BusinessDay, By Lesley Stones: John Edward, a familiar name in South Africa thanks to his TV shows and international tours, shares his insights about the spirit world, JOHN Edward would approve of how I went about reading his book One Last Time: A Psychic Medium Speaks to Those We Have Loved and Lost. I was armed with scepticism but not cynicism, just as he asks people to be when they go for a psychic reading. Edward sees dead people — occasionally — and speaks to them almost constantly as a renowned psychic of international acclaim. Even when he is off duty, someone in the next world may pop messages into his head for someone they left behind. If you don’t believe in an afterlife, then this book will be complete anathema and a crock of hocus-pocus. But I’m convinced a whole lot more is going on around us than the things we can see, hear or touch, which makes One Last Time a fascinating read, since Edward is, apparently, one of the most insightful mediums in his ability to interpret messages from the other world. He is a familiar name in South Africa thanks to his TV shows and international tours. He has written several books; this one was first published in 1998 with no explanation why it has now been reprinted. Except to make more money, perhaps, and spread the word. It begins slowly as Edward works hard to establish his credentials as a boy who was always different, having "out of body" experiences and foreseeing future events. As a teenager he cynically dismissed suggestions he had "a special gift," but the more he dabbled, the more he learned and the clearer his contact with the afterlife became. Those early pages are written in a simplistic style that reminds you he is a medium, not a writer. Yet once he gets to the meat of the story the pace and style pick up considerably. His stories are written without embellishment, he says, yet there are indeed some goose-bump-inducing moments. You can’t explain everything away as mere coincidence, and you’d have to be very hard-hearted and closed-minded not to believe some of these experiences. It would be pointless egotism simply to catalogue some readings and boast about the peace and closure they brought his clients, so Edward gives us an insight into what he believes about the spirit world, what happens when we die, and the real biggie of what life and death is all about anyway. His theories concur with those of his peers. He believes in reincarnation as spirits go through many lives to learn more lessons. He compares it to school, and says you can’t graduate to the highest level in the spirit world if you don’t do well in the training ground of this physical world by being a good, loving person. He believes you have chosen to come into this life and this body, and it relates to what you have done in past lives. "All of us inhabit a series of lives, playing different roles in our soul’s journeys on the road to higher wisdom," he writes. He doesn’t explain why so many people would choose to be born in abject poverty or disease-ridden or war-torn areas. It’s very much a middle-class thinking man’s book, not for the vast majority too busy working for their next meal to fret about lessons they are learning on their journey to a higher plane. Edward also explains how he interprets sounds, images or sensations put into his body by spirits when they want to convey messages to people they have left behind, to make us understand that they have passed into a better form but are still involved in our lives. Source: BusinessDay
