Posted by Roberta Grimes • July 17, 2021 • 101 Comments
Afterlife Research, Understanding Reality
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
And by the breath of His mouth all their host.
He gathers the waters of the sea together in a water skin;
He lays up the deeps in storehouses.
Let all the earth know the Lord;
Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
– David, Third King of Israel and Judah (1035-970 BC), Psalm 33:6-8
Scientific theories of how the universe began don’t actually explain how the universe began. We are told now that some 13.8 billion years ago this universe was just a tiny point of very dense matter and energy. And then, for reasons that scientists expect to be able to explain at any moment, that tiny point exploded and became this still-expanding universe. Well, okay. But where did that first speck of matter and energy come from? What came before the Big Bang?
When you ask this question, you get a variety of frankly unresponsive answers. For example, eighteen years ago George Musser, the astronomy editor of Scientific American, wrote, “In some ways, you can think of the universe as a black hole turned inside out. A black hole is a singularity into which material flows. The universe is a singularity out of which material has flowed. A black hole is surrounded by an event horizon, a surface inside which we cannot see. The universe is surrounded by a cosmological horizon, a surface outside of which we cannot see.” Well, okay. But then, where did that first inverted black hole come from?
The Big Bang theory cannot explain how something came from nothing. Nor does it explain how this universe can have randomly existed for fourteen billion years within tiny value tolerances of more than two dozen factors that together keep it from either collapsing in on itself or blowing apart, when the likelihood of its existing this way by accident is so remote as to beggar belief. So the existence of this universe and its ability to be stable over eons of time is sometimes explained by assuming that various Big Bangs must have happened constantly in their endless billions. And among them all, the one that resulted in this universe may be the only one – or one of the few – which happened to get those tolerances right. For example, Discover magazine tells us that “Cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin believes the Big Bang wasn’t a one-off event, but merely one of a series of big bangs creating an endless number of bubble universes.”
This idea that there could have been infinite random Big Bangs but maybe ours was the only one whose resulting universe was stable has been a comforting one in scientific circles for decades. But of late, Professor Vilenkin is thinking more in terms that make possible just one universe that had a clear beginning. Again from Discover, eight years ago: “‘We have very good evidence that there was a Big Bang, so the universe as we know it almost certainly started some 14 billion years ago. But was that the absolute beginning, or was there something before it?’ asks Alexander Vilenkin, a cosmologist at Tufts University near Boston. It seems like the kind of question that can never be truly answered because every time someone proposes a solution, someone else can keep asking the annoying question: What happened before that? The universe had a distinct beginning — though he can’t pinpoint the time. After 35 years of looking backward, he says, he’s found that before our universe there was nothing, nothing at all, not even time itself.” And in the sheltered beliefs-based world of modern materialist science, that assertion that time did not exist before the Big Bang apparently resolves all origin questions! The author of this Discover article adds, “One virtue of this picture, if correct, is that the spontaneous creation of our universe gives a definite starting point to things. Time begins at the moment of creation, putting to rest the potentially endless questions about ‘what happened before that’.”
But of course, it does nothing of the kind. It is not the fault of the scientists mentioned here that their work is constrained by the century-old scientific dogma of materialism! You and I know that time is merely a correlate of the matter that modern scientific orthodoxy abundantly confirms is less than five percent of what exists. And we have seen so much detailed and consistent evidence that a whole lot actually goes on beyond material reality that our greater perspective shows us that the lack of time that existed before the Big Bang actually settles nothing. The Reality beyond this physical universe is devoid of matter, energy, time, and space. All true. But still, it teems with intelligent and amazingly solid-seeming life!
The century-old imposition of “the scientific dogma of materialism” is grounded in the notion that science is fighting an intellectual guerrilla war against religions. To fight this war, the university departments and the peer-reviewed journals cracked down more than a century ago and established a dogma that effectively turned mainstream science into just one more religion: in this case, they established the religion of No-God. And in fact, since indeed there is no God of the sort that any religion has imagined, but there is instead an infinitely creative force to which scientists are required by those who control their profession to remain officially blind, scientists have been rendered incapable of ever answering the three biggest questions:
What is consciousness, and where does it come from?
What is life, and where does it come from?
How did the universe begin?
We have talked here about the first two questions, to which scientists have convinced themselves they are well on the way toward finding matter-based answers. They assume that consciousness must be created in the brain, and life originated when lightning struck a chemical soup, so if they can just sufficiently study the brain and keep on playing with chemical combinations they will one day solve the mysteries of both consciousness and life. Any day now! Their suppositions are wrong, since consciousness pre-exists matter and life is a property of consciousness. But since their presumptions about consciousness and life are not falsifiable without looking beyond their materialist dogma, their searches for the source of consciousness and the origin of life are giving many scientists nicely funded, if mostly pointless, careers. But the origin of the universe is another matter. There is no way to build a career on researching what might have come before the Big Bang, so the scientific community hopes to end all annoying inquiries about what actually came first by declaring that before time began there simply was nothing.
I have been watching the scientific community beclown itself this way for fifty years. There had been a gentlemanly separation between material and spiritual areas of inquiry going back at least as far as Plato and Aristotle, but it wasn’t made formal until the first part of the twentieth century. My research suggests that “the fundamental scientific dogma of materialism” was imposed by the university departments and the peer-reviewed journals in response to the simultaneous advent of quantum mechanics and a sudden flood of post-death communications that were being collected and documented by researchers for scientific study. It was all too much, too crazy, and too fast! So announcing their new dogma seemed like a good idea at the time, although they quickly stopped mentioning it in print. But still, that dogmatic barrier to an open-minded search for the truth remains, and it governs all of mainstream science.
