Posted by Roberta Grimes • July 10, 2021 • 40 Comments
Afterlife Research, Book News, Understanding Reality
Rather Than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
– Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), from Walden (1854)
There are many people now spreading the word that we all survive the death of our bodies. A lot of them are near-death experiencers, so what they are teaching is little more than the fruit of their own mental adventures; but still, we are the first generation for which universal human survival of death feels like a strong possibility. So we also are the first generation to realize that universal human survival means that a lot of the physics developed over the last millennium has to be wrong.
I began my search for the truth about death as an open-minded skeptic. It took me years of reading century-old communications from those that we used to think were dead to be confident that there were so many consistencies in those reports – and no inconsistencies at all! – that the afterlife has to be real. But if the afterlife is real, then where the heck is it? To try to answer that question, I did a lot more research. I read books about scientific anomalies, astral travels, near-death experiences, ghosts and apparitions, psychic abilities, quantum physics, and various random phenomena. And I did that for decades before I found one book that fits with everything I had learned and sensibly explains it all.
That seminal book is Your Eternal Self by Dr. R. Craig Hogan, first published in 2008. I devoured Craig’s book with the sense that all the lights were turning on at last, not only in the room and in the house around me but also in my neighborhood and in all the world. I finally got it! I understood it all! What I had discovered in doing afterlife research and all that later research to try to figure out where the afterlife was happening actually fits together perfectly. I just had never had the vision to realize how much bigger and more complex the greater reality actually is. Craig Hogan has a vision that dwarfs my own. So I had to meet him! I sent him fan mail, I brought him to Austin and sponsored a very successful speaking engagement, and I eagerly talked with him for hours. Forever after, Craig Hogan has been my wise and beautiful mentor, and he has been my Seek Reality guest more than thirty times in eight years. To this day, whenever I have an especially stubborn question, I find that he has already thought about it and he can propose a good answer. Craig understands what is going on as does really nobody else on earth. He understands it all so completely that he can answer your stupidest questions in a way that makes you actually feel smart for having asked them. And now he is outdoing himself!
Craig Hogan has written four definitive books that together summarize his life’s work. Three of these books are already in print, and we have discussed them on Seek Reality. They are: Your Eternal Self: Science Discovers the Afterlife,which is an update of his 2008 breakthrough; Reasons for What Happens to You in Your Life and Your Afterlife: Revealed by Speakers in the Afterlife; and There is Nothing But Mind and Experiences. Craig’s easily-read summary of these three books is called Answers to Life’s Enduring Questions: From Science Discoveries and Afterlife Revelations. It will be out by the end of the year. Craig Hogan’s books are scholarly, while mine are meant for casual readers. His books are extensively sourced and end-noted, and at the same time they are entertaining and surprisingly easy to read.
That second book, Reasons for What Happens, is the one that most astounds me. It is more than four hundred pages of powerful summaries of what we have learned so far about how all of reality works. It’s a user’s manual for people who are currently living lives in earthly bodies. It’s a book for the ages! Here are a few tastes of the Reasons for What Happens banquet:
From the Preface: This book will reassure you that your loved ones who preceded you to the next stage of life are living contented, fulfilled lives today, and you will do the same. You can communicate with them when you want to. You can have continuing, loving relationships with them while you are still in Earth School. They will come to your graduation from this life and sit patiently waiting for you to come off the stage into their embrace. Every person you have loved and every pet you ever owned will be there to greet you. The graduation ceremony will be a celebration.
Also from the Preface: I wrote this book to tell you what we know today about our purpose in this life, why this life is as it is, what happens in the transition from this life, and how people live in the life after this life. It will clear up misconceptions for you and give you reassurance that your loved ones are living a full life as healthy, happy individuals who have just moved to another country. I want this book to give you comfort, reassurance, and joy that you will live on after you stop using the body, and you will have joyous reunions with all those who have preceded you.
From Chapter 18 – Our Life after the Transition: The world we are living in now is a spiritual realm, with matter, energy, and forces woven by the Universal Intellect. The next spiritual realm of life is the same, but with a different set of matter, energy, and forces we will experience together. On arriving in the next life, people are astonished at how similar life there is to life on earth.
