Posted by Roberta Grimes • January 01, 2022 • 64 Comments
Afterlife Research, Quantum Physics, The Source, Understanding Reality
The road is long, with many a winding turn
That leads us to who knows where, who knows when.
But I’m strong, strong enough to carry him.
He ain’t heavy. He’s my brother.
– Bob Russell (1914-1970) & Bobby Scott, from “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” (1969)
There are many people who email me with occasional questions. We wouldn’t recognize one another if we passed on the street, but each of them trusts that if they have a question, they can send me an email and get an answer. And one of these questions came to me just before Christmas, when I was struggling with writing about what had been born to us two thousand years ago. It was the mildest of three NDE-related questions that arrived within days of one another, and I told my friend that I wanted to make her answer the subject of a blog post. I didn’t think about the fact that of course that meant that I was asking her to wait weeks for an answer! Here is her question. Her name is unusual, so let’s call her Sidney.
Hi Roberta! Happy Holidays. How are you? Just wanted to ask a question. My friend flat-lined for a few seconds due to Covid. The doctors brought him back a few seconds after that. He says it was the most euphoric feeling, but it was just black and there was nothing. What is the reason he had no NDE? Was it because his spirit didn’t leave the body yet since this was a matter of seconds? He doesn’t really believe anything happens after you die now. I told him death is a physical process and you don’t really die right away. it also takes days for cells to die. I think brain death is the initial and permanent death; although one author did come back from that. Your heart stopping isn’t really the end of it necessarily, right? I’m thinking it was too quick and sudden. I think there are stages of dying…sort of like …when u dream and it’s pitch black and you’re in twilight u see nothing, but it’s so nice. Just needed your opinion. I hope you and your family are doing well. Not sure if you remember me; my hair is different in my profile, but I tend to write you every so often. Any updates on your online classes? I hope all is well.
On almost the same day this question arrived, I also received a question from someone who was frantic because he had been watching NDE-related YouTubes, and in one of them the experiencer said that Jesus had told him if he didn’t do something right away – I forget what it was – he would go to hell. A third question that arrived on almost the same day was about an NDE in which a man had met God as his judge.
And as a side-story, three years ago, my eighty-year-old Catholic husband who doesn’t watch YouTubes or read NDE literature had a bit of minor surgery that necessitated general anesthesia. He told me as he was waking up, sounding stricken, that now he no longer believed in heaven because there had been no NDE at all, but only blackness. Even he has been deeply affected by the NDE ideas that pollute our entire culture. I hastened to assure him that general anesthesia prevents NDEs from happening.
Near-death experiences are a cultural phenomenon that is both a blessing and a bane.
For a long time, I wasn’t sure what to think of NDEs. They are, after all, a kind of gateway drug that opens the minds and hearts of people who are first beginning to consider the possibility that we might survive our physical deaths. And people love to hear some of those wonderful NDE stories! A lot of them speak about love and joy and happy things in general. People flying through the air. Meeting Jesus, being judged by God, and witnessing the battle between good and evil. Meeting dead loved ones and long-dead pets. Being told to go back because it isn’t their time. Sometimes being given wonderful, life-changing secrets. But as more and more people come close to dying and are revived, their near-death tales are seeping through our culture. And I am coming to see that near-death experiences might not be an un-mixed blessing to the world. For example, as many as one in seven NDEs are negative:
Many of these weirdly negative NDEs are reminiscent of the experiences reported by the most advanced astral travelers. Brave people like Seek Reality guest Cyrus Kirkpatrick report similar events. And indeed, NDEs apparently happen in the general astral plane under the control of our primary spirit guides, so for NDE experiencers to have some of the same experiences that the most advanced astral travelers report would make sense.
Let’s make a few simple facts clear.
A couple of years ago I wrote about NDEs. That post is still relevant. And the pictures that accompany it are so charming that I have used some of them again here.
Tomorrow is a happy day for Craig Hogan and me, and for those who share our voyage. Covid delayed it, but it was delayed as much by the fact that for years it was just a vague idea. “Hey! Let’s teach the afterlife and the greater reality online!” Pre-Covid, Craig and I had been running afterlife conferences, and we had learned the hard way that no matter what we did, it was impossible to get more than a few hundred people in the same place at the same time. After a whole year of work? But we wanted to educate thousands of people. If possible, even millions of people. After we have spent our whole lives learning the truth about what happens at and after death, and where it happens, how it happens, all the details about why it happens, we don’t want to graduate and have all that fun before we’ve managed to share these truths with the world!
