Posted by Roberta Grimes • May 06, 2023 • 58 Comments
Afterlife Research, Understanding Reality
What kind of fool am I, who never fell in love?
It seems that I’m the only one that I have been thinking of.
What kind of mind is this? An empty shell?
A lonely cell in which an empty heart must dwell?
What kind of clown am I? What do I know of life?
Why can’t I cast away this mask of clay and live my life?
Why can’t I fall in love like any other man?
And maybe then I’ll know what kind of fool I am!
– Anthony Newley (1931-1999) & Leslie Bricusse (1931-2021), from “What Kind of Fool Am I?” (1962)
What are you and I really made of? Last week we were amazed to discover that plants are actually sentient beings. And plants are even loving sentient beings! So now it is time for us to look again more closely at ourselves. Of what sort of stuff are human beings really made? Are we gloriously spiritual creatures as well, eternal by nature and only a little bit lower than the angels? Or on the other hand, are we basically animals, or even something like automated meat-robots? That is the core question about human nature that humankind is still attempting after thousands of years to find a way to definitively answer. Religions, of course, have been of no help to us as we have undertaken this greatest of all quests. And mainstream science has been similarly useless. Although each of our most prominent cultural modes of thought, mainstream Christianity and mainstream science, has long been sure that of course it has the perfect answers for us! And often hilariously so, in both cases. This is the first of three posts that will dig more deeply into why our understanding has gone so wrong in our broader mainstream culture.
(Of course, those who frequent this blog have a much higher and deeper understanding. But we cannot live in isolation from our mainstream culture! Please just hold on to what you know while we take this brief detour into what you will see is still an amazingly backward mainstream cultural wilderness.)
It may surprise you to be told once again that while we have lately discovered that even plants are sentient and amazingly loving beings, mainstream science remains stubbornly convinced that human beings are just meat-robots under our skin. There is, to be sure, no proof ever offered that all the evidence for the primacy of consciousness and for the continuation of life after death that we have been receiving over the past two hundred years is entirely without merit, for the simple reason that the mainstream scientific community has never been allowed to consider any of that evidence, as a matter of self-righteous policy. So therefore, all the scientific gatekeepers – the university departments and the peer-reviewed journals – can straight-facedly continue to pontificate that consciousness is produced in the brain, and that at death we simply blink out like a light. This is why, almost a quarter of the way through the twenty-first century, you can consistently find weird articles in popular-science magazines that have titles like, “Surges of Activity in the Dying Human Brain Could Hint at Fleeting Consciousness.” Scientists hope that these anomalies might explain near-death experiences, so science can at last do away with that whole inconvenient NDE problem. Never, though, can any working traditional scientist who wants to keep his scientific career even hint that those dying surges of brain activity might be a threshold to life after death.
This is such a stupid child’s-level game!
Working scientists must claim to you and me that they are actually “doing science,” when they have not been allowed to do the full range of actual objective, investigative science for at least the past century. The problem is that there are some things that they simply cannot study. It is almost as if they have to pretend that all those dinosaur bones in the fossil record that are mixed with the bones that they are being allowed to study are not really there. Or as if they are under a scientific mandate to study all the gases in the atmosphere, except for methane. Or maybe except for carbon dioxide. Can you see how nonsensical any sort of limiting mandate at all makes the entire field of investigative scientific research?
What happened to wreck the field of objective investigative science was that a century ago, the father of quantum mechanics, Max Planck, made an astounding discovery. As he said in 1931, “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness! Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” In fact, Dr. Planck had discovered that there is indeed a base creative force. And rather than allowing the free and open-minded scientific investigation of this amazing new idea, the scientific gatekeepers of a century ago, being terrified of inadvertently finding (gasp!) that there might actually be a Creator, which very idea smacked to them too much of allowing religion to invade science (although why that might be the case, you would have to ask them), those gatekeepers absolutely would not allow the study of Dr. Planck’s big new idea. Instead, they chose to circle their wagons around a brand-new invented scientific dogma of atheistic-materialism. They decided to limit the field of mainstream science to the study of matter, and matter’s correlate energy. The scientific gatekeepers of a century ago thereby began what has turned into a full century – and counting – of science as no longer a field of free inquiry, but rather they reinvented mainstream science as a dogma-based atheistic-materialist belief-system. And for the past century, no idea and no concept that might not be consistent with atheistic-materialism has been considered for teaching in any university science department, or for publication in any peer-reviewed scientific journal. Most people outside the scientific community have never much noticed a difference. But mainstream science is now, and for the past century it has been, exclusively the dogma-bound religion of atheistic-materialism.
So, yes, atheistic-materialist science therefore now holds that you and l are made of matter exclusively. And actually, it is even worse than that, since you and I are not even considered by mainstream science to be conventional animals in any real sense. Animals also are made of matter, but animals are assumed to be creatures in the natural state, and you and I are not seen to be precisely that. No, one of the tenets of this weird reinvented scientific religion holds that people are automatons who have no free will. I confess that when I first noticed this problem in mainstream science, I saw it as a transitory silliness. I wrote about it in The Fun of Dying in 2010 as an example of how completely around the bend that counterproductive “fundamental scientific dogma of materialism” had driven the whole scientific community. Atheistic-materialism has fostered in mainstream science the certainty that the human brain must generate consciousness, since for those who are limited by that artificial scientific dogma, where else can our conscious awareness come from? So for at least the past eight decades, scientists have obsessively studied the gray matter housed inside our skulls. The idea that matter must generate consciousness is a staggeringly strange notion, on a par with believing that rocks must generate the sunlight that they reflect; but atheistic-materialist scientists remain undaunted by the fact that all their work to refine this idea over decades has yielded so little progress toward figuring out how the meat in your head creates who you are. One currently fashionable possibility suggests that the process must be “quantum,” so no wonder it is so hard for scientists to figure it out!
