all clearly.
‘Tell her that she has an identical photograph at home.’ I duly passed this message on, and Jack then told me that he was going to give me the names of the people in the photograph, starting at the top, and going from left to right. I told my client what was happening, and indicated that she should find a pen and paper. As the names came through she wrote them down. When Jack completed the list, he told her that everyone he had mentioned sent their love, and that she was being cared for. Tears flowed when the communication came to an end, and looking at the names, she recognized the family she had lost.
‘Why aren’t you in the photograph?’ I asked.
‘Because I took it,’ she told me. ‘We’d got together for my mother’s birthday and I wanted to use my new camera.’
I asked whether she still had the photograph.
‘I believe I have. I’ll look for it when I get home, and give you a ring.’ She telephoned that evening to tell me that all the names were correct, and so was the order Jack had given.
She visited me once more, for healing. As she left she said, ‘I haven’t suffered from depression since I last saw you, because death doesn’t frighten me any more.’ She held my hands and smiled. ‘You see,’ she went on, ‘I know now that I will one day be reunited with my family, and they will be cross with me if I waste my life in the meantime.’ I never saw her again, but always received a ‘thank you’ card at Christmas.
After this episode there seemed to be a spate of ‘survivors’ showing me photographs and using the same process that Jack had done. It became obvious that there must be a system of telepathy and that everyone wanted to get in on the act.
The mediumship was going very well, until a female communicator began to speak in French. When I explained to my client that I hadn’t the faintest idea what was being said she explained that her father was French, and that the communicator was probably her paternal aunt.
‘Well I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass on this one,’ I told her. Suddenly, the aunt stopped using her voice and communicated telepathically – so the messages were conveyed and everyone was happy. I have been able to link people of all nationalities by this method. Occasionally they forget halfway through the conversation and resort to their native language, but a gentle reminder soon brings everything back to normal. There are moments when things go slightly awry, of course, but the laughter that ensues is a healing in itself.
There was one conversation that particularly moved me. It was that of a young French lady who had died in a fire. She told me that she felt no pain as the flames engulfed her because her mind had precipitated her death and had left her body before it was burned. The recipient of this message was her aunt, who was sitting beside me, weeping gently. She told me later that she had suffered terrible nightmares since the accident, supposing her niece to have died in agony.
A very similar story was that of a young man who had fallen out of a ten-storey building after a night of drinking. He contacted me whilst his mother was receiving healing and told her that his mind had left his body as he had fallen. He felt nothing as he surveyed the body lying on the ground.
‘I felt as though I was a mere bystander, looking at a stranger,’ he told us.
These stories have brought great comfort to those whose family and friends have died in similar circumstances. The mind protects and leaves when physically all is lost.
I was beginning to enjoy the survival evidence I received whilst giving healing. It was obvious that it brought enormous relief from pain and suffering and was, in fact, an alternative method of healing.
I was also perfecting the art of meditation, and through it was given an insight into another dimension. I had already seen a little of it as a child but now, years later, it was as though I could walk on air and I seemed to float effortlessly over mountains and valleys. I was taught that the thought was the deed. Simply think yourself somewhere and you were there. The temperature around me never changed, whether I was in a green valley or the desert, and it was always comfortable. I felt as though I was being bathed and massaged by the warm air around me, and the atmosphere was always charged with a vibrancy that one never experienced on earth. The colours were as I remembered them from my childhood. There was a brilliance, even in the pastel shades, that was hypnotic, and the perfume-laden air was intoxicating. When I was not in a meditative state I questioned whether these journeys were real or imaginary. In my heart I knew they were real, but how could I be sure? I did not want to fool myself. It was to be months before I was given the answer.
One day I slipped from a meditative mood into a trance, and found myself walking through seemingly endless corridors. The walls and ceiling of the building were transparent, and emanated a silvery light. As I reached the end of the corridor I saw my mother waiting for me. Other family and friends gathered round and we hugged and kissed. I remember asking if this were real and my mother told me never to doubt it. I wanted to stay but was informed that I still had a lot to do. When I finally awoke I knew that I had indeed been with my family and friends.
On subsequent visits I was shown halls of music, where each tone was matched by colours cascading down from the ceiling like a waterfall. I was shown how one can, with the necessary talent, think a building into existence, or think a bowl of cherries onto a table. The examples were endless and I was always enthralled at the visions before me.
These were to be confirmed time and again by survival evidence. I was entertaining some friends one evening when I saw a woman standing behind one of my female guests. I described the lady and gave her name, and was told that it was an aunt who had been dead for some time. My friend asked why her aunt was here.
‘I want to tell you that I shall stay with my father until it is time for him to come with me,’ was the reply.
‘How long will that be?’ my friend asked.
‘A few days,’ her aunt said. ‘He will feel no more pain.’ Then she left.
I thought it strange that my friend seemed happy to receive this message until she explained that her grandfather had suffered so much in the past year that death would be a merciful release for him.
Her grandfather indeed suffered no more pain, and died three days later. Proof that our loved ones ease our last moments and help us on our journey was given to me in so many ways.
I was once visiting an elderly lady in hospital when I saw a female spirit sitting at the bottom of the bed. She told me that she was waiting to take her mother ‘home’. I asked the patient if she had any family.
‘No!’ she said. ‘I did have a daughter, but she died in her teens. I’m sure I shall see her again.’ I described the visitor, and she confirmed that it was her daughter.
‘I expect she has come to fetch me,’ she said in a matter-of-fact way.
‘Or to give you reassurance,’ I suggested, trying to be positive. The old lady smiled knowingly. ‘I think she knows best,’ she said. She died a week later.
A small boy, who was in the last stages of cancer, came to me for healing. Ten minutes into the session a man stood in front of me, told me that he was the boy’s grandfather and that he would like to speak to his grandson. I asked the parents if they would permit me to pass on the messages. They agreed, and told me that they had spoken to their son about the afterlife, and that they believed his grandfather would be waiting for him.
‘I have come to tell you how beautiful it is where I am living now,’ the grandfather said. ‘I had never seen real colour before I came here. And the birds are magnificent, they look like a firework display as they move through the air. There are animals everywhere and they are loved by everyone.’
‘Will I be with you?’ the boy asked.
‘Of course,’ he was told. ‘I can’t wait to show you around. I must go now. Be seeing you.’
The parents tried to hide their tears for the sake of their son. They were still hoping for a miracle cure, but knew that they had just been given the answer. The little boy was ecstatic. He could not wait to see his beloved grandfather again, and spoke of nothing else during the remainder of the healing.
He died two months later. His mother told me that he had held conversations with his grandfather whilst in a coma. ‘There is no doubt that he could see and hear him,’ she said. The grandfather had arrived to ease the boy’s last days on earth, and had also given the parents immense pleasure knowing that he would be waiting for their child. But most of all it had relieved them of much pain and despair. Through the power of mediumship they had received a miracle.
It was at times like these that I realized the importance of mediumship. It is a talent that goes beyond anything that can be given by other professionals, and is a vital link between two worlds. With it comes a responsibility that can make or break you. ‘Is that what is happening to me?’ I asked myself. ‘Am I being tested to find out whether I can survive the onslaught?’ In the past 18 months I had certainly experienced phenomena that were absolutely incredible.
At times I found the whole process quite unbelievable. I had never had any inclination to involve myself with the paranormal in any way; my life had been too full of other interests and I knew nothing of spiritualism. The idea of visiting a spiritualist church would have been entirely alien to me.
However, I was taken to several spiritualist churches by a friend who thought that it would ease my path and provide some of the answers to my innumerable questions. But I soon closed that particular door, realizing that I had to find out the truth about this very extraordinary profession, for myself. I decided to follow a solitary path, mainly because I did not want to be brainwashed by the thoughts of others. If this was to be my future, and it was certainly beginning to look as though it was, then I had to break down all the barriers and come face to face, not only with myself, but with the power behind the phenomena.
One particular episode taxed my imagination. A small boy, who had been receiving healing from me, told his mother that he had seen me sitting on his bed during the night. ‘She was wearing a long blue gown, and smiled at me,’ he said, and though his mother questioned him for some time, intimating that he could have been dreaming, he was adamant. ‘I know I wasn’t dreaming because she woke me up when she sat on the bed.’ When his mother told me the story I was nonplussed. As far as I knew I had been safely tucked up in my own bed.
A similar story was given to me by another patient. Her husband was in a London hospital suffering from emphysema, and she had asked me to give him absent healing. When she visited him the following day he told her that a blonde woman wearing a long blue gown had visited him during the night. She asked him for a description; when he gave it, she said, ‘Oh, that’s Betty,’ and explained that she had asked me to give absent healing. She could not contain her excitement when she recounted the story to me. ‘How do you do it?’ she asked. I could only tell her that I hadn’t the faintest idea.
These nocturnal ‘visits’ were to become a regular occurrence, and were a complete mystery to me until a familiar voice – who I was by now calling my guru – told me that the mind leaves the body in sleep and can move around freely and show itself as a spirit form, exactly the same method as when someone dies and then appears as a spirit.
‘But how can these people see me when they’re awake?’ I asked.
‘Because their mind is still partly out of the body. We can only be seen with the mind,’ he answered. ‘Mind energy consists of the same elements as our dimension.’ It was a relief to know that somewhere, somehow, I was not harbouring a strange wardrobe and wandering about at night. Obviously my mind had a mind of its own!
One evening, feeling particularly drained after a full day’s healing, I sat down in my favourite armchair and drifted off into a light sleep. I awoke with a start when I felt the pressure of hands on my shoulders, but although I looked around there was no one there. I stood up and searched every room in the house, but I was definitely alone. I returned to my armchair, sat down and closed my eyes, and immediately felt the pressure on my shoulders again. I must admit it felt a bit creepy, and this time I simply could not move. I thought I recognized the feel of the hands but could not quite place it. Quite suddenly I was relieved of the pressure and found that I could stand. I walked around the room, feeling a bit odd, when something to my right caught my attention, I turned, and standing before me was my mother. I was so moved that I could not utter a sound. She smiled and disappeared. Trying to recall the vision later I could not remember whether she had been solid or transparent. I decided later that I had probably seen her as both as I had moved from one dimension to another.
There were times when I felt that the spirits had completely taken over my home. I would occasionally catch a fleeting glimpse of a spirit form if I turned suddenly, and it was this experience that taught me that the spirit world is not ‘out there’ somewhere. It is all around us. It is the energy counterpart of this planet and when we die our minds, free once more, spin through an energy vortex and, quite simply, go home.
In my first book, Mind to Mind, I told of the spirits that I could see walking through my bedroom as a child. Now I was being shown, once more, that this seemingly solid world of ours is but a shadow to the spirit world. This is why entities are able to disappear through doors and walls, and walk through wardrobes.
This conviction was confirmed one night when I saw the spirit form of a deceased friend quite literally walk through the wardrobe in my bedroom, sit on the bed and then it disappeared. A minute later he came up through the floor and stood laughing at the foot of the bed. I could sense him saying, ‘Well, what do you think about that!’
I found it quite extraordinary that I was accepting these visitations so easily – a far cry from my childhood when I habitually walked backwards, bumping into everything, because the church had convinced me that the devil was following me and waiting to pounce if I misbehaved. At least that is how my young mind interpreted it. And I hated the idea of a guardian angel. It sounded so GOOD! The entities that shared my life now were normal; there was no goody-goody stuff with this lot, they were just ordinary beings going about their lives, albeit in another world. I was finally beginning to like the ‘feel’ of this new experience, and loved the warm embrace of the energy that surrounded me, especially when I was healing.
All my life I had felt that there was something wonderful waiting to happen. When I fell in love I used to think, ‘This is it.’ But after a while I would realize that it was not ‘the happening’ yet, that it was still to come. I used to lie awake at night sometimes, wondering what it was going to be. I would frequently stare at the night sky, seeking the answer amongst the stars and beyond, but nothing could have prepared me for what was happening to me now; this, surely, must be the supreme ‘happening’.
But as in everything, there has to be another side of the coin and that for me was my continued apathy toward the idea of giving ‘sittings’. When I did give in I made sure that the room was bright and cheerful. There were no dark rooms with red lights for me – that would have totally depressed me. Although my clients were always moved and overjoyed by the outcome, I was unable to rid myself of the restlessness that I felt throughout the whole sitting. I had so much energy!
I often thought how stupid I would feel if no one wished to communicate and we had to sit in complete silence. But the challenge was to come in an entirely different way, and although I have recounted this story before I think it is still worth recalling, if only to help would-be mediums.
Within a few minutes of giving one particular sitting, I was given a picture of a pink elephant, and for a moment I wondered whether my client was an alcoholic. The picture appeared in my mind three times.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t said anything yet,’ I told her, ‘but quite honestly all I’m getting is a picture of a pink elephant.’
She was delighted. ‘I cannot thank you enough,’ she replied, ‘that is all I wanted to hear.’ She explained: ‘When my husband died he told me that if there was an afterlife he would show me a pink elephant. I’ve already been to several mediums, and was beginning to think that there was no life after death.’ She looked a little shamefaced, and went on, ‘I have to tell you that I deliberately thought of something else so that you couldn’t pick it up telepathically.’ Then she asked me why the other mediums had not picked it up.
‘There could be many reasons,’ I replied. ‘Perhaps your husband wasn’t around to pass the message on. Or, if they did get the message they might have felt a bit stupid.’ I smiled. ‘I must admit, I thought you were going to laugh at me.’
‘I’m so glad you told me,’ she said. ‘You’ve made me very happy.’
When she had gone, I wondered how many mediums had left out a vital piece of information whilst passing on survival evidence, simply to protect their own reputations. I was beginning to realize how much courage and intelligence one had to have to become a good medium. Receiving the messages was only a small part of the whole. Throughout the first two years, a pattern evolved both in healing and mediumship. A new experience would result in a spate of similar occurrences.
Whilst I was giving healing to a young woman, her brother came through and showed me a book with a thistle pressed in it. She understood this because he had promised that this would be his way of showing her that life did exist after death. She was understandably shaken, because she had not expected the information to be given to her during a healing session. She had visited several mediums previously, to no avail, and as her brother had been dead for four years she had completely forgotten his original promise.
On one occasion when I was giving a friend counselling, the beautiful scent of a rose filled the air. She recognized it immediately as a rose her father had loved when he was alive.
‘He promised to send me a rose if he survived,’ she told me, ‘but the perfume is even better.’ Just as she was about to leave she found a rose lying next to her handbag. It was the same variety that her father had grown and loved.
I had a similar communication whilst healing a man in his fifties. He most definitely did not believe in the afterlife, and I often pulled his leg about it. I was in a quandary. What should I do? I had to pass on the message although I knew 1 would be giving him ammunition for the future if it did not make any sense to him.
‘There is someone here who wishes to communicate with you,’ I said.
‘You must be joking,’ he replied. ‘You’re having me on.’
I smiled. ‘I promise you I’m not. His name is Peter, and he’s saying that he still owes you a fiver.’
‘Bloody hell! That’s my brother-in-law, and that was the last thing I said to him before he died. It was a joke, because he’d owed me the fiver since his wedding thirty years ago.’
