Posted by Roberta Grimes • December 12, 2015 • 12 Comments
Afterlife Research, Death, Human Nature, Thomas Jefferson
Some of the richest people on earth are spending their fortunes in search of 
ways to halt and reverse the effects of aging on our bodies, and to find a way to transfer human personalities to metal bodies so they can be earthbound for centuries. These wrongheaded notions are gaining steam; one recent article calls this “the year we decided to live forever.” There even is a name for this foolishness. It’s called “transhumanism,” the notion that we can escape the constraints of being human and live forever as perfected material beings.
It is tempting to call all this nonsense laughable, just the byproduct of willful scientific ignorance, and in fact it is all of that. But sadly, the scientific cluelessness that has trapped modern mainstream culture in materialism can no longer be seen as innocent. The toll it is taking on regular people who are only trying to live their lives can be tragic.
Recently I read an article in The New York Times that brought tears to my eyes. A lovely young woman was dying of cancer at the age of twenty-three. And because she had been persuaded by materialist science that her only hope of immortality would be for her to pay to freeze her cancerous brain, she wasted what should have been a beautiful time of transition from this life to the next in preparing to preserve the meat inside her skull. I couldn’t bear to read what her boyfriend went through at the dramatic time of her physical death, when he said goodbye to his beloved’s face before technicians harvested her brain. This article is full of the absolute fact that scientists know nothing about how the human brain might generate who we are, nor how that bit of frozen meat might ever again be a human being. But this whole idea of preserving brains as if they held who we are is becoming a materialist obsession. Those doing this to themselves admit that there is no evidence that our brains generate who we are; and indeed, there are creepy hints in some of the articles that I’m sharing with you here that some individual university scientists already suspect that they are in a blind alley. But the scientific establishment holds the line against peer-reviewing or funding any research that might lead someone to conclude that the mind may after all be eternal.
Of course, beautiful Kim is fine. As they were buzz-sawing her skull, she was out of her body and thrilled to be in the arms again of loved ones she had thought were dead. She must have wanted to let her boyfriend know that she was perfectly fine, but because he also is a victim of the Luddite conspiracy that is modern science, whatever poor Kim might do to help him realize that she has survived will likely be put down to his imagination. Or to mere coincidence. Or to creeping insanity.
These star-crossed young people are only two of the numberless folks whose lives have been damaged by scientists’ refusal to investigate anything beyond their dogmas-bound, materialist bailiwick. The scientific gatekeepers – the university departments and the peer-reviewed journals – are doing the equivalent of inviting earnest scientists into a room where there keeps appearing a puddle of water. These researchers are told that we must at all costs determine the elusive source of that water; and to do that, we can examine the floor. We can exhaustively study the walls. But we will lose our careers if we consider the ceiling.
Sadly, I do not exaggerate.
The insistence of mainstream science on materialism has kept the news media in ignorance, too, so many people now share Kim’s desperation about prolonging their material lives. And this is going on all over the world! Money is being poured into trying to understand the workings of the human brain out of all proportion to that organ’s value. Whenever possible, theories are propounded to reassure us of the brain’s importance. You come to sympathize with billionaires who have bought the bunk that scientists dish out, since some of them are being taken now for tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. For so long as the wealthy will fund this nonsense, the gatekeepers will shore up ignorant hopes in order to keep their income flowing. Ridiculous research will carry on.
Indeed, the very billionaires whose contributions are incentivizing universities to keep humanity in ignorance may be the greatest victims of the materialist science that they are perpetuating. Rather than living spiritually productive lives, these folks are instead accumulating material wealth as if doing that were the point of living. Who can blame them? They are winners in the game that science and our culture have insisted to them that they are playing. But these winners of life’s lottery will sadly learn at death that they were its biggest losers.