The more I think about how we might end this conundrum that holds our entire scientific community stuck now a century into the past, the more I am coming to realize that St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) had the right idea. In his Summa Theologica he offered five proofs for the existence of God, all of which can be boiled down to one. There has to be an Uncaused Cause. Even the notion that nothing existed before time began begs the question! What caused time, space, energy, and matter even to begin at all?
There is no way around this problem. It exists in many areas of scientific inquiry, but the one place where scientists cannot duck it is in the question of what came before the Big Bang. And then what came before that. And what came before that. The modern scientific approach reminds us of the story of an ancient traveler who was told by some sage that the world rides on the back of a turtle. When the sage was asked what the turtle was riding on, he said it was standing on another turtle. And what was that turtle standing on? The sage said, “It’s turtles all the way down.” We smile at that story because we know that the bottom turtle has to be standing on something real and not reptile! In every area of human inquiry there is an unacknowledged Uncaused Cause.
Of course, religions have been no better at finding the genuine Uncaused Cause than mainstream science has been, and science refuses to look for It. In truth, the Uncaused Cause is far more wondrous than any of us now can imagine! Last year we made some predictions about what humankind will eventually be learning about the Godhead and the greater reality, and we here reiterate those predictions. If you are young now, you may still be in a body when truth eventually overtakes both science and religion, and then for all of suffering humankind reality at last will be allowed to dawn. And in that splendid future day, just know that Craig Hogan and I and many other researchers are joyously right there with you watching it happen and giving you high-fives from the bleacher seats!
For He spoke, and it was done;
He commanded, and it stood forth.
The Lord nullifies the counsel of the nations;
He frustrates the plans of the peoples.
The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
The plans of His heart from generation to generation.
Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.
– David, Third King of Israel and Judah (1035-970 BC), Psalm 33:9-12
Dear Roberta, Congratulations on this splendid, perfectly accurate analysis and conclusion that there must be an uncaused cause for existence.
When I retired in 2010, I was irked by a Discover channel tv program in which Stephen Hawking told us that existence was based on the explosion of a “singularity” with the action the following the laws of quantum mechanics, so there was no need to resorting to an God for an explanation.
I was at the time an agnostic materialist, but what he said was somewhere between silly and even dumb. Got me to thinking again about the question of why anything at all exists which I entertained for many years with no progress. But this time, I was irritated and with the time to think hard. What I realized was there were to possible logical explanations.
1. The world came into existence from pure nothingness.
2. The world just simply always existed.
Well, the first explanation does not compute. it makes no sense.
The second is no explanation at all, it just gives up by stating there is no real answer. So, now I was getting very frustrated by the lack of any way to work toward a good answer. The recalled the NDE reports that referred top another realm of existence, so I looked to them for possible hints. although starting out with the suspicion the NDE reports were about hallucinations. What I discovered was good evidence that the bulk of the NDE reports were not at all about hallucinations, and therefore could be studied for a possible explanation. Yet, even then I continued to fail to even get the slightest useable hint.
I then realized that there was a good reason that I could not apply analytic, logical scientific thinking to solve the question. THe reason is what I term the Principle of Interior Unknowability (PIU), and it not only applies to study of Creation but to the nature of consciousness. I explain why we are unable to develop any assured research findings by employing two analogies.
Fishes born in their fish tank who never venture outside of it. Such fishes (or scientists in this material appearing world) have no possible opportunity to observe where the materials of their tank came from and how they were assembled. Guesses might be made, or inferences drawn, but no solid proof could be made available. In fact, by always being immersed in water, they do not even know it is there, much as we do not know we individually exist as consciousness embedded in a Universal Field of Consciousness, God’s mind.
The second proof for the assertion of the PIU is drawn from Godel’s proofs termed his Incompleteness Theorems. Godel demonstrated by clever analogy, that any non-trivial axiomatic system may contain theorems that cannot be proven, and worse yet, may own inconsistencies or contradictory axioms/postulates that lie undiscovered until the are met; an example is when a computer program, as conceived by Turing, crashes, what termed the Halting Problem. What is the core issue is what Bertrand Russel had identified as the basis for the Liar’s Paradox, e.g., “Everything I say is False.” So, it states that its message is false, but if the statement were indeed false, then by being declared false its message reverts to being true– an impossible self-contradiction. The problem identified derives from any set of statements made in a closed system, or theory, that do not have any external truth or logic checks external to such a set systematically determine self consistency.
Because our consciousness is embedded in the UFC, we cannot get outside of it to observe how it was created, or what exactly it may do, apart from our limited existence in it.
So, God is real, and God created the world, but we cannot know from our mortal being living within it how our conscious spirits and their world of existence was formed. Perhaps back on the other side, there might be an answer, but likely in the bliss of Heaven, the question will no continue to beg any answer.
When you said “Because our consciousness is embedded in the UFC, we cannot get outside of it to observe how it was created, or what exactly it may do, apart from our limited existence in it,” I realized that this makes perfect sense. I would think it would be impossible to come to any objective conclusions about what or who created anything – whether it be a fish tank environment or a universe – if the person trying to make that determination is trapped inside of what they are trying to analyze. They would only be able to speculate at best, since they are trapped within what they are studying.
Hello everyone on this blog. I just wanted to add my thoughts today as my contribution.
My question is does an Eternal being ask themselves why they exist, and if they do, is this why they create things?
Is it safe to say then that while one is confined in what we are trying to learn about, we are limited in what we can discover? It makes sense, as our conclusions can only be based on speculation etc. if we are trapped inside of the very thing we are trying to study.