‘He’s telling me that he’s definitely going to return it to you, to prove once and for all that he is still alive. There you are,’ I went on, laughing. ‘And he doesn’t like the way you speak to me about the afterlife!’
Peter then passed on several messages of a private nature, and when he had finished my patient was completely nonplussed and rather put out. ‘I’m going to have to think about this before I tell the family. They’ll think I’ve gone barmy.’ ‘Well, let me know if you get the five pounds,’ I joked. A month later he rang and told me that when he had got into his car that morning a five pound note had been lying on the passenger seat! It could not have been placed there by anyone else as he had the only set of keys. The spirits are very fond of leaving money around for some reason and they seem to favour the five pound note. I have been the recipient of many of these notes, and have found them in the most unlikely places.
It was now 1974, well into the second year of these incredible happenings, and I was being urged by a number of people to ‘take to the platform’ – the platform being spiritualist churches and the like. I had already been informed by the first medium I had visited that I would not work from the platform and that my work would always be confidential. I could well understand this, as I am a very private person. I had been the grateful recipient of messages from mediums who worked in the churches, so it was not a question of disapproval. It was simply not me.
‘But all good mediums take to the platform,’ my friend informed me.
‘Well, this one won’t be doing so,’ I told her. I also knew that I had a lot to learn and that I needed to do this in the privacy of my own home.
The more I thought about this issue the more important it became when I thought about the very private messages that came through, and the tears and laughter that ensued when I passed them on. There are as many people who wish to keep their lives a private matter between themselves and the communicator as there are those who do not mind sharing their messages with others. I fall into the former group, so I suppose it is inevitable that I have elected to work confidentially.
Many people believe that it is only women who seek help and guidance through mediumships, but this is not so; I had many men ask for my help. They tended to book evening appointments and I frequently worked until eleven o’clock at night. I believe that they felt at ease with me because very often the outcome of a sitting would be just as much a surprise to me as it was to them. During one of these sessions a man spoke to me.
‘My name is Carl. Would you tell my son that I did not leave my wife destitute as he believes.’
The man sitting opposite me stared in disbelief as I gave him the message. Then he said, ‘I’m afraid my father is wrong. We’ve looked everywhere for the life insurance policy that he always said existed, and there is no sign of it.’
The father spoke again. ‘Do you remember, as a boy, creeping up behind me when I visited the cellar?’ There was a pause as I passed the information on to my client, who answered in the affirmative. ‘Do you remember what I was doing?’ the father asked.
My client looked puzzled and said, ‘No, I don’t know what he was doing.’
It was here that the voice stopped and instead I was given the picture of a cellar. At the side of a workbench someone was taking a brick out of the wall. A hand reached into the space and brought out a box. Then the vision ended. The son was stunned. ‘I had no idea what he was up to when he went down there. The crafty old devil.’
He then told me that he had been extremely worried about his mother’s future. ‘Although she has her own home,’ he said, ‘she only has a small pension. I’m helping her, but with three children of my own it is very difficult.’ He laughed for the first time. ‘I hope there is something in that bloody box.’
And there was. Speaking to me a week later he told me how he had rushed to his mother’s house and after a hasty greeting had gone down to the cellar. Examining the wall at the side of the bench he had found the loose brick and the box. Inside were three life insurance policies, worth in the region of eighty thousand pounds.
If he had not sought help from a medium, those policies would have remained hidden.
Every day seemed to bring such wonder to me, and I wanted to share my experiences with the whole world. But, intuitively, I knew that it was too early. Although I was a relative newcomer in this field I had already seen the destructive influences at work and I knew I had to wait until I could prove myself under the most trying circumstances. In fact, I waited twelve years. More of that later.
Occasionally, my life was disrupted by an aggressive individual. One such person was the father of a small boy who suffered agonizing pains in his legs. The mother had brought the boy to me and the pain had receded after only two visits. It was then that the father decided he did not want the boy to receive healing. He would not give a reason but threatened the mother with dire results if she brought him to me. Fortunately for her son she chose to ignore the threats and continued with the healing.
One day, whilst I was healing the boy, the front door bell rang, and continued to ring until I opened the door. A man rushed past me, opening doors until he found the healing room. At this stage I had no idea who he was. When I entered the room I realized he was the boy’s father. He and his wife were having a terrible row and the child was crying. I managed to calm them down and sat talking to them for several minutes. Amidst all this confusion a spirit voice told me to get the mother and child out of the room. I turned to the woman and suggested that she take her son to my kitchen and make us all a cup of tea. She agreed. Left alone with the father, I told him that someone was trying to communicate with him.
He exploded! ‘I don’t want to listen to all this rubbish,’ he said. ‘That’s why I don’t want the boy coming here.’ I continued. ‘It is your grandmother, Mabel.’ On hearing his grandmother’s name he became speechless.
‘She’s telling me that out of all her grandchildren you were the one who used to show her kindness and respect. Is that correct?’ I asked. He nodded and I continued. ‘She is telling me that your aggression stems from the fact that you always longed for a child to share your interest in sport, especially football, and that you are devastated by your son’s disability.’ The man covered his face with his hands and quietly sobbed.
I got up and locked the door. I did not want his wife and son to see him this way. Placing my hand on his shoulder, I said, ‘Mabel is telling me that she had impressed upon your wife to bring your son to me as the medical profession could not help him.’ At that point the messages ended.
I waited for the man to compose himself, then said, ‘Your grandmother has made such an effort to help. What is there to lose? Allow your son to have healing. You never know, Mabel may be able to conjure up a miracle or two.’ He stared at me. ‘But I don’t believe in it.’ ‘Well, let my belief carry us all,’ I suggested.
I left him alone for a few minutes and then returned with his wife and son. We sat in silence for a while and then, much to the mother’s astonishment, the little boy’s father said, ‘Well, son, I think we will both be bringing you next week.’ He had his reward when his son put his arms around his neck and kissed him.
Six months later they were playing football together. The child never looked back, and he and his father had a very special relationship from that day on.
On another occasion a woman arrived for healing. During the treatment I heard a man’s voice saying, ‘Beth, you must get out, you’re in danger.’ I asked my client about her home life as I felt that was where the danger lay. It became obvious during the course of the conversation that I was right, and I decided to pass the message on to her so that we could discuss it. It did not seem to come as a surprise to her at all, in fact, she was very calm. She simply said, ‘I know.’ I asked her why she was not prepared to leave and she told me that her husband was mentally ill and would not seek treatment. He was becoming so aggressive that she was afraid he would commit suicide.
The voice spoke again. ‘Tell her this is Len, and I want her to leave now as she is making it too easy for him.’ I passed the message on to her, and she told me that Len was her late father-in-law. We discussed what he had said and I urged her to leave, if only for a few days. I was extremely worried about the situation, as I could hear the urgency in Len’s voice. Before she left I suggested that she should think very carefully about the information she had been given. Two days later she telephoned to say that her husband had tried to attack her so she had left and was now staying with her sister.
Three months later she came to see me and told me the whole story. Apparently, her husband had suffered a nervous breakdown the previous year but had refused to visit his doctor. He would not allow any of his family and friends to help him and had simply given up. He had lost his job, and had locked himself away in his home refusing to see anyone at all.
When Beth had returned home after visiting me he had insisted on knowing where she had been and when she refused to tell him, he became angry and attacked her. She realized, perhaps for the first time, that she was in danger, and decided to take Len’s advice and get out. The outcome was that with no one to lean on, her husband eventually sought help from his doctor, who recommended counselling.
Beth told me that it was Len’s messages that had been the deciding factor when she had left. She realized for the first time that her strength was encouraging her husband’s weakness. Now his health was restored, they were back together, and were extremely happy.
Beth had decided against telling her husband about the spirit messages. So she was surprised one day when he said, ‘You know, all the time I was ill I felt that my father was with me and was trying to tell me something. I wish I knew what it was.’
‘Well, perhaps one day we’ll visit a medium and you’ll find out,’ Beth replied.
‘You must be joking,’ he said. ‘Ydon’t believe in all that stuff.’ Beth just smiled.
I find it quite extraordinary that thousands of people who believe their late family and friends are often around them also insist that there is no life after death. It is totally illogical. And, many of those who do believe will not visit a medium because they are afraid their loved ones will speak to them.
I was also astonished to find that many clients who received wonderful survival evidence were unable to believe what they had heard and half suggested that I had been checking up on their family. I have never had the time to check my own family trees, let alone hundreds of others!
Everyone I met assumed that I had sat for years in a development group and were astonished when I told them that it had all more or less happened overnight. I am far too impatient to sit around waiting for something to happen, but when it does I take advantage of what I have been given. That is why in these first years I really had a great time. I could not wait for the next instalment, and when it came I was like a child with a new toy. I played with it, challenged it and, needless to say, marvelled at it. As I did with the next experience.
I was quietly reading a book one evening and became aware of a swirl of energy around me. Placing the book on the couch, I looked around the room and found that I was in the centre of a moving landscape of colour – pink clouds, orange hills, blue waterfalls and brilliant white fountains, a kaleidoscope of different pictures, landscapes filled with the beauty of colour, moving and changing all the time. I was entranced. Then a voice said, ‘Colour changes everything.’ It certainly did. When the energy silently slipped away and I was left once again with my ordinary room, I felt cheated. From that day on I brought more colour into my life. I also experimented with colour healing and found that it was extremely beneficial, especially with distant healing.
Time and again I marvelled at this incredible world that was being shown to me. It made everyday surroundings appear so dull. My whole life seemed to be on a roller-coaster, and there was no way that I could control the brakes. When I was tired, I often tried to shut it all out but could not. If it was not amazing phenomena it was small things, like the sound of the telephone ringing in my ears, warning me that my own phone would ring in a few seconds. Or the sound of a dog barking in my head – though we had no animals at that time. My belongings continued to disappear and reappear in the most peculiar places. This still annoyed me! There were whirlwinds of energy that felt as though someone had opened all the doors and windows on a chill winter evening. I felt a hand stroking my face whilst I was healing. I had become quite blase about the beam of light in the hall as it appeared so often. Sometimes there was someone inside the beam but very often it was empty. I had begun to think of it as a spaceship, which was really strange as I have always been bored to tears with things like the Star Trek films on television. However, it was the appearance of spirit forms that held my attention. How wonderful they were! And how incredible it was to study this phenomenon that had first manifested when I was a child, when I hadn’t a clue what was going on. Now, thirty-five years later, I still didn’t know an awful lot but at least the added years had given me the gift of reasoning – even though that was being taxed at this time.
I remember one incident in particular. I had finished healing for the day and was just about to leave the room when I saw a spirit form taking shape from the feet upwards. This was no ordinary spirit. It was a man with long white hair, whose beard practically reached his waist. He was wearing a white gown that swirled around his feet. My first thought was that he looked like Father Time, or at least how I would have imagined him. My legs were shaking so much I had to sit down. I waited for some kind of communication, but there was nothing. Then objects began to dance around on the table and the room seemed to shake. It was scary. I was staring at the old man and our eyes appeared to be locked together in some kind of beam. Then, just like a melting snowman, he disappeared into the floor and was gone.
It was incredible to say the least, and I was longing to tell someone about it, but felt that my family and friends had already been pushed to the edge with my new-found talents. I was intrigued, and for days I tried to recreate the image of this man. Who was he? What did he want to tell me? Had he been trying to communicate telepathically? I certainly did not feel any benefit from him having appeared, and had received no extra knowledge. At least not yet. It was to be a week before I found out what I had been given. Whilst speaking to a friend I realized that when she mentioned someone’s name I knew everything about them. I asked her to test me by mentioning names that were unknown to me, and the results were amazing. Previously, I could give an outline of the personality, but now, I was being given minute details about their lives, and their future. Somehow, this man had given me a line straight through to the Universal Mind. It was an incredible discovery, and a talent that enabled me to help people who were unable to visit me.
One such person was a lady who was bedridden and totally dependent on her family. She wrote to request absent healing and, at the same time, asked whether I could suggest Christmas presents for two nieces and a nephew. The names and birth dates were listed at the bottom of the letter, and as I studied them I had a picture of all three children. The two girls were totally different personalities; one was rather excitable and the other quiet, and as I thought about them individually I was able to recommend suitable gifts. When I linked into her nephew I knew that he would like a dartboard.
A month later I received the following letter:
It is with great regret that I have to tell you that my aunt died four days after Christmas.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping her with the children’s presents. She was overcome with joy when she saw how thrilled they were with her gifts. Needless to say, the children will treasure them and they will remind them of a very loving and lovely person.
I have only one question: How did you do it? I am fascinated.
How could I tell her when I did not know the answer myself ?
My life was becoming stranger than fiction, and at times I had the feeling that my home had become a time capsule. Visions of the past and future were constantly being relayed to me. The visions I did not like were those that showed disasters waiting to happen.
One night, in a dream, I saw an aircraft crash into some palm trees on the water’s edge, and I watched as it crumpled on to the beach in slow motion, the blue sea lapping over the wings of the aircraft. In the distance I could hear people crying for help, and then I woke up.
I woke my daughter, Janet, and told her that there had been a terrible plane crash. I was quite distraught; the vision was still in my mind and I felt as though I had been a part of the tragedy. Although I knew the crash had happened on a tropical island I had not been given a name or a date, and it could have happened anywhere in the world. The frustration was immense. Eventually I went back to bed.
The following morning I turned on the television, expecting to hear about the disaster. There was nothing. For the next week I listened to every news broadcast, and when I still heard nothing about the crash I decided that it had only been a dream after all.
Two weeks later I was looking at the television and was shocked to see my dream being re-enacted on the screen. The plane was going across the screen from right to left, exactly as I had seen it. It crashed into the palm trees and landed on the edge of the beach, and I heard the newsreader say that many lives had been lost. I was devastated. What was the point of giving me the vision if I was unable to help? Why wasn’t I given the time and place so that the accident could have been averted?
Whilst meditating some time later, I was told that I was to become part of a group who help accident victims come to terms with the fact that they are dead. When someone dies in this way they cannot understand why people in this dimension cannot see or hear them because for a time they still feel normal. I asked how I could help, as it was obvious to me that the majority of relatives and friends would not be visiting a medium. I was told that I would be helping whilst in a sleep state. Although it all sounded very interesting, I still could not see how I could fulfil this role.
A few years later a woman came for a sitting and I told her that there was a young girl, Sara, who said she was her daughter. The woman held her head in her hands for a few moments. When she looked up, she said, ‘I have been praying that she would contact me. What does she have to say?’
‘She is telling me that she brought your attention to a newspaper article about me,’ I replied, laughing. ‘Why should she want to do that?
‘I don’t know,’ Sara’s mother said, ‘but she’s right. Someone had left their paper on the train and I was attracted to your photograph and read the article. It was then that I decided to visit you.’
‘Your daughter tells me that you have always wondered whether she suffered when she was killed in the car crash. Is that right?’
‘Yes. That thought is always with me.’
‘She wants you to know that she did not suffer at all.’ I paused. ‘That’s strange, she’s thanking me for easing her path and for being there when she needed me.’
The mother frowned. ‘How could you have helped her?’