As they have been chasing their tails in a pointless study of mental gray matter, seeking something that in fact is not and cannot possibly be there, scientists have drawn a bogus conclusion that they oddly persist in believing, despite all the evidence there is that weighs against it. A researcher named Benjamin Libet showed in the 1980s that muscular and nervous preparations to move a digit begin about 350 milliseconds before we consciously decide to move that digit, thereby proving to many atheistic-materialist believers that human beings have no free will. There are some scientists who are sure that Libet’s work proves no such thing, but theirs is a minority view. Scientists who still stubbornly believe in human free will are mostly relegated now to the religionist side of the bogus battle between science and religion that actually goes back as far as Plato and Aristotle.
I bought Sam Harris’s book entitled Free Will when it first came out in 2012, and I read it as the in-joke howler that I assumed that Harris meant it to be. Sam Harris was in his youth a bright and sophisticated man. He originally couched his career in the scornful anti-religious mold of the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, but he is of the generation following theirs, and he used to strike me as just too smart to fall for the pseudo-religious, fake-scientific nonsense of atheistic-materialism. But, no such luck. An article lauding Harris and his book explains why he holds these nonsensical views. He says there that “The phrase ‘free will’ simply describes what it feels like to identify with certain mental states as they arise in consciousness (he is talking here about the “consciousness” that he imagines must actually somehow “arise” inside the human brain) — and our ‘freedom’ constitutes nothing more than this illusory feeling of control.” And at this point, most of the modern scientific community apparently shares this absurd misconception. We are being urged now to accept this bogus theory as correct, but to believe in free will anyway. Because scientists fear that if humanity’s prevailing view becomes the notion that individuals are simply not responsible for our actions, then civilization soon will fall apart.
On second thought, Sam Harris’s book, Free Will, is not even remotely funny. This absurd century-old religion of atheistic-materialism is now actually couched as what passes for mainstream science, believe it or not, just as very long ago the Early Medieval Christian religion became by default the prevailing science of its day, and physicians were thereby deluded into bleeding the sick in an effort to cure them. And in that very same crazy vein, our current scientific gatekeepers’ fear-based refusal to allow working scientists to examine the overwhelmingly detailed and consistent evidence that what we experience as consciousness is in fact the base creative force, that human life is eternal, and that our eternal life takes place in a greater reality that researchers have discovered and can describe for you in detail, have led the brilliant Sam Harris, this once-talented but now sadly deluded little man whose life is at this point being wasted on sheer nonsense, to write a paragraph that is breathtaking in its ignorance. Harris says: “Take a moment to think about the context in which your next decision will occur: You did not pick your parents or the time and place of your birth. You didn’t choose your gender or most of your life experiences. You had no control whatsoever over your genome or the development of your brain. And now your brain is making choices on the basis of preferences and beliefs that have been hammered into it over a lifetime — by your genes, your physical development since the moment you were conceived, and the interactions you have had with other people, events, and ideas. Where is the freedom in this?”
Indeed! Poor Sam Harris. Like nearly every working member of this almost entirely wasted early-twenty-first-century generation of research scientists, he has no freedom at all. Please take a moment to appreciate the fact that because Harris feels unable to go beyond the dogma-bound and entirely false beliefs-based religion of atheistic-materialism, in fact he does not know anything about anything. Literally! Every statement in his paragraph above is demonstrably wrong. In fact, as a part of your own infinitely precious eternal life, you chose to carefully plan an earth-lifetime before you were born on earth this time around. So you did indeed choose your parents, your gender, and the time and place of your birth. Therefore you controlled your genome as well, and in your pre-birth planning with your primary spirit guide for this lifetime, you masterminded in advance all the major events of your present lifetime. The human-made and entirely false scientific religion of atheistic-materialism makes it impossible for those who are stuck with working within that religion to investigate the truth about anything whatsoever.
But inevitably, the truth will win. The truth will win, even if the mind-controls imposed by these deluded scientific gatekeepers on folks like Sam Harris make it impossible for him and all those like him to open-mindedly seek what is true for as much as another thousand years! At this point, there is so much evidence that human consciousness is primary and that it survives our bodily death, just as very long ago there was abundant evidence that the earth is round and that it circumnavigates the sun. And the modern scientific community has sadly put itself in the position of the Early Medieval Catholic church, having to defend indefensible beliefs-based lies. Mainstream science’s enemy is no longer religion, for heaven’s sake. Now mainstream science IS the religion! So at this point, their enemy is the simple pursuit of the truth, untainted by anyone’s dogmas but its own. And if we are not seeking reality now, then whatever we are doing is a waste of good oxygen. The plain fact is that, as the great scientific genius Max Planck discovered a long, wasted century ago, what we experience as human consciousness is primary, and it pre-exists everything else. The only thing that all those old brain experiments prove is that these material bodies – which include our material brains – are just meat avatars, no part of which is aware or contains our executive function. Our eternal minds, quite apart from our bodies, are where we are aware, where we live and think and make our conscious decisions. And once we decide to move a digit, that digit and our brain are made aware of that decision almost simultaneously.
