JAMES VAN PRAAGH
Interest in the “other side” is at an all-time high. A Google search for “ghosts” turns up 34,100,000 sites. Television shows featuring paranormal events are very popular. Ghost Whisperer, one of the most popular shows featuring ghosts had its best rating in March since the show started in 2005. What was the reason for the show in the first place? Says James Van Praagh, Co-Executive Producer and New York Times best-selling author: “I did this show originally because I want to teach people. I wanted to teach them the truth about life after death.” His newest book, “Unfinished Business” is all about how the dead can teach us about life. Here, Van Praagh talks about how he communicates with ghosts, what he has learned from them and how his work can help you in your life. SOE: I was wondering how do you sense that there is a ghost around? Is it visual? Do you feel them? Do you hear them? JVP: It is a multi-sensory because, remember, it is a different dimension we are talking about. So the way I perceive them - I will get a sense of an energy, a feeling of energy. It will feel like a mother or grandparent or stranger. I will feel a sense of female energy or male energy. I will get the sense if it’s someone’s mother or father. And I will get a visual of them. When I see them, I just get quick glimpses. Flash, I guess you would say. It is so hard to describe in physical terms because it is so different. It’s multi-sensory. You feel, see and hear at once. I feel like their thoughts very, very quickly. Each spirit communicates differently because everybody is different. There will be some spirits that are much more visual. They will show themselves. They will be very much into the detail of things. Whereas there are other spirits that are very emotional. They will be very much about love or regrets or what they should have done, what they could have done. It will be on a very emotional level. It really does vary with the people, you know, how many types of people there are. When I communicate with them, it’s very multi-sensory. SOE: Do you think that correlates to how they were in their lifetime? JVP: Very much so. But as I said, if someone is very emotional when they were alive they will be very emotional when they pass over. It’s out of the physical. This is interesting because people that were very analytical and detailed and left-brained, whether they were a scientist or doctor or whatever, they will also tend to be very analytical and detailed. This is really interesting because then you have someone who is a skeptical person or people who didn’t believe, this is really fascinating because they don’t know what to do with it. They are like “whoa”. It is funny that way. My father did not believe in that (my work). Well, he believed in it, he wasn’t sure about it. He knew who I was, but he wasn’t necessarily a believer in what I do. Until the day he died. The night he died he said “You got it right. You got it right. Your mother…you got it right, you got it right.” It was really interesting. SOE: Have you seen him as a ghost? JVP: Sure. Oh, yes, many times. Not as much as I would like. And my mother, too. Because for a medium, at least for myself and other mediums I have spoken to, it’s very hard for us to read ourselves. Intuitively or a mediumistically, it’s very hard for us to read ourselves because it’s hard to be effective. But you can’t deny your mother standing there when you see her. Or hearing her or hearing him. I mean, that happens quite a bit. It happened much more when…and this is for everybody. When your loved one first passes out of the body, they will be around you a lot more and you will be able to sense them much more because they are still very close to you. I like to use the analogy that it’s like graduating from high school. In the first couple of years your high school experience with your friends and the classes and teachers are fresh in your mind. The longer time goes on the more you forget about those people, those classes, the experiences because you are not close to it any more. It’s very much the same with spirits because they are away from our physical-ness. They tend to forget everyday type of things. SOE: In the Ghost Whisperer the ghosts are attached to something here on earth. These ghosts you see, is there something keeping them here? JVP: Let me explain exactly what that is because that is a very confusing type of thing. The show is based upon a lady by the name of Mary Ann Winkowski, a lady from Ohio. She was on my talk show called “Beyond”. She was a para-investigator. She would go to places that were haunted. Her belief, which I tend to believe, (maybe differently than she does), is that there is a light for everybody that dies. There is a great white light or a tunnel that everybody experiences once they go to the other side. There are those people who may not want to go right over to the other side because of, let’s say, a mother who has a brand new baby. She doesn’t want to go over to the other side right away. She wants to stick with her baby. Or maybe they were very religious and their family was very religious and they are not so proud of how they lived their life. They might be afraid of going to hell so they aren’t going to go into that light. So it all depends. It might be someone who wants to make sure their will is taken care of and make sure everything is to the “T”. They aren’t going to be wanting to go over until everything is finished here. In the movie Ghost, Sam wants to find who his murderer was before he goes to the light. So these people, these ghosts, are earthbound spirits. The show Ghost Whisperer is really about earthbound spirits. When they finish their unfinished business, they