I explained about the activities of the rescue service. She found it hard to understand – and so did I! But this was only the beginning. There were to be many similar messages given to me in the future. That particular sitting continued for an hour, bringing mother and daughter together for the first time in two years.
At this point in time I was beginning to feel frustrated with many aspects of my life, not least the inability to find time for myself. I was now working twelve hours a day, six days a week. I tried not to work on Sunday.
Family and friends were urging me to take it easy, but what could I do when there were so many people needing help and guidance? There was already a four-week waiting list. If I cut down on my working hours that list would grow longer, and I feared for the health of some of my patients. I made the decision to reduce the hour-long appointments to half an hour.
Now, in 1975, I was in the third year of my healing and mediumship.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_d13b5891-37b2-584a-b110-8d8f92f63acd)
My mediumship was tested continually whilst I was healing. At first there was the smell of ether, so strong at times that it affected everyone visiting my home. Most of my patients claimed that it made them feel light-headed. Although I hated it, I found that in a peculiar way – it also comforted me. I felt that someone was trying to impress upon me that I was being guided. This was also confirmed by my medium friend.
‘For our spirit friends,’ he told me, ‘it is the simplest way of letting you know that a surgeon wishes to work through you.’
‘How long do you think it will last?’ I asked.
‘However long it takes to convince you,’ he replied. On the rare occasions that we met I tried to persuade him to become my mentor, but he was adamant.
‘You do not need me,’ he said. ‘I know that you have the finest spirit teachers available to you, because I have never seen anyone surrounded by so much power. All you have to do is listen and learn.’ He leaned forward and touched my hand. ‘You see, my dear, all I am is what my spirit helpers allow me to be. I am not a healer. I couldn’t heal anyone. I am just a medium, and use that talent to help where I can.’
From the beginning I had felt a presence whilst healing, and occasionally caught a glimpse of spirit hands touching the patient. The first time it happened I thought my mind was playing tricks with me. The following day, when the hands appeared again I could also see the lower part of the arms. Eventually I was able to see the whole spirit entity but, unlike many mediums who have specific people working through them, I seemed to have been contacted by a variety of personalities. I wondered if they were trying to find someone who suited my own psyche. It was very easy to distinguish between them; as their minds linked with mine their differing personalities were immediately obvious because they affected my own behaviour. One or two of the doctors had a sense of humour not unlike my own, while another would be very sombre and so the healing would be very quiet. The spirit doctor who carried out the manipulations of limbs was very excitable, and gave me the impression that he was, perhaps, slightly eccentric. I found it all absolutely fascinating.
I have mentioned in a previous book, Mind Magic, the time when Louis Pasteur manifested three times and informed me that he was going to help me with the healing, and of how I visited the library to find a photograph that would confirm that it was indeed that great doctor. The incredible healing that took place after this visitation was further confirmation.
I have always had a theory that if one keeps a picture in one’s mind of a particular person then, eventually, that image will be played back to us. I was absolutely determined that this was not going to happen to me, mainly because I was seeking the truth.
I know the manifestation of Louis Pasteur was real, because I had not thought about him since leaving school. Although my patients often asked the name of the spirit doctor who worked through me, I was loath to mention a name as famous as that of Pasteur, so my reply was that I did not know. I was given a photograph of him by a close friend, but hid it in a drawer because I did not want his image to encroach upon my mind. I knew he would understand.
From time to time other spirit doctors have come through and given me their names, but for some reason I have never bothered to write them down. The names themselves did not mean anything to me; it was their achievements that inspired me.
I came to the conclusion, after several years, that there were many brilliant doctors helping me, but Pasteur was definitely at the helm, holding everything and everybody together.
However, in my third year I was left wondering who on earth all these people were. It was made clear to me when I began to take note of the patients and their specific ailments that the spirit doctors were specialists in their own field. Since then I always ask for ‘the best you’ve got’ at the beginning of a healing session – and I know that my wish will be granted. I was also determined, at this stage, not to study medical textbooks. Apart from the fact that they can be extremely depressing, I do believe that ‘a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing’. Imagine my surprise, then, when a medical diagnosis was given to me. Many of my patients were delighted, because they had been visiting their doctors for years without any lasting cure. Most of the diagnoses were eventually confirmed by medical specialists, but a number of my patients had vowed, before visiting me, that they would never again put their lives in the hands of doctors. Although I never agreed with this decision I could sympathize. I had been there myself, having to date been given two terminal prognoses which had eventually turned out to be common problems that could be cured by vitamin and mineral therapy. But, one must not lose sight of the fact that we could be putting our lives at risk by not taking the best of both worlds.
Jimmy’s story is typical of this.
He was in his twenties, and was suffering from a dragging pain in the left side of his groin. The diagnosis I received was that it was a hernia and could be cured with healing.
After the first two sessions the pain disappeared, and he was delighted. But as he was about to leave my spirit doctor told me that he also had a small benign lump in the groin and that this should be removed medically. Jimmy’s face crumpled when I passed this message on. ‘I’m not going to any bloody doctor!’ he cried. ‘The last one I saw nearly killed my mother by giving her the wrong prescription.’
I spent some time reassuring him. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I would not have been given this message if it would put you in any kind of danger.’
‘Why can’t your spirit doctors get rid of it?’ he asked.
‘I have no idea, but I do trust them,’ I replied.
I persuaded him to visit his doctor eventually, who was not only surprised by the absence of the hernia but was amazed that Jimmy should be aware of the lump in the groin. It was so small that the doctor could barely locate it himself.
Jimmy had the lump removed, and it was benign, but the reason why it was necessary for him to have it removed medically and not spiritually became obvious when he was found to be in the first stages of diabetes.
I received another diagnosis for Irene, a woman in her late forties.
She had asked for healing for severe headaches. During the healing I was told that she had an aneurysm and that she needed immediate surgery and intensive healing after the event.
I was in a dilemma. I felt that I could not give her the diagnosis, but did suggest that she should see a specialist. She took my advice and after many tests my diagnosis was confirmed.
She came to see me two months later, and during that healing session a voice told me that Irene was going to be alright now. I passed this message on, and she laughed.
‘I believe them!’ she said. ‘They have saved my life.’ But she did tell me later that, although she had recovered, she had been convinced that the same thing was going to happen again. I am pleased to say that she was wrong, and my informant was right. I was to see her many times in the following years for her ‘top-up’, as she used to call it, and she never suffered from headaches again.
There were times, however, when the spirit doctors were adamant that my patient should not receive medical treatment. One such person was Peggy.
Peggy had been overcome by the power of the healing energies, and had gone into a deep sleep whilst having treatment. My hands were placed lightly on her stomach when I felt a presence behind me and a hand pressing on my shoulder. Then a voice said, ‘Tell her the operation will not be necessary.’ Peggy had told me that she had been advised to have a hysterectomy as she had fibroids in the womb. The voice continued, ‘Take your hands away.’ As I removed my hands they were replaced by a spinning vortex of energy which remained for approximately five minutes.
While this was taking place I heard whispering in the corner of the room. I could not see anyone, but the whispering continued for several minutes. During this time I felt as though I was levitating, although my feet were planted firmly on the floor. When I had finished healing I left to answer the telephone, and when I returned the room was filled with a haze of blue energy.
Peggy was awake now.
‘I’ve been to the most beautiful place!’ she told me. ‘The colours were out of this world.’
I laughed, and told her that she had indeed been out of this world. I then gave her the whole story. She was thrilled, and delighted that she would not have to go through the trauma of an operation. But before she left I advised her to visit her gynaecologist for a check-up.
I had a telephone call from her the following week. She was shrieking with laughter.
‘Betty,’ she said, ‘you should have seen his face when he told me there was no trace of any fibroids. I told him about the healing and he just shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘I’ve never believed in healing, but with this evidence I may just change my mind.’ But he added, ‘Don’t quote me on it.’
I wondered how many years it would take for the medical profession to accept that there were many healing alternatives where drugs and surgery could be avoided. One of the simplest is a healthy diet and the identification of vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
A young lady in her twenties visited me for healing. Jane was suffering from asthma, eczema and numerous fleeting aches and pains.
She had been having treatment from her GP for two years, until she had insisted that he refer her to the local hospital for a complete check. They had given her the usual drugs and ointment, but nothing had worked. She was in despair. Then a friend told her about healing. She made an appointment to come and see me.
While I was healing her, I noticed a white energy building up at the end of the couch. As always when this happened I felt excited, and my whole body was tingling. Then Jane sat up.
‘My God!’ she exclaimed. ‘I feel as though I’ve been plugged into an electric socket.’
I persuaded her to lie down again, and explained what was happening. It can sometimes be a little frightening if one is not used to healing energies. Unlike Peggy, Jane was being stimulated so much that she never stopped asking questions and I had to ask her to be quiet for a while. During the silence I heard a voice say, very distinctly, ‘The cat has to go.’ I asked Jane whether she had a cat, and if so, how old it was. She told me that Poppy was just over two and the love of her life. Then she frowned, and said, ‘How did you know that I have a cat?’ I passed on the message, and informed her that she was apparently allergic to cats. Jane burst into tears.
‘I can’t possibly get rid of her, I love her too much,’ she said. When she eventually stopped crying we both sat quietly, working out the timing. It was obvious that her allergies had begun when she had acquired Poppy. It became clear to us both that her pet was the problem. Before she left, Jane asked me to continue with the healing, hoping that it would cure her allergies, and avoid a painful parting from her pet. Two months passed and, although she was a bit better, we both realized that the message I received had been correct.
I decided to meditate and to ask for a solution to the problem. It is a practice I have always used for my own problems, and I am constantly surprised by the unusual methods that are used to solve them. This was to be no exception. An acquaintance of Jane’s had been heartbroken when her own cat died of old age, and having learned through the grapevine of Jane’s predicament, begged her to let her have Poppy. Jane eventually let her beloved pet go, knowing that she would be well looked after. Three weeks later, with further healing, the asthma, eczema and the aches and pains had vanished.
A word of warning though, to anyone suffering from the same complaints. Please do not blame your animal. Every case is different, and there are hundreds of reasons why people suffer with these disturbing ailments. Stress is the main factor, and, of course, we can have an allergic reaction to humans too. So please, love and care for your animals. They too have the potential to heal.
I have given a detailed description in Mind Waves about how I was taught to give psychic surgery on the energy counterpart, but the whole story would be a book in itself. During the training period, I became aware of a particularly powerful personality working with me. I think he must have been attracted by my enthusiasm, because when he was around the atmosphere was electric. He pushed me to the limits, and it was this man who was mainly responsible for the eventual fine-tuning of my mediumship. Sometimes the diagnosis he gave me was complicated, and I could feel his irritation when I questioned it. Otherwise, we had a perfect partnership. Once, when I asked his name, he told me that names are of no consequence. It is the quality of the personality that is important. We did think alike. He also told me that continually thinking in terms of ‘self puts the mind into a vacuum which makes it impossible for us to link up with the Universal Mind and the source of all knowledge. In other words, egotists will find themselves perpetually static, unable to think of new ideas or find alternative paths.
I had occasion to doubt a diagnosis many times, and once argued my case quite forcibly. My patient was a man in his fifties, suffering from a persistent backache which prevented him from following his occupation as a builder. A medical specialist had diagnosed a slipped disc and I could see from the energy patterns that this was correct. The diagnosis given by my spirit doctor was a complete energy blockage in the groin. I could not see this, and so I questioned his opinion. This sparked off a few mental fireworks, which I felt were unjustified at the time. I would have eased the energy from the top of the head, to alleviate pressure on the spine and enable the disc to slip back into position. However, as the operation progressed I could see clearly that my teacher was right and that I had been presumptuous, as most students are. He removed a dark tight ball from deep inside the groin area, and informed me that it was a longstanding energy blockage. Immediately I could see energy rushing around the body like a miniature waterfall. My tutor then said, ‘That’s it,’ and left. He had not touched the back at all.
My patient was over the moon when he found the pain had gone. He strutted around the room, bent backwards and forwards, and laughed with delight as he became aware that his slipped disc had been cured.
Because the man had been quite sceptical about healing, and had only agreed to visit me to keep his wife happy, I did not tell him the true story. I did tell his wife later though, and she passed the information on to her husband.
‘I don’t give a damn who did it,’ he said. ‘I think healing is bloody marvellous.’
You might well ask, after reading the chapters so far, whether I am really living on this planet. And believe me, I asked myself the same question, over and over again during this period. Although I had always been a very spiritual person, my feet were very firmly on the ground, and yet my day-to-day life had been turned upside down. My previously very private home had been turned into a healing sanctuary, and the telephone never stopped ringing.
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Betty Shine
The inside story of the ‘reluctant medium’, finally available in a mass-market A-format editionBetty Shine was originally an opera singer, but studied all forms of alternative healing, becoming a vitamin and mineral therapist.Guided by spirit voices from the age of two, she became a world-famous medium. This is the story of how she became the best known medium and healer in the UK.Through her books, tapes and absent healing service, she is in touch with thousands of people worldwide.
My Life As a Medium
Betty Shine
I dedicate this book to spiritual mediums around the world. Long may they continue to spread the word and demonstrate their very special talent.
I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die,
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb
I arise and unbuild it again.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 1792-1822
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u29245a4c-732a-5647-b55a-3b83c4afc29b)
Title Page (#u9fe23a9d-6ca7-5339-a0c2-3c4ee832e4b9)
Epigraph (#uafead40f-ea0d-5a04-80a5-d1460a418b82)
Author’s Note (#u2f06b3cf-c2c1-54ae-b3a1-0acb59ec9fa5)
CHAPTER ONE (#u7ca28447-0ff3-5286-a3ba-6e6668e1187d)
CHAPTER TWO (#uade45577-d0e7-5546-b26e-caa83359326a)
CHAPTER THREE (#ua071ba64-08e3-55b8-a007-9676db973e39)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise (#litres_trial_promo)
By the same author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Note (#ulink_1ac63738-c054-534a-846a-3048cffed366)
Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the people who have allowed me to tell their stories.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_ffa8d23b-c497-5d8f-92ac-a0f97fef5a5b)
Valerie sat in the chair opposite me in my healing room, and sobbed. I had known this would happen when the communication with her father came to an end.
She had been receiving healing from me, and as she was preparing to leave I had seen a man standing in a corner of the room. He told me that he was Valerie’s father. When I asked her to sit down and explained to her what was happening, she was shocked, as she had no idea at the time that I was also a medium. Apparently, the idea of survival after death had never interested her; she had been too brutalized by this life to care about the next.
‘Would you like to hear what your father has to say?’ I asked gently.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘First I will describe him to you,’ I said. ‘He is about five foot six inches tall, of stocky build, has black hair, bushy eyebrows, a fine nose and full lips. But his eyes are his main attraction – they are twinkling and full of humour.’
Valerie nodded. Unable to speak, she had followed the direction of my gaze and was staring into the corner of the room.
‘He tells me that his name is Nathan. Is that correct?’ I enquired.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘That was his name.’
‘He is showing me a gold watch on a chain. It has a cover on the face with an intricate design and the initial ‘N’, and was passed on to him by his father. They both shared the same name. Is that correct?’
