Trish MacGregor - Synchronicity and the Other Side: Your Guide to Meaningful Connections with the Afterlife

Believe it or not, life continues after you die.

While mainstream scientists might say theres no way to prove that contention, that hasnt stopped most people from at least wondering what comes next. Whether you call it the afterlife, the hereafter, life after death, or the other side, its on our minds from time to time. Some hold to religious beliefs in heaven and hell and are confident that eternity awaits. Others, though, arent content with faith and want firsthand evidence through personal experiencecontact with the other side. If youre one of those peopleor think you could become onethis book is for you.

Well relate numerous fascinating stories of spirit contact, and well show how you, too, can make contact. Woven throughout is the theme of synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence, which often plays a role in this exploration. Synchronicity is a connective tissue between the everyday world and the other side, the world of spirit.

The same day we decided to write a proposal for this book, Robs ninety-nine-year-old second cousin, John, passed away. We know that for a fact, because we searched our e-mail archive and found the note wed written to the editor of our previous book, The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity. The close timing of the two related eventsboth dealing with the afterlifewas significant, and there was no cause and effect involved, since Rob didnt learn about Johns passing for a couple of days. The confluences of coincidental events were meaningful, making it a synchronicity.

In Clint Eastwoods movie Hereafter, three people are touched by death in different ways. George (Matt Damon) is a blue-collar American who has a special connection to the afterlife, but is not happy about it. Marie (Cecile De France), a French journalist, has a near-death experience that shatters her worldview. And when Marcus, a London schoolboy, loses the person closest to himhis brotherhe desperately needs answers. Each character travels a path in search of the truth, and when their lives intersect, they are forever changed by what they believe mightor mustexist in the hereafter.

Granted, Hollywood is not always a loyal reflection of real life, or of death. But Clint Eastwood is a director who does his homework. You can almost see him, a man now in his eighties, motivated by his own mortality, researching life after death and spirit communication with the fervor of someone on a quest. Other writers and directors have gone in the same direction.

In Richard Mathesons brilliant novel (also made into a movie) What Dreams May Come, Chris Nielsen (Robin Williams) dies in a car accident, but his consciousness awakens on the other side. He discovers that his wife, Annie (Annabella Sciorra), has committed suicide as a result of his death and is trapped in a kind of hell created by her beliefs. To rescue her, he must enter her reality, a dark, dismal place, a broken-down house.

Such tales, when presented as fiction, are popular, even among those who are skeptical. The truth is that many people have doubts. As Emerson noted in The Over-Soul: The influences of the senses has in most men overpowered the mind to the degree that the walls of space and time have come to look solid, real and insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits in the world is the sign of insanity.

As you read on, youll see that the walls separating this world and the other side are not insurmountable, that you can obtain messages from deceased loved ones, that guidance can be found, that a larger picture of life and life hereafter is readily available. In fact, the more contact you make, the more the so-called realm of the dead appears to be buzzing with life, potential, and promise.

The stories in this book come from a variety of sourcesfriends, acquaintances, synchronicity experts, writers, mediums and psychics, and ordinary people who have experienced spirit contact through synchronicity. We include a few of our personal experiences as well. The stories span the spectrum from the relatively mundane (if anything having to do with spirit contact can be mundane!) to the mysterious and the bizarre. Youll discover that Spirit will use just about anything at its disposal to make contact with the living.

When we started blogging in February 2009, we were complete neophytes. The blog was mostly an experiment to see what would happen. We knew we wanted to write about synchronicity, but that it wasnt enough for us to write about just our own experiences. So we created a Google alert for the term and began to sift through countless URLs as they arrived in our mailbox. We dropped by the blogs and websites with posts that addressed synchronicity as Carl Jung defined itthe coming together of inner and outer events in a way that is meaningful to the observer and cant be explained by cause and effectand gathered stories. Gradually, our community grew and people began to leave comments about their own experiences.