Proponents of atheistic-materialism continue to insist that you and I are meat-robots and nothing more, and that as robots we lack even the ability to decide what we will have for breakfast. Working scientists must insist that whatever evidence they might find to the contrary is anomalous, and nothing on which they might even offer an opinion, since otherwise whatever status they might have achieved in the atheistic-materialist scientific community in which they are trying to build their careers will be at risk. All of this may sound funny to us, who are not bound by their beliefs, but it is nothing to laugh about because our governments actually listen to them. We must never forget that fact.
And so, you and I forge on. Next week we will be considering what the alternative cultural belief-system of Christianity has to say about what you and I actually are. And nothing that modern Christianity says can possibly be any more ridiculous than what this atheistic-materialist scientific belief-system has had to say about human automatons! … Or can it?
What kind of mind is this? An empty shell?
A lonely cell in which an empty heart must dwell?
What kind of lips are these, that lied with every kiss?
That whispered empty words of love that left me alone like this?
Why can’t I fall in love, like any other man?
And maybe then I’ll know what kind of fool I am!
– Anthony Newley (1931-1999) & Leslie Bricusse (1931-2021), from “What Kind of Fool Am I?” (1962)
Let’s also not forget what Nikola Tesla said and experienced:
He said:
“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”
Alas, this advice was not heeded.
“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”
“My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.”
He experienced:
Seeing the inventions in front of his eyes, in great detail. He didn’t need any drawings; he only made them to file patents. How scientists can explain these visions? Some explain it away by saying he was a madman. But what does that prove about his fantastic inventions? Nothing at all.
Dismissing and ignoring all spiritual experiences doesn’t explain anything whatsoever. What they have swept under the rug has become a treasure trove of the truth.
Oh my dear wonderful Adrian, how absolutely brilliantly said! My dear, thank you for mentioning Nikola Tesla, which I should have done. A genius, and a true polymath. Like all faith-based belief-systems – which science is, at this point – science is at its core based in fear. And the fact that it is based in a fear of finding that religions were right after all, so its “faith” is atheism, makes it all the more truly ridiculous. All that anyone ever has asked of science was open-minded common sense!
What I always think of, that makes me feel extraordinarily humbled and honored at the same time comes from several places in the Qu’ran.
Belief in the angels is one of the major tenets of Islam, and sometimes they are described as INCREDIBLY magnificent, encompassing the entire horizon if we could see them with physical eyes.
But a major part of this version of the story of humankind involves the angels’ stance towards us. The story goes that first angels were created, then jinn (non fleshly beings made of “smokeless fire,” and I’m sure what that is, exactly). And then, humans were made. The angels question the Creator and say “Why would you make a being of flesh who will create corruption on the earth?”
The next thing that happens is that Allah says “I know what you do not know. Now BOW DOWN TO ADAM.” And the angels, having fixed wills and therefore unable to disobey, bow down to “Adam,” meaning humanity.
This story always gives me the chills, that the angels would bow down to ME, weak, selfish, shortsighted little me. But — I have the ability TO CHOOSE the right and reject what is not loving toward other beings. I have to CHOOSE. The angels were made simply to obey. For us, it’s not automatic. I think that’s the point of the story. But for some reason it makes me feel even more loving toward the angels, who are there to help us through the challenge of physicality in this arduous journey called physical life/
Another part of this story is that this is the moment when “Iblis” became Satan. He’d been known as the ‘best of the jinni,” a real favorite of the rest of the crew… the .best of the lot (I bet you see where this is going)… So he was taken up to be with the angelic host (being the best little jinn and all).
When Allah tells the angels “bow down to Adam,” they do of course. But Iblis says NO… why should I, a superior being made of smokeless fire, bow down to this MEAT PUPPET who smells rank and is disgusting and who will do disgusting physical meat puppet things?? I WILL NOT SERVE! (paraphrasing a bit with the help of Milton, there).
And that”s how the whole thing started. According to Islamic tradition. (It pleases me also that there is a different version of the fall in the Garden: in that version, Adam and Eve sin TOGETHER, own up, and are forgiven together.. BUT are still told to vacate the premises and get down to earth to live, learn, suffer, and basically earn their way back to heaven. But at least it’s not ALL Eve’s fault in that version of the story. Small favors.)
I find this take on the usual stories really interesting because the one about the angels underlines the importance of free will, without which nothing we do on earth would mean anything. ‘For we are put on earth a little space, that we may learn to bear the beams of love.” (Blake)
If you want to read the original sources (in translation of course), I recommend the Abdel Haleem translation.
Thank you for the invaluable work you are doing. Love you!
Oh my dear beautiful Cherie, welcome to our little commenter family! I won’t be reading verses from the Qu’ran, but I will take your word for their accuracy. And it occurs to me that I owe to you, dear, and to everyone here an explanation as to why I so seldom mention other religions, and especially why I never mention Islam.
First, as to other non-Christian religions, while I was majoring in early Christian history in college, I took some comparative religion classes, and while my knowledge of them is rusty now, on occasion I do polish it up. I have found, though, that there is not much need to talk about those other religions here, since for the most part their base in the United States is very small and their teachings are benign.