The entity who once was Thomas Jefferson communicated as Jefferson 
through direct-voice medium Leslie Flint in the early sixties. Having extensively studied both the afterlife evidence and the man himself, and having further been helped to recall actually knowing Jefferson in his old age (when I was his young male protégé), I can attest that this communication is genuine. It comes from someone who once had considerable wealth and power, and who learned after his death just how valueless it was. He said:
“Unfortunately the world worships material things; puts a false value on them. Man’s got to realize that the only things that matter are the spiritual things. They are the things that do not rust, do not decay. Important though these things may be when on Earth, such as wealth and position, they are infinitesimal in themselves. One should realize that one has got to progress mentally and spiritually, and if you’re blessed with worldly things, to realize their only link is, they’re there for you to use and to share among those less fortunate than yourselves. But to do as the majority do, to struggle from birth to grave for money and position and then have to leave it and accomplish nothing in consequence, seems to be a pointless and foolish attitude towards life.”
Buddhists talk about the risk of “turning on the wheel” of repeated fruitless reincarnation. A life lived without spiritual growth is a life that is altogether wasted, and its only result is that the one who has lived it will soon be planning another life without the distractions of wealth and power in hopes that this time he will get it right.
I enjoyed reading this post and it shows us the limitations of newtonian cause and effect thinking. Here we are nearly 100 years into the era of Einstein and the quantum founders and we still pursue the science of the mind/brain with the linear idea that a non caused spontaneous physical universe somehow produces the non physical condition of being and awareness. When you truly believe that conscious awareness is the result of an electro chemical biological process life has no meaning. The result of this is a desperate terror filled grasping for more, or even worse, disregard for the value life as no more consequential than electrochemical blink of a firefly. It would be better to not “be” at all than to have being without meaning. What is so incredible is that we are immersed and totally absorbed in the reality of universal consciousness and somehow have no inkling of it. It brings to mind the saying that seeking God is like ridding on an elephant in search of an elephant. It is all so simple and obvious we cannot believe it is true.
You’re so right, dear Michael! I have taken to telling people that God (or Consciousness, or Mind) is the water in which we swim. Fish are not aware of water because they know no other reality, and in the same way we have trouble perceiving God because we never experience non-God. Even at the worst moments of our lives, even when we are in despair and we feel bereft and friendless, we remain immersed in the love of God. This is how it feels to be in God! Our first understanding that this is true and can never be not-true is the place where real spiritual growth begins.
Thank you for commenting, dear friend! I’m sending love and hugs to you and all those you love for the Christmas season ;-).
It baffles me, too, why anyone would want to hang around in this crazy world. It does have some things to offer and I feel and hope I have learned a lot while I have been here but I look forward to the Other Side. I believe it is people’s belief or fear that the Other Side does not really exist that makes them cling to this world and anything it has to offer. They are reacting from fear instead of love.
You’re right, dear Joy! Most people have a primitive fear of bodily death that must be an innate instinct; and it is common, too, for many to have a more sophisticated fear of death as the great unknown. These fears are natural, and they tend to turn people toward wanting to learn more about what actually happens at and after death, which is a good thing!
My issue here is with the adamant enforcement of materialist beliefs by mainstream scientific gatekeepers. Their actions are based in fear as well, and they are damaging so many lives! They are instilling unnecessary fears in regular people and making them believe that freezing their meat-brains might be a way for them to preserve their earth-lives. And they are instilling false hopes in billionaires in order to keep their funding coming. At this point, fearful scientific gatekeepers are doing willful and incalculable harm! Inexcusable harm. There is no word of opprobrium severe enough to sufficiently condemn their actions.
So, what are they so afraid of that they are willing to risk being seen by history as equivalent to the Catholic Church that convicted Galileo of saying that the earth is not the center of the universe? Your guess is as good as mine, but I will tell you what I think. I don’t see this as a conspiracy, but rather I see it as hundreds of working scientists who see their whole lives’ work at risk so they independently and ever more desperately defend the dogmas on which that work is based. They learned materialism in school. They learned a worldview, and they have based their entire careers on that worldview. Now each of them has a mortgage to pay, children to feed, and a retirement to fund, and because the materialist pronouncements of their profession have worked to instill fear in people with money, they have barred the study of anything that might upset their funders’ materialist views in order to keep the money coming. I don’t know if this is right, but I do know how to test it. One day a billionaire will come across sufficient information about what actually is going on to pique his curiosity, and he will announce his willingness to fund appropriate research projects plus a billion-dollar prize for the first scientific team to prove the eternal nature of our minds. At that minute – at that second! – the scientific scramble to deny the greater reality will be over. And the scramble for bucks in the other direction will begin.