From Chapter 11 – We Must Cast off Early Earth School Teaching: What children are being taught in Earth School is failing humankind. We must realize that we are creating the world that is bringing us hopelessness and misery. Society, our families of origin, and organizations such as schools and religions teach children to believe they are flotsam and jetsam, bobbing about in an unsympathetic sea that flings them onto the rocks of suffering and misery. They are taught to see themselves as victims in a cold, mindless world they cannot control or appeal to.
The primary change in perspective we must make as we cast off Earth School’s mistaken teachings is to realize we are creating our world. If we are miserable, it is because we are making ourselves miserable. Misery is not imposed on us. We can deny misery and make ourselves happy. Happiness is freely available when we realize we are not victims and can change our lives to be what we want our lives to be.
From Chapter 8 – Our Souls Plan Our Earth School Experience: Our lives are carefully planned. They are not sequences of accidents in time. We chose the family of origin, mental and physical capabilities and limitations, events that would shape our minds and allow us to learn the lessons we chose to learn, and the potential exit points when we would graduate.
We have done the planning in dialogue with the others who will be in our sphere of contacts and influence in our lives, and with our guides, Souls, and higher-order beings whose role is to do as much as possible to ensure we learn the lessons and have the experiences we planned to have.
From Chapter Five – Why Is There Evil and Suffering in Earth School? Our lives were not intended to have suffering. We should be living lives full of love, peace, joy, optimism for the future, and good health. When events occur that disrupt our lives, we should be able to adjust to them, secure in knowing we are spiritual beings living through temporary circumstances so we can learn lessons, and that we are supported by those around us who have learned to be other-centered and unconditionally loving.
Suffering is not a necessary condition of life in Earth School.
Having spent half a century doing some of the same research that empowered Craig Hogan to finally puzzle out how reality works, I see these books as a brilliant course in at last beginning to make sense of everything. And while a visionary non-scientist has been working through and sharing all these revelations with the world, the scientific community continues its nonsensical search for a source of consciousness inside the brain. To give you just one example of this ongoing scientific exercise in futility, the July edition of the popular science magazine New Scientist carries an article entitled “Can physics explain consciousness and does it create reality?” The subhead and first two sentences of this article inadvertently demonstrate the insoluble problem that lies at the heart of modern physics:
“We are finally testing the ideas that quantum collapse in the brain gives rise to consciousness and that consciousness creates the reality we see from the quantum world. If physics explains all the phenomena in the universe, and if consciousness is part of the universe, then (it) seems that physics can explain consciousness. Of course, this assumes that consciousness isn’t separate from the material reality that physics explains.”
You may have to read that passage a few times to get the full ridiculous flavor of it:
Physicists cannot escape their many misconceptions that are based in the false dogma that matter is primary unless they are willing to give up all the bogus fruits of their 
centuries-long detour into materialism. But fortunately, our beautiful friend Craig Hogan has now definitively found and defined reality. In whatever future decade or century physicists at last become desperate enough to search for the truth with open minds, they are going to find our brilliant and personable adventurer friend there waiting for them. And meanwhile, we who are working to raise the consciousness vibrations of all of humankind have at last been given the liberating truth. Now we can share it with all the world.
– You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
Jesus, JN 8:32
Hi Roberta, hi everybody! Thank you for sharing Craig’s books. He is doing vital, insightful work.
Roberta: Just had to tell you that I’m re-reading Craig’s book which I started on Thursday, so what a coincidence that you mentioned him on your blog. Not only that, but you also said above “the graduation ceremony will be a celebration.” I had a zoom meeting with a medium a couple of months ago and he told me that my dad was there, and he said that my dad told him that he (my dad) was looking forward to an upcoming graduation – a kind of celebration in regards to me, and the medium used almost the exact same words mentioned here. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but this seems like it’s more than just a coincidence.
