Organized religions offer various scenarios relative to salvation or one’s place in the afterlife. Most of them are difficult to reconcile with a loving and just God. If one chooses the wrong savior, even the wrong denomination, or happens to die at the wrong time, tough luck.

However, modern revelation, coming to us primarily through credible after-death communication and the near-death experience, offers us a much more sensible, rational and fair judgment — if it can be called a "judgment" — one consistent with a loving and just God, and not dependent on luck.

In 1853, Robert Hare, an emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania medical school, commenced an investigation of mediums with the intent of debunking them. But he was soon converted to spiritualism and received many messages from the spirit world explaining how things operated on that side.

As he came to understand it, one’s immediate place in the afterlife "is determined by a sort of moral specific gravity, in which merit" is the weighted factor.

This moral specific gravity is apparently built up during a person’s lifetime based on his or her good works or lack thereof, and manifests itself in the person’s energy field, often referred to as the aura. Hare called it a "circumambient halo" and was told that it passes from darkness to effulgence based on the degree of spirit advancement. Moreover, one cannot be dishonest with himself, as the moral specific gravity allows him to tolerate only so much light. If he were to try to cheat and go to a higher sphere, he would not be able to tolerate the light there. Nevertheless, he can continue to advance from that point.

Seemingly consistent with this moral specific gravity idea is the explanation given to Frederick C. Schulthorp during his early 20th-century astral projections, or out-of-body experiences. Schulthorp said he was told by spirits that every thought generates an electrical impulse that is impressed upon the individual’s energy field and is stored there. Every thought has a specific rate of vibration. The combined vibrations over a lifetime determine the person’s initial station in the afterlife environment.

"Upon entry into spirit life, a person will naturally and automatically gravitate to his state in spirit which corresponds to his acts and thoughts throughout life as reproduced by his ‘personal tape recorder,’" said Schulthorp, explaining his understanding at a time before computers made this comprehensible to the average person.

Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, the eminent Swiss psychiatrist, told of a near-death experience he had after a heart attack in 1944. "It was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. … I consisted of my own history, and I felt with great certainty, this is what I am. I am this bundle of what has been, and what has been accomplished."

A moral specific gravity is an idea that appeals to reason. It is a plan of attainment and attunement, of gradual spiritual growth, of reaping what we sow.

Michael Tymn, a Kailua resident, is vice president of the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies and is the author of "The Articulate Dead."