The reason why all of humankind is not already  certain that our minds are eternal rests on two inconvenient facts:

• Each of us cultivates a worldview upon which we build a personal identity. So to be asked past the age of maybe forty to take our worldview down to base and accept a different understanding of the truth is the equivalent of being asked at midlife to assume a new identity. It is embarrassing and frightening.

• We have to make a living. And usually our career choices spring from identities based on our cultivated worldviews. So to adopt any big new idea at midlife can mean losing the ability to provide for our families.

As a result, the leaders in every field will mightily resist new foundational ideas. They cling to old certainties with everything that’s in them.

I have a lot of sympathy for today’s leaders in mainstream science and mainstream Christianity. They have built good careers based in erroneous views of reality and of God respectively, but they had no part in creating those views. They received them early in life, and since the truth was not available to them they built their identities and their careers on what amounted to outright lies. They are victims, just as you and I are victims.

Unfortunately, though, in continuing to cling to old fallacious certainties, these scientific and Christian leaders are doing the world incalculable harm. They won’t look at the evidence for a greater reality, and they refuse to wonder about anything beyond the edges of whatever ideas they find comfortable. While this reluctance of theirs to disrupt their long-held assumptions is understandable, it also is the greatest obstacle that you and I face as we attempt to arrest humanity’s slide into barbarism and we struggle to build a more humane world. Let’s look at just two examples of people who are fighting the truth out of a simple fear of venturing beyond their own erroneous understandings.

In the scientific field, Susan Blackmore bills herself as a parapsychologist and a skeptic. She claims to have begun her career as a believer in the paranormal, and then to have conducted experiments that convinced her that all claims of phenomena that might suggest that consciousness can exist apart from the body were “only wishful thinking, self-deception, experimental error and, occasionally, fraud. I became a skeptic.” I remember her early career somewhat differently. In the eighties and nineties I was reading debunker literature as part of my research, and Susan Blackmore was a prominent member of that dishonorable clan. If memory serves, she spun people in a centrifuge and found that before they blacked out they might experience a narrowing of vision and spots of light that could be something like the tunnel ending in a light seen by some NDE-ers. She concluded that therefore all NDEs were the product of stressed or dying brains. She didn’t open-mindedly investigate psi phenomena. Instead, she looked for ways to explain some small aspect of each phenomenon so she could declare the whole thing to be bogus. And her claim to be a former believer whose experiments have proven psi phenomena to be false has given her a great career! At this point, questioning her own assumptions is the last thing she is prepared to do. Here is the text of an email that Susan Blackmore wrote to afterlife researcher Michael Roll on September 25, 2016, reprinted with his permission:

“Dear Michael, How many times do I have to tell you that I do not believe that Crookes and Lodge discovered evidence for life after death. I may be wrong, and I could be proved wrong, but as the evidence stands I am very far from convinced. In addition, everything I have learnt since about the nature of self and everything I have learnt from my 30 years of meditation all lead to the same conclusion – that selves are ephemeral constructions made by brains and when those brains die so does the self. So of course I am not going to try to promote Crookes’ and Lodge’s work. Also I do not think it has ever been suppressed. It is just not good enough to convince scientists and so they ignore it. If they turn out to be wrong and you are right then things will change but I personally doubt this will happen. Sorry – but that’s it as far as I am concerned. with best wishes, Sue”

Now in her sixties, she is not about to turn her skepticism toward her own beliefs!

In the Christian field we face not just erroneous beliefs that feel hallowed after having been passed down for two thousand years, but also a superstitious fear of God that is the antithesis of anything spiritual. If you attempt to point out the flaws of Christianity – they are abundantly explored in other posts on this site – then you are a heretic, un-chosen, and damned. This example is from an email sent by a prominent televangelist, abbreviated for length:

“It is ONLY faith in Jesus Christ that saves you because it was Jesus Christ who God sent to die for your sins! He was God’s perfect sacrifice to give fallen man a way back into everlasting fellowship with Him. So if you accept THAT, then you have to accept the ENTIRE BIBLE as God’s inspired, inerrant Word. It can’t be only part right! The reason is God cannot lie. The Bible is an all or nothing proposition, it is either ALL true, or NONE of it is true… Does this mean your Jewish friend who is a “good person” but never accepts Jesus is going to hell? YES! Does this mean that the family member you love but rejects Christ is going to hell? YES! Does this mean those kind people you work with that embrace Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or some other false religion are going to hell? YES!”