My dear Lola, we are told that the actual mathematical odds against coincidences happening are so long that we might as well assume there are no actual coincidences. Virtually every “coincidence” in our lives is engineered by our guides as a form of communication. And I find that thought to be perfectly lovely!
My dear Mike, I believe that history will show that now is when humankind finally began to grasp the true nature of reality. And worldwide, I don’t know of any other researcher who is as far ahead in this field as Craig is! Indeed, few others even seem to fully grasp the importance of figuring it all out. At this point, I teach the truth at a basic level, while he teaches it at a more sophisticated (college?) level. And it does fit together! But nearly every other scholar is focused on understanding and teaching about just one or two aspects of it.
In general, neurologists who dogmatically presume that the brain is the source of consciousness prolong scientific ignorance more than physicists, because most physicists are not interested in the nature of consciousness, and are content to play with math models. For example, quantum mechanics has created the apparently magical phenomenon of quantum entanglement, what Einstein derided as instantaneous “spooky action at a distance,” because it requires signals between paired particles that are instantaneous however far apart they were, but such signaling must be faster than light speed and no one has the slightest idea what the signal mechanism might be. Physicists therefore encourage their students not to bother about the meaning of quantum mechanics, but just learn how to use its formula (the Schrodinger wave equation) to calculate, Incidentally, I have published research demonstrating that the apparent instantaneous spooky action at a distance does not really explain quantum entanglement, because the paired particles do not have to communicate after they are formed to be complimentary (satisfy the principle of conservation of energy).
I now routinely get to challenge publishing neurologists about their illusion that the brain is producing consciousness by providing them with documented evidence that patients who have an NDE induced by trauma are able accurately to report what they saw and heard far distant from their hospital room. For example, Dr. Bruce Greyson illustrates this phenomenon of discarnate consciousness with his own experience with a patient of his in his new book, After. He had been eating in his hospital’s cafeteria, and accidently splashed spaghetti sauce on his tie. Before going to see his patient, he tucked his tie under his white jacket, so no one could see that it was spoiled. After he introduced himself to her, she mentioned that she saw him soil his tie. The 2016 text, The Self Does Not Die, documents over a hundred such cases of accurate reports during an NDE that cannot be explained by ordinary sense-perception from the body and its brain. The standard response from neurologists is to refuse to consider that such reporting is scientifically credible– and they refuse to discuss any evidence denying that the brain does not generate consciousness, but only works with it.
Largely, conventional scientists understand that their research proposals will not survive peer funding approval if they do not espouse materialism, because all of their peers have been trained and made their own careers as materialists. The materialist fallacy is thus self-perpetuating.
Hi, Dr Hiller. I was not aware that the “spooky action at a distance” (quantum entanglement) theory that Einstein came up with was considered questionable. I always thought it was written in stone. So now that I know it isn’t, and if no communication is required between these paired particles, is it because everything in the universe has a strange connection to each other?
Dear Lola,
The Heisenberg and Bohr philosophical position (Operationalism in physics which is universally agreed to) was that we cannot assign to particles, in their natural state, any definite real properties, because they cannot be fully observed as definite and real in their natural state. However, the development of “weak particle measurement” demonstrates that the Heisenberg/Bohr’s conclusion was a mistake based on the crude particle measurement technology they had available.
Following the Heisenberg/Bohr assertion that particles are naturally randomly hazy in a statistical probability distribution across space, when a photon would be split into a pair of lower energy photons, conservation of energy requires that the pair possess all of the energy of the original, and in particular, the polarity of the pair must balance to zero; thus if one member of the pair has an H (or V ) polarity, then the other must have a V (or H).
Einstein’s EPR Paradox paper argued that when one member of the pair would be energetically observed, so that it stopped being randomly hazy and converted to a definite real state (termed a collapse of the Schrodinger wave equation), then the Schrodinger wave equation predicted that the other member of its pairing would have to instantaneously adopt a complementary polarization, however far apart the pair members were. Einstein thought that prediction must be wrong, because instantaneous communication or signaling between the paired photons would violate Special Relativity which limits signalling to light speed, fast but taking some time, and there was no mechanism specified or known to enable such signalling; so he derogatorily termed the signaling required as “spooky action at a distance.” When the paired photon experiments were eventually conducted, it WAS found that the paired photons were in balance, so quantum entanglement now accepts magical spooky action at a distance.