‘Yes.’ I could hardly hear her reply, and asked her to speak up. She shook herself as though relieving her body of a heavy burden.
Nathan was speaking again. ‘Will you tell my daughter that I love her, and that I am pleased the rest of the family were able to escape. Death, when it came, was a merciful release, not just for me but for all of my friends who were incarcerated in that dreadful building. The shedding of the physical body was a revelation. Looking down, it seemed that a bundle of old rags was lying there, no use to anyone, whilst my real self soared into the sky. At first there was a brilliant light, then total darkness and finally a dark tunnel. Spinning through this tunnel I saw a pin-point of light, and then I suddenly shot out into Paradise. At least that was what I thought it was. My darling, you have so much to learn, and I have appeared today to tell you that you must believe in survival. Haven’t I proved it to you? When you truly believe, your life will begin. Love will enter your life and you will be shown what a privilege it is to be able to give of yourself without expectancy of reward.’
There was a pause, and Nathan murmured, as though he were speaking to another presence. Still staring at the corner of the room, Valerie asked, ‘What is happening?’ 1 had to tell her that I didn’t know. It must have been two minutes before Nathan spoke again.
‘I have your mother here but she can’t show herself yet, she doesn’t know how. She hasn’t been here very long.’ Nathan continued, ‘She wants me to tell you that we both love you very much and you are to stop crying every night because you live alone. You must believe that you are not alone – there are so many people here who give you love and comfort. You only have to believe that and the loneliness will disappear. Your aunt, Greta, wants to send her love also. I have to go now, my darling. You must believe that life is everlasting. If you do not believe that, then life will not be worth living.’
Valerie looked at me, still crying. ‘Everything you have told me is true. I’m terribly lonely, I have no friends.’
‘Have you ever thought about having a pet for company?’ I suggested. ‘There are so many unwanted animals around. And it would be a way of giving. When you are a giver rather than a taker you will find that your generosity will return to you tenfold.’ Then, changing the subject, I asked her if she had recognized my description of the watch. ‘Yes,’ she said bitterly. ‘I suppose some Nazi has passed it on to his son.’
‘Valerie,’ I said, ‘it is only a watch. What you have received today is worth a thousand watches. I’m sorry I have to ask, but did your father die in a concentration camp?’ It was quite apparent, having seen her father, that they were Jewish.
Tears were still running down her cheeks as she answered. ‘Yes. My mother and I escaped with my cousin, but my father was picked up at work before he had a chance to hide.’ She gave me an odd look and said, ‘If I’d known you were a medium, I wouldn’t have come for healing. I’ve always been afraid of this sort of thing.’
‘Are you still afraid?’ I asked.
‘No! But I am shocked. However, this experience has been so beautiful I shall never be afraid again. I could actually smell my father’s tobacco when he was speaking to you. Could you smell it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but then I’m used to the aromas manifested by spirit people.’
We talked for some time, and when she was ready to leave she kissed me and said, ‘I’m going home to think very carefully about my father’s words.’
It was at this point that Nathan materialized. The wonder and joy on Valerie’s face was a sight to behold. She walked toward him, arms outstretched, but as she did so, he faded. She looked at me, ‘Where has he gone?’ she asked.
I assured her that he was still there even though we were unable to see him, and that he must love her very much to make such a supreme effort to show himself. Valerie hugged me. ‘I will never forget this as long as I live,’ she said.
When Valerie had left I walked back into the healing room. It was so charged with energy that I felt as though I was walking on air. I sat down and thought about the first message I had ever received – a simple message from a mother to her daughter. Then, as I recalled the emotionally charged sitting I had just experienced, I realized just how far I had come in being able to handle the sheer power that had exuded from Valerie’s father as he gave his message to his daughter.
At this point I would like to go back to the beginning of my mediumship and share the magic of my journey with you. It was not an easy journey by any means.
I had never been particularly interested in other people’s lives, so one of my first questions was, ‘Why me?’ It was a question I was to ask myself many times over the following years. As the messages I received always made sense to somebody, I was never afraid that I was going mad. I simply was not interested, and so tried to block out the voices. Because of my lifelong interest in health, it was the healing aspect that fascinated me most – so the spirits used every opportunity to pass on messages whilst I was healing. It was almost as though they were saying, ‘If you listen to us and pass on our messages we’ll help you with the healing.’ Oh yes, make no mistake! They were prepared to bribe me.
If I had been in a giving frame of mind it would have been easier for both sides. But I wasn’t. My children had left home and, for the first time since marrying at the age of twenty, I had time to enjoy myself. Life begins at forty-five, I thought. And it did, but not in the way I had envisaged.
My main reason for trying to block out the voices was the emotional strain it put upon me. Healing was stimulating, exciting, and I had studied alternative healing for most of my adult life. I felt that I could use that knowledge in conjunction with the energies to produce good results.
Mediumship, however, was a mystery. Although my grandmother had been a medium and we all looked upon her as someone very special, it had never dawned on me that I would inherit her gifts, so I had paid very little attention to her interests. I was only ten when I was evacuated, during the Second World War, and saw very little of her from that time. The war separated many families in this way. The simple fact was that I loved being a healer but hated being a medium. Fortunately for me and for many others this changed, and this book is about my training as a medium by spirit entities.
They spent an enormous amount of time and energy dealing with my eccentricities – and I had many. Ignoring my pleas to be left alone and my threat to give up healing they continued to try to pacify me and to encourage ‘survival evidence’. For this I am now truly grateful. But it was quite a different story at the beginning.
Although I had been guided by a spirit voice from the age of two, I was still shocked when, during my forty-fifth year, my friend’s late mother spoke to me and asked me to pass on a message to her daughter, who happened to be with me at the time. When I had finished relaying the message my friend looked at me and said, ‘I didn’t know you were a medium.’ My response was, ‘Neither did I!’
In my first book, Mind to Mind, I described my visit to a famous medium and how, during the session, he had told me that I would be a great healer and that my name would become known around the world. He also explained that I was mediumistic and that I would be using this gift for clairvoyant diagnosis, amongst other things. That was twenty-two years ago, and everything he forecast has come true.
Much has been written, by myself and others, of my healing abilities, but I have never mentioned the inner conflict that I suffered as I tried to come to terms with the fact that people who were supposed to be dead were actually trying to communicate with me. And that overnight the energy floodgates had opened.
And if that was not enough, spirit forms began to build up around me. One day, whilst my daughter Janet and I were having tea in the kitchen, I happened to glance through the open door leading into a large hall. A huge funnel of blue energy had formed in the centre of the hall, and as I stared a man appeared inside the structure. He had long white hair and wore a white robe. A quick glance at Janet told me that she was wondering why I was ignoring her and staring through the door. I explained, in a whisper, what was going on and asked her to turn around. Her reaction was to tell me to close the door as she would rather not see it. I didn’t, of course, as I was completely fascinated by the phenomenon. Then the entity looked straight at me with a kindly but concerned expression. My first thought was, ‘If he is worried, how does he think I feel!’ The vision slowly disappeared and as it did so I experienced a feeling of emptiness and desperately wanted it to return. It was a sensation that was to become part of my everyday life. At the time I was upset by Janet’s refusal to share my experience. I was to find out much later that she had her own unique path to follow.
While I was relaxing that same evening, the faces of different nationalities manifested on the blank walls of my living room. The images vibrated as they continually changed. I remember looking at them in fascinated disbelief, wondering what on earth was going on. This continued for about one hour.
Retiring to bed did not help either. When I looked up at the ceiling I could see an eye, about the size of a dinner plate. This phenomenon was something I had experienced from the beginning. It was a kindly eye, and it gave me a tremendous feeling of peace. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of sleep looking at it. It was only months later, whilst looking in the mirror, that I realized it was identical to my own; this was my mind’s eye – my third eye. From that moment I was able to ignore it and my sleeping hours were restored. Three years later the eye stopped appearing, and I missed it.
Something new seemed to be happening to me every day, and there were times when I just had to get out of the house. I would drive to the nearest park and, depending on the weather, either go for a walk or sit in the car. It was on one of these occasions that I pondered over the different spirit messages I had received for myself. How was I to know whether the voices were true or whether I was listening to my own higher mind? It worried me, and I had no idea how this was going to be resolved.
The following day, whilst carrying out that most mundane of household jobs, washing-up, I had my answer. A voice repeated over and over again the christian names and surnames of both family and friends, many of whom had been dead for some time. The repetition was extraordinary. I wrote them down. It was very similar to the way I had been taught parrot-fashion at school when learning my times table. When the voice eventually stopped I looked down at the names on the paper. Some I remembered, others I did not. As I had a day’s healing ahead of me, I had to put them out of my mind at that point.
That evening the voice returned, repeating the same names three times. Toward the end many new names were mentioned. The process continued in this vein for the next two months. During that time I checked with relatives and friends, and all of the names that were unknown to me were verified. As time passed I was also given the second christian names of many of these people. Once more I had to check, and once more they were confirmed. The voice itself had no name and I was never to find out who it had been. But one thing was sure, it was the most persistent of all the communicators. If that person had ever lived on this planet he would surely have made an excellent politician!
Although the results I was having with healing were excellent, I found the survival evidence intrusive. Somehow it did not seem to belong in the healing room, although the messages were well received. But I was unhappy about it. There were so many lessons to be learnt as far as healing techniques were concerned and I needed the time to study them.
I remember sitting alone one evening, praying for the voices to stop. I had heard a child’s voice that day asking to speak to her mother, and the shock had reduced me to tears. This is how it happened.
I was healing a young woman who had been suffering with acute irritable bowel syndrome for the past two years. This was her second visit. She told me she liked being with me as I didn’t ask her questions. It was so peaceful. Suddenly I heard a little girl’s voice saying, ‘I want to speak to my Mummy.’ I looked at my patient. Her eyes were closed and she appeared to be asleep. I touched her hand and she opened her eyes. ‘There’s a little girl here who wants to speak to her Mummy. Have you lost a child?’ I asked gently.
She whispered ‘Yes,’ and then incredulously, ‘Can you hear her?’
The child spoke again. ‘Tell Mummy that the nice lady said that I could talk to her as she is so unhappy.’ I passed the message on. With myself as the mediator the conversation continued as follows:
Mother: ‘I love you and never stop thinking about you.’
Child: ‘I know, Mummy, because sometimes I can see you.’
Mother: ‘Where are you, darling?’
Child: ‘Well, I’m not sure, but it has lovely birds and we stroke them.’
Mother: ‘Who is we, darling?’
Child: ‘My friends. I have to go now, Mummy.’ A woman’s voice took over.
‘Hello, Jill, it’s May. I thought you would like to hear from Gemma. We’ve been worried about you.’
Jill’s eyes widened. ‘I can’t believe it! May was my aunt. She died about ten years ago.’
May then continued, ‘I look after the children, and Gemma has been with me since she arrived. She is a very happy, lively little girl and much loved. Now I must go.’
Jill was crying and questioning at the same time. I sat and held her hand.
‘Why did your little girl call May “the lady” and not auntie?’ I asked.
Jill wiped her eyes. ‘Gemma was only two when my aunt died. She didn’t know her.’ She frowned then, and said, ‘It is strange. Gemma died exactly two years ago today.’
I smiled. ‘Obviously it was a treat they had planned for you.’ ‘I had no idea you were a medium,’ Jill remarked suddenly. I smiled and said nothing. Jill left.
If I had been truthful I could have told her that I didn’t want to be a medium. That I had found the whole session a terrible strain. I re-learnt a valuable lesson that day. The truth is sometimes a cross we have to bear alone so that we can ease the suffering of others.
After Jill had left I sat alone, going over and over the conversation she had had with her daughter. The little girl’s voice was in my head and I couldn’t get rid of it. The sadness overwhelmed me. I prayed that the voices would stop. Two weeks later Jill asked for a healing session. Although I gave her an appointment, I dreaded seeing her again. When she arrived I could not believe she was the same young woman. The pallor had gone and her previously dull eyes were shining.
‘Betty,’ she said, ‘I haven’t come along hoping to hear from my daughter again, I just want to thank you for the precious gift I received last time I was here.’ She laughed. ‘I haven’t suffered with my bowel since, and I know that my daughter’s visit has cured me.’ As an afterthought, she went on, ‘With your help of course.’
Whilst I was healing Jill, a spirit child built up in the room. It was Gemma. She was smiling, and although she didn’t speak I was able to give Jill an accurate description of her. Jill never looked back. Because she now knew that Gemma still lived, albeit in another dimension, it gave her the strength to rebuild her own life.
Was I being shown the link between healing and survival evidence? Did they sometimes have to go hand in hand to get results? At the time I did not know what to think. All I knew was that things were moving too fast for me and I just could not take it all in.
One night I awoke with a start. I could hear a rushing sound, like a waterfall. Then as the sound receded I saw the most beautiful coloured pictures being projected on to the wall opposite my bed. The first scene depicted a small village with white houses and a dusty track. Behind the village were hills, and just above the hills was the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen. The sky was a mass of many different colours. As I stared, the scene slowly changed. This time it showed a valley filled with people crouching on the ground, obviously listening to the figure standing before them. I could not see the face of the figure as it was half hidden by a white cowl. The scene changed again, and before me was a beautiful waterfall and the same rushing sound that I had heard on awakening. And then a voice said, ‘Everything is possible.’
As my bedroom returned to normal I tried to leave my bed. At this point I needed to make myself a cup of tea – perhaps with a tot of brandy! But I could not move. The whole of my body felt like lead. Eventually, I was able to sleep. The leadenness, I was to find out later, was due to the mind energy having practically left the body, as it does with shock or deep sleep, and until it slips back, the physical body is helpless. These visions have continued, and all have a spiritual significance. I love them and would hate them to disappear altogether.
It seemed that the more I tried to reject the voices so eager to pass on messages of survival, the stronger they became. Healing sessions were usually of an hour’s duration. I felt that anything less than that would lead to a sense of urgency, and when people are ill they need time to talk. When survival evidence came through, the session obviously went on for much longer and this worried me a great deal, because my clients liked the confidentiality that I gave them. I did not favour the packed waiting room. It might give the appearance of being successful, but it does little for the sensitivities of the people who are forced to share their space when they are at their lowest ebb. As I could not stop the flow of spirit voices I had to arrange my diary accordingly so that my appointments did not overlap.
This worked quite well until four friends, who all had health problems, asked if I would mind if they stayed together whilst they each received healing. I reluctantly agreed, although I thought at the time that the room was far too small for all of us. It seemed, however, that the spirit world thought it could hold a few more! As I healed, survival evidence poured through. It must have looked as though I was giving a command performance! As usual there was a mixture of tears and laughter, especially when an uncle, who had been a professional comedian, came through. His niece said, ‘I cannot believe he is still telling the same old jokes.’ Another of the friends had lost a watch and was told to look under the wardrobe in her bedroom. She called later to tell me that it had indeed been there. All of this happened during the evening and they were my last clients – but what if it had happened during the daytime? They had overstayed their time by two hours.