Yes, there are other afterlife experts. And many are sharing parts of these truths. Of course, Craig and I are grateful to them! But what is now known about the afterlife and where, how, and why it happens is, all together, a complete and disciplined entirely new science that is as vast and complex as any other science! And still, even as late as this moment, eager seekers can’t learn much about it. Even a quarter of the way through the twenty-first century? Yes, there still are gaps in what we know. But not very many. Not anymore! While our oceans die of plastic pollution, and our one great Mind chokes on NDE pollution that is based on knowledge gleaned not from the actual afterlife, but rather from what we have learned via NDEs that happened in the astral plane, there still is no single place where seekers can go and learn the actual truth about the greater reality and the genuine afterlife. And there should by now be such a place. So, you know, you look around at all the other afterlife experts. And then you look in the mirror. And you shrug.
The internet makes it theoretically possible to reach the entire world. And Craig and I have come to see that I am a natural beginner teacher, and he is a natural advanced teacher of all these truths in a complete, thorough, and logical manner that will make sense to anyone who wants to learn what really happens at and after death. We are finding, too, that it is my role to run this school, and it is his role to create the lessons that will make it worth anyone’s while to be an earnest seeker. We haven’t chosen these roles! The roles have chosen us. And so it is.
Tomorrow the work on Seek Reality Online’s website will begin. Then in April, you will be able to take from me a basic, completely free course that can liberate you from the fear of death. As fifteen five-minute video modules, or as a single eighty-minute podcast, or as both: your choice. You can watch or listen as many times as you like, and that might be enough. But if you want to know more, with Craig you can examine every bit of what it has taken us decades to learn, and then to put together as a complete and fully integrated science. Then very soon, together with us you can begin to look forward to going home eternally to the most fun you ever have had in your life!
Then just as all that plastic detritus has been able to pollute the oceans of the world, and NDE-based fears have been able to pollute my husband’s mind and the mind of Sidney’s friend, perhaps soon now the internet will make it possible for the truth about our eternal natures to begin to pollute modern western cultures. Perhaps now we can start to give truth a chance! And then, at last and forevermore, humankind can begin to live together in a peace that truly never will end.
It’s a long, long road from which there is no return.
While we’re on the way to there, why not share?
And the load doesn’t weigh me down at all!
He ain’t heavy. He’s my brother.
– Bob Russell (1914-1970) & Bobby Scott, from “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” (1969)
Hi Roberta, thanks again for clarifying the difference between an NDE and actual death where the cord has broken. Although you have talked about this before, it often takes 2 or 3 times for some concepts like this to sink in and I am one of those people. I’m really looking foward to April for the online course!!!
Wow, David, I’m looking forward to Seek Reality Online as well. We have been planning it for so long that it seems that it must forever have been here – we literally cannot wait to see what it actually looks like!
Dear Roberta,
I am somewhat puzzled and inclined to dismiss reports of Christ being judgmental and harsh during any Out of Body Experiences. I have read all of the NDE and separate OBE reports on NDERF (over 5000), as well as many from IANDS, and never saw any like that. I also sometimes detect “story” telling, but of course can never be sure about faked reports, done for the fun of it, or for money.
Re not getting an NDE when knocked out, which includes from anesthesia, my research “accidently” came to that topic. A friend had asked about how often God or Jesus showed up in the NDE reports, so I obliged by examining the most recent cases on NDERF, 62 cases. While doing the counting it struck me without looking that NDEs were being disproportionately had by people who were agnostic, atheist, or had serious doubts about there being any Christ or God. A statistical test in fact showed that there was a reliable NDE relationship for what might be termed a wake up call for the need of a life course change; my research was published here ( https://scigod.com/index.php/sgj/article/view/730/778 ). I discussed my findings and conclusions over email with Ken Ring, and he said that he had come to the same conclusion, although he had not specifically worked on the statistics.
Dr. Hiller: I read your paper and just wanted to say that I love your Domain Theory. You had mentioned this before. It could certainly be the reason for such a high percentage of NDEs consisting of a mystical light but I don’t understand that if there are 3 domains and one is God alone and another is physical reality, then that only leaves the 2nd domain, so although the percentage is high for seeing manifestations of light, why isn’t this universal i.e. shouldn’t everyone be seeing this light? Is it because thoughts are so powerful there that people see things they truly believe to be true? (like vi sions of hell for instance)
Dear Lola, just to review briefly, the 1st Domain was God alone (and while time does not run for God, there is yet succession of events and change). The 2nd Domain is what is generally thought of as Heaven; it is a world of light in which God and all of His creations appear as forms of light (God is not intrinsically light, but may appear so in the 2nd Domain), and everything there owns the consciousness from having been created by God from God’s own being; time does not run in the 2nd Domain. The 3rd Domain is the material world we here live in, and it is a subset of Heaven and connected to it, although our physical senses cannot detect the 2nd Domain. Our physical body has attached to it our eternal spirit (then termed “soul”) which normally exists in the 2nd Domain but comes here for experience not available in the exquisite blissfulness of Heaven. Thus, the 3rd Domain by design provides for the harsh stresses of mortal life, and such experience both serves to inform us when returning to Heaven just how wonderful it is, and provides the opportunity for spiritual growth by overcoming its challenges (a good summary of what I found and concluded was posted by Kevin Williams on the IANDS information website that he manages ( https://near-death.com/near-death-experience-of-space-time-and-consciousness/ ).