What I explain, based on the findings of experiments using “weak” measurement that particles naturally exist as definite and real (as Einstein had intuited), not randomly hazy entities, is that when the pair is created from splitting their parent photon, each is created with a polarity that is in balance with its pair-mate, and that balance is maintained Paper published https://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/934 , and, if you email to jh7138@gmail.com, I could send you the paper). Thus, when the EPR test experiments are conducted and find that the pair is in balance, there was no need for the first pair member to be observed to have to then signal the second member what polarization it must adopt, because it already had its polarization set when it was created as a pair member. My explanation is parsimonious and requires no magical signaling; two Nobel laureates in physics agree with my paper. However, physicists love having magical quantum entanglement, because it makes quantum mechanics special, profound, and thus physics and physicists profound, even mystical.
What is mystical is the phenomenon of discarnate consciousness for which the NDE (really the OBE associated with an NDE, or with deep meditation and lucid dreaming) provides good evidence. The new book by Dr. Bruce Greyson, After, and the earlier book by Dr. Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life, are good to read.
Oh my dear Jack, I find the way you keep trying to bridge the gap between materialist science and reality to be so touching! Craig and I have talked about how best to help the light to dawn, and given the centuries-long investment of so many scientific careers in building on a falsehood, we consider it to be impossible to bridge that gap with reason and argument. The only way to break through is with a sledgehammer of shame. We speculate that when everyone’s phone includes an app that lets you ring up great-great-aunt Mildred and get her secret recipe, then everyone will know that modern science is built on a lie, and the whole edifice of materialism will come tumbling down. But nothing less than that is likely to work. And it may not surprise you to know that some of history’s greatest and most famous scientists are working on that app right now!
Thanks for clearing this up for me after all these years. I consider it a miracle that I actually understand your explanation! I used to live near RPI and the students always were in awe of two particles “communicating” with each other through an unknown mechanism. Your explanation dissolves a lot of the “magic” but makes a lot more sense to me. Judging by the Amazon reviews Dr. Van Lommel’s book sounds like a great read for the layman on this subject – I look forward to reading it.
Dear Lola, I considered attending RPI, but chose instead Carnegie Tech as a physics major. However, by my junior year, I became disenchanted with physics because of its greater interest in math modeling than understanding what was to be modeled, so I transferred to psychology at UConn. However, psychology at that time was even worse than physics, because it was still stuck on Behaviorism which refused to study thinking because it was not directly observable. I managed to overcome this foolish aversion to what is such an important topic, constructed a theory about vagueness of meaning, and conducted correlational and experimental research, all of which was published in refereed journals (google my name with vagueness), Here is a good blog by a commercial research firm about the widespread use of vagueness now ongoing some fifty years later
( https://provalisresearch.com/blog/hiller-vagueness-content-analysis-dictionary/ ).
Dr. Pim van Lommel is not only brilliant in his research, but also personally a kind person, just any any doctor ought to be. Likewise Dr. Greyson, and his new book, After, is really a great read summarizing his fifty years or so of research on the NDE (available at Costco).
Dear Lola, you can assume that there is nothing done in the field of theoretical physics in the past few centuries that can be considered to be written in stone. Nothing. What materialist scientists are doing is the rough equivalent of using mathematics to study a thought. And how productive can that possibly be? How do you find a way to write it in pencil, and never mind in stone?
Yes, dear Jack, neurologists focus on studying the brain, but it is physics that is the base science. If physicists were to announce that they had discovered that consciousness is the base creative force, then all the scientific fields would adopt that central understanding. And materialism is self-perpetuating, just as you describe it! In fact, I am told that Ph.D. candidates are told when they enter their postgraduate programs that if they intend to break ground in the directions that we are discussing, they shouldn’t bother to get a Ph.D. because their research will never be funded. How is that for rigidly enforcing a scientific hive-mind?