When they had gone I sat quietly in the healing room, feeling thoroughly exhausted. Leaning my elbows on the healing couch I put my head in my hands and wondered what was going to happen next. I felt that I was being knocked sideways as each individual experience gave me more problems. Then I heard a voice calling my name. It was repeated three times. Silence. A few seconds passed and the voice said, ‘You must have faith, trust us.’ I stood up and threw my arms out and shouted, ‘Trust who? Who are you?’ Silence. I was so annoyed that I began to tell them just how I felt. ‘How do you think I feel?’ I said dramatically, still throwing my arms around. ‘Every day something different happens. I’m trying to give people privacy and then voices clamour to give survival evidence and it completely messes up my schedules, and tonight I have had to work myself to death trying to please.’ Still ranting like a drama queen, I went on, ‘There must be someone else you can go and bother, for Heaven’s sake!’ At the end of this tirade I felt wonderful, having released all the frustration of the past six months. Perhaps that had been the reason for the silence. Nothing made me more angry than a one-way conversation, spiritual or otherwise. I had found out the hard way that onesided conversations meant trouble. As I left the room, I prayed that I would be given a peaceful night’s sleep. This was granted. Perhaps my ranting had done some good after all.
Another, more personal problem was worrying me. People who I had thought of as friends were avoiding me, and one day I had the opportunity of asking one of them if there was a problem. He looked shamefaced, and told me that when he had told his mates in the pub about the wonderful survival evidence he had received they had ridiculed him. The bottom line was that he could not cope with this, and so had decided to stop seeing me. I argued that I had not changed, but was exactly the same person that I had always been. A trifle more perplexed perhaps, but the same.
‘Betty, the majority of people think mediums are frauds,’ he said.
‘And your friends think they’re the experts, do they?’ I was furious.
‘Why did you tell them in the first place?’ I asked. ‘You must have realized they would laugh at you.’
‘Well, I must confess I was pretty bowled over by what had happened, and wanted to share the experience.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve been an idiot, haven’t I?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘But I think you’re being a coward.’ Upset, he turned around and left.
A few months later we talked on the phone. He told me that he had needed time to think about what I had said, and laughingly agreed that he was a coward at heart.
‘I am so intrigued, I can’t keep away,’ he confided. Eventually, the survival evidence, clairvoyance and healing won him over. He was to admit later that it had completely changed his life. During this time there was one question that he repeatedly asked. ‘As a believer, will I have to change my ways and become a goody-two-shoes?’ ‘Well if you do then I’m in serious trouble,’ I replied.
It was a thought that frequently passed through my mind, especially as my clients were obviously in awe of me. Like my friend, I did not want to change. I had led an extremely eventful life and I was the sum total of every experience I had ever had. And yet the thought continued to bother me.
My mother was religious and belonged to the Church of England, and so I had become part of that Church from my birth. After much coaxing from my mother, I was confirmed in Southwark Cathedral when I was nineteen. I was already beginning to feel disenchanted and hoped by making this commitment that things would change. It is only later in life that one realizes that it is not that easy. Eventually, after much soul-searching, I stopped being a member of the Church. And from that time on, I felt spiritually cleansed. In retrospect, it is obvious that it was part of the Grand Plan that had been mapped out for me. But here I was twenty-five years later, with yet another spiritual dilemma. It had to be solved if I was to have peace of mind. And yet, as with so many problems we have during our lives, this one was going to have to be put on hold.
Throughout the first year of my mediumship I tried to make all sorts of pacts with the spirit world; some worked while others did not. I could not understand why this should be so, and continued to experiment. It was through trial and error that I began to see a pattern emerging, and this was confirmed through survival evidence.
One evening I was healing a woman who was crippled with arthritis. Halfway through the session a spirit voice told me that he would like to speak to his sister. I passed the message on and the woman was delighted that her brother was communicating. With myself acting as the mediator, the communication was as follows:
‘Hello, Joan, we heard you were in trouble. I was elected to speak as we were so close when we were young.’
‘Bert, it’s so lovely to hear from you but who are the “we” you are speaking about?’
‘Oh, Mum, Dad, Ivy, Flo and many others who loved you.’
My patient began to weep. She said, ‘I am in such pain, I wish I could be with you.’
‘Joan, you will never be well until you have released all the hate in your heart. It is crippling you.’
‘I can never forgive him for what he did to me,’ she replied.
‘This hate is not hurting him, only yourself.’ Bert paused, then continued, ‘We cannot help you until you help yourself.’
For the next twenty minutes they enjoyed a private chat about their lives until Bert said goodbye. I asked my client who the ‘he’ was. She told me that it was her ex-husband, and that he had made her life hell.
Joan visited me again a fortnight later. She walked into my healing room, twirled around and said, ‘Look what you have done for me. My arthritis has gone.’
On questioning her about the last two weeks I found that she had rid herself of the hate she had inside her by mentally sinking into a bath and watching the black hate being released. Then she ran the water until it was clear.
‘So you have actually cured yourself,’ I said. She looked at me in silence for some time. ‘I suppose I have,’ she was perplexed. ‘But it was so easy.’ I smiled. ‘If I had all those people rooting for me in the spirit world I would find it easy. I think the evidence you received has been a valuable lesson for both of us.’
She visited me again a year later to tell me that she was getting married and was going to live in America.
It was a simple message, but a powerful one. Working in my capacity as a medium or healer I could not always be successful if the spirituality of the client had been badly affected in some way. I began to give myself mental exercises for cleansing, and felt so much better that I passed them on to my clients. It was whilst I was sitting at my healing couch writing them down that I heard a voice say, ‘We are going to try something.’
My hand moved rapidly, as I drew face after face on the blank paper. There were priests, nuns, clowns and children, and they were not all English. There were many foreign people with ornamental headdress. The drawing stopped as rapidly as it had started, and I was completely dumbfounded. I had never been able to draw at all, and here were most professional sketches. I tried to carry on, but I could sense that the force had left and with it my artistry. These sessions continued for about three weeks and I thought that I had found another talent. I was thrilled. Unfortunately, it left, one day, never to return. I found out much later that a medium is tested in many ways, and a spirit artist had obviously wanted to work through me but had found that I was not the right material. I could have told them that to begin with!
I was still being urged to give straight sittings and although my clients were extremely happy with the results, I myself did not particularly enjoy the experience. It was too inactive for me. As most of the sitters needed healing, I was able to persuade them to have healing whilst giving them survival evidence at the same time. They were delighted with the results, and this method suited me.
My mediumistic abilities enabled me to work in conjunction with a team of spirit entities, including doctors who had taken it upon themselves to train me. As in any teacher-pupil relationships we had our ups and downs. I was convinced at one stage that healing was purely magnetic, and that the spirits did not have anything to do with the healing. The team were quick to react to this.
First there was the blind man who told me that when he and his wife arrived home after healing, all the lights in their house were on, including the spare room which they never used. Also, the curtains in the bedroom were closed at night and opened in the morning.
Then a woman client told me that she had felt someone manipulating her arm in the night and found when she woke in the morning that her frozen shoulder had been cured.
A friend who suffered from migraine mentally asked for my help during an attack. After a few minutes she felt hands on her head and shoulders and fell asleep. When she awoke, the pain had gone and she never suffered another migraine.
And so it went on, until they had convinced me that there were spirit doctors and they did work through me. But one day whilst meditating I received this message.
Having experimented with the idea of healing being purely magnetic you have been given evidence that this is not entirely correct. But you have found out for yourself that life force is magnetic. You will find that spiritual power and life force interact all the time and it is impossible to separate the two. You were partly correct. We would like you to continue with your original ideas and when we feel that you are on the wrong path we will gently guide you back on to the correct one. You are a free spirit and will always be so.
I was glad to hear that. I hated the thought of being manipulated and sometimes the idea disturbed me. It was only the successful healings that urged me on. If so many people were being given a new life by this incredible force then what I was doing must be right. But somewhere in the corners of my mind I occasionally felt uneasy. Sometimes, I was not quite sure if the ideas I had were mine or theirs, they were so mixed up.
Other aspects were also worrying. Although I have been an avid reader all my life there were certain subjects that did not interest me, and one of those was golf. Yet when a group of friends discussed golf I found myself making suggestions that would improve their game. They were astonished, and so was I. But trying these tactics later they found them to be extremely helpful.
The same pattern was repeated whenever there was a particular topic being discussed. People who did not believe in mediumship or healing gradually began to phone me for advice, and I began to give my friends psychic consultations. Between us we monitored these consultations, which were to prove extremely accurate.
Nine months into my first year of mediumship I was to discover yet another gift. In conversation, whenever a name was mentioned, I seemed to know everything about that person and was able to give a detailed account of their personality. When asked about this ability and where the information came from, I had no answer. All I could say was that it was, ‘a kind of knowing’. Now, of course, I know that it is an ability to tap the Universal Mind. Twenty-two years on I am still using this talent to help friends.
One memorable consultation was with an amateur golfer. His ambition was to achieve a hole in one. The words came before the thought as I explained what he had to do.
‘Take a long look at the direction in which you want the ball to go and visualize an energy beam from the middle of your forehead to the hole. Then “see” the ball going into the hole. If you have any doubts at all it will not happen. Just “know” that it is going to happen.’
My friend laughed, ‘That sounds even more difficult than trying to get it in the normal way.’
‘If you simply “think it there” it should work.’ We were both laughing at this point. He agreed to try, though we were both doubtful.
A week later I answered the door to find him standing there with a huge bunch of flowers. He shoved them into my arms, and raising his hands above his head, shouted, ‘You’re a bloody marvel. It worked!’
He then explained in detail how he had carried out my instructions to the letter and got a hole in one on the first try. Grabbing my arm be propelled me inside and told me that he wanted me to be his personal consultant. I declined. But over the years he was able to achieve his ambition five times.
I enjoyed the mixed consultations with my friends. They were always happy events and there were no great expectations, it was just fun. Nevertheless, we were all pleasantly surprised at the outcome of these meetings. For me it was a time to relax, away from the pressure that was being put upon me by requests for healing and sittings.
At the end of the first year I still found sittings difficult. The communicators themselves were very coherent most of the time, and I was at ease with the two-way conversations. The difficulty arose from the emotions that were released when the contacts came through. A sitting would sometimes leave me feeling completely exhausted.
When I had been healing it was quite the reverse and I felt exhilarated. It was to be some time before I could work out why this should be so. I was also saddened by the fact that I did not seem to have a life of my own any more. I was trying to please too many people at the same time. However, I was so fascinated by the phenomena that were becoming a daily occurrence that I could not, it seemed, cut the cord.
There was one thing, though, that angered me during this period, and that was the intolerance shown to mediums and healers. The word ‘medium’ seemed to bring out the worst in people. I was ‘told’ by Christian friends that the devil was speaking through me. I replied that if that was the case then he was pretty well-informed and extremely intelligent.
‘Of course he is,’ was their reply. ‘That is why he is so good at hoodwinking people.’
‘You know him personally, do you?’ I asked.
‘Yes! We know him as well as we know Jesus Christ,’ they said.
‘Describe him,’ I asked. They faltered, and then said, ‘He can take on any image.’ Laughing, I remarked that he must be very talented. They were furious. ‘We’re trying to help you. This is no laughing matter.’
‘If you are right, then why does he give so much pleasure to so many people?’
They were angry and tried to interrupt, but I held up my hand to silence them. ‘No, hold on,’ I said. ‘All the messages I have passed on to people from relatives and friends have given them such happiness. In fact they have all told me that it has changed their lives for the better. In many cases it has taken away the fear of dying.’
‘They are being lured away from Christ,’ they replied.
I tried to bring some logic into the conversation. ‘If the church preaches that there is a life after death, then surely it should not be too much of a surprise to anyone that the survivors try to contact us to confirm this.’
‘We have already told you, it is the devil mimicking them.’
We had come full circle and I decided to end the conversation. It was then that they attacked the healing. ‘You can only be healed by a priest,’ I was told. It did not seem to matter to them that the priest giving the healing may not be a natural healer. ‘Jesus Christ would be working through him,’ they said.
‘But surely the Church preaches that Christ is within all of us,’ I remarked.
‘He is,’ was the reply. ‘But he will only work through those who have been ordained.’
I suggested that we should stop at that point, and they left. I believe that everyone should have their own point of view as long as it makes them happy, and I do not believe that you should try to force your opinions on others. This usually brings unhappiness.
I had been thoroughly grounded in the church’s teachings, and many of them did not make sense to me. The spirit teachings did. The healing continued, and so did the mediumship. I did not know then that the second year was going to be even more incredible than the first.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_61240e1d-0f36-5404-8d78-be6aa69b374e)
At the end of 1973, my energy had increased one hundred per cent. I felt like a time bomb waiting to explode. Subtle, yet tenacious, the spirits were there watching, guiding, protecting and, at times, an absolute pain.
My personal belongings were beginning to move around the house of their own accord, and sometimes disappeared altogether. It was frustrating and time-consuming trying to locate them. Like naughty children, the spirits seemed to be testing my patience, and I could see no sense at all in their behaviour. If there were mischievous entities trying to lighten the atmosphere they did not succeed, and their actions always made me angry.
I confided these peculiar happenings to a friend who was helping with some odd jobs around the house. He laughed, and told me that it was just my imagination. When he next looked for his toolkit it had gone, and he accused me of having moved it. I assured him that I had done no such thing and we spent the next hour searching for it, but to no avail. He was extremely agitated by this time and went back into the room in which he had been working to fetch his coat. There, in full view, was his toolkit. Sitting on top of the bag was a St Christopher medal he had lost earlier that year. His face was an absolute picture.
When he left, he said, ‘I will never again disbelieve the stories you tell me. Today I have had proof positive that there are things that ordinary people may never see, feel or understand, but they are there. Somehow, it’s a comforting thought.’ He hugged me and laughed. ‘I’ve learned a valuable lesson today. I don’t know everything.’ ‘Nobody ever will,’ I replied.
On another occasion a female friend asked me if I could locate her wedding ring, which she had lost the previous day. I closed my eyes and asked for help in tracing it and a few moments later was given the location. It was in my own bathroom! We decided to investigate and to our amazement found the ring lying on the side of the bath. My friend was shaking. ‘Betty, what on earth is going on?’ she asked. ‘I lost this ring in my home and it turns up in yours.’
‘I have no idea,’ I replied. ‘This is the family bathroom. It’s never used by anyone else.’
In that instant a woman’s voice came through to me. ‘Tell Jim he must not use his car until he has checked the brakes.’ Jim was my friend’s husband and I gave her the message.
‘Who was she? Did she give a name?’ she asked.
‘No, she didn’t,’ I replied.
‘Don’t you think that is a bit odd?’ I laughed, and said, ‘She certainly didn’t hang around, but I do think you should ring Jim and warn him.’
She did so, and a look of complete bewilderment came over her face as she spoke to her husband. She replaced the phone.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she told me. ‘He said he’d had a strong feeling that something was wrong with the brakes so he took the car to the garage to have them checked. He is waiting for the result.’ My friend smiled. ‘He is a real sceptic, you know. Perhaps this will make him think.’ The next day she called to tell me that the brakes had been stripped on one side and could have caused a serious accident.