go on and move on to the light. Now, I do not communicate with earthbound spirits. I communicate with the ones that go into the light. They are already in the light on the other side. Those are the ones who come back to me and they come back to this level of vibration, though me, through my mental faculties and send me thoughts and send me images, send me feelings from their dimension. They load down to this dimension in order to do that. They are around us but not everybody sees them because they are a higher frequency. It’s just like we have in this world, cell phones, radios, television, we have a signal go through the air, but we don’t see the voices. We don’t see the images. We don’t hear the music in the air. Why is that? Well, it’s because waves are a higher frequency, outside of the physical, so we don’t tend to see them but they are all around us. It’s the same thing with spirit, exactly the same thing. We need to explain to the people in a way they can understand this stuff because they are a little bit too out there. And I think it’s very important to use those analogies that people can really relate to. SOE: One thing you said was some people don’t want to go into the light because they lived their life badly and they were afraid to go to hell. So the light does not necessarily go to “heaven”, it just goes to the “beyond”? JVP: Yes, it goes to a spiritual realm, a spiritual level. They won’t go to hell. There is no such thing as hell. What happened is they have been raised with this religious background, that mindset, and they really think there is going to be a hell for them. Especially if they are born-again Christians or whatever discipline. Just like on this earth, we have very strong extremists in religion. They believe a certain way. You know, it’s going to get crazy in a way because there is no such thing as God who’s principals say, “Okay, I’m better than your god.” It doesn’t work that way. It’s crazy. When you pass over, what you have is every single person visits their funeral. They go to their funeral, if there’s a wake or memorial service. They all see what they are wearing in the casket. They all see who is attending their funeral. The women usually count how many flowers and who set the flowers. Men are very involved with how many cars are in procession to the cemetery. Really funny. I have been there when men are complaining about wearing make-up in the coffin. My father thanked me for putting his teeth in because he said he looked pretty good. They are always very aware of it. When you pass into the light - and most everybody does - there is a life review. You will be met by your loved ones. You will be met by all the ones who you formed bonds of love with on the earth. They greet you. And it could be an old boyfriend who you never married. For some reason, he went off to war and he died. You will see him. He will come to get you. And animals, too. So it’s all that. And that’s our home. And see, once you get to that level of vibration, that dimension, it’s a very valid, real world. It’s a very solid, solid place of gardens and parks and buildings and halls and skies and lakes. They have all of that over there and moreso. The colors there are more vivid than here. Everything seems much more alive there. And what happens is, we have a life review. In that dimension, because there is no such thing as time because we are, once we pass out of this dimension we are staying outside of time. What could be for us 80 years, there it could be a flash, it could be 2 minutes. And you experience that 80 years - everything that happens in your life. You are the judge and jury. You feel how another person felt when you said something to them, whether it be good, bad or indifferent. And then you have to forgive yourself. Now, if you are a good person you won’t have anything to worry about. But if you are a nasty person, you have to relive it over and over again in your mind and try to forgive yourself. You know, one of the hardest things to do is to forgive ourselves so imagine when you have no such thing as time, that thought goes around, over and over again, so that can be your hell, you see. That’s where the hell is. We do create our own hell and our own heaven. SOE: What if the person was a murderer who’s brain never worked quite right here and so that’s why they did these horrible things. What if they don’t feel like they need to forgive themselves? JVP: Because they are mentally challenged there’s a problem. There’s a chemical imbalance. That’s a very, very different thing. And it’s handled very differently because they are unaware. They weren’t right. What happens is, they get a lot of help on the other side. It’s really interesting because I think that we come back on this earth level and this is the only place we come back to. And some to perfect their bodies, their brains, their minds, their belief system. And for some reason, some people are not fully developed yet and they do these things. It seems that they had help over there to realize that that is not the right way to behave. So that’s what happens. Those are the mentally challenged people here. It could be one of many things. Not one answer, but it could be many things. It could be a karmic obligation. It could be that the basic mental handicap in order to show others unconditional love. Or teach others how to love unconditionally. There are many reasons. There could be a karmic connection between a person that is killed by somebody because in another lifetime that person killed them. There are so many reasons why, but it does tend to be more of a balance type of thing. And it’s learning. Really it’s a schoolroom. We come back to learn lessons. SOE: With all of our new