Now, my best guess, supported by my research, is that the NDE serves the purpose of providing information that will be helpful in making best use of our mortal life (consider also that Edgar Cayce said in one of his readings that the average number of lifetimes is 36), and that is true for children as well as adults.
The prolific author on paranormal topics, Brad Steiger, who had an NDE as a child, was first to publish my Frozen Time Theory ( in Real visitors, voices from beyond and parallel dimensions, 2016; and later its extension into the tripartite domain theory in Haunted, 2019).
There are many OBEs without any of the trauma associated with the NDE (e.g., from lucid dreaming, deep meditation, and even spontaneously; OBEs associated with taking drugs are completely unreliable, because they combine induced brain malfunction along with the OBE), and as Roberta has described, these experiences are highly variable in nature and lack the purpose of the NDE– I hope this characterization of experience in the 2nd and 3rd Domains answers your good question.
Thank you for answering, but I would appreciate it if you would send again the link to the Frozen Time Theory, I feel that this is the most fascinating thing I’ve ever heard. I am probably not remembering it right, but I think you said that everything that ever happened still exists in its own time period and if we knew how to have access , we could “see” events from the past because they are literally “frozen in time.” In other words, nothing just disappears into oblivion.
The idea being described has been termed Block Time Theory
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time ) as I discovered after writing about my own concept, which differs, as I do not believe the future is set but evolves, while leaving traces of the past behind. All that exists is Now in both the 2nd and 3rd Domains. It’s also so interesting that when we are in the 2nd Domain, it is clear that time does not run, and that only Now exists, although ever evolving. I recently published a paper explaining how time does not run in the 2nd Domain, as implied by Special Relativity, but yet change is ever ongoing without contradicting Special Relativity:
Near Death Experience & Special Relativity
Abstract
In near death experience, a common feature found was an observation that everything perceived from the out of body state, such as other people, appeared to be made of light. Special Relativity established that time for any physical object slows, with respect to any given reference frame, as the object’s speed increases, and at light speed, as a limit, time stops. It is generally thought that when time stops, no activity or change would be possible for any object traveling at light speed, such as a photon. The analysis presented here demonstrates that change is possible when time has stopped by posing alternate reference frames for an object. ( https://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/989 ).
My complete theory text (including Frozen Time Theory and the Tripartite Domain Theory) is available in print copy on Amazon here ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1698062621/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=quainc0f-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1698062621&linkId=dc55a74bbc282a0acf4b1ca61363199b ), An updated version was posted as an ebook ( https://www.amazon.com/Near-Death-Experience-Space-Consciousness-ebook/dp/B081T7D7LQ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=jack+hiller&qid=1588777468&s=books&sr=1-1 ).
I had not started out to write any book, but simply wrote papers as the ideas came; after about a decade of such work I realized that the papers evolved as a coherent theory, and so compiled them as a text. I have not myself had an NDE or OBE, or any drug induced trips.
It became clear in retrospect that as my Mom was passing, she was participating in an otherworldly experience, because she told me about my future wife (she would be “sorta Chinese,” which at the time I dismissed and soon forgot as coming from my NYC born Jewish Mom; it was over 35 years later, as I was working on NDE research, when it struck me that what Mom said had come true, as my wife is Filipina, Chinese, Spanish). It was love at first sight, and we married after only two months dating, some 47 years ago.
Dear Jack, what is this “time” that you mention?
Dear Roberta,
The majority of my book is about time which I define in multiple conventional ways, such as psychological perception, neurological speed of response, as an adjunctive dimension such as employed by Einstein in Relativity Theory as space-time, and with a focus on “Now.” I devoted two chapters just to time, and a chapter to Now. My chapter on Frozen Time Theory explains how time operates in the 2nd Domain as a fourth spatial dimension, and I describe a technique for conceptualizing four dimensions (i.e., space-time); I also explain how time in the 2nd Domain (which does not run) maps to time in our 3rd, material, Domain. So your good simple question merits a truly extensive discussion of abstract concepts. Hope this answer is responsive short of reproducing my book.