Thank you for your thoughts, dear!
Another insightful blog, Roberta, with excellent comments by Michael Newton and Joy Collins. I’m in complete agreement with them and you on this.
I’m also getting tired of this constant “brain worship” by neuro-science and materialist science in general. As you point out, it’s practically everywhere. Just the other day, billionaire Elon Musk, of Tesla Motors, and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, are donating $1 billion for more AI and brain research. It’s all for making sure that AI robots don’t take over the world!
It’s still based on the false assumption that the brain creates consciousness. And the also false assumption that when AI computers and robots get sophisticated enough they’ll suddenly develop self awareness with free will and maybe turn on us. There have already been some sci-fi movies and novels with this theme.
I ran across recently another critique of materialism. The person asked the question, how can human brain cells understand quantum physics when the materialists, he pointed out, such as Richard Dawkins, say that the brain only evolved to help us survive; thus they contradict themselves.
Of course, we know that it’s our consciousness that understands quantum physics and everything that has meaning. The brain is only an instrument to be used by our consciousness.
Michael Newton makes a good point about the absence of meaning in the materialist paradigm. It somewhat amazes me when I read or hear some materialist scientist exhorting young people to see the beauty of materialist science and it’s pursuit of truth and to get excited about that paradigm.
What?! That’s a mind numbing contradiction, for the nub of physicalist philosophy is that there is no meaning in the universe, nothing to get enthused about, for the qualities of “beauty,” “truth” and “enthusiasm” are merely the electro-chemical inter-actions of neurons in the brain. We’re constantly told by this ilk that there are no transcendent qualities or realms, that this is all delusion.
I wonder when the materialists and the offshoot of transhumanism will find out that they’e been running up a blind alley? Eventually, that will happen, but it doesn’t look like anytime soon. Meantime, like Joy Collins, I’m looking forward to the afterlife!
P.S. Roberta, loved your Podcast interview with Tom T. Moore. I’ve been working along similar lines and his work has sure helped improve matters. Just subscribed to his newsletter. Thanks for having him on!
Oh my dear Michael, a wonderful comment from you as well! And I’m so glad that you enjoyed Tom T. Moore. He’s extraordinary! He also works in some areas where I am not yet comfortable, but I’m becoming comfortable enough with his integrity that I wanted to share him with you.
As I’m sure you must be able to tell, dear, I absolutely love doing this work! I’m drinking life from a fire hose; I get maybe five hours’ sleep a night or else I start to fall hopelessly behind. And I truly do believe that there is no one else on the face of the earth who is so thrilled with what each minute brings as I am!
Roberta,
I love the frank, fresh way you put things in your writings in on your PodCast. Well said!
Thank you, dear Brian! I love the way that you write as well, as I’m sure you realize. Merry Christmas and big hugs to you and your beautiful family!!
Roberta this blog covers a lot of ground. As far as improving the human body I’m sure some of that will happen. It may be the body’s life processes could be tweaked to extend the possibility of organic existence perhaps significantly longer. If the definition of death is the time consciousness disengages from physical existence then that may not matter. If you’ve decided to leave at a certain point then what shape the body is in wouldn’t determine anything. How many times have we heard of people dying without any specific cause? Even assuming bodily processes could be kept going indefinitely what about accidents? Would you ever venture outside and take the risk of an accident taking you out? What kind of life would that be?
As for Kim I can understand her fear and the lengths she went to. I started having panic attacks at the age of 37 when the knowledge of death at any instant became visceral. This without any health threat looming just the obvious fact that anything could happen at any time. Fortunately I’d read the condensed version of “Life After Life” as a teenager and immersed myself in that literature. I also had the realization during this event that all consciousness is one and that I‘m not really the individual I seem to be. Looking back I now understand it was a spiritual emergency and my first foray into spiritual growth. The panic attacks eventually stopped.