And second, as to Islam, what I learned in college was that it was Islam’s intention to conquer the world at the point of a sword. That had been Christianity’s intention under Constantine and his successors as well, when Christianity was as young as Islam is now: that is just what Big Religion does. It is not a bug, but a feature. And in the nineteen-nineties, I watched Big Islam do its Big Terrorism thing, lining up Christians and beheading them all at once, throwing homosexuals off buildings, and so on. Daniel Pearl was the big one for me. After Daniel Pearl, I swore that I would never even mention Islam again in my life.
Christianity has been no better dear Cherie! Inquisitions. Crusades. No better at all. And now Christianity is dying a richly deserved death, so the perfect teachings of Jesus can at last be heard and shared and followed. But Christianity is my religion to fight. Jesus is my Prophet to save from the evils that have been done in His name. If you have read very much of my work, you know that I have said things about Christianity almost daily that should have me burning in hell forevermore, if there actually were a hell, and all for my love of Jesus, the eternally living Christ. All I can say, my dear, is that I have known some beautiful Muslims, and now in you I have just met another one. I believe that within your religion there are some wonderful teachings, too, about love and kindness that could make for a terrific religion someday!
I like to say, “give us another 600 years and we might get up to where things ought to be.” It took Christians – and then only some of them – 2003 years to accept gay marriage and gays as full members of their communion. So …there’s always hope! I just remarked to someone the other night that we have the chance to see what the Inquisition was like centuries ago by looking at the Taliban today. Islam and Christianity are close cousins, but people have a way of mucking things up. I really appreciate your work, Roberta. It hovers above and transcends organized religions but reaches down to shine light on them.
Oh my dear Cheryl, I really don’t think that even another 600 years will be enough. All the problems in Christianity come from the fear and negativity that Constantine baked into the cake when he created it, and there is no way to remove that now! The only way to fix Christianity is to begin again, from before the religion that Constantine created, which is what Jesus is now about to do….
Not sure how my name got changed, but it’s Cherie again (Cheryl is the legal name but I go by “Cherie.”) Yes, good old Constantine…I’m well aware of that history. He just wanted stability in his empire… whatever they came up with was fine as long as they all AGREED. Peace in our time! was his motive. The story of the Good Samaritan seems to resonate in this discussion… a group who was related to the Jews (As the Muslims are religiously related to both Jews and Christians) and a group always under suspicion, not trusted, and reviled. And we know how the Good Samaritan story turned out.
On a whole other topic… I just now noticed that you and another writer on the same topics has a logo that consists of wings… kind of an angelic motif?
Small white wings moving in an UNEARTHLY fashion are what I saw one night when I was grieving HARD for my husband. They appeared out of nowhere… floated VERY VERY VERY slowly through the room…and disappeared. I had been screaming in my head. “WHY CAN’T I SEE YOU!” (My husband died June 5, 2022…just a year next week..) Then I saw those wings.
I’ve never seen anything like those wings but I am pretty sure they did not come from the physical plane.
As far as the other stuff… I also had an NDE back when I lived in Germany. I figure that if the afterlife were a big Victorian house, I was allowed on the front veranda where others may have gotten as far as the vestibule before being sent back.
In a nutshell, the lessons I saw were pretty consistent with what others did: God has no gender, but shows to people the way THEY need to experience the Creator. II saw a decidedly feminine figure but not a figure at all…. more of an energy presence like twinkling lights, but not lights…
She/He has a GREAT sense of humor; the entirety of creation, “all that is seen and unseen” is a UNITY… even the “rocks and stones themselves” can “sing”… everything has a consciousness… and everything is deeply connected and greatly beloved of God. EVERYTHING. Which means the Golden Rule is as much self-love as other-love because what hurts YOU literally hurts me–because we ALL are as connected as the strands of the web of a spider…
In the months and years just afterward, I could not BEAR to watch any depictions of violence on TV or movies…. I’d yelp if my ex ran over an anthill… and as happens to so many who get those experiences, that marriage did not survive. The second one did and lasted till his death last year. That death is what spurred me to revisit the literature on NDEs and afterlife communication.
One of the biggest lessons I got was that everything is connected to everything else, SO PROFOUNDLY…. That includes the 1.8 billion Muslims on Earth, dear Roberta! lol
I’m not proselytizing because we don’t do that (it’s in the quran=no compulsion in religion). I’m just pointing something out that you may want to work on, for yourself. But I think you have some misapprehensions. Jesus and Muhammed are not in competition, but function as brothers. Their teachings are not as divergent as you seem to think.
Nobody is perfect. Not even us NDD’ers. 🙂
One last thing I saw: God thinks the depictions of Godself in Italian art… like the “Creation of Adam” on the Sistine Chapel ceiling ..are pretty darn funny. Entirely WRONG, but that’s why they make Her crack up. I saw that like a Powerpoint slide… THAT’s NOT WHAT I LOOK LIKE!! lol
Dear Roberta,
Bingo, ” Mainstream science’s enemy is no longer religion, for heaven’s sake. Now mainstream science IS the religion! So at this point, their enemy is the simple pursuit of the truth, untainted by anyone’s dogmas but its own. ”
Let’s start with the empirical discovery that plants appear to own awareness, to own a form of consciousness. Why? How? Consider that when God would go to “make” anything He could not go shopping for His material at any cosmic Home Depot or Lowes. What God makes must of logical necessity be made from what God is, and God at His core is consciousness. What is made by God is of God and may be in communication with God.
