Heaven and Hell are described vividly in many religions as a place of reward or pain respectively as a result of what we do in this life. There have been many attempts to find physical places for Heaven and Hell, and many descriptions of what the deceased will find there. Here is not the place for discussion, however. So, let us look at the consequences of belief in the Afterlife. If we believe the scriptures, it is easy for us to see our beloved ones who have passed over in the Elysian Fields, or an Eden-like world, or the sky populated with Angels with halos and wings, holding harps, and hanging out on clouds. Unless the Departed were murderers or rapists, or had been particularly nasty to the bereaved, we expect people to turn up at St Peter’s Gates to be allowed in.
Isn’t religion wonderful? Those comforting homilies about how the Meek will inherit the Earth, while our enemies, Johnny Foreigner, and politicians will rot in eternally burning furnaces are fine as long as we do not think too much about them, and accept them at face value. Unfortunately, in this fast changing world, beliefs change, and people convert to different religions, or horror of horrors, become atheists. Suddenly those comforting images of the Afterlife are no longer so cosy. We might even think that our body rots in the ground, and that is it. There is no Soul. Life is bleak if we believe that there is nothing beyond Death. Heaven and Hell is a fantasy dreamt up by religion to keep the population obedient. Such cynicism!
What is interesting is that fervent belief in a paradisiacal afterlife or demonic hell can be as damaging as the atheistic pose that there is nothing after death except our bodies’ contribution as plant fertilizer to the earth. As I said, one of the aims of Spiritualism is proof of survival. However, when a spiritualist sees your loved one, the loved one is often on their own, with a characteristic, an object or something so that the spiritualist can offer proof of whom they are seeing. There is no accompanying image of heaven or hell, or anything else in the surroundings (it is usually the surroundings of where they lived or liked to be at when they were alive) that gives a clue to where Heaven or the Afterlife is. I do not know how typical my experiences are, but I see the spirit against a dark background. There is not even the Light!
The fact is that spirits of loved ones are seen against a dark, neutral background, with only symbols or objects that are personal to the family or person seeking proof of survival. Where is Heaven? I believe the answer is that we are seen in the spirit world according to our beliefs. As a child we may have strong ideas of what heaven is like, but as our experiences of life and religion continue, we generally become more cynical. We see innocent babies and people die horribly for no reason, why the bad seem to be unpunished.
Also, I very much doubt that a vision of heaven is the last thing we think of as we die. We may be more concerned with those left behind. This would be particularly true of parents worrying about their children. Because Heaven and Hell is such an unknown, while the realities of life are there to be experienced, our impressions are naturally going to be stronger on what we know, rather than idle speculation. Now, there are of course going to be people who have strong views and stronger imaginations on what the afterlife is like, and they will naturally see what they believe.
All this is not about saying there is no Heaven, or Hell. I am simply trying to point out the difficulties of knowing something that can be only known when you are dead! Faced with these unknowns, it would be quite natural for spirits passing over to find an anchor in the experiences when they were alive.
The conclusion for me is that there is survival, and there is communication from the dead. Where the dead reside, I have no idea. Furthermore, the dead can influence the living, and vice versa.
From the above we can deduce the optimum conditions for communication with the dead. There has to belief in the Afterlife. What that belief is, is not too important, as long as there is there is the perception that it is good. For those of us still alive, we also have to have belief, or faith that people go somewhere when they die. In other words, there has to be rapport between the living and the dead. The problem of course is that the living has problems communicating with the living! If you have any doubts, look at levels of crime, war, and other antisocial evils we see in the world.