The Eagle and the Rose Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 1995 by Rosemary Altea

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Warner Vision

  Hachette Book Group

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  New York, NY 10017

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  The Warner Books name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books.

  First eBook Edition: June 1996

  ISBN: 978-0-446-54934-9

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PART I: The Awakening

  Peter

  The Beginning

  The Healer Man

  PART II: Grey Eagle

  The Eagle

  The Illusion

  The Strangled Lady

  Talks and Services

  God's Children

  PART III: Case Book

  Jelly Babies

  Martha

  Elizabeth

  Suicides

  Confronting Death

  Coach Crash

  The Little Girl and the Tiger

  Mary

  Louise

  The Scientist

  PART IV: The Power Expanded

  Healing

  Rosemary the Healer

  The Power within Us

  A Vision of the Future

  PART V: The Message

  Our Learning

  David

  The Girl

  Epilogue

  The Miraculous New York Times Bestseller

  “A fascinating spiritual adventure. Rosemary Altea’s journey of self-discovery reminds us that our existence is more mysterious than any of us have dared to believe.”

  —JAMES REDFIELD, Author of The Celestine Prophecy

  and

  A Remarkable True Story

  “On national television, Rosemary Altea rendered Larry King speechless with a personal message from his long-dead mother; at a bookstore in San Francisco, she stunned a recent widow by announcing that the woman's late husband was standing right behind her. ‘He thanks you for the rose,’ Altea said. ‘I laid a rose in his coffin just before the burial…’ said the woman. ‘Now, how could you know that?’”

  —Alix Madrigal, San Francisco Chronicle

  ALL ACROSS AMERICA, PEOPLE HAVE BEEN STUNNED, MOVED, AND UPLIFTED BY ROSEMARY ALTEA. DISCOVER WHY IN…

  THE EAGLE AND THE ROSE

  “I walked through the front door of where Ms. Altea has been staying a skeptic, my purse empty of handkerchiefs and tissues. I walked out two and a half hours later, leaving dozens of sopping wet tissues behind…. Maybe I had become a believer.”

  —Elaine Louie, New York Times

  “People who believe the dead are always with us will be fascinated by THE EAGLE AND THE ROSE.”

  —USA Today

  “Inspiring and important…. A fascinating book which chronicles the life and work of a truly talented woman. Its messages of hope and love will help many people.”

  —Brian Weiss, M.D., author of Many Lives, Many Masters

  “A moving account. The author's simplicity and patent sincerity will warm the hearts of readers who reserve judgment in spiritualist phenomena. Here is the heroic story of Rosemary Altea's ‘blossoming’ into life and establishing centers where people can receive spiritual and psychic healings.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “I was completely captivated.”

  —Willis Harman, president, Institute of Noetic Sciences and author of Global Mind Change

  “Rosemary Altea's stunning account of the existence of life after death brings us right up to the frontier of evolutionary advancement. The message in THE EAGLE AND ROSE is multi-layered—serving our human needs for connection to loved ones and stimulating our spirit of adventure to cross the bridge between two planes of existence.”

  —Carol Adrienne, coauthor of The Celestine Prophecy: An Experiential Guide

  A Featured Alternate of Book-of-the-Month Club®

  To my daughter Samantha.

  First in my life, she is my light … my miracle

  Do you love me, or do you not …

  You told me once, and I forgot…

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank all those wonderful people who have helped me … who have shared my journey. Friends, dear friends, and colleagues, far too many to mention but whose names are written on my heart.

  Dear friends without whose support I could not have written this book.

  You who will know, will know that I thank you. That Grey Eagle thanks you.

  To Kay. To Pat. To Lynne and Peter. To Claire. And to my friend and confidante Joan, goes my deepest gratitude, and my love.

  My thanks also to my personal assistant Perrin Read, who brings light and organization to an otherwise cluttered world.

  My deepest gratitude to my editor Joann Davis, whose help in writing this book has been invaluable.

  And to Joni Evans my agent and my friend…. a feather!

  We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.

  We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

  —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  PART I

  The Awakening

  Peter

  I was in Whitby, a coastal resort in the north of England. It was a warm summer night, and although it was quite late, the small holiday town was busy. Gangs of youths had been arriving since early summer, looking for work, and unable to find any, they had become a bit of a problem for the locals.

  As I stood watching one such gang, a rowdy but good-natured lot, I was aware of a couple of police cars placed strategically along the main street, obviously on the alert in case of trouble. Although there wasn't much traffic, the lads were pushing each other into the road as the occasional car passed through.

  One boy among them, the daredevil of the group, would leap out in front of every passing car, sometimes coming within inches of being hit, laughing and shouting at the poor motorist, with a catch-me-if-you-can attitude.

  You might easily reach the conclusion that this boy had a death wish, or perhaps he believed that death only happened when one was old.