technology, do the signals from cell phones and other electronic gadgets bother them? JVP: It seems like the more static in the atmosphere, it’s harder for them to get through in some ways. It used to be much easier when there wasn’t so much going on in the atmosphere. For instance, in the 30’s, there were wonderful séances they used to have where people would sit in the dark. And really, people used to sit in their sitting rooms and listen to the radio after they ate. And it’s funny, but that’s the beginning of development circles came. Like meditation circles. Physical mediums would sit in the dark because they can’t have a physical light. So that’s where physical mediumship began and they said that it was much easier for them to come through because there wasn’t so much static electricity in the air. And now we have signals in the air. It’s difficult, but they get through. They do get through. It would be a lot easier if there weren’t so much. For instance, I know a place in Brazil where they put aside a house and they just meditate and pray in this house. They don’t take phone calls or anything. No televisions. And the information that comes through and the phenomena is pretty amazing because you have that purity. SOE: A question about your On-Line Course. You talk about learning how to connect with the spirit of both the departed loved ones and other helpful energetic guides. Who are these guides? JVP: Well, the guides are people you have known from this life. Let’s say a parent or grandparent, a friend, a teacher. Or it could also be guide. People’s spirits who go through many, many lifetimes are your guides. There may be many types of guides, there could be guides that are with you from the beginning. I could say that for a lifetime who is watching over you, you also have guides who come to you for specific types of jobs. For instance, let’s say you want to begin to learn about oil painting. You will draw to you, just by doing that, you will bring to your consciousness, into your awareness, into your atmosphere, you will bring to you a being, a person who is very much aware of oil painting and maybe has that skill, that ability when they were here on the earth. And they will try to impress you how to use your best abilities, your gifts. So when I was developing as a medium, I brought one of my guides who was a doctor. And you say, “Why would a doctor come to you?” Well, he was a doctor from the 1930’s in London. His name is Harry. He would come because he wanted to work on the energetic body and make sure the chemical balance of the body was pressed low and the energy that was being used developed the mediumship. And then I had another man who is still around me and he’s a man who is helping me to bring through creative things, to pick, as he said, “Pick up my fingers and write through me.” My books and so forth. He was in the theater and he was a musician that could play and compose music. He was a man of theater, has composed music and he is also an artist. He gave me his name, I looked it up and sure enough, he was. He was in Paris in 1895. And I found him. SOE: You know, I write and sometimes I just feel like I’m not even doing it myself. JVP: Well, you are not. They are impressing you. They are coming through and impressing you. In fact, they will take you over. And it’s just like, I just composed a musical. I am writing a musical for Broadway without playing music, the melodies come right through me. When I was picked up at the airport, I said, “Can we please go to some sort of place that I can buy a tape recorder because I have to get these melodies out of my head?” And sure enough, there were 12 melodies and I transposed them with this other gentleman and now they are going to be used in a musical that I am actually writing. SOE: What is the projected date? JVP: Ten years or so. It’s called the “Haunted Musical”. We just got the writer on board. So, music comes through me a lot and, but spirit comes through us all the time. We just don’t realize it. But they are always around us. We are never alone. We never do this stuff alone, never live on this earth alone. I had a friend that just passed over about a year ago. And it’s funny, because she is in my new book. It is dedicated to her. And we talked every day over a cup of tea and we would talk about spirituality and people on the earth and how people behave. She came back to me right after she died, about a week after. And she said, “James”, she said, “Oh, James, it’s so difficult, that earth.” She said, “People don’t realize how hard it is until you step out of it. People should be given a lot of credit for living on that earth, for their journey on earth. They should be given a lot of credit because it’s hard. Very hard there.” Interesting. SOE: I took a course on running my energy and seeing auras. I was impressed by how it was taught like a regular school subject. There were specific steps to take, in a certain order. With your on-line courses, these are specific lessons that anybody can learn? JVP: It’s like a piano. You know, every single person can learn how to play the piano. Now there are some people that are very good at it, born artists. And others can be “okay” at it. It’s the same thing with my type of work. You can take a course and learn how to meditate. You can learn about the chakras. You can learn how to run your energy up and down. That’s fine. But there are other people that will be much more intuitive and they will be able to really work it. Some really become pretty good at that. You know what is so interesting I find. In my lifetime, your lifetime, we have seen this because you have been at this for a long time, too. When I first started this stuff in 1978 and the