Two weeks later, the mysterious voice contacted me again, and told me that she was Jim’s late mother. This time she wanted to give him some advice about his business. Her prophecy was later to be proved correct and prevented him from losing a large amount of money.
Whenever I felt the need to be peaceful, I would go into my healing room. By the simple act of walking into the room I was transported to another world a world of love and beauty and forgiveness. It was so easy to close my eyes, daydream and just drift off. For as long as I can remember I have used this easy way of meditating.
One day, however, an unfamiliar voice interrupted my reverie by calling my name. As he spoke I began to feel light-headed, and felt myself drifting into a deep trance state.
‘There will be great changes in your life,’ he told me. ‘You are being taught by the finest minds. Do not argue with them.’ There was a pause, then he continued, ‘The path you are on was of your own choosing.’ I tried to ask questions telepathically but my mind was not functioning. When I was finally able to think logically the voice had gone.
On opening my eyes I could see a white haze swirling around the room, forming intricate patterns. It disappeared finally into a whirlpool of its own making, and I wondered whether I was being shown the door from one dimension to another.
Still feeling sleepy, I thought about his remark that the path was of my own choosing. If this was true, and there was no reason for me to suspect that it was not, why had I selected it? Why had I pursued a singing career? Why had the events of the last year all come as such a shock? There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but the answers were not forthcoming at this time. Nevertheless, I did agree with the first part of his message. It was quite obvious that I was being taught by the best when I was healing.
It was during a healing session that I was shown another aspect of mediumship. I was with a woman who had recently lost her brother. She told me that there were only three members of her family left, and that this had left her in a very depressed frame of mind. As she was speaking I could feel a presence in the room, and a man’s voice said, ‘Tell her it’s her brother Jack.’ I passed on the message, and asked whether he was the brother who had just died. She told me that Jack was her eldest brother and that he had passed on three years ago. It was Barry, the youngest, who had just died.
Jack spoke again. ‘I want you to concentrate, so that my sister will be convinced we have survived.’ I presumed he meant himself and Barry. Then, in my mind, I was shown a photograph. There were about ten people in the picture and I could see them all clearly.
‘Tell her that she has an identical photograph at home.’ I duly passed this message on, and Jack then told me that he was going to give me the names of the people in the photograph, starting at the top, and going from left to right. I told my client what was happening, and indicated that she should find a pen and paper. As the names came through she wrote them down. When Jack completed the list, he told her that everyone he had mentioned sent their love, and that she was being cared for. Tears flowed when the communication came to an end, and looking at the names, she recognized the family she had lost.
‘Why aren’t you in the photograph?’ I asked.
‘Because I took it,’ she told me. ‘We’d got together for my mother’s birthday and I wanted to use my new camera.’
I asked whether she still had the photograph.
‘I believe I have. I’ll look for it when I get home, and give you a ring.’ She telephoned that evening to tell me that all the names were correct, and so was the order Jack had given.
She visited me once more, for healing. As she left she said, ‘I haven’t suffered from depression since I last saw you, because death doesn’t frighten me any more.’ She held my hands and smiled. ‘You see,’ she went on, ‘I know now that I will one day be reunited with my family, and they will be cross with me if I waste my life in the meantime.’ I never saw her again, but always received a ‘thank you’ card at Christmas.
After this episode there seemed to be a spate of ‘survivors’ showing me photographs and using the same process that Jack had done. It became obvious that there must be a system of telepathy and that everyone wanted to get in on the act.
The mediumship was going very well, until a female communicator began to speak in French. When I explained to my client that I hadn’t the faintest idea what was being said she explained that her father was French, and that the communicator was probably her paternal aunt.
‘Well I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass on this one,’ I told her. Suddenly, the aunt stopped using her voice and communicated telepathically – so the messages were conveyed and everyone was happy. I have been able to link people of all nationalities by this method. Occasionally they forget halfway through the conversation and resort to their native language, but a gentle reminder soon brings everything back to normal. There are moments when things go slightly awry, of course, but the laughter that ensues is a healing in itself.
There was one conversation that particularly moved me. It was that of a young French lady who had died in a fire. She told me that she felt no pain as the flames engulfed her because her mind had precipitated her death and had left her body before it was burned. The recipient of this message was her aunt, who was sitting beside me, weeping gently. She told me later that she had suffered terrible nightmares since the accident, supposing her niece to have died in agony.
A very similar story was that of a young man who had fallen out of a ten-storey building after a night of drinking. He contacted me whilst his mother was receiving healing and told her that his mind had left his body as he had fallen. He felt nothing as he surveyed the body lying on the ground.
‘I felt as though I was a mere bystander, looking at a stranger,’ he told us.
These stories have brought great comfort to those whose family and friends have died in similar circumstances. The mind protects and leaves when physically all is lost.
I was beginning to enjoy the survival evidence I received whilst giving healing. It was obvious that it brought enormous relief from pain and suffering and was, in fact, an alternative method of healing.
I was also perfecting the art of meditation, and through it was given an insight into another dimension. I had already seen a little of it as a child but now, years later, it was as though I could walk on air and I seemed to float effortlessly over mountains and valleys. I was taught that the thought was the deed. Simply think yourself somewhere and you were there. The temperature around me never changed, whether I was in a green valley or the desert, and it was always comfortable. I felt as though I was being bathed and massaged by the warm air around me, and the atmosphere was always charged with a vibrancy that one never experienced on earth. The colours were as I remembered them from my childhood. There was a brilliance, even in the pastel shades, that was hypnotic, and the perfume-laden air was intoxicating. When I was not in a meditative state I questioned whether these journeys were real or imaginary. In my heart I knew they were real, but how could I be sure? I did not want to fool myself. It was to be months before I was given the answer.
One day I slipped from a meditative mood into a trance, and found myself walking through seemingly endless corridors. The walls and ceiling of the building were transparent, and emanated a silvery light. As I reached the end of the corridor I saw my mother waiting for me. Other family and friends gathered round and we hugged and kissed. I remember asking if this were real and my mother told me never to doubt it. I wanted to stay but was informed that I still had a lot to do. When I finally awoke I knew that I had indeed been with my family and friends.
On subsequent visits I was shown halls of music, where each tone was matched by colours cascading down from the ceiling like a waterfall. I was shown how one can, with the necessary talent, think a building into existence, or think a bowl of cherries onto a table. The examples were endless and I was always enthralled at the visions before me.
These were to be confirmed time and again by survival evidence. I was entertaining some friends one evening when I saw a woman standing behind one of my female guests. I described the lady and gave her name, and was told that it was an aunt who had been dead for some time. My friend asked why her aunt was here.
‘I want to tell you that I shall stay with my father until it is time for him to come with me,’ was the reply.
‘How long will that be?’ my friend asked.
‘A few days,’ her aunt said. ‘He will feel no more pain.’ Then she left.
I thought it strange that my friend seemed happy to receive this message until she explained that her grandfather had suffered so much in the past year that death would be a merciful release for him.
Her grandfather indeed suffered no more pain, and died three days later. Proof that our loved ones ease our last moments and help us on our journey was given to me in so many ways.
I was once visiting an elderly lady in hospital when I saw a female spirit sitting at the bottom of the bed. She told me that she was waiting to take her mother ‘home’. I asked the patient if she had any family.
‘No!’ she said. ‘I did have a daughter, but she died in her teens. I’m sure I shall see her again.’ I described the visitor, and she confirmed that it was her daughter.
‘I expect she has come to fetch me,’ she said in a matter-of-fact way.
‘Or to give you reassurance,’ I suggested, trying to be positive. The old lady smiled knowingly. ‘I think she knows best,’ she said. She died a week later.
A small boy, who was in the last stages of cancer, came to me for healing. Ten minutes into the session a man stood in front of me, told me that he was the boy’s grandfather and that he would like to speak to his grandson. I asked the parents if they would permit me to pass on the messages. They agreed, and told me that they had spoken to their son about the afterlife, and that they believed his grandfather would be waiting for him.
‘I have come to tell you how beautiful it is where I am living now,’ the grandfather said. ‘I had never seen real colour before I came here. And the birds are magnificent, they look like a firework display as they move through the air. There are animals everywhere and they are loved by everyone.’
‘Will I be with you?’ the boy asked.
‘Of course,’ he was told. ‘I can’t wait to show you around. I must go now. Be seeing you.’
The parents tried to hide their tears for the sake of their son. They were still hoping for a miracle cure, but knew that they had just been given the answer. The little boy was ecstatic. He could not wait to see his beloved grandfather again, and spoke of nothing else during the remainder of the healing.
He died two months later. His mother told me that he had held conversations with his grandfather whilst in a coma. ‘There is no doubt that he could see and hear him,’ she said. The grandfather had arrived to ease the boy’s last days on earth, and had also given the parents immense pleasure knowing that he would be waiting for their child. But most of all it had relieved them of much pain and despair. Through the power of mediumship they had received a miracle.
It was at times like these that I realized the importance of mediumship. It is a talent that goes beyond anything that can be given by other professionals, and is a vital link between two worlds. With it comes a responsibility that can make or break you. ‘Is that what is happening to me?’ I asked myself. ‘Am I being tested to find out whether I can survive the onslaught?’ In the past 18 months I had certainly experienced phenomena that were absolutely incredible.
At times I found the whole process quite unbelievable. I had never had any inclination to involve myself with the paranormal in any way; my life had been too full of other interests and I knew nothing of spiritualism. The idea of visiting a spiritualist church would have been entirely alien to me.
However, I was taken to several spiritualist churches by a friend who thought that it would ease my path and provide some of the answers to my innumerable questions. But I soon closed that particular door, realizing that I had to find out the truth about this very extraordinary profession, for myself. I decided to follow a solitary path, mainly because I did not want to be brainwashed by the thoughts of others. If this was to be my future, and it was certainly beginning to look as though it was, then I had to break down all the barriers and come face to face, not only with myself, but with the power behind the phenomena.
One particular episode taxed my imagination. A small boy, who had been receiving healing from me, told his mother that he had seen me sitting on his bed during the night. ‘She was wearing a long blue gown, and smiled at me,’ he said, and though his mother questioned him for some time, intimating that he could have been dreaming, he was adamant. ‘I know I wasn’t dreaming because she woke me up when she sat on the bed.’ When his mother told me the story I was nonplussed. As far as I knew I had been safely tucked up in my own bed.
A similar story was given to me by another patient. Her husband was in a London hospital suffering from emphysema, and she had asked me to give him absent healing. When she visited him the following day he told her that a blonde woman wearing a long blue gown had visited him during the night. She asked him for a description; when he gave it, she said, ‘Oh, that’s Betty,’ and explained that she had asked me to give absent healing. She could not contain her excitement when she recounted the story to me. ‘How do you do it?’ she asked. I could only tell her that I hadn’t the faintest idea.
These nocturnal ‘visits’ were to become a regular occurrence, and were a complete mystery to me until a familiar voice – who I was by now calling my guru – told me that the mind leaves the body in sleep and can move around freely and show itself as a spirit form, exactly the same method as when someone dies and then appears as a spirit.
‘But how can these people see me when they’re awake?’ I asked.
‘Because their mind is still partly out of the body. We can only be seen with the mind,’ he answered. ‘Mind energy consists of the same elements as our dimension.’ It was a relief to know that somewhere, somehow, I was not harbouring a strange wardrobe and wandering about at night. Obviously my mind had a mind of its own!
One evening, feeling particularly drained after a full day’s healing, I sat down in my favourite armchair and drifted off into a light sleep. I awoke with a start when I felt the pressure of hands on my shoulders, but although I looked around there was no one there. I stood up and searched every room in the house, but I was definitely alone. I returned to my armchair, sat down and closed my eyes, and immediately felt the pressure on my shoulders again. I must admit it felt a bit creepy, and this time I simply could not move. I thought I recognized the feel of the hands but could not quite place it. Quite suddenly I was relieved of the pressure and found that I could stand. I walked around the room, feeling a bit odd, when something to my right caught my attention, I turned, and standing before me was my mother. I was so moved that I could not utter a sound. She smiled and disappeared. Trying to recall the vision later I could not remember whether she had been solid or transparent. I decided later that I had probably seen her as both as I had moved from one dimension to another.
There were times when I felt that the spirits had completely taken over my home. I would occasionally catch a fleeting glimpse of a spirit form if I turned suddenly, and it was this experience that taught me that the spirit world is not ‘out there’ somewhere. It is all around us. It is the energy counterpart of this planet and when we die our minds, free once more, spin through an energy vortex and, quite simply, go home.
In my first book, Mind to Mind, I told of the spirits that I could see walking through my bedroom as a child. Now I was being shown, once more, that this seemingly solid world of ours is but a shadow to the spirit world. This is why entities are able to disappear through doors and walls, and walk through wardrobes.
This conviction was confirmed one night when I saw the spirit form of a deceased friend quite literally walk through the wardrobe in my bedroom, sit on the bed and then it disappeared. A minute later he came up through the floor and stood laughing at the foot of the bed. I could sense him saying, ‘Well, what do you think about that!’
I found it quite extraordinary that I was accepting these visitations so easily – a far cry from my childhood when I habitually walked backwards, bumping into everything, because the church had convinced me that the devil was following me and waiting to pounce if I misbehaved. At least that is how my young mind interpreted it. And I hated the idea of a guardian angel. It sounded so GOOD! The entities that shared my life now were normal; there was no goody-goody stuff with this lot, they were just ordinary beings going about their lives, albeit in another world. I was finally beginning to like the ‘feel’ of this new experience, and loved the warm embrace of the energy that surrounded me, especially when I was healing.
All my life I had felt that there was something wonderful waiting to happen. When I fell in love I used to think, ‘This is it.’ But after a while I would realize that it was not ‘the happening’ yet, that it was still to come. I used to lie awake at night sometimes, wondering what it was going to be. I would frequently stare at the night sky, seeking the answer amongst the stars and beyond, but nothing could have prepared me for what was happening to me now; this, surely, must be the supreme ‘happening’.
But as in everything, there has to be another side of the coin and that for me was my continued apathy toward the idea of giving ‘sittings’. When I did give in I made sure that the room was bright and cheerful. There were no dark rooms with red lights for me – that would have totally depressed me. Although my clients were always moved and overjoyed by the outcome, I was unable to rid myself of the restlessness that I felt throughout the whole sitting. I had so much energy!
I often thought how stupid I would feel if no one wished to communicate and we had to sit in complete silence. But the challenge was to come in an entirely different way, and although I have recounted this story before I think it is still worth recalling, if only to help would-be mediums.
Within a few minutes of giving one particular sitting, I was given a picture of a pink elephant, and for a moment I wondered whether my client was an alcoholic. The picture appeared in my mind three times.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t said anything yet,’ I told her, ‘but quite honestly all I’m getting is a picture of a pink elephant.’
She was delighted. ‘I cannot thank you enough,’ she replied, ‘that is all I wanted to hear.’ She explained: ‘When my husband died he told me that if there was an afterlife he would show me a pink elephant. I’ve already been to several mediums, and was beginning to think that there was no life after death.’ She looked a little shamefaced, and went on, ‘I have to tell you that I deliberately thought of something else so that you couldn’t pick it up telepathically.’ Then she asked me why the other mediums had not picked it up.