For someone without any spiritual knowledge or mystical experience to fall back on facing death must instill a horrible fear similar to what I felt. I find it hard to believe that anyone facing death in this day and age wouldn’t turn to NDEs for understanding. Perhaps if she’d read Mellen Thomas Benedict’s near death experience due to brain cancer she wouldn’t have been so quick in undergoing the cryonic procedure. Perhaps like Benedict and Anita Moorjani she could have realized it’s possible to come back bodily healed. I think we’re to fast in dealing with “dead” bodies in our culture. We should leave them alone for 40 days like the Buddhists say.
The whole uploading yourself thing is a joke. You can’t compute consciousness. Consciousness is what does the computing. They already say it would take all the worlds computing power to simulate one brain. How could they possibly simulate thousands or millions of brains? Who decides whose brain will be simulated first? Even assuming you could actually exist inside a machine how does that guarantee immortality? Aren’t computers becoming obsolete every couple of years? Don’t all machines turn to junk eventually? Who’s going to be designated to make sure you get uploaded to the next machine? What if they stop caring? What if they just pull the plug and trash you? As we know with all technology, shit happens! This is the same argument I make about runaway AI. Just pull the plug!
As for the billionaires I wouldn’t really call them victims. They have money to burn and if they waste some of it well what else is new? They’ll still experience the truth at the end of their incarnation like everyone else.
Oh Tom, what wonderful insights! Thank you!
And I understand your attitude toward the billionaires. They should know better, but so what? It’s their money to waste. My concern for them is the fact that their ignorance is leading them to waste what were planned to have been lifetimes of intensive growth! Wealth is one of the toughest spiritual lessons, in that it is hard to surmount but if you can do that you can progress very far spiritually. On the other hand, if you remain in ignorance and heedlessly waste the money and learn nothing, you can set yourself back spiritually by many lifetimes. It is the loss of this opportunity to grow and the thought of how devastated they will feel right after death that makes me sad for them. I’m sorry – I can’t help it!
Thanks as always to all who contribute. It is good to see how other people are understanding and thinking about these amazing and provocative subjects. I just downloaded Liberating Jesus and am excited about reading it.
As a retired pastor who has gone beyond the broken concepts and theology of traditional Christian dogma and doctrine, I tried to “free” Jesus from the theology while within the church. There were many who were thirsting for a new truth about Jesus, but also those who became upset and angry that their ingrained indoctrination was being questioned by a pastor who was supposed to be a keeper of the faith. Over time I have become more understanding and forgiving of these folks and my own reactions to them. The Truth that Jesus taught and practiced created religious enemies in his lifetime and still does so today for those who dare to shake the system. Jesus told us and showed us the correct response to these people, but loving your enemies is a great and difficult lesson for most of us. With some small degree of humility I claim at least a little success in loving the unlovely.
At the core is fear but fear is only possible if you feel that there is something to lose or defend that is necessary for your life. Life is an absolute gift eternally given totally free from Source, but that is really hard to believe and accept from our ego centered viewpoints of neediness. Spiritual growth is the process of freeing our egoic minds and emotions by accepting, welcoming and embracing the presence of higher leveled conscious beings around us. The meaning of salvation is the realization that we cannot lift ourselves above our own level of consciousness. Our “saviours” are ready, waiting, and quietly encouraging us to receive the light of knowledge and gift of energy needed to free ourselves from current level of spirituals consciousness and make progress into the kingdom of heaven.
Hello dear Michael! You are right in saying the world is ready to begin to get beyond the religion. I am hearing now from many readers of Liberating Jesus, and what they say makes me realize that there are many Christians who have felt that Jesus was much more than the sacrifice that Christianity still makes Him out to be. Their most common complaint seems to be, “What took Him so long to say all this?”
I don’t think it’s possible for us to understand the timing. But I do realize now that it’s very clear that many Christians are ready to meet Jesus in His Gospels without the rest of the Bible in His way! The teachings of Jesus on love and forgiveness are the surest way to rapid spiritual growth, and now at last people are beginning to read and attempt to follow the Lord’s instructions. When enough of us are doing that, then we are told that the whole world will change.