As a child, I used to pray/talk to God many times a day, but not with the prayers I had learned in church. I gave Him thanks for His gifts, prayed for others and the world. Mostly, I asked Him questions.

In one of those prayer times He told me that Heaven is like school, divided into grades. Depending on what you learn, you either pass to another grade or stay where you are. Then He gave me the example of a classmate of mine who was 14 years old but was still in the second grade, and had been there for some years, while I was promoted from second to fourth grade.

He said there are also those same "grades" in the negative, like minus first grade, minus second grade and so on. It's like a barometer measuring temperature - plus and minus degrees. Those in the negative are in what we call hell, but it is not a hell of fire. People suffer in the minus places because it is hell, but every resident in both those places, the negative and the positive, has the opportunity to improve and, as time passes, get promoted to a higher grade.

After you pass on, you spend a few days resting, then go to where you belong according to your spiritual advancement.

I have been taken to various positive heavens, and also some negative ones. On the positive side, I was in a place where I heard beautiful music but could never find out where it was being played. I saw another one where the trees have gold/silver/green leaves that made musical sounds in the breeze. In another, there were the most beautiful perfumed flowers and people had their own gardens. I have also been in a garden where children were playing. At another place I visited, I saw and listened to a choir practice from start to finish. Once I was taken to a schoolroom where there was a class in Cosmology.Some of the students asked me where I had been for so long. In this present life I had seen myself in that classroom before, and currently I love Cosmology.

I could not visit higher places (grades) for which I was not spiritually prepared. I guess my soul wouldn't have been able to take it. I see the lower grades as hospitals where people go to get healed. The time it will take for you to get healed depends on how sick you are or how badly you are hurt.

Sonia Hemmings

Posted 5-8-2011