‘There could be many reasons,’ I replied. ‘Perhaps your husband wasn’t around to pass the message on. Or, if they did get the message they might have felt a bit stupid.’ I smiled. ‘I must admit, I thought you were going to laugh at me.’
‘I’m so glad you told me,’ she said. ‘You’ve made me very happy.’
When she had gone, I wondered how many mediums had left out a vital piece of information whilst passing on survival evidence, simply to protect their own reputations. I was beginning to realize how much courage and intelligence one had to have to become a good medium. Receiving the messages was only a small part of the whole. Throughout the first two years, a pattern evolved both in healing and mediumship. A new experience would result in a spate of similar occurrences.
Whilst I was giving healing to a young woman, her brother came through and showed me a book with a thistle pressed in it. She understood this because he had promised that this would be his way of showing her that life did exist after death. She was understandably shaken, because she had not expected the information to be given to her during a healing session. She had visited several mediums previously, to no avail, and as her brother had been dead for four years she had completely forgotten his original promise.
On one occasion when I was giving a friend counselling, the beautiful scent of a rose filled the air. She recognized it immediately as a rose her father had loved when he was alive.
‘He promised to send me a rose if he survived,’ she told me, ‘but the perfume is even better.’ Just as she was about to leave she found a rose lying next to her handbag. It was the same variety that her father had grown and loved.
I had a similar communication whilst healing a man in his fifties. He most definitely did not believe in the afterlife, and I often pulled his leg about it. I was in a quandary. What should I do? I had to pass on the message although I knew 1 would be giving him ammunition for the future if it did not make any sense to him.
‘There is someone here who wishes to communicate with you,’ I said.
‘You must be joking,’ he replied. ‘You’re having me on.’
I smiled. ‘I promise you I’m not. His name is Peter, and he’s saying that he still owes you a fiver.’
‘Bloody hell! That’s my brother-in-law, and that was the last thing I said to him before he died. It was a joke, because he’d owed me the fiver since his wedding thirty years ago.’
‘He’s telling me that he’s definitely going to return it to you, to prove once and for all that he is still alive. There you are,’ I went on, laughing. ‘And he doesn’t like the way you speak to me about the afterlife!’
Peter then passed on several messages of a private nature, and when he had finished my patient was completely nonplussed and rather put out. ‘I’m going to have to think about this before I tell the family. They’ll think I’ve gone barmy.’ ‘Well, let me know if you get the five pounds,’ I joked. A month later he rang and told me that when he had got into his car that morning a five pound note had been lying on the passenger seat! It could not have been placed there by anyone else as he had the only set of keys. The spirits are very fond of leaving money around for some reason and they seem to favour the five pound note. I have been the recipient of many of these notes, and have found them in the most unlikely places.
It was now 1974, well into the second year of these incredible happenings, and I was being urged by a number of people to ‘take to the platform’ – the platform being spiritualist churches and the like. I had already been informed by the first medium I had visited that I would not work from the platform and that my work would always be confidential. I could well understand this, as I am a very private person. I had been the grateful recipient of messages from mediums who worked in the churches, so it was not a question of disapproval. It was simply not me.
‘But all good mediums take to the platform,’ my friend informed me.
‘Well, this one won’t be doing so,’ I told her. I also knew that I had a lot to learn and that I needed to do this in the privacy of my own home.
The more I thought about this issue the more important it became when I thought about the very private messages that came through, and the tears and laughter that ensued when I passed them on. There are as many people who wish to keep their lives a private matter between themselves and the communicator as there are those who do not mind sharing their messages with others. I fall into the former group, so I suppose it is inevitable that I have elected to work confidentially.
Many people believe that it is only women who seek help and guidance through mediumships, but this is not so; I had many men ask for my help. They tended to book evening appointments and I frequently worked until eleven o’clock at night. I believe that they felt at ease with me because very often the outcome of a sitting would be just as much a surprise to me as it was to them. During one of these sessions a man spoke to me.
‘My name is Carl. Would you tell my son that I did not leave my wife destitute as he believes.’
The man sitting opposite me stared in disbelief as I gave him the message. Then he said, ‘I’m afraid my father is wrong. We’ve looked everywhere for the life insurance policy that he always said existed, and there is no sign of it.’
The father spoke again. ‘Do you remember, as a boy, creeping up behind me when I visited the cellar?’ There was a pause as I passed the information on to my client, who answered in the affirmative. ‘Do you remember what I was doing?’ the father asked.
My client looked puzzled and said, ‘No, I don’t know what he was doing.’
It was here that the voice stopped and instead I was given the picture of a cellar. At the side of a workbench someone was taking a brick out of the wall. A hand reached into the space and brought out a box. Then the vision ended. The son was stunned. ‘I had no idea what he was up to when he went down there. The crafty old devil.’
He then told me that he had been extremely worried about his mother’s future. ‘Although she has her own home,’ he said, ‘she only has a small pension. I’m helping her, but with three children of my own it is very difficult.’ He laughed for the first time. ‘I hope there is something in that bloody box.’
And there was. Speaking to me a week later he told me how he had rushed to his mother’s house and after a hasty greeting had gone down to the cellar. Examining the wall at the side of the bench he had found the loose brick and the box. Inside were three life insurance policies, worth in the region of eighty thousand pounds.
If he had not sought help from a medium, those policies would have remained hidden.
Every day seemed to bring such wonder to me, and I wanted to share my experiences with the whole world. But, intuitively, I knew that it was too early. Although I was a relative newcomer in this field I had already seen the destructive influences at work and I knew I had to wait until I could prove myself under the most trying circumstances. In fact, I waited twelve years. More of that later.
Occasionally, my life was disrupted by an aggressive individual. One such person was the father of a small boy who suffered agonizing pains in his legs. The mother had brought the boy to me and the pain had receded after only two visits. It was then that the father decided he did not want the boy to receive healing. He would not give a reason but threatened the mother with dire results if she brought him to me. Fortunately for her son she chose to ignore the threats and continued with the healing.
One day, whilst I was healing the boy, the front door bell rang, and continued to ring until I opened the door. A man rushed past me, opening doors until he found the healing room. At this stage I had no idea who he was. When I entered the room I realized he was the boy’s father. He and his wife were having a terrible row and the child was crying. I managed to calm them down and sat talking to them for several minutes. Amidst all this confusion a spirit voice told me to get the mother and child out of the room. I turned to the woman and suggested that she take her son to my kitchen and make us all a cup of tea. She agreed. Left alone with the father, I told him that someone was trying to communicate with him.
He exploded! ‘I don’t want to listen to all this rubbish,’ he said. ‘That’s why I don’t want the boy coming here.’ I continued. ‘It is your grandmother, Mabel.’ On hearing his grandmother’s name he became speechless.
‘She’s telling me that out of all her grandchildren you were the one who used to show her kindness and respect. Is that correct?’ I asked. He nodded and I continued. ‘She is telling me that your aggression stems from the fact that you always longed for a child to share your interest in sport, especially football, and that you are devastated by your son’s disability.’ The man covered his face with his hands and quietly sobbed.
I got up and locked the door. I did not want his wife and son to see him this way. Placing my hand on his shoulder, I said, ‘Mabel is telling me that she had impressed upon your wife to bring your son to me as the medical profession could not help him.’ At that point the messages ended.
I waited for the man to compose himself, then said, ‘Your grandmother has made such an effort to help. What is there to lose? Allow your son to have healing. You never know, Mabel may be able to conjure up a miracle or two.’ He stared at me. ‘But I don’t believe in it.’ ‘Well, let my belief carry us all,’ I suggested.
I left him alone for a few minutes and then returned with his wife and son. We sat in silence for a while and then, much to the mother’s astonishment, the little boy’s father said, ‘Well, son, I think we will both be bringing you next week.’ He had his reward when his son put his arms around his neck and kissed him.
Six months later they were playing football together. The child never looked back, and he and his father had a very special relationship from that day on.
On another occasion a woman arrived for healing. During the treatment I heard a man’s voice saying, ‘Beth, you must get out, you’re in danger.’ I asked my client about her home life as I felt that was where the danger lay. It became obvious during the course of the conversation that I was right, and I decided to pass the message on to her so that we could discuss it. It did not seem to come as a surprise to her at all, in fact, she was very calm. She simply said, ‘I know.’ I asked her why she was not prepared to leave and she told me that her husband was mentally ill and would not seek treatment. He was becoming so aggressive that she was afraid he would commit suicide.
The voice spoke again. ‘Tell her this is Len, and I want her to leave now as she is making it too easy for him.’ I passed the message on to her, and she told me that Len was her late father-in-law. We discussed what he had said and I urged her to leave, if only for a few days. I was extremely worried about the situation, as I could hear the urgency in Len’s voice. Before she left I suggested that she should think very carefully about the information she had been given. Two days later she telephoned to say that her husband had tried to attack her so she had left and was now staying with her sister.
Three months later she came to see me and told me the whole story. Apparently, her husband had suffered a nervous breakdown the previous year but had refused to visit his doctor. He would not allow any of his family and friends to help him and had simply given up. He had lost his job, and had locked himself away in his home refusing to see anyone at all.
When Beth had returned home after visiting me he had insisted on knowing where she had been and when she refused to tell him, he became angry and attacked her. She realized, perhaps for the first time, that she was in danger, and decided to take Len’s advice and get out. The outcome was that with no one to lean on, her husband eventually sought help from his doctor, who recommended counselling.
Beth told me that it was Len’s messages that had been the deciding factor when she had left. She realized for the first time that her strength was encouraging her husband’s weakness. Now his health was restored, they were back together, and were extremely happy.
Beth had decided against telling her husband about the spirit messages. So she was surprised one day when he said, ‘You know, all the time I was ill I felt that my father was with me and was trying to tell me something. I wish I knew what it was.’
‘Well, perhaps one day we’ll visit a medium and you’ll find out,’ Beth replied.
‘You must be joking,’ he said. ‘Ydon’t believe in all that stuff.’ Beth just smiled.
I find it quite extraordinary that thousands of people who believe their late family and friends are often around them also insist that there is no life after death. It is totally illogical. And, many of those who do believe will not visit a medium because they are afraid their loved ones will speak to them.
I was also astonished to find that many clients who received wonderful survival evidence were unable to believe what they had heard and half suggested that I had been checking up on their family. I have never had the time to check my own family trees, let alone hundreds of others!
Everyone I met assumed that I had sat for years in a development group and were astonished when I told them that it had all more or less happened overnight. I am far too impatient to sit around waiting for something to happen, but when it does I take advantage of what I have been given. That is why in these first years I really had a great time. I could not wait for the next instalment, and when it came I was like a child with a new toy. I played with it, challenged it and, needless to say, marvelled at it. As I did with the next experience.
I was quietly reading a book one evening and became aware of a swirl of energy around me. Placing the book on the couch, I looked around the room and found that I was in the centre of a moving landscape of colour – pink clouds, orange hills, blue waterfalls and brilliant white fountains, a kaleidoscope of different pictures, landscapes filled with the beauty of colour, moving and changing all the time. I was entranced. Then a voice said, ‘Colour changes everything.’ It certainly did. When the energy silently slipped away and I was left once again with my ordinary room, I felt cheated. From that day on I brought more colour into my life. I also experimented with colour healing and found that it was extremely beneficial, especially with distant healing.
Time and again I marvelled at this incredible world that was being shown to me. It made everyday surroundings appear so dull. My whole life seemed to be on a roller-coaster, and there was no way that I could control the brakes. When I was tired, I often tried to shut it all out but could not. If it was not amazing phenomena it was small things, like the sound of the telephone ringing in my ears, warning me that my own phone would ring in a few seconds. Or the sound of a dog barking in my head – though we had no animals at that time. My belongings continued to disappear and reappear in the most peculiar places. This still annoyed me! There were whirlwinds of energy that felt as though someone had opened all the doors and windows on a chill winter evening. I felt a hand stroking my face whilst I was healing. I had become quite blase about the beam of light in the hall as it appeared so often. Sometimes there was someone inside the beam but very often it was empty. I had begun to think of it as a spaceship, which was really strange as I have always been bored to tears with things like the Star Trek films on television. However, it was the appearance of spirit forms that held my attention. How wonderful they were! And how incredible it was to study this phenomenon that had first manifested when I was a child, when I hadn’t a clue what was going on. Now, thirty-five years later, I still didn’t know an awful lot but at least the added years had given me the gift of reasoning – even though that was being taxed at this time.
I remember one incident in particular. I had finished healing for the day and was just about to leave the room when I saw a spirit form taking shape from the feet upwards. This was no ordinary spirit. It was a man with long white hair, whose beard practically reached his waist. He was wearing a white gown that swirled around his feet. My first thought was that he looked like Father Time, or at least how I would have imagined him. My legs were shaking so much I had to sit down. I waited for some kind of communication, but there was nothing. Then objects began to dance around on the table and the room seemed to shake. It was scary. I was staring at the old man and our eyes appeared to be locked together in some kind of beam. Then, just like a melting snowman, he disappeared into the floor and was gone.
It was incredible to say the least, and I was longing to tell someone about it, but felt that my family and friends had already been pushed to the edge with my new-found talents. I was intrigued, and for days I tried to recreate the image of this man. Who was he? What did he want to tell me? Had he been trying to communicate telepathically? I certainly did not feel any benefit from him having appeared, and had received no extra knowledge. At least not yet. It was to be a week before I found out what I had been given. Whilst speaking to a friend I realized that when she mentioned someone’s name I knew everything about them. I asked her to test me by mentioning names that were unknown to me, and the results were amazing. Previously, I could give an outline of the personality, but now, I was being given minute details about their lives, and their future. Somehow, this man had given me a line straight through to the Universal Mind. It was an incredible discovery, and a talent that enabled me to help people who were unable to visit me.
One such person was a lady who was bedridden and totally dependent on her family. She wrote to request absent healing and, at the same time, asked whether I could suggest Christmas presents for two nieces and a nephew. The names and birth dates were listed at the bottom of the letter, and as I studied them I had a picture of all three children. The two girls were totally different personalities; one was rather excitable and the other quiet, and as I thought about them individually I was able to recommend suitable gifts. When I linked into her nephew I knew that he would like a dartboard.
A month later I received the following letter:
It is with great regret that I have to tell you that my aunt died four days after Christmas.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping her with the children’s presents. She was overcome with joy when she saw how thrilled they were with her gifts. Needless to say, the children will treasure them and they will remind them of a very loving and lovely person.
I have only one question: How did you do it? I am fascinated.
How could I tell her when I did not know the answer myself ?
My life was becoming stranger than fiction, and at times I had the feeling that my home had become a time capsule. Visions of the past and future were constantly being relayed to me. The visions I did not like were those that showed disasters waiting to happen.
One night, in a dream, I saw an aircraft crash into some palm trees on the water’s edge, and I watched as it crumpled on to the beach in slow motion, the blue sea lapping over the wings of the aircraft. In the distance I could hear people crying for help, and then I woke up.
