AboutStephen Sakellarios Expertise I can answer questions about reincarnation (from both Eastern and Western perspectives) and life after death, and how these topics relate to religion and spirituality.
Experience
I produced a documentary entitled "In Another Life: Reincarnation in America" which aired on PBS station KBDI in Denver, CO, Jan. 2003
I have a masters in counseling from FSU, and over thirty years' study of Eastern mysticism from carefully selected sources, plus eight years' study of contemporary Western reincarnation studies. I've published nine related articles online and in print. I offer an online class on the subject and maintain an extensive educational website at www.ial.goldthread.com, as well as giving talks and radio interviews (archived on the website).
Question Hi
I was wondering for what reason is there ghosts? Why don't they return to the other side. If we have spirit guides,why aren't we guided back home.Enter into the light when we die, as it were to the non-physical plan.Now that they are dead,do they think like us or are they trapped repeating the same behavior like walking from one room to the next.when you see them & they do it again. What I'm trying to get at is whats happening to them? They just seem very lost & alone repeat the same behavior.
Answer Hi Julie-Ann,
First of all, as I understand it, there are two types of "ghosts", or what we call ghosts. One is just a kind of recording that plays over and over, like a video loop. I don't entirely understand the mechanics of it, but speaking in very rough terms, an intense emotional experience or an oft-repeated experience has made an impression in the ether or astral world which interpenetrates our physical world, kind of like a video recording. So, for example, suppose a widow used to walk back and forth and back and forth for years on a balcony hoping for her husband to return. That left an impression, and it replays like a looping video. Under certain conditions, people in the physical world may catch a glimpse of it.
That's one kind of ghost. As you see, it's not actually a live person.
The second type is an actual person who has gotten stuck, for one reason or another, in this astral realm right near the physical world. The normal process of death, as you say, is for a person to go to the full astral realm where they re-experience and re-examine the mental impressions of their just-past lifetime, according to their actions and the nature of the impressions they created. Good actions in this life create good impressions, and good impressions create the "heaven state"; vice-versa for the hell state. Both are ultimately temporary (though the hell state certainly may *seem* "eternal" to the person experiencing it).
There are a number of reasons why a person may get stuck in this situation of being a ghost. There may be some strong attachment to the physical world. Suicide can create this condition because the person has cut their life short and they had leftover karma which creates strong urges and keeps the person focused on the physical world. A person might be stuck as a ghost because of intense remorse for something they wish they could set right--there could be endless variations. People addicted to substance abuse might also end up in this predicament, continuing to yearn for the physical substance of their particular addiction.
There are people who claim to be able to help release such ghosts. A ghost can be stuck in this situation for hundreds of years. Like every other situation where a person is stuck in an impasse, sometimes the thing that is needed is for the person to sincerely want to change, to sincerely want help. You can see in this life that people who are stuck--for example, the alcoholic lying in the gutter--may be in a horrible condition, and yet, they refuse help if that help requires that they stop drinking and change their life.
This brings up an interesting point. When people try to contact spirits on the "other side," the closest and easiest spirits to contact are precisely these troubled persons. They are, generally, people you would not dare to invite into your living room if they were alive; and yet, people invite them into their lives now that they are ghosts. It's very dangerous. Contacting them should be left to the experts who know how to handle them and how to help them.
Let me know if there's anything I haven't answered here.