 And Jesus weeps.

If we hope to open the minds of scientists and religionists who resist any open-minded search for the truth, we first must understand why they fight so hard to avoid considering fresh ideas. Their livelihoods, their prestige, and their very sense of self depend on keeping everything new at bay! As Max Planck said almost sixty years ago, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

A couple of generations of scientists have come and gone since Dr. Planck made that observation. Cracks in the materialist wall that mainstream scientific gatekeepers long ago erected are beginning to appear, but slowly. And where religion is concerned, the fact that attitudes like the one quoted above have emptied churches is beginning to open some minds. The process of enlightenment is agonizingly slow, but it is beginning to accelerate. As Rene Descartes said four hundred years ago, “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” His advice is more essential now than it ever was!

One of the things I love about public speaking is that so often people will remind me that they find some things hard to understand. I can lose track of how mind-bending some of these concepts are! And no matter how carefully I might write, if people’s minds are catching on something that seems so basic to me that I never mention it, then nothing I write will be very helpful. I have just returned from a trip to California where I met some lovely people and was reminded yet again of some of the basic concepts that I take too much for granted. Today I’m going to mention a big one!

We all become caught up in the notion that our physical bodies are who we are. The fact that mainstream science is so far into the weeds that scientists persist in seeking a source for human consciousness in the brain contributes to our confusion, as does this confounding sense we have that what our sensory organs are telling us is true, that a solid reality exists and that you and I must be these bodies.

But the evidence is overwhelming now that we are not these bodies at all. Instead, our minds are part of the eternal Mind that is all that exists. Please read the previous two sentences again, since unless you understand them you will understand nothing! What is true is that your mind is eternal, and everything that you perceive to be solid is a projection of eternal Mind. It is all a collective illusion.

Of course, something like this would have to be right in order for us to have out-of-body experiences and to so easily survive our deaths. But knowing that intellectually is a far cry from being able to live it! So I’m going to try to make plain to you now the relationship between your physical body and your powerful, eternal mind.

Your body is your avatar. If you saw the 2009 movie by that name, this will make more sense to you. As you’ll recall, Jake Sully sleeps in a pod while his mind is connected with a blue mimic of his body so he can act in an alien world. He feels that he is experiencing everything his avatar’s sensory organs pick up; he operates it as easily as if it were his own body. But it is only his mind that is in touch with the brain of that distant avatar. And his mind is always awake in either one body or the other.

This analogy isn’t perfect, but it’s close. The evidence tells us that when we enter a new earth-lifetime, a subset of our eternal mind will go through a process that connects it with our new body as it develops in utero. The connection is to the entire body, and not to just the brain: we create what amounts to nested energy-bodies that fit inside our physical bodies as a hand fits inside a glove. Those nested energy bodies have no need to sleep, so throughout our lives while our physical bodies sleep those energy bodies will leave them and move around to consult with spirit guides, visit with dead relatives, take courses, or even travel to the very end of the universe, all while still connected to that sleeping material body by an energy cord that can occasionally be seen. When we reach our chosen exit point from this lifetime, our nested energy bodies leave our physical bodies for the last time. The silver cord that has connected them throughout our lives then frays and disintegrates, and once that happens this sorry avatar of a physical body quickly dies. Meanwhile, our energy bodies rapidly raise their vibratory rates and enter the afterlife levels of reality (usually at Level Three).

The difference, of course, is that your mind is not sleeping in a capsule while all of this is going on. Your mind is part of infinitely powerful and infinitely creative eternal Mind, and it exercises a kind of superconscious oversight while an aspect of it is involved in an earth-lifetime. Soon after your body’s death, your awareness will again merge with your eternal mind, and you will have access to all the powers and memories that you left behind.

I hope this makes things clearer for you! Think of your physical body as something like your old Toyota, just a useful way to get around, but nothing more. You would never confuse your car with yourself! And once you are certain that your mind will survive your death as easily as it survives the junking of your car, you will at last be able to begin to live the rest of your life on an eternal scale.