Dear Lola, You are exactly right that by being trapped within any phenomenon, we cannot acquire any “privileged position” from which to objectively study what it truly is, or however it ever came to be. Because this is such an iron clad insight, I termed it a principle. As far as I know, this is a new insight for metaphysics, too.
Dear Jack, next week my dear Thomas and I will dare the impossible! 🙂
Dear Lola, I think the first step in our developing any understanding of anything is for us first to realize and accept the fact that we are inside something. And there is also an outside. It seems to begin to be essential now to our survival as a human species for us to begin to understand at least that!
I always felt we were inside of something – like a gigantic simulation, but I just thought I was crazy for feeling that way, I’m not so sure any more LOL. I’m not sure that being in “heaven” will help to answer this mystery as that is likely part of the universe as well. This is truly fascinating.
What seems to be going on now is that some of us – and very recently – are being nudged a lot more by our guides, and even flat-out told things that they can know from their more independent perspective on both our world and their own. Apparently next week Thomas and I will be attempting a clearer synthesis of all of this. Oy.
Dear Jack, I am honored and delighted that you think we have this one right! I’ll be curious to see what you think of what we plan to say next week, when we two brave fish will try to understand not only water, but also everything else….
Hello everyone on this blog. I just want to add my contribution today, thank you!
Does it make sense to be an Uncaused Cause? We, ask ourselves of a beginning and an end to things!
But an Eternal being, would seemingly still ask the question, why do I exist? Evidently, creation may possibly be a way of understanding existince. Much like why parents have kids. What do you think?
Dear Terry, my blog post next week is a companion to this one, and it should serve to answer your questions, at least in part. No, the genuine Godhead has no question at all about why It exists! Our understanding is still relatively dim, but it’s surprising how much we actually do begin to know at this point.
Here is a pale clue based on my own very limited insight: it is very odd for us, with all the impulses that drive this experience we perceive as incarnation, to think about a Being that does not have a point of view about existence. But God doesn’t wonder. The Creative Force is exactly that—and WE are the wonder. ♐️🌈🌅
Hi Roberta, hi everybody! Thanks for this insightful look at the state and objectives of what — in a modern Western technological culture — is called “science.” It really is transactional and is in fact pretty good at keeping track of GPS and developing medicines and other products for monetizing. It is R&D. Interest in the larger reality will need to be driven by something else.
Now that you mention it, I think you are right. There is no monetary motive for studying the greater reality.
Yes. And there is a century of theoretical physics behind us now that has been based in materialism, and therefore essentially based in a lie. The last thing any academic physicist wants now is for the truth to become obvious to everyone, so then they have to undo a whole century of academic knitting!
Sadly, this is true. Instead of admitting that they were following the wrong path for all these years, they will continue to pursue materialistic theories so that they can preserve their egos. It is incredible to think how much money and wasted time has been devoted to this.
Dear Lola, I have come to believe that the present state must be preserved at all costs by a great many scientists and science hangers-on, not just for the sake of their egos but also for the sake of their livelihoods. There is no other imaginable reason why they would be continuing this stupid stonewalling in the face of so much broadly-disseminated and really excellent information about what actually is going on!
Very well said, dear wonderful Mike! Science is all transactional now. R&D. Medicines and GPS. Even the Einsteins and Plancks of today are limited to teaching just very old physics! I have spoken with some of them, and what they tell me privately about the hollowness at the heart of academic physics is pretty tragic. One physicist recently told me that you can make the math say whatever you want it to say, so what really is the point of any of it?
Roberta
The basic truth is easy: Materialism is fake theory; one to confuse and control. Just look at the Medical Industry which is based mostly on Falsehoods. They don’t cure they treat symptoms and is based on Materialism through Fake data..
Materialism is like a snake eating it tail.
It’s my humble opinion that our journey from Belief to that of faith which must dominate the mode of living is the only path that will allow the escape from this circular argument.
The only reason for entering into this argument is a waste of time and effort for individuals have to make up their own mind to change. You or I cannot, nor should we want to, change another human. Only they can change and likewise only we can change ourselves…
skip
Dear Skip, the whole reason why I have spent my life researching the afterlife was that I have craved to know what is true! Why else would anyone study anything? So to watch the entire scientific community willfully ignore and even fight overwhelming evidence that their field’s materialist dogma is nonsense as they devote their working lies to what amounts to a game based in nothing real truly is amazing and confounding to me. You read these articles in Scientific American or Discover, and you sometimes even see them effectively admitting the game! I hate being as cynical as I have become of late. What really is the point of any of it?
In my experience of being a skeptic and believer and unbeliever and doubter and seeker etc. I have come to realize the answer is not found in thinking. Thinking itself is barrier. When the mind is quiet there is the opportunity for a flood of magnificent realization that is beyond description. Then we try to describe It or label It and It is once again hidden by our thoughts. The Zen master said those who Know do not say and those who say do not know. Thanks as always to Roberta!
Thats a great realization Mike N., that resonates well with me.
My dear David, you also have grown so much! It really is delightful to be in your life and to watch it happen.
Hi Mike N,
Your take on thinking and the quiet mind is how I see it too. And the ‘flood of magnificent realization’ is indeed too wonderful and joyous to be described in limited, clumsy words.
Thank you for this resonant truth.🙏🏼
Efrem: What do you and Mike mean by the “quiet mind.”? Do you mean through meditation or possibly prayer? It is extremely hard to quiet the mind to the extent where someone would be able to experience something like a “flood of magnificent realization,”
Oh dear Lola, I don’t have the patience for either meditation or long periods of prayer, but I have found (and been surprised to find) that sincerely following the teachings of Jesus can take you to the same kind of “peace that passes all understanding.” It seems to be a part of the process of spiritual elevation, fortunately, no matter what the source of that elevation might be!