Roberta: Your last sentence is disturbing but, unfortunately, it is true. I wonder why they can’t see that millions of dollars are being wasted by leaving consciousness out of the picture. Otherwise, their theories will remain just that – theories.
Dear Lola, there are hints that many members of the scientific community are coming to understand that there are basic things wrong with their theories, but I don’t think that any of them yet sees that nearly EVERYTHING is wrong! As you saw with quantum entanglement, a great many scientific theories that they talk about so confidently are really just spitballing and bluster. They really don’t know! And as you point out, they simply cannot grasp the true role of consciousness. At the base of this mess really seems to be a deep anxiety that they might find that there is a God after all, so they seem to feel something like the righteous defenders of whatever truth there is from the horrors of blind superstition! These really are such weird but interesting times 🙂
Dang Roberta, so well stated about what underlies the aversion of physicists, but really all materialist “scientists” to the role of God. Please check out this recent publication of mine explaining the role of God in mathematics and the physical sciences ( https://scigod.com/index.php/sgj/article/view/766 ). If you have any problem with accessing it, email me and I will email it to you. It is a short essay, but really compliments well your own perspective.
I think it’s true that they want to keep science separate from anything spiritual because they are afraid of what they will find, be it God or something else they can’t explain with math formulas etc. It makes me angry, as I think it is imperative that we progress in our way of thinking no matter where that road takes us. Sadly, I think there are many scientists who would be willing to do this, but the “powers that be” who control them won’t let that happen, so funding would have to come from a different source, and that is what the main problem is
Roberta, this is a very nice thing you have done, honoring your post to Craig Hogen. In case your readers don’t know him, Craig is very approachable. He doesn’t know me but he has responded to numerous emails that I have sent him on complex questions, usually within a day. I look forward to reading theses books and am glad that we have people like Craig and Roberta to help us individually with our own afterlife explorations.
Dear David, thank you for pointing out what an amazingly sweet person Craig Hogan is! I almost said that in my post, but it didn’t seem to fit with the fact that he is at base a scholar. But he is so kindly and so unflappable that I have come to think that he is the most spiritually elevated person inhabiting a physical body that I have ever known.
David: I am not surprised that Craig Hogan answered your emails. He is very approachable like you pointed out. He faces the evidence head on and seems very interested in educating people about it. He has a new book out and he mentioned it recently on Seek Reality, and it sounds fantastic. I certainly understand why Roberta holds him in such high regard.
Dear Lola, I have only lately come to realize that Craig Hogan – someone I have considered for thirteen years to be my friend and mentor in this work – is actually the most spiritually elevated being I ever have known who is still in a body. He is just the way spiritual elevation looks! He is always kindly and unflappable. When someone is selfish, angry, or otherwise ego-based, he simply withdraws. Now he is my spiritual model as well!
Thanks Roberta. There is lots of info out there about our spirit and it’s existence. The church I have been a member of for 33 years teaches all of the above. We are spirits that came here with a plan that we designed. Earth is a school. We will go back to where we came from…spirit world. Those who pass on, are dwelling in an alternate realm, right here. They are continuing on their journey. We are helped by our ancestors and others. We can talk to them, and they to us. We are created to experience joy. We are one with Source. We are love, ‘children’ of God.
Are you familiar with Dolores Cannon? She has info from those who have died. She worked with people, using past life regression and took patients thru the death as well as birth experience. She tells about the difference between an NDE experience and a full death experience. I found that interesting.
Thanks again for your writings and today’s info about Craig Hogan. I will be reading his books and nudging them towards my husband who is convinced that none of the spirit stuff is real, science hasn’t proven it, so it’s not real.🙂
Dear Sue, if your church is so advanced as this, then you are blessed indeed!
And yes, I know of Dolores Cannon. She and many others are using what we have been learning about various practical aspects of reality to help people in the here-and-now. It is all quite wonderful!