Let’s turn to the human body/brain. That too is made by God from what God is. The body as conventional material/energy must own consciousness, just as do plants (or rocks, water, … everything). Thus, the mass of cells that constitute the body’s tissues and organs, and the body as a whole owns the consciousness of its elements. In Freudian Theory, the actions of the body are motivated by the Id, Ego, and Super Ego. The Id is a construct representing basic bodily functions, such as breathing, and blood circulation, and instincts, such as eating and having sex. The Super Ego is a construct for moral principles, and Freud, attempting to be a proper atheist-materialist rejected God and so held that somehow the brain manifested the Super Ego function. The Ego is a construct for brain activity that works to accommodate the needs and desires of the Id, especially when its needs and desires conflict with the Super Ego and the possibilities for action in the physical world and the rules and law of society.
However, the human, as a material body owning its own consciousness, also was designed by God to have our eternal spirit attached, a part of God’s consciousness separated out to enable individual existence, attached to enable living in the material world. When the body dies or ceases to function during trauma, the attached spirit (termed “soul” while spirit is attached to the body) is free to detach and roam; that is why good empirical research has demonstrated that reports from the Out of Body state about activity too far distant to be observed with eyes and ears have been found highly accurate ( see the text, The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences, by Rivas, et al ).
The net result is that our living body is managed by two distinct sources of consciousness, one associated with the material body and the other being our soul. I have in fact published theory that the ghost activity that is lately being studied by researchers using electronic devices is tapping into the consciousness that remains when the material body dies ( On the Nature of Ghost Sightings and Behavior ). Our soul of course, having detached from the body, returns to Heaven where it once again directly experiences God’s love, and may commune with God. I have also published theory that our communication with God is akin to us as being individual droplets of water existing in the ocean that is God’s consciousness. For convenience, the consciouness that is God may be termed a Universal Field of Consciousness, UFC. Thus, what Tesla was referring to was his mind accessing the UFC which contains all knowledge.
The conflicts between the Id and Super Ego may generate distressful psychological conflicts. Modern medicine attempts to treat such conflicts with drugs–and conspicuously fails, because the root of the problem is not chemical or neurological, but instead conflict between body and soul ( I have also published a paper about this ( Evidence of the Body Possessing a Form of Consciousness Beyond Its Soul ).
Oh my dear lovely Jack, we have missed seeing you here for the past couple of weeks, and I thought, if this doesn’t get him, I am going to start to worry!! But on science-bashing, you and I can see eye-to-eye every time 🙂
All so beautifully said, my wonderful friend. You have had to contend with these folks directly, which I never have done, so you can address their problems much more specifically. And thank you for doing that here!
I think your references to the body possibly having its own form of consciousness is fascinating, and I’m open-minded about it. I would love to see your evidence!
Emailing you the papers I mentioned. In a nutshell, we have three cases documented in which the body continued to act on its own during the OBE, with the individuals watching it perform on its own.
1. Indvividual get stressed while swimmin to shore and has an OBE; he watches as the his body continues to swim to shore.
2. Individual driving a motorcycle is clipped by a pick up truck and has an OBE; watches as the truck driver comes over to his body to help, and his body punches the truck driver.
3. Lady has to call an ambulance and while riding passes out, and has an OBE; when she gets back to her body she asks her Mom, who was in the ambulence with her, why Mom was screeming, and Mom says she was the one screaming, not Mom.
The ghost analysis follows from these cases, plus out knowledge that all entities are formed from consciousness.
Hello Jack. May I humbly submit that these acts of seeming body consciousness may be a chicken with it’s head cut off phenomenon?
Ray, consider the details reported. In the case of the swimmer, the swimming was not splashing around directionless, but well performed swimming on line to land.
In the case of the motorcycle accident, the body grabbed the trucker and punched him in the face–is that headless chicken activity?
In the case of the screaming girl while she was out of body– I might make a sexist joke, so I better let that slide.
oh, forgot the citations:
Surahs 2.34, 17.61, 7.11 — the places where the “bow down to Adam” story is references. And another line should read that I DON’T know what “smokeless fire” is. Doubt anyone else does, either, lol.
Oh my dear lovely Cherie, “smokeless fire” would be Spirit, of course! Consciousness! And what a lovely, poetic way to describe it!!
Hello, Roberta.
Thank you for your efforts to show us the way and thank you for this post. I appreciate you.
It is truly amazing to me that I have been so blessed to be exposed to the truth that has been not so obvious in this world. It feels like, when I consider the path of my 68 years old life, that I have progressed in this incarnation through all the stages of a soul’s Earthly progression from Infant Soul to Old Soul and all levels in between. I am sure that I experienced incarnations where I properly and slowly progressed through those levels, but it seems that this incarnation, as David, was on “fast forward” until I reached my proper endpoint for this life as an Old Soul. Thank you very much for your help in getting me where I needed to be.
I feel blessed, and somewhat sad, that I have progressed and I am unable to share my insights very widely, but I do share some when I am guided to do so. Maybe this progression is mostly a solitary journey that we planned and only a few people, like you, are tasked with sharing enlightening teachings on a mass basis. I, also, may be a little slow on the uptake. I was told once that I am the last soul in my Soul Group to “get it.” : )
Anyway, it seems that this world is not set up in a way, that the spirits incarnated here easily and naturally learn and abide by the true principles. There may be a reason for Science’s wrong turn a century ago. Maybe this Earth School is meant to be more like a Boot Camp than a University?
I will continue to be thankful, forgiving, loving, and kind. I pray each day that I may continue to progress with my Life Plan. May this be the blessing of all those seeking.