late 1980’s, you know, I was considered a weirdo. I was talking about energy and all that sort of thing and now it’s mainstream. We couldn’t do that 20 years ago. But people talk about energy now. Yoga has certainly helped that. Feng shui has helped that. And it’s people thinking of alternative ways of thinking and of being. And it was generational. Each generation brings in a new wave of understanding. A new wave of information. Things do change. It’s so good to see in our lifetime that people are finally getting it. You know that convention where I met you, you couldn’t have something like that 20 years ago. Showing the light and showing the way to be. My work is so interesting. I find it so fascinating because one of the things that I just love doing is just stepping back and looking at it objectively, like I’m watching a show. Watching the whole performance happening. My whole goal is, I have to prove life after death because I am basically a survival medium that proved there is life after death. Yes, people get that. Once they get that basic stuff, great. But I’m worried about the next step. The next step which I teach all the time now, the next step is, guess what - We are all connected. We are all one. We are all one energy. And it’s just an illusion, the biggest illusion we have in this dimension is a sense of separateness. We are separate from one another. An analogy I always use is it’s like the ice cubes. You pull out from a freezer, you have these single ice cubes. But guess what, you put them all together and leave them sitting out for a while, they melt and become water. Then you can’t distinguish one cube from another, they are all the same element. It’s exactly the same way. We are responsible for our thoughts, words and deeds. Could you imagine if people took the responsibility that their thoughts meant something? They had to be responsible for that because they are going to get it later on. They would change their whole way of living life. That’s the point that I want to get out. SOE: Do the ghosts tell you thing how to help you live life? JVP: Yes and no. I’m a human being. I have my own lessons I have to learn and I am aware of my lessons I have to learn. I definitely am aware of them. It’s hard. It’s hard being sensitive too. I am extra sensitive to most people so their hurts are deeper. But their joys are more, too. And I just have to bring balance to that all the time. It helps having my perspective. I don’t get stuck in just download and depression and all that. I don’t get like that because I see the bigger picture. That really, really helps. I appreciate every day when I wake up and I thank god or goddesses, whatever is out there, for giving me a house, giving me a nice garden, people, my health. You know, I do every day. Every single day I send that appreciation out there because it is important. It’s important to acknowledge that. SOE: When you do acknowledge it, does that get it out of your body so that it creates a void so more comes in? JVP: And it also clears up your space, your energy space around you and brings in more, brings in more abundance and more love. You know, love is the most strongest force, strongest energy we have. And that’s all we are is love. And when you bring that love into your life in any way, whether it’s through thought, whether it’s words that you said to the universe, whether it’s an appreciation, whatever it is, love will circulate and be out there – it’s a rippling effect. And it does work. It certainly works. We can’t always have things the way we want them. Like when, unfortunately, and I think you are probably this way, too, I’m a Virgo, so I think, we get upset when we think things have to be in order. A, B, C and D. And they are not. Whether T comes before the X and the Z. Well, that stinks. But then there are lessons to learn. So you have to be careful you don’t put a judgment on it. If you caught up with judgment, you are not thinking the true test. JVP: Everything in order and there has to be a form to it and a reason behind it. We always go, “Why would this person behave this way?” Why is that person doing this? Let me save you…you know, you will never find out the reason why they will do it because you never know what motivates someone. You just have to step back and say, “You know what, it is what it is and that’s all that it is.” I just had a discussion with a person I can’t name her, but she is very well known in the metaphysical/New Age movement and we talked about some practitioners that are out there right now. Who are on television or who say certain things, do certain things, behave certain ways and to me, it’s irresponsible and it hurts people. I wonder, why does this person want to hurt people? That’s the conscious level that person is on. To them, they might be doing exactly the right thing. They might not even be aware that it’s hurting somebody. Really, think about it. Guess that’s true. You know, we are all put on this earth at different levels of awareness and spiritual levels. But I still think, you have to know right from wrong. SOE: How does the Ghost Whisperer tie into all this? JVP: The show is doing really, really well. These past two weeks have the best numbers they have done in the ratings since the show started. I want to teach people the truth about life after death and so forth. Yes, I understand it’s television. You have to throw some entertainment so make the ghosts spooky and scary. Fine. But I wanted to teach it. The best thing about it is that it gets the word out at a certain level. I will tell you this. I have had more people at my workshops. I say, “How did you find out about me?” And I would say 90% now say the Ghost Whisperer. So at least it’s getting