Sue: I envy you because you found a church that is so progressive. You are very lucky. I miss Delores Cannon as she was so friendly – like a helpful neighbor. Her death was a great loss to many.
Dearest Roberta,
Your good fortune at finding a church where the Truth is preached prompted me to write about a theory of mine, and that is that there are priests/ministers who have some concept of the Truth but are actually afraid of preaching it or even discussing it informally. Maybe I am reading too much into what I see as little hints. One occurred about there years ago when our priest and a few of us were discussing forgiveness. I mentioned that the most important person to forgive was ourselves. Fr. John gently let it be known to me not to pursue that fact any further.
Just this past Sunday when the Gospel in the Lectionary was Mark 6: 14-29, Fr. John preached on the linkage between the beheading of John the Baptist and the crucifixion of Christ. He did mention verse 6:15 “Others said, He is Elijah” but stopped short of affirming that it was likely true.
My last example occurred when I loaned him my copy of Richard Martini’s “Flip Side”. (If you haven’t seen it, it is about Michael Newton’s
work with Life between Life hypnotism.) He did have a minor criticism, which unfortunately can’t remember, but I got the impression that he did watch it in its entirety.
I have resolved not to bring the topic of spirituality up in the church, as I really like Fr. John and I would hate to put him on the spot.
Yours,
Cookie
Oh my dear Cookie, just look at your amazing final sentence! You are not going to bring up the topic of spirituality in your church because you don’t want to put your clergyman “on the spot”!! Can there be any more tragic rebuke to organized religions in general, and to Christianity specifically, than that?
You are right, of course, not to present your friend with a tragically insoluble problem. But for millennia our various cultures have considered our religions to be the source of our “spiritual” information and teachings, when in fact no religion fosters our spiritual growth. And it’s time that all of us – as you have! – come to accept that. And look elsewhere spiritually.
dear roberta thumbs up for giving someone your praise before your own if i could ask mr hogan something iwould like to know how i can communicate with my wife we were happily married 60 years till i lost her i have done every thing possible to make contact mediums etc nothing i pray for her soul dailyi loved her so much and i would just like to add there is suffering and you cant control it i have suffered with greif all my life losing my son and members of my family i have asked my god to take me idont see a purpose in my life this earth school isvery hard
Oh my dear Terence, I am sorry you have chosen such hard lessons this time around! The only way I know to ease deep grief is with knowledge. If you are up to it – and it’s okay if you’re not – then you can engage in an intensive study of what actually is going on, and when you really do begin to get it you will know that everyone is fine and they are all rooting for you. If you would like PDFs of some of my books, please just send me an email through the green contact block!
Terence: I know how you feel as I also have lost all my family members, most having died at young ages. I urge you to take advantage of Roberta’s offer so you can read some of her books as well as others mentioned in the bibliography. Without resources such as these, I would be in a very bad state right now, and I truly think they will be of great help to you.
What a joy to read this today!!!!
Oh my dear Becki, what a joy it is to have you as part of our beloved blog family!!
hi lola thanks for your support i have asked roberta to help me shes a wonderful person i have all her books and have read them more than once thats the only thing that keeps me going i am tempted to get the Dr Hogan books
I have loved all your interviews with Mr Hogan, Roberta. He truly is a generous guy to come on 30 times, and it never gets old. One might think you two would run out of things to talk about, but I have a feeling you could do another 30 easy. 😀 And he’s such a prolific writer; his series sounds like a spiritual PhD program! That 2nd book, especially, does indeed sound pretty amazing. BTW, I hope Thomas will give the green light on your new one soon. I’m really looking forward to it. Has he given any hints on why the delay?
I second Scott’s point. I have been looking forward to the next one too!
My dear Scott, Craig Hogan’s books are indeed a PH.D. program in understanding what actually is going on, and it is all wonderful! I joke that I teach all the same things at the grade-school level, while he teaches it at the college level, and it’s not much of a joke to say that, since it is the truth. I aim to help everyone on earth to understand these things, and for many people that will be enough. But for those who need more in order to accept the truth, Craig gives him even so much more than they need. OMG, he even uses footnotes!