With love,
David D.
“only a few people, like you, are tasked with sharing enlightening teachings on a mass basis.”
I believe this, David, it’s no coincidence that people like Roberta Grimes, Whitley Strieber and others with writing skills work tirelessly towards that goal
Oh my dear beautiful David D, please know that we all feel that frustration of wanting to spread the truth so much more widely and so much more quickly, now that we finally get it ourselves, and feeling so pressed for time because of our own limited time remaining on this earth! And I love the way you put it – that this is more like a “Boot Camp” than a University. But, it is what it is. And we just do what we can with each day that we have. All so beautifully said!
I lost my husband almost 4 years ago and in my immense pain I looked for ways to communicate with him because he was Brasilian Espírita and reader of Allan Kardack. After my husbands death I cried and screamed and called! I could believe he didn’t’exist because I felt his presence every night as I meditates- in the beginning I saw his face and then signs – when I meditate my room is filled with leaves or scenes and when I cry those leaves come next to me and embrace me. When some memory comes up I KNOW it is a message – something for nevão note. And when I ask a question I “ hear” in my head the answer !
Oh my dear beautiful Barbara, I’m so glad that you finally got this to post! Everyone, Barbara is past 90, and she finds our commenting process somewhat difficult. And of course, beloved Barbara, your husband is right there with you and he loves you wonderfully and he is young again and blissfully happy! There is no separation at all, it is all just illusion, so how joyous it is that you get to experience some of that now!
I was born a seeker. I knew something was rumming
outside the superficial facts most were comfortable believing
Maharishi called it
Consciousness: Cosmic Consciousness.
The ground of all being
But the question arose: how do you envibe Consciousness?
It takes time. Maharishi: “Even alittle of this delivers from great fear ‘
SO how do you up a full tank of unleaded Consciousness?
Enter Roberta gratitude, forgiveness and love— resentment
dulls the our perception–use the fist ball, keep the gratitude
journal and lastly’Love” Piece of cake!, Well, it takes a little time gfl erica
.
Oh my dear beloved Erica, how sweet you are, and how beautiful, my dear one!
Science has indeed become a religion onto itself.
We have witnessed it during Covid. It was shocking how many scientist were censored for questioning the given narrative. Only to find out many of those scientists were indeed correct. It wasn’t about finding the truth. Asking questions and challenging hypothesis has become a no-no in Science.
I also noticed how people like Sam Harris responded to Trump when he was elected. Totally taken by surprise at how different their persona’s had become. People I thought were reasonable were acting like children.
That just goes to show you we are all going through similar experiences.
No matter who it is, they are trying to navigate this material world. Sometimes we do well and sometimes not-so-well.
Our natural instincts for survival and our ego’s will get even the most reasonable of people under the right circumstances.
Sam Harris’ argument about free will is great example.
We can override those natural instincts through free will. We just need to first be aware of what is happening. We can’t change something if we are not aware of it. To modify our behavior and the way we think through simple repetition. Kind of ironic, to use what can be a weakness to our betterment.
It’s easier to say we don’t have free will and just accept things are they are instead of changing it.
That is why these blog posts are important. It brings awareness to what is happening. That we do have control even if difficult. We can rise above our natural instincts and become who we truly are.
Dear Thomas,
I echo your sentiments. Many of my extended family members belong to that “religion.” For a while, some of them wouldn’t speak to me because of certain decisions they made that they felt I should also make. Those family members have since made peace with me – I told them I had never had any issue with either one of them in the first place and there was no love lost! I know most people are doing the best they can with the information known at the time.
Along that same vein, one thing I find so distressing about life on this earth is that those in “authority” try to control any kind of narrative at all (whether from a religious viewpoint, or a scientific viewpoint). I don’t believe that ANY information should be censored. It’s not the government’s job to tell us what they think we the people can handle in terms of information, or what information we should be able to access.
Lastly, I want to also express my gratitude to Roberta for her weekly insights, which I find myself looking forward to eagerly in my otherwise somewhat mundane daily life.
Much love to everyone here – I feel like we’re a family!
JenniferK
Hi Jennifer,
Seemed like a lot of people were very scared. And if you didn’t agree with the narrative you were putting others in danger.
I can’t say if this were to happen again many wouldn’t do the same thing.
I think you did a wonderful job forgiving them. Simply awesome!
I felt sorry for many people seeing all the anger they felt for others. There is no peace in being that way, from my experience.
Dear Thomas,
Thank you for your kind words! I don’t usually have a problem forgiving people – I’d better not, with all the flubs & blunders I’ve made over the years! Lol 🙂
I agree, it made my heart sad.
Oh my dear Thomas, how profoundly said! It can be very, very difficult to question the prevailing narrative, especially within oneself. Every deep thinker in every generation, going back for thousands of years, has said that he never really got anywhere until he first took it all back down to base and started all over again. And that is the really hard part. And you get it, my dear Thomas! Even peeking behind that curtain is so hard!
« What are we? »
What does it take to be a sentient human being?
Empathy, Compassion, Love? Are we there?
Ah yes, my dear Camille! Wow, so true – like Thomas, you are taking it back down to base. We begin there. Certainly, the scientists aren’t there! And, wow, wait until you see how the Christians deal with it….
Emailing you the papers I mentioned. In a nutshell, we have three cases documented in which the body continued to act on its own during the OBE, with the individuals watching it perform on its own.