Well that’s good to know because I don’t have the patience either for meditation
Lola and all, It can be as simple as gazing at beautiful things in nature and not making mental comments or comparisons, or naming, etc. Just see it and just be.
Again for me, meditation or prayer is doing something. I have done my share of both and had wonderful benefits. As others have said we are so caught up in human doing that we have minimized the reality that we are human beings.
We are “I Am” gaze into the distance and be.
OK I’ll try that – thanks
Hi Lola 👋
The whole process of the ‘quiet mind’ and ‘peace’ strikes me as being different for each of us. We are each unique, both genetically and in mind; both in body (incl. brain structure) and in soul nature.
Not everyone is designed to meditate and for some people it actually causes more frustration than it is worth. I reckon there are many paths up the mountain, so to speak. And meditation is only one path and not THE path. In fact, I’ve come to see that it is a tool, a disciple to clear the mind – but the Divine revelation, or the experience of bliss and inner peace, is actually given by God. Ultimately it is not an automatic result of stilling the mind. For me the state of peace/love/bliss feels like a pure ‘bestowal,’ a gift. It comes when it comes. I cannot force it, but I can receive it gratefully.
Maybe, just maybe, it has more to do with our hearts than our minds. It is not about meditation technique. It is above love.
Hence I have found that in sincerity and love we turn to Jesus and really live His Way. Then as Roberta says, we are swaddled in “the peace that passes all understanding.” It feels like peace is abiding within me now, whereas previously doing meditation exclusively even touching the edges of this inner state was fleeting.
Actually Lola, The Way is taking me deeper than years of meditation yoga ever has.
But I know I’m meant to go with what’s happening and not force it. I’m ‘nudged’ to let go of the avid seeking I’ve done for years and just let God direct things and enjoy the ride through life, as it were.
For me Lola, that old seeking-trying-seeking mentality can be let go now.
It is a relief! 😉🙏🏼🌅
Efrem: Sometimes when you try too hard it actually works against you, presumably because you are using your brain to figure things out. It sounds like that’s what you were doing in the past, and when you finally “let go.” you were able to sink into the peace you were looking for. I agree that the answers are more in our heart than in our mind, as the mind tends to be too analytical.
And dear Efrem, watching you grow past spiritual turmoil into peace over many months has been lovely! I think your willingness to be open about the process of your growth has been of spiritual help to many people who simply read and don’t comment. Thank you for helping so many!
Dearest Roberta,
I thank Thomas and yourself from the core of my heart; you’ve helped me throw off long held baggage and rise ever higher.
And if anything I’ve written here has helped anyone, I account it a privilege and a delight. 🙏🏼❣️🌅🕊
Oh my dear Mike, sometimes I envy those who have the great advantage of simply going with their own inner knowing! I just want to cheer you on. You have no need to do more than to live in that beautiful bliss of communion with your guides, whose only purpose is to assist you in attaining ever greater spiritual bliss! As for me, my own bliss can’t be enough. My life’s purpose is to teach and to assist in the uplifting of others, and my primary guide is a pretty hard taskmaster, so I have to keep seeking the basic knowledge that you have the luxury of walking past as you seek thse deeper truths! But I do get to watch you and so many others attain that Zen moment spiritually, attain the kingdom of God, attain the Buddha’s bliss. And the joy of that is beyond my ability to express it.
Lola and all, It can be as simple as gazing at beautiful things in nature and not making mental comments or comparisons, or naming, etc. Just see it and just be.
Again for me, meditation or prayer is doing something. I have done my share of both and had wonderful benefits. As others have said we are so caught up in human doing that we have minimized the reality that we are human beings.
We are “I Am” gaze into the distance and be.
Hi, Roberta,
All of our existence seems to be in the Afterlife (with its many spiritual realms) or in the “Physical Realm” (let’s just call it that so we can talk about it).
The Physical Realm is the playground or game that the Infinite Creator (or Source, God, etc.) has created for us, who are pieces (I like the image of “sparks”) of itself, to explore and grow from experiences. We continue to send a portion of ourselves from the Afterlife to the Physical Realm until an end of incarnation cycles is reached. Our progression no longer needs incarnations.
The Physical Realm is a creation so amazing that, while in it, we can enjoy it and explore it (probably) forever and never fully understand it on a macro or quantum level.
Is it “real” or a “simulation?” Maybe both are the same. We can enjoy discussing or exploring “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”, but it’s just a playground or a game.
Our goals for incarnations in the Physical Realm seem to be to:
– Realize/learn that all creation is one with the Infinite Creator,
– Use our free agency to choose Love, Compassion, Forgiveness, and
Service to Others as The Way
Could it all be as simple as that?
I am so thankful for the journey that I have been on. You, Roberta, have been very helpful in my progress. May all creation be blessed with the Light and Love of the One Infinite Creator. I know we’ll have great fun reuniting and comparing notes in the Afterlife.
Your friend, David
Dear David– You nailed it!
Dear Friends,
I could not leave my last post without mentioning about the nature of the “Physical Realm.” I spoke of a simple model of our existence. Obviously, we are all in the midst of an incarnation, and probably like you, I find it physically and emotionally difficult, traumatic, painful, frustrating, and draining. There is also horror, poverty, and inhumanity. Thankfully, there is usually some joy, happiness, strength, accomplishment, and healthy energy interspersed in there.
We enter our incarnations with the Veil of Forgetfulness, so we are each a clean slate, at the beginning, with no support from the experiences of any prior incarnations. There is probably only a small percentage of us who will eventually glimpse that the Physical Realm is a playground or game and that there are the goals that I mentioned above.