And as for The Fun of Loving Jesus – Embracing the Christianity That Jesus Taught, apparently the time is still not quite right. Now he is saying “early next year.” This hurry-up-and-wait guidance is one of the ways I know that he is coordinating our work with the work of many others.
Dearest Roberta,
Our real leaders are not politicians, celebrities or the rich and the elites. They are not famous (or infamous) musicians or actors necessarily… Our real leaders to my thinking, are those that help humanity wake from its long slumber, fraught with fearful, self created dreams and nightmares. In a way, everyone who helps to bring the Kingdom of God on earth shares in true leadership. The Greater Reality needs to be understood at this turn of the age, and this takes people who step up.
Yet humanity is sometimes blessed with far seeing individuals who are sent to earth to spark the great change that is to come.
You know Roberta, I am struck by Dr R. Craig Hogan’s vast knowledge coupled with his easy going humility. This uniquely perceptive scholar always seems like one’s favorite uncle; someone who is trustable, kind and loving. He feels like a close family elder. And he is surely one of the leading lights of this age.
I so enjoy your weekly Seek Reality episodes and the amazing people you find to interview. And I particularly look forward to every appearance of Dr Hogan as the ensuing conversation is fascinating.
You two together make a stellar team!
🙏🏼❣️🌟
Thank you for all of this, dear Efrem. Craig and I love doing our interviews together, and apparently that comes across. We try to do them four times a year at this point, and we are looking now at doing some larger educational projects together. We both find simply living and teaching to be so much fun!
Jesus claims to need something from us in many NDEs. But NDEs don’t occur in the official afterlife, so what does Jesus really want?
Dear Ali, as you know, every NDE occurs essentially in the mind of the experiencer. Every encounter with Jesus (or anyone else) that happens there and includes a message is just a message for that experiencer alone. But Jesus did tell us pretty clearly in the Gospels what He wanted! If you put “Jesus” or “teachings” or “teachings of Jesus” in the search bar on this website, you will find my analyses of what He said. But one of His best interpreters walked the earth seven hundred years before Jesus was born!
Micah of Moresheth said, “What does the Lord require of you but that you do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?”
Physicalists looking for brains generating consciousness is a futile activity.
It’s not even the right question.
The question they would have to answer is why do I personally EXIST in the first place?
Why do I seem to be an individual, a specific consciousness staring out of the eyeballs of a specific body?
What was different about the universe for this to occur?
Billions of bodies showed up before this one.
Billions showed up after this one.
None of them seem to have created my existence.
This body could be running around without it being ME just like these billions of others
Why would this specific body/brain create my existence?
All bodies are made of the same elements.
All brains have the same basic anatomy.
If all brains are basically the same and are creating consciousness then there should only be ONE consciousness staring out of every set of eyeballs simultaneously.
A hopelessly superimposed existence from every possible viewpoint at once.
I’m sure that physicalists would claim that no, no, brains are so complex they are all different.
Ok, so what would have to be recreated in another brain for me to exist staring out of another set of eyeballs?
If an exact copy of my body was created in antarctica would I find myself to exist there freezing my ass off while also sitting in the comfort my living room?
According to the physicalists that would have to be true or their argument collapses into incoherence.
Then in a random universe where things statistically reoccur why couldn’t I exist again or even in more then one place at a time?
Why do the physicalists so adamantly insist that an individualized consciousness could only exist once?
How could pure awareness even be individualized?
Physicalists demand measurements but with consciousness there is nothing to measure.
There is electricity in the brain they say. We’ll measure that.
Is electricity consciousness?
If so then once I again I should exist everywhere at once since electricity cannot be individualized.
My blender runs off of electricity.
Is it a genius?
Unless physicalists can answer these questions their premise collapses like the house of cards it is.
Idealism, which states that consciousness is primary answers the question of why I seem to exist as an individual.
One consciousness exists looking out of every set of eyeballs and in the process the illusion of individuality is created.
I am you, you are me, we are one.
Hello Thomas! This is very nicely said. Thank you for joining us here!