Do ghosts age? Can they regain their youth? A common feature of all accounts about youth and age in ghosts is that if a person dies at an old age, after death the person invariably returns to a younger state—somewhere between the twenties and thirties—and there is a marked glow surrounding that person. When my father visited me two days after his death, there was a wonderful glow surrounding him and the process of becoming youthful was already in an advanced stage. In some cases, the transformation from old to young has been recorded to be amazingly fast, as for instance, in the case of the late Hiren Gupta. A retired United Nations official, Hiren Gupta, died in India. And his brother, who lived in England, saw him in his house less than an hour later, but it was a much younger version of Hiren that he saw.
The “youth and age” pattern in ghosts seems to point at four things. One, if you die young, you seem to reappear in an older form. Two, if you die old, you seem to reappear in a younger form. Thirdly, both young and old, when they re-appear, seem to be in the twenty to thirty age groups. Fourthly, no matter what they age at which they died; they can also appear just as they were when they died, particularly in the case of children aged under twelve. Why is this so and how does it happen?
Spirit contacts offer interesting reasons. As I’ve written earlier, some of them are too complex to explain in a limited column space, with several “matter”, ether, and other metaphysical elements being involved, but here are the more easily presentable ones. According to spirit contacts, the concept of age in physical terms, such as wrinkles on the face, stooping of the figure, loss of teeth, eyesight, etc., can occur only in a physical state, i.e. the body. A soul doesn’t age in that respect and once the soul leaves the body, all vestiges of old age as we know it drops away.
Youth is a vibrant stage and it is that vibrancy which surrounds a spirit when other mortals view it after death. Apart from this, the moment a soul leaves the body—often after occupying it for a long span of time—changes begin to take place. That’s because the soul will soon have to enter the astral body which has been prepared for it. To re-appear before loved ones, the soul has to clothe itself with ethereal material—the woolly, white form which we generally associate with spirits—and the imprint of its former earthly form is part of this re-appearance process.
Souls have been known to enter living bodies, but there are no known instances of spirits manifesting themselves in somebody else’s form before loved ones. For instance, Rakesh will always appear as Rakesh, give and take the older or younger form, before family and friends and cannot appear as Roshni or Naresh, etc. Of course, there are many cases where spirits have disguised themselves in a beautiful form to lure away somebody or for some other design, but that is another intriguing and distinctly separate dimension. Before loved ones, a departed soul will always appear in its true earth form.
But then, if one applies the theory or fact—depending upon your belief—of re-incarnation, how does that determine the form which a spirit takes? If, for example, I wish to “interact” with my grandfather, who I’ve never seen in real life, what will happen? He will appear before me in more or less the form which I had seen in photographs. Could it not then be that my own mind is creating certain images? To an extent perhaps, but then my mind cannot generate much of the context related information and other incidents that my grandfather furnishes. And in cases where no photographs of the dead person exist, it is the accuracy of such information that becomes a determinant.
And what if my grandfather has already taken birth again and is back on earth in another physical form? He will still be able to re-appear in the earlier spirit form. But how is that possible? That’s because even when the soul resides in a physical body, when the body sleeps, it can still leave it and travel, connected it is believed, by an “invisible” thread. The Tibetans believe strongly in this and there are recorded instances of souls being able to leave the body and return to it, by will and otherwise. In fact, research by hypnotists and past life regression specialists has consistently been shedding very interesting light on this phenomenon.
People who were very positive personalities always appear in a more distinct, solid form, while the impressions of those who had weaker personalities make weaker impressions. But what about spirits who seem to be “constant”—always seen in the same form and shape by successive generations? Curiously, they have become “frozen” in that state—some out of choice but mostly because something remained inadequate during their transition time from the body. In most cases, even if they want to, they do not have the power to change their form.
In re-incarnation, there are many instances where marks from an earlier birth have remained even in the next birth. For instance, near Agra there was the case of a boy being reborn a few months after his death. In his last birth, he was shot to death, with the bullet piercing his neck. In this birth too, the bullet mark is on his neck—at the precise spot where it had struck in the last birth. There are other instances of earlier birth skills continuing into this birth. There is the case of an uneducated, untrained person who can perform sophisticated surgeries which have astonished surgeons. The list is a long one. While such instances offer significant leads to unravelling some of the mysteries surrounding life after death, deformities as distinct from marks, are rarely visible in spirit forms. However, when requested, a spirit can appear with its earth life deformity.
Once again, the reason behind this is that deformities are physical afflictions, and not a part of the spirit state. When gathering the ethereal material around itself and manifesting itself in an imprint of its physical earthly state, harmony is maintained. Deformities, disharmony, dissonance are, it would seem, conditions which apply to the earth and not to the astral world. Even children with deformities who die young generally re-appear in a “whole” state. These then, are some of the simpler insights into the other world—a world where each living being is destined to go one day.