1. Indvividual get stressed while swimmin to shore and has an OBE; he watches as the his body continues to swim to shore.
2. Individual driving a motorcycle is clipped by a pick up truck and has an OBE; watches as the truck driver comes over to his body to help, and his body punches the truck driver.
3. Lady has to call an ambulance and while riding passes out, and has an OBE; when she gets back to her body she asks her Mom, who was in the ambulence with her, why Mom was screeming, and Mom says she was the one screaming, not Mom.
The ghost analysis follows from these cases, plus out knowledge that all entities are formed from consciousness.
Hi Jack!
Like clockwork, you blew my mind yet again.
The second consciousness would make sense the more I learn. If we were in complete control we wouldn’t behave as we do. Instead, we are constantly fighting ourselves. Never thought of that thing we fight may be another consciousness. Always looked at as if we were battling our natural survival instincts. Maybe both?
Thomas, There are important implications for the general concept of reincarnation derived by distinguishing body and soul as sources of motivation.
Strictly speaking, given that the body that grows in life is unique, when it disintegrates from material decay, it would not ever again exist without a special act of God. It is the attached soul that attaches to a body to have multiple different educational life experiences in the material world that may be said to reincarnate — but not any of the bodies it had called home before.
Thanks Jack, I am still trying to wrap my head around “Everything is Consciousness”.
I’m assuming everything in this world is made of consciousness (God).
Our souls are made of consciousness. So is the plants and all other life forms. When we all (including the plants/animals) die we transition to home leaving our bodies.
Even though our bodies are made of consciousness, there is no permanence to them after our souls leave. They are just a husk for our souls to experience this world. Same with all life forms here.
Some things created out of consciousness is designed to be temporary. More than likely for us to experience this world. After our life here is finished, the bodies consciousness is released when our silver cord breaks. And the bodies consciousness (energy) would set off the electronic devices you spoke of.
Am I on the right track here? Sometimes it takes me awhile to grasp some concepts and this is a doozy. haha
When the swimmer had the NDE, do you think their soul still had control of the body since the silver cord was still connected?
It sounded like they were a bystander at that point even though the connection kept the body alive. That was why I wondered if there was something else in control of the body.
Thomas, In each of the three OBE reports, the person flt no control over their body, but merely percieved its activities, which came as a surprise.
Yes, the body with it’s material needs and wants (Id and Ego) often conflict with the morality of the attached soul (Supoer Ego).
One of my neighbors is a retired Freudian psychotherapist, and he does agree with my findings and conclusions. The widespread use of drugs only suppresses life, and does not deal with the moral conflicts which need to be resolved.
Thank you for this documentation, my dear Jack! Really fascinating! I agree with your conclusions – I think the evidence does suggest some sort of identity animating the material body was at work in each case. Just fascinating.
Jack
Great clarification!
I see us when the Silver Cord is severed rising to our level of Consciousnes. Mom and Dad come running to hug us–
they’d been through the Life Review so they are
feeling pretty good!
When it is time, we choose from a list our next reincarnation–a portal appears and swish-down we go!
But we never any of our previous families; they
are a part of our lives forever!
I imagine a gigantic photo album in the heavens and all our families have a page.
We can talk to them anytime depending on how much
ignorance we have dumped!
All our lives are forever kept.
This is not fact.
But in my imagination,I see it
I am a romantic and extremely mushy.
gfl Erica
And even better, my darling Erica, we and they are ready for a period of playtime then, with all of us together again, and everyone joyous and a whole eternity to explore!
Erica Paul, Our existence is eternal, and we accummulate countless family members and friends. We reincarnate for education, as many times as we and our guides feel appropriate. No one can prove that to you as mortal, but the evidence is substantial.
Thank you, my sweet friend Jack! I can recall when I first did this research how overwhelming all the good news felt. I quite literally could not believe it at first, coming out of a deeply church-Christian background. Thirty years ago i thought it had to be wrong. Then in the end I really got Jesus, and suddenly it all made perfect sense.
We continually discuss the hows and whys of advancing our spiritual nature but rarely discuss how we arrived at such a low level of consciousness which makes all of this necessary. I thought we started off as perfect beings and part of God like sparks off a fire. The story of Adam & Eve has a message but I do not think it is factual. I have my own ideas on she subject but an looking for a short answer from one of the regulars on this blog. Thanks to Roberta and to all participants who take time to impart their wisdom for the benefit of all.
My dear Thomas, it has now been proven to be true that, amazingly, there was an evolutionary bottleneck, and every human bring alive is descended from a single woman and a single man who lived 200,000 years ago in what is now Botswana, in Africa. I consider that fact, and the further fact of the Eden myth which explains to us that we began as a perfectly innocent couple who fell from grace, to give us our task. Consciousness exists naturally in a range from fear and hatred at its lowest vibration to perfect love at its highest vibration, and Spirit has given us this school/gym in which to learn to raise our personal vibration.What could be more straightforward?
Thomas, consider that if we came here fully aware of our ideal spiritual qualities as we experience them existing in Heaven, then there there would be no point to living thru the harshness of our material, mortal life on Earth.
Hope this idea helps to explain why life is difficult.
Exactly so, my dear Jack!
Apologies if I am wrong, but I took Thomas Eberhard’s question as why do we need to raise our vibrations at all since we are part of God.
Earth was created for us to learn more about love and in doing so it raises our vibration.
Did God create us with the idea we would to work towards our potential?
