Extraordinary Evidence > Other Entities and Realms > Ghosts

About Ghosts

Leroy Stilwell
with a story by Anne Rogers

Leroy Stilwell has been a formal devotee since 1976. He is one of the founders of this website. You can read his biographical information in the About Us section.

Generally (and this is also true in Adidam), the term “ghost” is used to mean the separate and distinct consciousness of someone who has died but that is still associated with the earth plane. A “ghost” can even potentially interact with beings in this dimension. One can read many stories from many sources about ghosts and the circumstances under which a formerly living human being is moved into existence as a ghost. Usually when one dies there is an eventual separation of that individual consciousness from the elemental earth plane and movement on to processes no longer associated with this dimension — until eventual re-birth. But in circumstances such as sudden death, suicide, intense and unresolved emotional connections or relations with individuals or places in the earth plane, one’s transition in death beyond the earth plane is not made and one remains attached to the earth world. Until, that is, some one, thing or condition intervenes to help such stuck beings move on.

Just as the recently dead can be helped by their friends, reminding them of what is going on when the physical body is dead, so also those recently dead who are locked into the etheric and who are what might be called "ghosts" can be helped. Those individuals may not be present in the physical plane all the time. They may pass into unconsciousness and then return again. They may go into some field of subjective revery, and it is in that plane that they experience what could be called "hells" and difficulties and strange frustrations, like strange dreams. Then they may again return to association with the physical plane while they are yet in the etheric body, invisible to most others but perhaps even experienced there.

Some of you may have had experiences with such individuals, perhaps people you knew and whom you experienced in this way shortly after their death. I have had contact with many such individuals. They can be released by associating with them very much as you would associate with someone who is alive right now. You must help them be aware of their actual situation, because they think they are still physically alive. They have not quite figured out their situation. It is a problem to them. They are not in a normal state. They are emotionally shocked and agitated, strangely attached to people and places.

The one major thing that is going on with them is that they are not aware they have died. They think they are alive, and yet something about their situation does not quite make sense to them. They cannot get people to respond to them, and the people who are in the rooms that used to belong to them act as if they are not there. Yet they move around and they do things like everybody else. They could sit and watch TV with you at night. They could hang out in your rooms, watch you have sex, even try to have sex with you.

The one thing you can do to help them is to make them aware that they are dead, explain what has actually happened to them, and describe the next step of their relinquishing, relaxing, letting go, moving on. Such direct address to these individuals, if you have some perception of them, can be useful to them.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, July 3, 1987

"Ghosts” are just as much an ordinary (although rarer) fact of the process of life and death, as are conception, gestation, birth, growing up and growing old.

The following story by Anne Rogers is a rather matter-of-fact recounting of a visitation by a ghost, which she experienced with Adi Da.

Anne: It was in the late 1970’s. I was part of a group traveling with Avatar Adi Da during a period when He was intensely working on an up-to-then summary of His Teaching. We were in Hawaii. I was alone with Beloved Adi Da and we were talking. He was relaxing on His bed. At one point Adi Da sat up, putting His Legs and Feet over the side at the middle of the bed onto the floor. Just as He did that, a man appeared to my vision, standing on the same side of the bed that Adi Da was on, but more to the foot of the bed. It was clear to me that there was not actually a man standing there, but that this was a vision or a ghost. He just stood there looking down at both of us. He was not menacing; nor was he friendly or social in his demeanor. He was tall and stately looking, dignified I would say. He was wearing a Hawaiian print shirt, but in subtle colors, muted greens and browns I think, and a pair of khaki pants. His bearing was formal in its nature.

Adi Da had previously spoken about a ghost that was inhabiting His room. The ghost had awakened Him one night while He slept alone in bed. The man had put his fingers on His chest and zapped him with a kind of electric energy, as if to say, “You’re in my room. And I don’t particularly like it. This place is mine, so kindly vacate.” Adi Da said the man felt that He was an intruder in his quarters.

Adi Da also saw the man at the same time that I did. We talked about it. He told me that that was the same man that had disturbed His sleep previously, and that this was (or rather, used to be) his cabin. Adi Da said that he was a ghost, and for whatever reason he had not been able to move on.

It was amazing to me, but I had seen a couple of other ghosts at the place we were staying and was getting somewhat used to it — but that these ghosts were “real” had been confirmed by Adi Da having seen this man at the same time as I.

The next day, Adi Da was looking through coffee table books in the living room. The books were full of photographs from World War II. (Where we were staying was not far from Pearl Harbor.) I was nearby and Adi Da called me over. He pointed to a photograph of a man in naval uniform in the book. He didn’t say anything, but I recognized the man immediately. It was the same tall, dignified man whose ghost I had seen the night before. There was no mistaking it. And the caption indicated that this man was a senior ranking Naval Officer in the Pacific Fleet during World War II.

Adi Da and I were both excited about the discovery. We both were certain that the man in the photograph was the same as the ghost haunting Adi Da’s cabin. Adi Da suggested that we do some investigation.

We found that the elderly woman who owned where we staying had actually had a longstanding relationship with this officer and that he had lived out his last years there on this property, and specifically lived in the cabin that Adi Da was now occupying.

After this discovery, Avatar Adi Da then assisted the man to move on from his haunting ways. And when we left, he was long gone, on to further growth, and obviously greatly helped by the Divine Master.