I am approaching “old age” and though many would consider me not so old, I really feel tired and worn out. So, I do not minimize the nature of the Physical Realm. I have great compassion for your difficult experiences which may seem unnecessarily cruel. It gives us only a little comfort to be told that we basically planned our lives to be the way they are in the Afterlife prior to our incarnation. I am feeling very blessed that I have come to the realization of the plan that I modeled above.
As for the nature of the Afterlife, Roberta’s book, The Fun of Dying, is a very good starting point to learn of it. Roberta gives abundant references to expand your knowledge of the Afterlife. We enjoy the Afterlife’s rest and rejuvenation between incarnations and our progression experience there will be more wonderful than can be expressed. We progress until we joyfully reunite and merge with our Creator.
Blessings to all, David
Dear David, Again so well said concerning our tribulations here. SAfter responding to Roberta’s message here, I did my bedtime prayers, but was driven to get up and write some doggeral about the infirmities of aging, and did that in a few minutes. Tried going back to bed, but was then driven to write about the loss to death of loved ones:
Junior Partners
What to do now
What to do next
How to know
What is the best
Withered by age
Less abile anything to do
With dulled senses that rage
from the aches and pains in me and in you
Why do we stay and even strive
Or is it we are kept here
Perhaps as our missions are yet alive
So not yet welcome there
He has so much more to be doing
Junior partners welcomed to assist
So it’s ours to keep on going
until it’s that time for our final rest.
————————————————
There’s no good reason for sorrow
Gone from ever seeing again
never again to smile with this dove
only seeming remorse and pain
never again to hold and love
Only, not really gone at all
just now unseen,
but standing tall
where you have not yet been
Where only light exists,
there are no sorrows
love is all that persists
in this eternal world of bliss
That’s beautiful Jack.
I am moved by it.
God love you my friend. 🙏🏼
Dear Efrem, Thank you. Although I wrote these, because I’m no poet, and they flowed in a few minutes, I’m inclined to think that I am not their true author, but just the messenger. I have been to grieving over my loss of both parents in a house fire some 53 years ago– the verses on sorrow have worked now to ease the grief.
Dear Jack, you’re a poet! That’s lovely! You and I do a lot of serious researching and writing and trying to ever more deeply understand, trying to make each word more perfect, so we also really need to write creatively. Doing that feels like relaxing and loosening up mental muscles that would otherwise get too tight. What I do to stay limber is work on a novel series that started to come to me in 1976, and it is now six books long. I understand that there is one more to go, and I’ll finish it up in my early eighties. I even have a separate team of guides who have thought up this 500-year saga and are giving it to me on their own schedule. I’ll bet your writing poetry is the same phenomenon: our guides are keeping our minds limber. Our own lives below the surface might be the greatest mystery of all!
Roberta, I’ve never thought of poetry et al as our guides keeping our minds limber. Now that you mention it, there may be something in it..
I do feel an enthusiasm at the chance to be word and letter agile, when I might start penning a poem; abstract, out-of-the-box things come to mind. Could these things be equivalent to the unusual, body twisting warm up exercises before say, a long run?
Interesting idea. 😉
Oh my dear David, there are tantalizing hints that there is a lot more going on than we ourselves can know, and our limited earth-minds can’t really grasp it but when we resume our eternal minds – which is one of the first things that happen after we graduate – we will understand a great deal more. I am really looking forward to that! For now, I have my guesses. We’ll see 🙂 !
Roberta, how do you do it? Since I discovered you and your message, I find myself reading all of your books over again and finding something new each time I read them. Every time I read your latest blog post, I am urged on to dig deeper. To me, that is the best definition of success at whatever we do, to be able to stimulate our companion spirits on this journey to continue the quest for themselves.
In reading Jack’s comments, I was struck by something he said about the bliss of Heaven that may eliminate our curiosity and thus our search for answers. Forgive me, Jack, if I put my personal spin on your words, but it brings up at least two questions that I, as a novice, would like answered.
From what I am reading, in Heaven there is no cessation of curiosity. Our development as souls/spirits continues, and, as we learn and stretch and grow in Heaven, we can also serve a purpose in channeling our knowledge to those still in human form. Is this an accurate assessment?
The second question has to do with the answer to the first. If Earth is our trip to the gym, as you, Roberta, have so eloquently expressed in your analogy, and if Earth is either going to be destroyed in a terrible war within the next two hundred years or become “Heaven on Earth,” depending on how we as spirits do our jobs, what will be the point of our coming here? Won’t all of the weight machines and the treadmills have been removed?
I realize I have wandered from the subject of your post, Roberta, but as I said at the beginning of this comment, your work and the comments made by the wonderful people who respond and add to these discussions urge me on with more questions. I don’t think I want to ever lose my curiosity and need for answers, even in the bliss of Heaven.
Dear Janelle, –Bingo, your inference was precisely correct. In my own text about the NDE, that was the reason proposed for why God created the material world after Heaven. A writer I came across wrote, David Foster Wallace, expressed this idea brilliantly in this little allegory:
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”
By only living eternally in Heaven alone, we could never start to even appreciate the paradise that is Heaven.
Jack, I really like this allegory. I think I understand what you are saying, but bear with me. Are you referring to those who have never made a sojourn on Earth and thus have not learned anything or everything there is to learn here? And if that is the case, what of those who have made the journey to Earth and learned some or all of what is needed to develop as spiritual beings? Do we then lounge around in Heaven with no purpose and no more questions to be answered or wisdom to impart to those experiencing life on Earth or, for that matter, to our Heavenly companions?