Or were we created perfect, with the highest vibrations. Only for something to happen that lowered our vibrations making it necessary to relearn?
I’ve wondered about this before, but put it aside as it didn’t change the goal of us being here. Though my curious side would still be interested in knowing. 🙂
Oh my dear Thomas, we are created as aspects of Consciousness, but with the capacity to grow spiritually. There is no limit to our ability to love! And as we learn to love ever more perfectly, so our vibration rises ever higher, ever more intensely, to an ever more infinite degree. There literally never will be a top!
I appreciate all the time you and others put in to answer our questions and help us grow.
Life can be busy, but everyone here always makes the time to help.
Ya’ll rock stars!
Sorry for raising a confusing question. So where were you and I when this first “innocent couple” messed up? Roberta’s comments support the meaning behind the Adam & Eve Story so I assume the myth part refers to aspects like the apple and serpent. Is it possible that we lowered our vibrations from actions taken while in the spirit realm? If so then the story of Adam & Eve is more like an allegory.
My dear Thomas, I don’t think that there ever was a fall. I think that instead, we are simply climbing from good, to better, to even better, to even better than that! to Wonderful! to Yay!! to Omigosh!!, to Wow!!, to Fabulous!!!, to GREAT!!, to ICAN’TEVENBELIEVEIT!! to EVENBETTERTHANTHAT!! to… well, you get the picture.
Hi Roberta,
I think that the fact we manifested on Earth 🌎
is our Fall.! What a beautiful place to grow.
If anyone doubts free will, look at the mess
we chose to make here.
I think raising our vibrations is the #1 way to heal the Earth. When Love replaces ignorance, all
our Love replaces littering, and lowers our need
for things.
l Love this Blog. Thank each of you for raising
my vibrations. I learn so much! gfl, Erica
Oh my sweet Erica, raising our personal vibrations is indeed a positive way to help to heal the earth, although it will take very many of us all working at it to make much of a difference! And we do have fun on this blog together don’t we? Even if it’s mainly teasing one another. Being playful-serious. Stretching our minds! Everyone needs a safe place to be able to do that, and I’m glad to provide you with this one!
After 16 years in the Catholic Education System I managed to break loose. During the past 4 years or so I became rather conplacent and limited my search to these weekly blogs. This was done willingly, given that this dialogue verified much of what had been learned on my own while adding a whole new dimension of understanding. Now I aam trying to figure out how we got to the low starting point of needing numerous earth lifetimes to raise our vibrations. The Bible makes a big deal of it. Is anyone aware of books that might provde some insight into the subject? Thanks to all.
Dear Thomas,
Not that I have anything helpful to add to what you’re asking but I just want to say that I also have the same question. I couldn’t stop thinking about this last night.
What has never sat right with me is the [Christian] idea that we are fallen, sinful creatures. Because that would imply that the “God-of-the-Bible” made a mistake when he created humans, due to the fact that we ultimately “sinned” and if that wasn’t God’s intent, then why did it happen? My very loose theory is this: we are all fragments of God. To create the illusion of separation, we as separate souls embarked upon an experience starting from the furthest “distance” from “God the Whole”. So the furthest distance would be the lowest, basest, darkest “realm” from which we would journey back to God? Even this engenders many new questions. Maybe the experience was a mistake? God “thought” about what it would be like to experience separation and by virtue of that thought it happened instantly? Because thought creates? I dunno…. So, I’ll end my ramblings here! Lol
Much love,
JenniferK
Oh my dear JenniferK, no mistake, my dear. The main problem is just that we don’t remember when we are here WHY we are here, so we don’t try as hard as we meant to try when we were in the life-planning stage. There are cases in the literature that suggest that if you really make an effort, you can go from the third to the fifth level in one lifetime, and I can see how that could be done. It’s all about love and service!
Oh my dear Thomas, the main problem is that when we are here, we don’t remember WHY we are here, so we don’t try very hard. When we are at home, in our real lives, most people are at level 3 or 4 in terms of vibration, which is comfortable and happy. But then teachers come by, and maybe even Jesus, and we decide that hey, we want to grow spiritually, and it’s not that hard, so we get together with others from our soul group and we all plan an earth-lifetime, and we’re going to try really hard and ace that sucker and grow by a lot, so then we get here, but we all of course have amnesia – which is part of being born into an earth-lifetime, and we don’t try very hard. We grow old and die and get back home and slap our foreheads and wish we had tried harder, and so it goes!
Thank you Jennifer for taking the time to acknowledge my question. While I do not disagree with the answers being given, they are not on point which seems a bit odd. Maybe the answer is unknown or being hidden for whatever reason. I already have some thoughts on the subject but need to do more research. “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find”…. it always works but takes some effort.
My dear Thomas, when you read my blog post that is just now being sent out for next week, I think you will understand why humankind is having so much trouble growing spiritually. Let’s talk about it in the comments there….
according to ACIM, God didn’t create any of this. He created us, and we created this in and with our minds. If you look at anything in this universe, it is always in a state moving toward decay and death. God doesn’t create death, our ego does. The only thing real is our sleeping minds that are caught in fear.. of God, for goodness sake. When we wake by completely aligning ourselves with the Holy Spirit through Love and Forgiveness for ourselves and each other, all of this will dissipate like the dream that it is. Thank God Jesus is here helping and showing us how.
Oh yes, my dear Lynne! But this is a useful spiritual school so long as we will use it that way. And if we will use it that way, then things will indeed work as intended!