I woke my daughter, Janet, and told her that there had been a terrible plane crash. I was quite distraught; the vision was still in my mind and I felt as though I had been a part of the tragedy. Although I knew the crash had happened on a tropical island I had not been given a name or a date, and it could have happened anywhere in the world. The frustration was immense. Eventually I went back to bed.
The following morning I turned on the television, expecting to hear about the disaster. There was nothing. For the next week I listened to every news broadcast, and when I still heard nothing about the crash I decided that it had only been a dream after all.
Two weeks later I was looking at the television and was shocked to see my dream being re-enacted on the screen. The plane was going across the screen from right to left, exactly as I had seen it. It crashed into the palm trees and landed on the edge of the beach, and I heard the newsreader say that many lives had been lost. I was devastated. What was the point of giving me the vision if I was unable to help? Why wasn’t I given the time and place so that the accident could have been averted?
Whilst meditating some time later, I was told that I was to become part of a group who help accident victims come to terms with the fact that they are dead. When someone dies in this way they cannot understand why people in this dimension cannot see or hear them because for a time they still feel normal. I asked how I could help, as it was obvious to me that the majority of relatives and friends would not be visiting a medium. I was told that I would be helping whilst in a sleep state. Although it all sounded very interesting, I still could not see how I could fulfil this role.
A few years later a woman came for a sitting and I told her that there was a young girl, Sara, who said she was her daughter. The woman held her head in her hands for a few moments. When she looked up, she said, ‘I have been praying that she would contact me. What does she have to say?’
‘She is telling me that she brought your attention to a newspaper article about me,’ I replied, laughing. ‘Why should she want to do that?
‘I don’t know,’ Sara’s mother said, ‘but she’s right. Someone had left their paper on the train and I was attracted to your photograph and read the article. It was then that I decided to visit you.’
‘Your daughter tells me that you have always wondered whether she suffered when she was killed in the car crash. Is that right?’
‘Yes. That thought is always with me.’
‘She wants you to know that she did not suffer at all.’ I paused. ‘That’s strange, she’s thanking me for easing her path and for being there when she needed me.’
The mother frowned. ‘How could you have helped her?’
I explained about the activities of the rescue service. She found it hard to understand – and so did I! But this was only the beginning. There were to be many similar messages given to me in the future. That particular sitting continued for an hour, bringing mother and daughter together for the first time in two years.
At this point in time I was beginning to feel frustrated with many aspects of my life, not least the inability to find time for myself. I was now working twelve hours a day, six days a week. I tried not to work on Sunday.
Family and friends were urging me to take it easy, but what could I do when there were so many people needing help and guidance? There was already a four-week waiting list. If I cut down on my working hours that list would grow longer, and I feared for the health of some of my patients. I made the decision to reduce the hour-long appointments to half an hour.
Now, in 1975, I was in the third year of my healing and mediumship.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_d13b5891-37b2-584a-b110-8d8f92f63acd)
My mediumship was tested continually whilst I was healing. At first there was the smell of ether, so strong at times that it affected everyone visiting my home. Most of my patients claimed that it made them feel light-headed. Although I hated it, I found that in a peculiar way – it also comforted me. I felt that someone was trying to impress upon me that I was being guided. This was also confirmed by my medium friend.
‘For our spirit friends,’ he told me, ‘it is the simplest way of letting you know that a surgeon wishes to work through you.’
‘How long do you think it will last?’ I asked.
‘However long it takes to convince you,’ he replied. On the rare occasions that we met I tried to persuade him to become my mentor, but he was adamant.
‘You do not need me,’ he said. ‘I know that you have the finest spirit teachers available to you, because I have never seen anyone surrounded by so much power. All you have to do is listen and learn.’ He leaned forward and touched my hand. ‘You see, my dear, all I am is what my spirit helpers allow me to be. I am not a healer. I couldn’t heal anyone. I am just a medium, and use that talent to help where I can.’
From the beginning I had felt a presence whilst healing, and occasionally caught a glimpse of spirit hands touching the patient. The first time it happened I thought my mind was playing tricks with me. The following day, when the hands appeared again I could also see the lower part of the arms. Eventually I was able to see the whole spirit entity but, unlike many mediums who have specific people working through them, I seemed to have been contacted by a variety of personalities. I wondered if they were trying to find someone who suited my own psyche. It was very easy to distinguish between them; as their minds linked with mine their differing personalities were immediately obvious because they affected my own behaviour. One or two of the doctors had a sense of humour not unlike my own, while another would be very sombre and so the healing would be very quiet. The spirit doctor who carried out the manipulations of limbs was very excitable, and gave me the impression that he was, perhaps, slightly eccentric. I found it all absolutely fascinating.
I have mentioned in a previous book, Mind Magic, the time when Louis Pasteur manifested three times and informed me that he was going to help me with the healing, and of how I visited the library to find a photograph that would confirm that it was indeed that great doctor. The incredible healing that took place after this visitation was further confirmation.
I have always had a theory that if one keeps a picture in one’s mind of a particular person then, eventually, that image will be played back to us. I was absolutely determined that this was not going to happen to me, mainly because I was seeking the truth.
I know the manifestation of Louis Pasteur was real, because I had not thought about him since leaving school. Although my patients often asked the name of the spirit doctor who worked through me, I was loath to mention a name as famous as that of Pasteur, so my reply was that I did not know. I was given a photograph of him by a close friend, but hid it in a drawer because I did not want his image to encroach upon my mind. I knew he would understand.
From time to time other spirit doctors have come through and given me their names, but for some reason I have never bothered to write them down. The names themselves did not mean anything to me; it was their achievements that inspired me.
I came to the conclusion, after several years, that there were many brilliant doctors helping me, but Pasteur was definitely at the helm, holding everything and everybody together.
However, in my third year I was left wondering who on earth all these people were. It was made clear to me when I began to take note of the patients and their specific ailments that the spirit doctors were specialists in their own field. Since then I always ask for ‘the best you’ve got’ at the beginning of a healing session – and I know that my wish will be granted. I was also determined, at this stage, not to study medical textbooks. Apart from the fact that they can be extremely depressing, I do believe that ‘a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing’. Imagine my surprise, then, when a medical diagnosis was given to me. Many of my patients were delighted, because they had been visiting their doctors for years without any lasting cure. Most of the diagnoses were eventually confirmed by medical specialists, but a number of my patients had vowed, before visiting me, that they would never again put their lives in the hands of doctors. Although I never agreed with this decision I could sympathize. I had been there myself, having to date been given two terminal prognoses which had eventually turned out to be common problems that could be cured by vitamin and mineral therapy. But, one must not lose sight of the fact that we could be putting our lives at risk by not taking the best of both worlds.
Jimmy’s story is typical of this.
He was in his twenties, and was suffering from a dragging pain in the left side of his groin. The diagnosis I received was that it was a hernia and could be cured with healing.
After the first two sessions the pain disappeared, and he was delighted. But as he was about to leave my spirit doctor told me that he also had a small benign lump in the groin and that this should be removed medically. Jimmy’s face crumpled when I passed this message on. ‘I’m not going to any bloody doctor!’ he cried. ‘The last one I saw nearly killed my mother by giving her the wrong prescription.’
I spent some time reassuring him. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I would not have been given this message if it would put you in any kind of danger.’
‘Why can’t your spirit doctors get rid of it?’ he asked.
‘I have no idea, but I do trust them,’ I replied.
I persuaded him to visit his doctor eventually, who was not only surprised by the absence of the hernia but was amazed that Jimmy should be aware of the lump in the groin. It was so small that the doctor could barely locate it himself.
Jimmy had the lump removed, and it was benign, but the reason why it was necessary for him to have it removed medically and not spiritually became obvious when he was found to be in the first stages of diabetes.
I received another diagnosis for Irene, a woman in her late forties.
She had asked for healing for severe headaches. During the healing I was told that she had an aneurysm and that she needed immediate surgery and intensive healing after the event.
I was in a dilemma. I felt that I could not give her the diagnosis, but did suggest that she should see a specialist. She took my advice and after many tests my diagnosis was confirmed.
She came to see me two months later, and during that healing session a voice told me that Irene was going to be alright now. I passed this message on, and she laughed.
‘I believe them!’ she said. ‘They have saved my life.’ But she did tell me later that, although she had recovered, she had been convinced that the same thing was going to happen again. I am pleased to say that she was wrong, and my informant was right. I was to see her many times in the following years for her ‘top-up’, as she used to call it, and she never suffered from headaches again.
There were times, however, when the spirit doctors were adamant that my patient should not receive medical treatment. One such person was Peggy.
Peggy had been overcome by the power of the healing energies, and had gone into a deep sleep whilst having treatment. My hands were placed lightly on her stomach when I felt a presence behind me and a hand pressing on my shoulder. Then a voice said, ‘Tell her the operation will not be necessary.’ Peggy had told me that she had been advised to have a hysterectomy as she had fibroids in the womb. The voice continued, ‘Take your hands away.’ As I removed my hands they were replaced by a spinning vortex of energy which remained for approximately five minutes.
While this was taking place I heard whispering in the corner of the room. I could not see anyone, but the whispering continued for several minutes. During this time I felt as though I was levitating, although my feet were planted firmly on the floor. When I had finished healing I left to answer the telephone, and when I returned the room was filled with a haze of blue energy.
Peggy was awake now.
‘I’ve been to the most beautiful place!’ she told me. ‘The colours were out of this world.’
I laughed, and told her that she had indeed been out of this world. I then gave her the whole story. She was thrilled, and delighted that she would not have to go through the trauma of an operation. But before she left I advised her to visit her gynaecologist for a check-up.
I had a telephone call from her the following week. She was shrieking with laughter.
‘Betty,’ she said, ‘you should have seen his face when he told me there was no trace of any fibroids. I told him about the healing and he just shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘I’ve never believed in healing, but with this evidence I may just change my mind.’ But he added, ‘Don’t quote me on it.’
I wondered how many years it would take for the medical profession to accept that there were many healing alternatives where drugs and surgery could be avoided. One of the simplest is a healthy diet and the identification of vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
A young lady in her twenties visited me for healing. Jane was suffering from asthma, eczema and numerous fleeting aches and pains.
She had been having treatment from her GP for two years, until she had insisted that he refer her to the local hospital for a complete check. They had given her the usual drugs and ointment, but nothing had worked. She was in despair. Then a friend told her about healing. She made an appointment to come and see me.
While I was healing her, I noticed a white energy building up at the end of the couch. As always when this happened I felt excited, and my whole body was tingling. Then Jane sat up.
‘My God!’ she exclaimed. ‘I feel as though I’ve been plugged into an electric socket.’
I persuaded her to lie down again, and explained what was happening. It can sometimes be a little frightening if one is not used to healing energies. Unlike Peggy, Jane was being stimulated so much that she never stopped asking questions and I had to ask her to be quiet for a while. During the silence I heard a voice say, very distinctly, ‘The cat has to go.’ I asked Jane whether she had a cat, and if so, how old it was. She told me that Poppy was just over two and the love of her life. Then she frowned, and said, ‘How did you know that I have a cat?’ I passed on the message, and informed her that she was apparently allergic to cats. Jane burst into tears.
‘I can’t possibly get rid of her, I love her too much,’ she said. When she eventually stopped crying we both sat quietly, working out the timing. It was obvious that her allergies had begun when she had acquired Poppy. It became clear to us both that her pet was the problem. Before she left, Jane asked me to continue with the healing, hoping that it would cure her allergies, and avoid a painful parting from her pet. Two months passed and, although she was a bit better, we both realized that the message I received had been correct.
I decided to meditate and to ask for a solution to the problem. It is a practice I have always used for my own problems, and I am constantly surprised by the unusual methods that are used to solve them. This was to be no exception. An acquaintance of Jane’s had been heartbroken when her own cat died of old age, and having learned through the grapevine of Jane’s predicament, begged her to let her have Poppy. Jane eventually let her beloved pet go, knowing that she would be well looked after. Three weeks later, with further healing, the asthma, eczema and the aches and pains had vanished.
A word of warning though, to anyone suffering from the same complaints. Please do not blame your animal. Every case is different, and there are hundreds of reasons why people suffer with these disturbing ailments. Stress is the main factor, and, of course, we can have an allergic reaction to humans too. So please, love and care for your animals. They too have the potential to heal.
I have given a detailed description in Mind Waves about how I was taught to give psychic surgery on the energy counterpart, but the whole story would be a book in itself. During the training period, I became aware of a particularly powerful personality working with me. I think he must have been attracted by my enthusiasm, because when he was around the atmosphere was electric. He pushed me to the limits, and it was this man who was mainly responsible for the eventual fine-tuning of my mediumship. Sometimes the diagnosis he gave me was complicated, and I could feel his irritation when I questioned it. Otherwise, we had a perfect partnership. Once, when I asked his name, he told me that names are of no consequence. It is the quality of the personality that is important. We did think alike. He also told me that continually thinking in terms of ‘self puts the mind into a vacuum which makes it impossible for us to link up with the Universal Mind and the source of all knowledge. In other words, egotists will find themselves perpetually static, unable to think of new ideas or find alternative paths.
I had occasion to doubt a diagnosis many times, and once argued my case quite forcibly. My patient was a man in his fifties, suffering from a persistent backache which prevented him from following his occupation as a builder. A medical specialist had diagnosed a slipped disc and I could see from the energy patterns that this was correct. The diagnosis given by my spirit doctor was a complete energy blockage in the groin. I could not see this, and so I questioned his opinion. This sparked off a few mental fireworks, which I felt were unjustified at the time. I would have eased the energy from the top of the head, to alleviate pressure on the spine and enable the disc to slip back into position. However, as the operation progressed I could see clearly that my teacher was right and that I had been presumptuous, as most students are. He removed a dark tight ball from deep inside the groin area, and informed me that it was a longstanding energy blockage. Immediately I could see energy rushing around the body like a miniature waterfall. My tutor then said, ‘That’s it,’ and left. He had not touched the back at all.
My patient was over the moon when he found the pain had gone. He strutted around the room, bent backwards and forwards, and laughed with delight as he became aware that his slipped disc had been cured.
Because the man had been quite sceptical about healing, and had only agreed to visit me to keep his wife happy, I did not tell him the true story. I did tell his wife later though, and she passed the information on to her husband.
‘I don’t give a damn who did it,’ he said. ‘I think healing is bloody marvellous.’
You might well ask, after reading the chapters so far, whether I am really living on this planet. And believe me, I asked myself the same question, over and over again during this period. Although I had always been a very spiritual person, my feet were very firmly on the ground, and yet my day-to-day life had been turned upside down. My previously very private home had been turned into a healing sanctuary, and the telephone never stopped ringing.
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Betty Shine
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Биографии и мемуары
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The inside story of the ‘reluctant medium’, finally available in a mass-market A-format editionBetty Shine was originally an opera singer, but studied all forms of alternative healing, becoming a vitamin and mineral therapist.Guided by spirit voices from the age of two, she became a world-famous medium. This is the story of how she became the best known medium and healer in the UK.Through her books, tapes and absent healing service, she is in touch with thousands of people worldwide.