Mark Anthony
Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2021. 278 pp., paper, $17.95.
Much of our fear of death lies in the fear of the unknown, especially about what happens to us afterward. The Roman Stoic Seneca said, “Life is a journey to death.” Yet even this philosopher could not tell us where we go or what the afterlife entails.
Lawyer and medium Mark Anthony provides insights into this mystery in his latest book, The Afterlife Frequency: The Scientific Proof of Spiritual Contact and How That Awareness Will Change Your Life.
Anthony acknowledges that “Death is the great unknown,” but that while “faith embraces mysteries . . . science explains them.” His gift of mediumship runs in the family. His parents were also mediums. When he was four, Anthony experienced a near-death experience, during which he was given the phrase “Eternal Light, Eternal Life,” which became his guidepost. Throughout his youth, his father, who was a NASA engineer, always told him to “be aware.”
Those of us on this side can experience the vibratory frequency or energy vibrations being given off by the spirit, says Anthony. He compares these to the difference in radio frequencies between AM and FM. The details he gives remind me of the “radiating vibrations” spoken of by Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater in their 1905 book Thought-Forms. According to Anthony, these vibratory energies, “like all other vibrations . . . tend to reproduce themselves whenever opportunity is offered to them” and attract those who are open to reception on the same mental wavelength.
Early in the book, Anthony introduces us to what he calls the “electromagnetic soul” (which he terms “spirit”). He quotes Einstein: “Matter is energy, energy is light, we are all light beings.” Death, he says, is when “the life force or energy, which Buddhists and Hindus calls consciousness and Christians, Jews, and Muslims call the soul, leaves the body.” The soul is “preexistent” to the body and survives after the body ceases to function.
While we may not all be mediums, Anthony believes that we all have the capacity to recognize synchronicities and communications from the other side. “Everyone is capable of a mediumistic experience, because everyone possesses the sixth sense to some degree.” He recommends the “RAFT technique”: recognize, accept, feel, and trust. He makes it clear that each of us is equipped to know things beyond our five senses and is “sensitive to electromagnetic energy external to the human body,” primarily through the pineal gland and the solar plexus.
One of the most common forms of “interdimensional communication” happens during sleep, when we may experience a “visitation” from someone on the other side. While Anthony’s book concerns people who have passed on, I was reminded of an interdimensional communication from the spirit who became my daughter. While pondering whether the time was right for my husband and me to have a child, over three subsequent nights I experienced a vivid dream of a beautiful little girl with dark curly hair. She didn’t say anything, but just appeared, stood before me, then left. I decided I’d received my answer, and we eventually had a beautiful baby girl who looked just like the one in my visitation.
How do we know the difference between a visitation and a dream? Anthony says that the loved one’s image is generally clearer in a vision than in a dream. Furthermore, “visitations have a rational beginning, middle, and end, and the person who had the visitation is convinced of its authenticity,” he explains.
Anthony addresses the phenomena of “spirit intervention,” which “explains how spirits affect our lives through premonitions, feelings, influences on chains of events (synchronicity), and even the manipulation of matter and energy. Nothing in our lives is random, and everything falls into place as part of a larger plan, which some call fate, others, synchronicity, and some the will of God.”
Anthony describes three levels of karma: “individual karma,” “collective karma,” and “the karma experience, which includes the repercussions of being interconnected to everyone and everything living on this particular planet in this particular dimension.”
Anthony’s book is filled with fascinating anecdotes of his own experiences giving readings to groups and individuals. I believe that people gain comfort from Anthony’s readings, which often provide answers to questions surrounding their loved ones’ deaths.
Many people will be relieved to know that “hell does exist, but it is here in the material world,” Anthony says in his chapter “There’s No Place Like Hell.” As in some Eastern teachings, heaven and hell are revealed as states of mind, not necessarily places to which we go. “At some point in everyone’s life, mine included, we are cast into hell,” Anthony states. “Yet hell, like the material world where it exists, is not a permanent state, although it may sure feel like it.” He then offers a more comforting explanation: “Perhaps hell is a lesson as opposed to a punishment.”
Anthony has dedicated his life to using his abilities as an “evidential medium” to help those “suffering with the pain of loss” to understand that we survive physical death. Does his book solve the mystery surrounding the afterlife? If it doesn’t, it certainly provides some thought-provoking stories of spirit contacts that may encourage those who are fearful and doubtful to hope that life’s journey does not end with death.
Clare Goldsberry