Dear Janelle, in fact our spiritual growth goes on eternally, and we are always hungry for more. Or so Mikey Morgan tells us! Based on conversations with him and other bits of evidence, I have come to think that there likely are realms of spiritual growth above the very top level of this one, perhaps a series of realms, with ever greater growth and ever more delights. Mikey says that we never stop growing!
I agree with you,, Janelle
Dear Lola and Janelle,
Yes, we come here at least once to learn what cannot be learned with adequate emotion while blissfully existing in Heaven, From what I have read from thousands of NDE reports, it’s fair to conclude we can be busy creatively as may please us or elevated spirits while in Heaven.
However, because there is so much potentially to be learned from this rich, stressful, material environment, we chose to return many times. Edgar Cayce, when asked how many lives we live here during one of his sessions, said the average is 36– I shudder to think that I’m only yet in the low range of that average.
Only 36? I hope Cayce is correct, but I have heard that it isn’t unusual to have hundreds – even thousands of lives on earth. That didn’t make me happy. The problem with reincarnation is that there are so many interpretations of it, one could go crazy trying to figure out which one is correct i.e. there are those who say that only one third of our soul is reincarnated, and the remainder remains in the spirit world. Others say that the choice to reincarnate is strictly up to us. How do you know that you are only in the low range of that average? I would think you would be in a much higher range. I’ve gotten to the point where I feel that being here would no longer be necessary for many of us unless we want to come back to help humanity. Otherwise,, what’s the point?
Dear Jack, others talk about many more lives for each of us. Hundreds. There are going to be a lot of questions that our trip back home will let us finally have answered!
My dear Janelle, thank you for saying such lovely things! We do have fun though, don’t we?
To try to answer your questions:
1) There is a lot of learning in the afterlife, including in classrooms and from what we might term gurus – sixth-level beings. Even from Jesus! But what we really crave is spiritual growth, and until we achieve considerable spiritual development through living on earth, we really need to keep on coming back here. So one specific kind of class that is quite popular might be termed “How to survive the worst times on earth.” People who choose to suffer some major earth-disaster will have to take such a class in order to be born at the right time and place to be part of the Holocaust or to have some other awful experience!
2) We don’t really know what the earth will be like in 200 years. My hunch is that Thomas talks about the kingdom of God arriving then as an alternative future just as a way of encouraging us, and what is more likely is just a mild elevation that won’t entirely alleviate the earth’s present useful stresses. But, who knows?
Sadly, I sent a message and it was turned down as a human–something. WHY. I am a soul – at the moment in human form-why would you not accept my comment. I am your follower.
Oh my dear Barbara, I don’t like those nonsense tests either! If you want to talk with me, simply use the green contact block. But at least your messages did finally get through to us here!
My comments have been turned down 3 times now with answer human verification failed. Can you explain?
Dear Barbara, The human check mechanism for spotting pictured objects can really be tricky. What I have learned to do is to copy my comment, so when I fail the test, I can easily paste and try again.
I do that, too! I started after composing a long comment and then having it lost. That’s very frustrating! It funny, how I often fail to verify myself. 🙂
David
Dear Barbara,
I feel bad for your frustration of having your message or comments filtered by a program with a flawed algorithm that computes that you are a bot (i.e., not human). You are very much loved and appreciated. It’s just probably some weird glitch in the system. Have a great Sunday!
David
Thank you, David and everyone for being so supportive of Barbara! I wish I had some control over any of that process. I think I would prefer to have a few bots get through and share their (probably not very interesting) opinions to having really lovely friends like our Barbara being shut out this way!
Oh, it also may help to exit your browser and reload Roberta’s post and the comments before trying to submit your comment after having a comment rejected. I remember it happened to me before!
It happened to me as well earlier today, but then it stopped happening for reasons I don’t understand, but I know it wasn’t done deliberately..
Dear Barbara,
I, too, have been turned down a couple of times, but I finally caught on before I made it a third. What happened to me is that I clicked the Post Comment button, but I had thought that it wasn’t clicked, so I clicked it again. The Blog app doesn’t like being clicked twice for the same post and lets you know that by locking up, so now I watch the progress bar after clicking.
Yours,
Cookie
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.
Dear Thomas, this is a quite profound and enjoyable little treatise! You are absolutely right in all of it, and by the time I reached the end I was suppressing a giggle. You nailed it.
Scientists simply don’t think as deeply as you do. They don’t think any of it through. Their whole materialist dogma is as frayed and useless as a pair of 1920s knickers, so they don’t bother to defend it anymore because they know it doesn’t stand real scrutiny. At this point, every working scientist is just trying to make it to retirement with his career still intact. So then you come along with this great and very accurate piece that makes them all look ridiculous. Thank you! Love it!!
Thanks for such a thought provoking blog post Roberta. It can make the head hurt to contemplate, but the sense I get is that maybe the joy will turn out to be in the journey rather than the destination, since maybe this is a reality designed to have no destination. Could that possibly be the ultimate perfection of God’s plan? Are we learning the paradox of being like God – to be still while in motion, to be a perfectly clear and reflecting, yet flowing, river of the living water of the Holy Spirit, in which God experiences and sees itself, evernew, evergreen? (I know these metaphors can be a bit simplistic, but they sometimes seem like a good way to approach conundrums like that of the uncaused cause. I think that is why mystics resort to them so often)
Oh my dear Scott, this is really beautiful! I think you must have been a poet in another lifetime. You have a poet’s soul!
You’re very kind Roberta. It must have been another life, because I don’t know where this stuff comes from half the time. 😄
Dear Scott, I do believe your point here IS what existence is about as existence continues on, ” the joy will turn out to be in the journey rather than the destination, since maybe this is a reality designed to have no destination. ” That was the conclusion that I too have reached and presented in my own text on the nature of existence.