  The police, not wishing to cause any more trouble than necessary, watched and waited, hoping the group would eventually get tired of their game and drift off home.

  Heading toward the center of Whitby was Peter, who had just landed a job with a marine company. Overjoyed with the news, he had arranged to meet his sister and two friends for a celebratory dinner. The evening turned out to be a great success, but all too soon Peter and his friends were saying their good-byes. The three young men piled into Peter's little car and set off toward the town center.

  Standing in the street, still watching this gang of high-spirited youths playing their game, dicing with death, I noted that with each escape they were becoming more rowdy and more careless.

  As Peter's car approached, I saw the headlights, clear and bright, lighting up the street. The young and silly daredevil, waiting until the very last minute, leapt out into the road. I knew instinctively that he was about to get his death wish.

  Peter realized too late what was happening and tried to spin the car away from the figure looming large in front of him. But the car hit the boy and sent him spinning onto the pavement, where he fell, his head
crashing onto the hard surface. It was this blow, and not the impact of the car, that killed him.

  The horror of the accident written plainly on his pale countenance, Peter panicked. Putting his foot down hard on the accelerator, he sped out of the town center, making for the cliff road.

  A police car chased after him, and as I followed Peter's car I could hear, quite clearly, his two pals yelling at him, begging him to stop.

  Soon, bringing his car to a standstill, with the police car pulling up alongside, Peter scrambled out and began running up on to the cliff path.

  His friends, desperate, shouted, “Peter, don't. Come back! Please, Peter, come back!”

  I watched as this tall, good-looking young man, his blond hair standing out starkly in the night, raced along the cliff top, the policeman hot on his heels. His two pals, now sobbing uncontrollably, hung on to each other, helpless, frightened, and bewildered by the events that had taken place. But my attention was brought back to the two figures running along the cliff top, and I heard the policeman, breathless and tired, call out, “Please stop, lad, please.”

  But Peter ran on. Suddenly, approaching a clump of bushes and too weary to run any farther, he dived behind them.

  The young officer had seen Peter hiding and slowed his step. Cautiously he advanced toward the shrubbery and in a low, soft voice tried to persuade Peter to give himself up.

  For a few seconds I thought he would succeed, as Peter stood up and made toward the policeman, but then the policeman took a step forward, and Peter shot back into the bushes.

  There was a loud scream, and I saw the handsome young man with the blond hair topple and fall over the edge of the cliff.

  His lean body seemed to hang in space for a brief second before it crashed onto the rocks below. The bushes that Peter had hidden behind had themselves been hiding the cliff edge.

  The scene that I had witnessed with horror and shock now shifted in front of my eyes and became misty. Suddenly I was back in my study in Epworth, a small town in the north of England, where I lived, and the lady sitting before me was crying as I recounted all that I had seen.

  The atmosphere in my little room was tense and filled with sadness, and I had begun to wonder what I could do to help my client cope with the awful burden she had to carry, when I heard his voice again. This time it was clear and sharp and directed at me. I turned to where I thought the voice had come from, and a young man chuckled. “Not over there, silly,” he said. “I'm over here, next to Gran. Can't you see me yet?”

  I looked to where my client sat, a large, comfortable lady in her late sixties, but still I couldn't see him.

  Laughing now, I said, “Come on, Peter, stop playing games. I haven't got time for them this afternoon.” Immediately I saw a handsome young man, slim and very fair, a delighted grin on his face, standing next to my client's chair.

  Placing his hand on her shoulder, Peter said proudly, “This is my gran, you know. Isn't she lovely?”

  When I repeated this comment to “Gran,” she burst into tears again and, sobbing, said over and over again, “Oh, Peter. Oh, Peter. Why did you have to leave me?”

  Peter, completely unperturbed by this, said, “She keeps on saying that all the time, and she just won't stop crying. D'you think you could make her understand that I'm okay? Tell her that I am having a great time here, and that Gramps is with me now.”

  Again I relayed the message that Peter had given, and, as I mentioned Gramps I saw a tall, stoutly built gentleman, who gave his name as Paul, and confirmed that he was indeed Peter's grandfather.

  “I passed over just a year after Peter,” he told me. “I'd been having trouble with my heart, you know, and Peter's accident, or the shock of it, just finished me off.”

  Well, of course, I didn't know and had to ask my client if she understood what Paul had said. She was able to verify that Paul was her husband and Peter her grandson, telling me how close they all had been and how she had felt, since Peter's accident, that the rest of the family had somehow drifted apart.

  There were many things said that first memorable sitting, and my client confirmed with a nod of her head every detailed piece of evidence given.

  Paul was keen to talk about the family business that he and his wife had built up together over the years and which was now being run by his two capable sons. He wanted his wife to let them know that he was still around and still taking an interest in things.

