What to do when you are dead has recently been released in Flemish. Here is one of the interviews from the Flemish magazines Dag Allermaal and Met Alle Programma's Express by Dominique Trachet. In places a little has been lost in the translation

Imagine this: you die! What to do? What can you expect? The British medium Craig Hamilton-Parker gives answers to these and other questionsin his book 'What To Do When You're Dead', a practical guide to thehereafter. 'My biggest aim is to save people from the fear of death',says Craig Hamilton-Parker.

Whether you are tempted to believe Hamilton-Parker or not, his book is an interesting read, not only because of the realistic and often humourous way by which the author presents this delicate topic, but also because he draws some exciting paralels with Eastern mysticism. His theories about the meaning of life are worth a thought or two. Moreover Hamilton-Parker has a scoop to share with us; Princess Diana has let him know that she's arrived safely at the other side and she says that her death was due to an unfortuante accident, not to an assault or a conspiracy.

The book gives an answer - often in painstakingly detail - to about any questions that surround death. And, sorry, dying does not relieve us from all the suffering; there's a big chance that you and I will return for another round of human life, with all its heights and lows. 'We live to learn', says Craig Hamilton-Parker in an exclusive interview with this magazine. 'To free ourselves from any strings with the material
world and to blend in with the spiritual world. You could even say, with divinity.'

Q: How do you make contact with the other side?

A: In my method of working there's absolutely no hocus pocus. When someone consults me, I start meditating half an hour before. It's a technique that frees my mind and opens up my chakras - a number of specific spiritual points between the head and the stomach - in order to release my telepathic senses. When a person is seated in front of me, I can make contact with those spirits on the other side of death who want to tell this person something. I don't 'see' spirits, but I do receive information from them. Someone's name, a personal description, an accent or a specific way of speaking that can be linked to a deceased person. I deliver messages or advise, but I never predict anything. Spirits don't do predictions. They respect the human free will, however small that may be. Those thoughts and ideas suddenly surface, a bit like a poet or a painter starts from their inspiration that seems to appear out of nothing. The process is extremely intuitive.

Q: Why would the deceased want to give us advise?

A: They want to relieve the human suffering and take away our fear of death. That is also my task as a medium; to make people realize that death is not the end and that whatever we do in this life, indeed can make a difference. The purpose of my book is to make people think about life and death, about their own mortality, about their deepest expectations from life and which of them they actually achieve. That is not necessarily morbid; it can on the contrary contribute to a greater consciousness of life and a better appreciation of it.

Q: In your book you blend Western and Eastern mystical thoughts, and one of them is reincarnation. Nowadays there are much more people than let's say a thousand years ago. Where do these 'extras' suddenly come from?

A: New souls are born perpetually, but personally I believe that we incarnate and evolve from animality into humanity and, in the best case, finally into a spiritual form. A sort of evolutionary ladder that breaks the boundaries of birth and death. But we do always incarnate on this Earth. In my opinion the destinies of man and this Earth are eternally tied to each other.

Q: Is there such a thing as human destiny?

A: In my opinion there is. The purpose of life is to acquire the divine conscousness that binds all forms of life. Buddhists call it 'nirvana' and the hindu call it 'enlightenment'; the dissolution of the ego.

Q: Does that imply the loss of identity?

A: In the east they have a beautiful analogy to describe such equilibrium. They compare it to the dissolution of a lump of sugar into a glass of water. You don't see the sugar anymore, but it's still in the
water.

Q: A question all of my colleagues wanted me to ask. Do we still have sex after we die? In your book you don't deny it, but you name sex as a form of weakness.

A: I'll have to nuance that. There is sex and there is sex. Many times we have sex in an animalistic kind of way; either to procreate or for pleasure. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's a pure material form of sexuality. Whoever clings to it, clings to the material world, while our evolution implies the release of this material bonding. The other kind of sex is the sexual energy that is born from love; an ultimate surrender level. This surrender comes very close to blending in with the immense All.

Q: According to your book we even learn after we die. We analyze our lives in order to find aspects we should learn about. What if I have enough of it and don't want to incarnate anymore?

A: Maybe you don't feel like incarnating now, but you can't fathom the deepest depths of your soul. There's an explanation to it, as we don't see the whole picture. We are but a small part of our personalities; an incarnation only reveals one aspect of our entire soul. And by death we return to our complete selves. Depending on the needs we feel, we decide whether to incarnate, and we decide how, where and as whom we incarnate.

Q: Surely nobody would want to incarnate as a starving child in Africa.

A: That depends on the way you look at it. We could also say: 'God gives the toughest lessons to his best pupils.' In my opninion it comes to accept life as it presents itself; not to be cracked by the circumstances but to use those circumstances to become a better person, on whichever level. To see people suffer is also an invitation to help them. We cause suffering ourselves or we let it happen without helping the others. This confronts us continuously with our failing, with our inperfection, with the lessons we still have to learn.

Q: In your book you state that we're on the verge of a new spiritual breakthrough, but when I look at the situation in for example the Middle East or Africa, I'm not that optimistic.

A: You shouldn't watch television, but you should listen to the hearts of people. Never before have we talked so much about spirituality, never before have we had so many ways of communication to spread spiritual ideas, and - when you think about it you'll know I'm right - never before was there this much tolerance towards different spiritual opninions. Situations like the problems in the Middle East are merely skirmishes. It's not politics that will change the world, but the spirit of free thinking people.

What to do when you are dead
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