George Anderson - 4 Sept

Most Berkley Books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. Special books, or book excerpts, can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write: Special Markets, The Berkley Publishing Group, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

Ask George Anderson

W HAT S OULS IN THE H EREAFTER C AN T EACH U S A BOUT L IFE

George Anderson

and Andrew Barone

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright 2012 by George Anderson and Andrew Barone.

Cover design by Daniel Rembert.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The B design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley trade paperback edition / September 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Anderson, George (George P.)

Ask George Anderson : What Souls in the Hereafter Can Teach Us About Life / by George Anderson and Andrew Barone.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-101-61131-9

1. SpiritualismMiscellanea. I. Barone, Andrew. II. Title.

BF1261.2.A53 2012

133.9'1dc23 2012010590

Some of the names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the authors alone.

This book is dedicated to my friend and son, Terren GrahamI can still hear your laughter in my heart.

GEORGE ANDERSON

This book is also dedicated with gratitude to Juan Anthony Bidotyour belief in me turned my sky back to blue.

ANDREW BARONE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For their kindness, for their courage, for their compassion and inspiration, we are profoundly grateful to the following people, both here and hereafter:

Robin Stein and the soul of Morris Stein

Robert Oquendo

Dianne Arcangel

Monsignor Thomas Hartman

Gary Jansen

Pauline and Dennis Patterson and the soul of Jeffrey Patterson

Sharon Friedman

Geri Hashimoto

Joanne Bogenschutz

The Sisters, Servants of Mary

Dr. Raymond Moody

Emily Max and Stanley Oscartu

Rosemary and Luther Smith, and the souls of Drew and Jeremiah Smith

Rebecca Grappo

Denise Silvestro

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

The Little Box of Dreams

O ne of my fathers favorite expressions was: Life is always so easy, until somebody comes along, upsets your apple cart, and shows you how hard it really is. But I believe that none of us wanders so aimlessly through our own lives as to think any of it is easy, simply because we havent yet learned how hard it actually can be. We know instinctively, and quite early on, that in life, some apple carts are destined to be overturned. The longer I live, learn, and grow, the more I realize that quite the opposite of my fathers statement is actually the truth. Life is not so easythat is, until someone comes along, helps us pick up our apples, and makes our life easier by illuminating the dark corners of our mind, our heart, and our world. In doing soin accepting that outstretched hand from sometimes the most unlikely of placeswe can learn to live our lives on a clear path of understanding, finding true happiness and enduring peace.

Living and learning on the earth relies on two principles that seem forever linked to our humanity: our need to look within ourselves for the skills necessary in order to live, and the need to look outside ourselves for the tools necessary in order to survive. Together, they create one of humanitys most powerful life lessons: We need to understand our reason for being, and look to others to understand our reason for continuing, in order to flourish on the earth. But something happens to us on our road to understandingwe somehow get lost in our own search, and we struggle needlessly, until we realize that the answers we sought were much closer than we ever realized.

As we walk through the early years of our lives, we tend to view them as a fixed point painted against the backdrop of a movable worldwe live in a world we believe is our own making. But circumstances change, and things begin to happenthings beyond our control, and things beyond our understanding. They start to tear at the once-familiar fabric of our existence, separating warp and weft until our own fear and uncertainty render our world completely unrecognizable. But the vagaries of our world and the issues we struggle with are not unfamiliar to everyonethere are those we can learn from, and depend on, to help us understand and mitigate the hard lessons each of us will face in our lifetime. We may eventually learn something from the world we struggle to understand, but we can learn much more from the experiences of others who have navigated this ground before us. Looking forward, toward those who already lived the lesson and earned the prize of knowledge, we begin to discover how important understanding and reassurance can be to our fragile lives. And then hopefully, in time, looking backward from our place of newly found understanding to those we can also help and reassure, we begin to discover the true meaning of our journey on the earth.

How easy it all sounds when we are told. How hard it all is to apply in our own lives, though. We want so much to believe that each of us needs only our own mind and our own hands to face whatever challenges will come our way. But its also part of the fabric of our humanness to pretend we understand when we dont, and to think we are doing just fine when we arent. Its a brave but foolish mask we wear, because we somehow feel that admitting we dont have all the answers, or worsethe fact that we dont even know where to look is a sign of weakness or flaw. One of the bravest steps we can take in our lifetime is to ask for help from those who have walked the same road, who climbed the same mountain, and who overcame the same obstacles to come to a place of understanding and peace. We can certainly continue blithely, hoping that perhaps by luck or happenstance we may find our way. But trying to endure without understanding exactly where we are on the journey of our lives is to face peril worse than any hard experience we will surely come across. The history of humankind, from the earliest recording, has taught us that those who tried to wander the land alone, who sought to hunt when they had no weapons, or sought to brave the elements when they could build no shelter, not only lived a life of daily imminent danger, but also quickly perished from the earth.