Considering how best to address some of the questions I heard in California got me thinking about the movie, so I watched it again. I urge you to do the same! It’s a visually beautiful and emotionally intense but uplifting experience, and it highlights where our scientific understanding was a decade ago… and where it remains today.

When I first saw Avatar in 2010, I reveled in the concept of someone sleeping in a capsule while his mind roamed in an alien body. That demonstrated a pretty advanced understanding! When I watched it again the other day, however, what struck me was its fixation on materialism. The planet must be “a neural network” with tree roots that demonstrate “more connections than in the human brain” through which flows “electrochemical communication” that the natives can access by means of an odd neural pigtail that is apparently attached to their brains. There is talk, too, of a “network of energy that flows through all living things,” and of a “goddess made up of all living things.” So near, and yet so far!

The big picture that still eludes mainstream science, and eludes even the writers of such insightful movies, is that the only thing that exists is consciousness. And consciousness is an infinitely powerful, infinitely creative potentiality without size or form, highly emotional and therefore probably self-aware. Every human mind is integrally part of that consciousness. So whether we are talking anywhere on earth, a planet six light-years away, or the very edge of the universe, you are forever alive in all places at once. You might say that nothing else but you exists.

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/138531998@N04/28180572131″>PATTERN.</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>

GUEST POST: Victor and Wendy Zammit are the world’s leading afterlife experts. For decades they have fearlessly battled all who would deny humankind these truths, and they even have posted a million-dollar challenge for anyone who can prove that the afterlife evidence in their wonderful book, A Lawyer Presents the Evidence for the Afterlife, is either misinterpreted or bogus. Their indispensable Friday Afterlife Report is available for free at victorzammit.com. This article by Victor will help you better understand why so many otherwise intelligent people, both scientists and religionists, are still so unable to accept what is by now incontrovertibly true. Having also long fought this battle against ignorance, I think what Victor has to say is brilliant!

AFTER DECADES of dealing with all kinds of paranormal skeptics, I can relate to you that there are at least nine reasons why closed-minded skeptics tend to remain stubborn about their skeptical beliefs – and why some of them unreasonably attack those who scientifically and empirically investigate evidence for the paranormal. The nine reasons below can apply to any person who inflexibly holds strictly subjective, personal beliefs, whether those beliefs are religious or secular.

My experience with closed-minded skeptics is that they do not investigate the evidence. They completely reject any information that is not consistent with their own cherished beliefs, even if that evidence is scientifically supported. And they lack the skills, competence, and objectivity to perceive new evidence in a scientific and balanced way. Here are some of the reasons why:

• RATIONALIZATION THROUGH COGNITIVE DISSONANCE. “Cognitive dissonance” is a term used by psychologists to describe the discomfort that arises when people are confronted with information that is fundamentally inconsistent with their own beliefs. When a materialist is confronted with highly persuasive evidence for the paranormal, that evidence will elicit in him extreme anxiety. Denial must follow. The materialist will become angry, hostile, even aggressive. He will feel forced to reduce his anxiety by rationalizing his beliefs and going into extreme denial.
• CATHEXIS. This is a psychological term for the fact that some people develop a very powerful – and usually unconscious – super-glue connection with an idea or a thing. Some of those who call themselves skeptics are “cathexed” to ideas which are incompatible with the possibility of an afterlife. Because the connection can be powerful and unconscious, sufferers often will attack their source of anxiety, which can be anyone who puts forward evidence that contradicts their beliefs. So these individuals are immune to logic, science, and any kind of repeatable and objective evidence that threatens to reverse their cathexis.
• NEUROLINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING (NLP). When some skeptics are confronted with information that is fundamentally inconsistent with their own deeply cherished beliefs, the mind of the skeptic will DELETE that information. As with “cognitive dissonance” above, this kind of skeptic will experience unbearable anxiety, a disturbance of his “comfort zone,” and will go into complete DENIAL. The most aggressive skeptics who are affected this way will even cheat, mislead, and lie about the real situation.
• ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMMING. “Environment determines perception.” It is known that, by and large, the environment you were born in will shape how you will see the world. If a Western skeptic from New York had instead been born in India, more likely than not the skeptic would be a Hindu. If he were born to a radical, extremist Islamic family, the skeptic would be a Moslem. If born to an orthodox Jewish family, the skeptic would be an orthodox Jew. And in secular Western countries, many people today grow up with an atheistic bias. One needs to have skills and considerable resolve to rise above such environmental conditioning and programming.
• BRAIN-EXPLANATION FOR “CLOSED-MINDED SKEPTICISM.” Skepticism can even be biologically based. When we have a rigid belief system, the neurons in the brain fire in a certain defined network. So if information (e.g. afterlife evidence) comes into the brain and contradicts our rigid belief system (which in this case is skepticism), those neural pathways will fire in the same old way and will not decode the new information. This functions just like a filter. It is only when the skeptic has a dramatic experience that a new neural pathway will be established, and then the old one gradually falls into disuse. Our belief systems are fundamental to filtering our perceptions of reality.
• PRIMARY MOTIVATIONS: MONEY, POWER, STATUS – AND A JOB. Some people choose to be closed-minded skeptics for career advancement and/or to make money, to attain influence, and even for celebrity status. Those who are scientists may want to continue to work in science. Most scientific funding comes from big corporations, and it tends to go only to those scientists and researchers who have the potential to increase their profits. For example, you may get a scientist who will reject the paranormal outright because he/she can get funding for taking that position. These scientists-come-skeptics will never listen to logic, to science, or to intelligent reasoning. They can’t move from their positions because they would lose money, power, status, and even their careers. Do you remember those negatively prejudiced scientists and medical doctors we once saw in glossy magazines in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, and also on television, stating as scientists that smoking is good, and even is healthy for you? Or those scientists who once stated that certain pharmaceutical drugs were healthy, when subsequently it was shown that these drugs might have killed hundreds or even thousands of people – a drug like vioxx? To this day there are scientists in Germany who still insist that smoking is safe.
• THE SMORGASBORD ARGUMENT. Professor Stephen Hawking is most notorious for using this “smorgasbord” approach, picking and using only the information that substantiates his own negative prejudices. This closed-minded skeptical professor does not know that in a courtroom situation his smorgasbord arguments would be torn to shreds. Why? Because he would be cross-examined on the critical, most vital evidence that he ignores because it fundamentally contradicts his deeply entrenched negative prejudices. He makes a huge error in thinking that he is an expert in the use of evidence! A litigation lawyer has exclusive technical knowledge of what is relevant, what is evidentiary, and what is essential admissible as evidence, and won’t let anyone get away with picking and choosing only whatever evidence supports his own position.
• THE HYPNOTIC EFFECT. Those skeptics who are blatantly irrational, illogical, and unreasonable about the paranormal or the afterlife evidence could be suffering from a powerful negative hypnotic effect. Some years ago I sent clear, easily identifiable afterlife evidence in rebuttal to a couple of hard-line skeptics. Their reply was, “where is the evidence?” Yet non-aligned scientists easily identified the evidentiary value in the same evidence when it was sent to them. It is possible that skeptics at some time in their lives experienced a “parallel hypnotic directive” that there is no afterlife or paranormal evidence. This is exactly what happens when we see a hypnotist on stage telling a couple of our hypnotized friends that they will be eating an apple. But the hypnotist then gives them an onion to eat, not an apple, and the hypnotized subjects CANNOT IDENTIFY THE EVIDENCE and refuse to believe they each have eaten an onion! Even after they have been taken out of the hypnotic state, they still insist that “the apple was really delicious.” Hypnotic suggestion can be so powerful that it can be almost impossible for people to overcome it.
• BEING SPIRITUALLY RETARDED. There is no link between intelligence and being spiritual (you will notice that I said “spiritual,” NOT “religious.”) An atheist could be “spiritual” (or highly ethical) when he/she does voluntary work for the benefit of others without a thought of making some kind of profit for him/herself. But there is a class of closed-minded skeptics who may be highly intelligent but are spiritually retarded, meaning that they have not reached a stage in life where they can perform secular spiritual work for the benefit of others in selfless service. Nor can these spiritually deficient folks objectively identify legitimate afterlife evidence.

Having read Victor’s wisdom, now I better understand how it is possible that in the twenty-first century we still get such nonsense as scientists attempting to preserve the minds of those we love inside computers so we’ll be able to talk with them after they die. The next time I hear from someone who is stuck in close-minded skepticism, I’m just going to send him Victor’s wonderful words!