  Occasionally, though, Peter and his grandfather would start up a conversation between themselves and I would have to remind them that they were supposed to be talking to me.

  My impressions of Peter, after our first meeting, were that he is a very likable and intelligent young man with a tremendous zest for life. Full of fun and extremely quick-witted, he keeps me on my toes every time I meet him, which is quite often, as his gran has been back to see me quite a few times.

  The one thing that strikes me, more than anything else, about this lovely young man is that he has an amazing capacity for expressing joy, and because he has such a positive attitude about life, he has adapted to his new mode of living remarkably well. The sun shines in my little study every time Peter comes through to talk to me, although there is one small shadow in his life.

  For Peter's father, there is no life after death, and the tragedy of his son's passing stays, buried, deep within his heart. He rarely talks about his son, the pain is too deep, and Peter has told me that his father believes that “when you're dead, you're dead,” and nothing can ever change that fact.

  Peter knows that to get his father to understand that he is still very much alive is not going to be easy. In fact, as Peter puts it, “It's going to take a hammer and chisel to get through my father's thick skull that there is such a thing as life after death.” Still, he insists he'll keep on trying.

  Even as I have been writing Peter's story, I know that this wonderful and sensitive young man has been beside me, making sure that I get every detail right. Because he is the kind of young man who just refuses to admit defeat in all things, and also because for the last five minutes I haven't been able to shut him up, I am going to allow him to have the last word.

  “Dad, I am here, honestly I am, and I love you, Peter xxx.”

  The Beginning

  When Peter's grandmother came to see me I had been working as a medium for several years. For me, Peter's story was not an unusual one. I had spoken often before to others in the spirit world, had heard many sad tales, witnessed the pain and heartache of the bereaved, and had observed their struggle to deal with their loss. I had experienced many other extraordinary things as well, including out-of-body travel, trance work, and the rescue of lost souls. But wait, I am getting too far ahead of myself. How did it begin … how far back must we go as I attempt to unfold the mystery that is my gift, my oh so precious gift?

  According to my mother, I have been odd since I was a small child—so much so that she was at times convinced I would end up in the local mental hospital as a patient.

  Her reasons for thinking this were, I suppose, quite valid. Having five other children—two boys and three girls—who were in her eyes quite normal, I must have seemed very different, and I know that she found me difficult to understand, and perhaps even more difficult to love. She had a quick temper and a cruel tongue, and because I was so unlike the others I was often made the scapegoat.

  Her marriage to my father was a miserable and unhappy one, so there were always traumas or difficulties of one sort or another, and she would often vent her anger on me.

  We lived in the Midlands, in the city of Leicester, in a small council house on the wrong side of town. This is where I was born and raised, a year after the Second World War ended, and where I grew up. From my early childhood, from the very beginnings of my life, I can remember seeing faces in the night, unrecognizable and terrifying. They appeared to loom out of the darkness and hover over me in what seemed then a very menacing way. I would hear voices muttering but never quite understan
d what they were saying. Sometimes the faces seemed so awful, and frighteningly large, in brilliant Technicolor, that I would cry out and my mother would once again have to deal with this awkward child.

  My father, a demanding and unreasonable bully with a temper made worse by my mother's constant nagging and moaning, was a professional soldier who had been in the army most of his adult life. This meant that he was away from home for most of my childhood until I was eleven years old, returning only on weekends and holidays, leaving my mother to raise six children. Not an easy task for any mother, but ours had a job working nine A.M. to six P.M. in a factory, folding and packing carbon paper. Because of my mother's income, we were the only kids in our neighborhood who went on vacation every year. Our house displayed fitted carpets and brocade curtains. Very posh.

  I can still remember “bath nights”—Sundays—before modern plumbing was installed. In the corner of the kitchen was a large copper boiler and just above it the dreaded pump. The “copper,” as it was called, had to be filled with water and heated. Then my mother would stand at the pump, working the handle up and down for what seemed like hours, until the bath upstairs was filled with hot water, after which she would haul me and my sisters in one at a time.

  God forbid that any of us cried if she scrubbed too hard, which she often did in her frustration, because we would then feel her hand across our bare backsides. And boy, did my mother have hard hands! Tired out, and with patience exhausted by six children, my mother would feel relieved when she had bathed us and tucked us into bed and could put her feet up for what was left of the evening.

  I am certain that we could have survived quite well on my father's salary, but my mother wanted to do more than just survive. Her home and our holidays kept her going, but everything has its price, and all the comfort in the world doesn't spell happiness.

  I cannot remember ever sitting on my mother's knee or being loved in any way. My childhood memories do not include those of affection and warmth, only loneliness and rejection and fear, real fear. I was a timid and nervous child, never sure, never trusting, always needing. And there was one more thing, an added worry: Was I like my grandmother?