My dear Jack, I think there is joy in both the journey and the destination, but I also think it is simply impossible for us to comprehend what is going on from where we are now. And I especially enjoy wondering about all the glorious surprises we have in store!
I’m confused. I thought the “destination” was to rise higher and higher in spirituality and join the collective Godhead. Otherwise, why all the incarnations, nudges from spirit guides, etc. I seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through if there is no destination or purpose to it.
Dear Lola, Having a destination directly implies finality, but as discussed above, it appears that God’s own eternal existence takes us along to join in His eternal exploration of what may be. Several years ago when I was in extreme anguish over events, and had wished that nothing had changed, it came to me in that unvoiced voice that change is the essence of eternal existence, for should there be no change, existence would then be frozen dead. Change, not finality, must be core to existence.
I see what you mean, and finality doesn’t make any sense. I think I thought about the word “destination” incorrectly so thanks for clearing that up.
I like what you say Jack – the choice between change or being frozen. If we replace the word change with “the infinite creativity of God” or a phrase I heard recently that I really liked, “the infinite fecundity of God”, I think that puts a good point on it. I recall reading similar things in the Seth books many years ago, in which Seth said that God could be thought of as basically chaos, but that should not be thought of negatively, rather as limitless possibilities, for without those limitless possibilities things will eventually grind to a halt and be “frozen dead.”
Dear Scott (and Lola), I do think we (including Roberta) are now all in agreement about the infinite, eternal creativity of God.
Indeed we are, my wonderful friend Jack!
My dear Scott, I find it hard to think of “chaos” as related to the Godhead. Possibilities, yes! But, chaos? This entire universe is being continuously re-created in each micro-instant, with all the minute peculiarities of more than seven billion living people, just on the earth alone! The complexity of that beggars the imagination, and yet the Godhead is so entirely in tune across thousands or millions ofminds that It manages this task with scarcely a glitch anywhere. (Occasionally there is a little wrinkle, though. I love spotting those!)
I don’t think that Seth meant the word “chaos” as we think of it here on earth. Something could look like “chaos” initially, but could be extremely organized. We would never pick up on it from our limited physical minds.
Hi Roberta. I don’t want to bog down in semantics, but could chaos just be another word for the quantum field? The unmanifest field of any and all possibilities (aka chaos) is resolved into the manifest moment by moment by consciousness, which would be us/God? Without all those possibilities being available, good, bad, or indifferent, the “game” doesn’t really work. I think that is what the Seth material was putting across, that consciousness creates reality. This gets into that age old idea of the unmanifest versus the manifest aspect of God.
Dear Lola, the higher we are vibrating – the more toward love and away from fear – the more powerful our minds become. That is the essential nature of consciousness, and achieving that power seems to be at least a part of the point. The Godhead is a Collective of Perfected Beings that together are so powerful that they continuously manifest this illusory universe!
There is no doubt that fear is our greatest enemy. I was brought up in fear so I know what I’m talking about. No matter what we do in life (or the afterlife), with fear in the picture, it is impossible to advance, as fear would act as a barrier to making our minds more powerful. Therefore, eliminating fear should be first and foremost before even trying to undertake anything else.
Yes, dear Lola. And fear is most of the problem with Christianity, sad to say. Some sincere Christians have tried to convince me that, well, there is no fear in THEIR denomination… but then they say that, no, they wouldn’t stay home from church if they were sick. They won’t take THAT risk! I have come to believe that until someone can trust in God’s love enough to give up form and espouse substance with their whole hearts, they really can’t do much at all to raise their personal consciousness vibrations. Very sad to say, indeed!
It’s amazing that no one stops and thinks that a high energy like God and the collective Godhead will freak out if we don’t go to church on Sunday. They make God into a narcissist, which would preclude him from being an advanced being because an advanced being couldn’t possibly be a narcissist, nor could such a being have an ego that would require itself to be worshipped in any way. We need to stop projecting our human faults onto a being who is not human and doesn’t share our petty concerns. I actually got in trouble for not wearing a hat in church at the age of 8, as God supposedly was pissed off because I went into a church with no hat on. I knew from that point on that I could never be a “true Catholic.”
Hi Roberta and everyone,
When I consider the Uncaused Cause I am a boy lost in the forest who forgets his trail and wanders freely below the towering, living, breathing canopy flanked by falling sun beams amid light-dappled shrubbery. Soon, the boy wonders if the forest has no end.
Is my long sought destination just an early way-marker on an endless journey? And does the shadow, the dark illusion, give stark contrast to the Light Eternal so we may truly see Light’s wonder for the first time?
Maybe all our lives here allow the Source to see itself in new ways via the shadows we strive against, and new experiences of wonder emerge for the Source that sees all.
Perhaps our world exists for the Creative Force to make new ways to experience the triumph of love. And we are all part of that force; we humans who are sent out into the wilderness of separation to find our way back to oneness at last. Do we co-create illusion which we exchange for truth as we grow bright and approach the Source?
Is it all for wonder? Did we really venture through all these lives only to find that we are already at home and never really left?
Did the boy but dream his walk of dappled light and shade through the wild, endless forest?
Efrem: That’s a good thought and certainly could be true, especially the part about co-creating illusion, I do believe that’s true.
Hi Lola, and thank you.
It does feel like we humans have created some good things but also some awful illusions that we now believe are true. So many fear and fear-response false systems and behavior that make people suffer.