them there. SOE: I remember reading when Oprah had Beckwith and other people from The Secret on and the hits on her website went up 80%. It was amazing. JVP: I am going on Larry King Live and I invited Michael Beckwith. I am quoting Larry King for the book. So it was Michael Beckwith, myself, Debbie Ford, Marilee Matlin and JZ Knight. SOE: Oh, yes. Let’s talk about your new book, Unfinished Business. JVP: I just got it sent to me this morning. The reason I wrote the book is so the dead can teach us about life. I get so many people who come back from spirit who have a lot of regrets. A father who never said “I love you” to his daughter. Or regrets from the living. For instance, a mother who gave her son the keys to the car and the kid gets in a car accident and dies. There is a lot of guilt. And there is a lot of regret. And there is a lot of blame game. And so I go through all of those emotions, I call it “emotional baggage”, going through the guilt, the regret. Love vs. fear. I talk all about that. And what the lessons of each one were. Or are. And how you can step back and look at it in a different way. Then I go into “Do Unto Others”, “Forgive and Forget.” Learn to really heal ourselves with relationships we have in life. You know, we all have friends for a season, a reason or a lifetime. And I personally went through this where you have a friend for 20 years and then suddenly they are gone for some stupid reason. And you go through life not forgiving that person. How do you forgive them? It’s hard. There are obstacles you have to go over. And then it’s also taking the high road on things. I have one chapter, “Clarity of Consciousness”. Being aware. Living a mindful life every day. Being aware of your thoughts, your words. You say to someone, how do you live your life? And then at the end of the book, I call it “Your New Life Transcends” which is all about loving your life and how do you have cycnicism? What do you do to finish business? Call up somebody you haven’t talked to in a long time and say, “I’m sorry.” Write a card to your family member you haven’t spoken. Finish everything up so you can leave this earth in your time. And when you leave the earth you look back and say, “Okay, I crossed every “t”, I dotted every “I”. Everything is sewed up the best I could. And so that’s why I wrote it. It’s an important book. It’s funny because I would never want to write a book like this and it just came through me. One reason I wanted to do it too was because Jennifer Love Hewitt going back to the show. Jennifer Love Hewitt said what she loves about the show is it helps people not to have an Amanda Gordon (Hewitt’s character). That people don’t have to have unfinished business. They can do everything before they die. That was my impetus to write the book. And that same line is going to be on the book jacket because that was really was part of the reason that I wrote it because it’s true. So much regret, forgiveness. When I receive the spirits, all they talk about is forgiveness and regrets. The first story that I put in my prologue is a true story. It’s about a lady who left her kid at home, a little boy at home with his playmate and she went over to the next door neighbor to show a new casserole. She went back home about half hour later. Her husband already was home. She goes in and the friend runs out the front door. She can’t find the husband. She hears a scream upstairs. She goes up the stairs. She walks in the bedroom and there is her husband covered in blood, holding his son. The son had the father’s gun which the wife told him to put it away three days earlier. He didn’t do it. Now the son was dead. Now imagine living with that the rest of your life. The last thing I say is they both stuck to the small boy’s frame, begging for his life, but he was long gone. And so it became the longest day of their life. Which is true. So that really gets started with, now how do we go from there? How do we live life from there? That’s a tough situation. SOE: Is that a story that you got from a living person or from a ghost? JVP: It was based upon a reading that I did years ago. All these stories in my books actually happened but I change things around a little bit because I have to change identities. But yes, they are all actual readings from the past 25-30 years. It’s amazing how people relate to them. They relate to them really, really well. SOE: In addition to reading your book, Unfinished Business, I see people can take a Mediterranean cruise with you. Tell me about that. SOE: What is transfiguration? SOE: Great. I have been reading your book “Ghosts Among Us”. There is so much information in there. I am interested in holistic health. I was wondering, do ghosts ever give you health tips? JVP: Oh, all the time. I do a lot of medical intuitive work. Even when I do radio shows, I hear the person’s voice and I will be able to read the energy going up and down the body and I will see where energy is stuck in the body. I will see where the shoulders, from the shoulder or their throat, neck or in the reproductive area. I see it and I tell them, “You have a something that’s going on.” I have a doctor work with me, he works with me. A lot of medical intuitive work. I am going to do that on the Ghost Voyage too. And I want to say, doing energy work, once you start tuning into that level, that energy level, you can read people easily. Once you are in tuned to it, it’s like riding a bicycle. Once you are aware of it, you can do it. * * * * * Copyright 2009 - All rights reserved. This inteview and all information listed on SourceofEnlightenment.com is copyrighted. No part of this site may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Source of Enlightenment. |
