The woman on Jacob’s Ladder

Before sleep I did my usual deep meditation. On my altar was a selenite obelisk I’d bought a few days earlier from a spiritual shop in Ireland — a spontaneous purchase; I’m not big on crystals and know little about them. That night I decided, just as spontaneously, to meditate holding it in the palms of my clasped hands, simply feeling it. The meditation went particularly deep. I went to sleep with the crystal beside my head.

A city on the water

During the night I came out of the body and found myself standing on water in the middle of a beautiful sunlit city. It felt like Sydney or Singapore, though I’ve never been to either — beautiful buildings and architecture, the whole city built around water. I enjoyed the view so much that I flew up into the air to see more of it. Controlling direction while flying can be difficult, and in struggling with it I discovered something useful: stretch one fist out ahead of you and let your energy follow it, like Superman. It worked.

A field of crystals

Then came a period of astral blindness. I used the affirmation to clear it, and as my vision returned, vivid again, I looked around in pure awe. I was standing on an infinite field of crystals — violet, chrome, metallic, a dark hue of every colour at once, glowing and refracting. Above me was a vast black starry sky with the Milky Way banded across it. A cosmic crystal dimension. I knelt and picked some up; they were larger than my hands, and running my fingers over them, the texture was unmistakably the selenite I had been meditating with before sleep. I also felt an almost fearful sense of being very far from my physical body, and had to remind myself I could return at any time.

A friendly Middle Eastern man told me about a set of stairs. I felt I could trust him, and I wanted to find them.

The path and the stairs

I walked on along a wide pavement, and realised this plane was not as heavenly as I had first assumed — it was closer to the earth’s dimension of consciousness. The path began to wind and led into very large caves, and I started to see hundreds of people on the left side of it. Nobody else seemed to be walking the path I was on. They were rowdy and partying — drinking, shouting, dressed finely, some of the women dressed provocatively. It took real effort not to be distracted. It felt like being in a nightclub, hundreds of souls flirting, showing off, screaming. I held to my mission and kept walking.

Finally the wide pavement narrowed, and the narrow path led to an incredibly high flight of stairs going up, with light at the top. It spiralled, but on a far grander scale than any staircase in a house. I started up eagerly, and noticed that although there had been hundreds, if not thousands, of people at the bottom, only one or two were climbing. They walked alone, in their own thoughts. The mood changed quickly into something quiet and contemplative.

The stairs became long corridors winding upward. In the astral, to go up is usually to go up in consciousness, and normally I experience that as a quick shift into another dimension. Here the shift was gradual, which was strange to observe. Through windows along the side of the path I could see how high I was — blue sky and clouds outside.

The woman on the ledge

I was walking quickly, restless about where this was going, when I passed a woman walking much more slowly. She seemed to be in her forties. I tried to overtake her, minding my own business and respecting her space, but I couldn’t help hearing her murmuring to herself, clearly distraught.

“All these cigarettes — I can’t stop smoking all these cigarettes.”

I tried to leave her to it and walked ahead. But she grew louder behind me, until she was almost shouting: “I can’t stop! I can’t stop smoking!”

Her anguish came to a peak. She began shaking and screaming, and I could no longer ignore her. I stopped and turned to look. I watched her climb out of a window in the corridor and stand outside on the ledge — and we were very high in the sky. She wanted to jump.

This was no different from a person standing on a ledge in the physical world. Some might think: you’re in the astral — why would jumping matter when you can fly? But not every soul can fly, or reach just any dimension. Most people in the lower astral — the so-called hell realms — feel too heavy to rise.

And her falling wasn’t merely a visual thing. She was about to fall in her consciousness, which is far more dangerous than falling physically and breaking bones. We really have to understand this. When we see someone about to jump in the physical, all we think is that they will die — but spiritually, that is the least of it. The deeper tragedy is that the person has already fallen so far within that the outer fall is only the final expression of it.

She stayed on that ledge. A few others on the path had stopped too, and we all watched. She was gripped by pure fear, crying hysterically, looking down into the abyss that was about to consume her. There was nothing I could do — she was entirely taken up with her internal struggle, the fight for her own soul. All I could do was observe, and as I did, in an acute telepathic way, I began to see and feel what she was going through. It was overwhelming to feel.

I could sense she had tried to quit many times before. But this time she wanted to be rid of it once and for all, and she knew that to continue upward she would have to face the pain behind the addiction — the reason it existed at all. Some might think this is a great deal of drama over smoking. It goes much deeper than that.

I began sending her encouragement telepathically, because I truly wanted to help. You can do this. Have courage. Have strength.

What happened next was terrifying. She reached new peaks of resistance and suffering, until in her wailing and screaming and the violent contortions of her body she became — no exaggeration — possessed by her demons. Her body and aura turned black. Her eyes glowed red. Her skin was tormented with veiny, bloody redness. Her whole body shook violently, as if the very depths of hell were about to explode out of her. And all the while she stood on that edge, fighting from within.

Through all of it I kept sending her love and support. This is temporary. Let it pass. Have faith.

To go through something like this consciously — and even to witness it consciously — takes real spiritual strength, because in those moments it is so easy to fall, to give in to your weaknesses, to slip back into ignorance and the temptation of being dishonest with yourself. We can all learn from her struggle. She saw what she no longer wanted in her life, faced the pain behind it head on, and overcame it. That is a rare thing to see.

Back in her usual form, she picked herself up and climbed through the window onto the path. In my emotional state I couldn’t help running up to her and giving her a big hug. I said, “Well done.”

She had a peaceful, beautiful smile on her face. “Thank you.”

She seemed younger than before — she had looked about forty; now she looked to be in her thirties. But she carried scars all over her face and body from the possession she had just passed through. Inwardly she seemed far stronger and more focused. Still a little preoccupied, probably processing what had happened, but able now to continue on her path with wisdom and strength.

We walked on together. I was still so moved by what I had witnessed that I wanted to ask her more — when really I should have left her in peace. The next question I asked was a foolish one. I was thinking: this is so amazing, I have to share her story on the channel. I felt like an astral journalist who had to report it all back. So I asked her name.

As she said it, a strong burst of unconsciousness — a confusion in my ears — came over me. I fought against the sensation, because I really wanted to know her name. I wasn’t wise enough in that moment to recognise it for what it was: a sign that her name should be kept private. In fighting to hear it I lost more and more consciousness, until I was pulled back to my body. I woke, and wrote it down.

Jacob’s Ladder

The idea of Jacob’s Ladder never entered my mind until some days later, reflecting on the experience — it had left such an impact on me. Then I saw what I had been walking through.

Usually when we call something symbolic, we mean it stands for something else — it points beyond itself and has to be interpreted. But in the more refined astral worlds, the symbol and the reality are not separate. You don’t see an image of ascent; you live the ascent itself. The ladder is not a picture of the soul’s climb — it is the climb, made visible.

To rise through those stairs is to rise through our own inner levels — the chakras, rung by rung. And in the middle of her ascent she met her trial: whether she would earn a new level of being, or fall back down her own inner ladder. She climbed.