Imagine what we could create together if and when many more of us become beings of love. 🙏🏼
Yes, Efrem…..the illusions seem so real that we get caught up in them, and many times this ruins our lives if we dote on them
Oh my dear Efrem, what is most astonishing, the more we learn about how this all works, is how absolutely and profoundly each one of us is LOVED! Every religion, and Christianity in particular, considers us to be miserable sinners, failures more or less, who might escape hell but just barely. But the Godhead genuinely and completely LOVES us! Not as if we have somehow earned it, but the way a doting mother loves her only child. It’s amazing. When you wander among those trees, know that there are gentle hands always right there, keeping you safe, and the fondest and proudest and most doting heart completely loving every step you take!
Dearest Roberta,
Thank you so, so much for saying this. Sometimes I really need to hear this.
And this perfect love is for each and every one of us individually. Doesn’t the sheer magnitude of such love make it so astoundingly wonderful?!
You know my favorite affirmation is: ‘Be still and know that I am God.’
Perhaps I could tweak it sometimes to become :
‘Be still and know that I love you.’
❣️🙏🏼🌅
Oh my dear Efrem, indeed it is wonderful. That is why I say it every week at the end of our Seek Reality podcast: I say something like, “You, most of all in the entire universe, you are infinitely loved.” I want everyone left to dwell for awhile on the amazement of that!
Dearest Roberta,
I’ve always thought that your signature finisher in your weekly Seek Reality podcast is a masterstroke:
Thomas and your good self reach many listeners there, and you share the truth that each of us is perfectly/infinitely loved by the Divine.
You give people the opportunity to really, truly realize this love applies to them directly. And this is certainly a masterstroke because so many of us find it hard to KNOW that it is true for us. We need to hear this.
Life has taught me that behind our human behavior; underneath our bitterness or nastiness, beneath aloofness or inability to connect is one basic thing. It may even power deep fear of rejection. It is a dislike or hatred of ourselves. It’s the feeling that we are not worthy of love.
We have often thought that there is Spirit and the Godhead Jesus, there are these very spiritual people who experience amazing things, and the realm of love eternal is true for them – but not for us. We fall short. We are not good enough to be worthy of it….
This deeply help belief is the saddest thing; holding us back from believing and then KNOWING that we are infinitely loved.
Your finishing statement, reinforced each week, moves listeners out of self deprecation and sets them free. This makes all the difference. People soon discover they can be ever happier, their vibe raises and inner burdens disappear.
🌅🌅🌅
Dear Efrem, I do believe you nailed it.
Dear Lola, There are many NDE reports which comment on how God and Jesus regard our Man made religions, to include Christianity in its various denominations. Simply said, They are disappointed at how we have distorted God’s role and our place in His Creation.
Religions intentionally works to create fear and reliance on the church to avoid damnation, and to gain entry to Heaven, just as Roberta has said too. By contrast, when Christ tells people to go back to lead a better life, His message is simply the Golden Rule–nothing more complicated or demanding than that.
Dr. Hiller: That is truly amazing. I had no idea there were many NDE experiencers that commented on the distortion of religions and God’s role. Humans tend to make things more complicated than necessary, so that doesn’t really surprise me. It’s sad to think how many people were killed, tortured, etc for not choosing the “right religion” when in fact there is no such thing
Dear Jack, I think of His message as the Golden Rule on steroids! Radical love, complete forgiveness, perfection in our interactions with others: it isn’t easy, but once we have internalized love and forgiveness at that level we will no longer have any need or wish to incarnate again, which is a consummation devoutly to be wished!
“new ways to experience the triumph of love.” That’s beautiful Efrem. It resonates with me and I feel it gets close to what this Earth school is all about. The shadows can be our greatest teachers about the light. On the other side it’s all light, so we take it for granted, nothing to push against. We can study it theoretically in our afterlife classrooms, but like riding a bike, until you start pushing against those pedals and trying to keep your balance, the “book” learning doesn’t get you too far.
Dear Scott F, you are right. Theoretical knowledge is nothing like actual experience. I guess we’ve got to live it to really learn it.
And book learning can only take one so far. When I was younger I put a lot of store in book learning. Then certain, unforeseen events happened in life that shook me to the core and left me in shock for quite a time. However the things I learned from these few sharply difficult experiences, taught me more than years of book learning. Since then I have left books aside, mostly.
Scott, I guess no book can truly come close to the impact of what may happen in this life. 🙏🏼
All true and very well said, my dear Scott! Those who are there tell us that people forget just how awful things are here, and how lo-o-ong our lives seem when we have to live them within time. I’m read comments from the dead who say that it’s the fact that we forget how bad it is and how long it is that is the only reason why anyone ever returns!
Dear Jack,
I didn’t know that there were so many reports on how the Divine sees our man made religions. You know I often feel that older, traditional cultures have remembered our beautiful & integral place within creation, whereas organized religions have not. Everything is fear and power based in these religions. They demand such slavish conformity.
And what is more love based than the Golden Rule; the astonishingly simple elegant equation. 🙏🏼
Dear Efrem, the thread above ran out, but I would like to reply to what you said about our Seek Reality signoff being a “masterstroke.” Of course, it came from Thomas! When he first had me say it, I thought it might even be sacreligious; but I guess that at this point everything I say is sacreligious anyway, right 🙂 ?
I have learned enough by now to say it with all my heart! I think of the people that you describe, beat down by their religions and fearful, and I feel that God is speaking through me as a vessel to tell them that indeed God does perfectly and completely love them! It feels wonderful, every time.
I felt Thomas’ perception in your wonderful S.R. finisher. I had a feeling this came from On High and Thomas knows this at his elevated level in a way I cannot imagine. And he relays it to us via yourself.
And if it feels wonderful to tell us we are perfectly and completely loved – it feels so nourishing and life giving to hear it!! 🌅🌅🌅