Dear Lola, I did quite a lot of NDE study in the eighties, when NDEs were hot and I was trying to understand them. It eventually became clear to me that they were highly personal experiences in the nature of dreams that were facilitated by each person’s guides, and that they never involved the afterlife area but they happened in the astral plane exclusively. So by 1990, of course, I lost interest in them. It was clear to me that:
1} The tunnel (which never once had appeared in anything I had read that was published before Life After Life in 1975) was a wormhole rescue device to get people who were unexpectedly out of their bodies safely through the lowest-vibration levels.
2) The light at the end of the tunnel was the mid-level astral plane.
3) The whole NDE happens in the astral plane.
4) More extensive NDEs arrive at the boundary to the afterlife, where the NDE-er is told that if he doesn’t turn back, his silver cord will break and he will die.
5) The dead consistently tell us that death is ALWAYS a one-way trip.
So every NDE-er who claims to have “died and come back to life” is flat-out lying to you.
I have certainly heard cranky-Jesus NDE reports, dear Jack, and I’m no NDE expert, so I’m sure you’ve heard them too, but that isn’t what prompts my alarm today. The terror in the eyes of someone I love who doesn’t follow NDE literature and who had believed in heaven before his anesthesia but assumed after he came out of it that the lack of an NDE meant that there must be no heaven was absolutely horrifying for me!
That NDEs have polluted our culture with absolute nonsense to such an extent was my red-letter moment. If Dr. Moody had called the phenomenon he had discovered “Crazy Experiences” or “Zany Experiences” or “Nonsensical Experiences” or “Wow Experiences,” then all would be well today.
But, no. I now must spend the rest of my life trying to rescue the innocent from other innocent people like Eben Alexander and Anita Moorjani, and – yes – Dr. Moody, too, by joining with Dr. Hogan and others who know the truth and spreading the truth about what happens at and after death to as many people as possible! Otherwise, soon everyone will be expecting an NDE with every bit or surgery, or else losing all hope. Jesus said the truth will set us free. At this point, the truth has become essential!
But dear, my Edward’s problem was that he didn’t have an NDE, but he had expected to have one. It was the pervasiveness of NDEs in our culture that was the issue for him!
Hi Roberta, hi everybody! Happy 2022. I am glad you took on the idea of NDEs as pollution. Most of us who have had even joyous positive NDEs don’t integrate them well or quickly. Those who have their experiences as children, as I did, can spend their whole lives struggling with what they “saw”—they may feel baffled and alienated. For me it’s been almost 60 years so far. NDE’s are indeed a bane as much as a blessing.
But I like the way you slipped in the idea of polluting the accepted Western culture at the end! I am looking forward to Seek Reality Online.
OMG, my dear lovey Mike, me too!
When you said you are a “natural beginner teacher,” I had to smile because I was reminded of Robert Fulghum’s book, All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. With your announcement of an online course, I feel like a kid just starting on this exciting journey with a teacher who has already taught me the basic notion of the Fun Of Dying in a way that even I, a kindergarten student full of sorrow over the “loss” of my beloved soulmate, could open the door and step into the classroom without trepidation. So let me be the first to say to my favorite teacher, “Hey, Roberta! Is it April yet? :-)”
Heh – thank you, dear Janelle, you have made me smile! And now I have made you a promise, so we’ve got to hope the software team can keep to their schedule….
Ditto Janelle! Couldn’t agree more!
Roberta and Craig… can’t wait for your course in April! 😁😁😁
Oh my dear Kristian, thank you for saying that! When you invest a lot of effort and your own funds into doing something that feels gigantic, you sometimes kind of wonder whether you might be giving a party to which no one will show up. But as we watch the developers work, we are feeling more confident that at least this is going to be a happy party!
Congratulations on the launch! I can’t wait!
Thank you for all the work you and Craig Hogan have put into this to get to this point.
What a gift to humanity and beyond!
Christi Pitliangas
Dear Christi, I have already tried to reply, so if this is a second reply, then I apologize. I am sending you a great big hug! Craig and I hope this will end up being a collaborative effort, a gift from a great many of us to a great many of you of so very much collective knowledge that will enlighten at last the entire world in service to the God of All!
YOU WROTE: “The Godhead is a Collective of Perfected Beings.” I am really not sure of what you mean by this, because it begs the question of who created those beings.
Adrian: Good question. My guess is that they weren’t created as perfected beings but rose up spiritually to that level over time, but I too am anxious to hear the answer to this.
Oh my dear wonderful Lola, so am I!
(And now that I have said that… sorry! – In a greater reality without time, in some way that it is hard for us to understand, apparently all of us actually are part of that glorious eternal Godhead of All. We are One Perfected Being that is Endlessly Being Perfected. We are told that when we get home, this will make sense to us. Meanwhile, it makes my eyes cross even to think about it.)
My dear wonderful Adrian, who created the one God?
I once meditated on the question of whether absolute nothingness is possible. Anyone who meditates deeply on this will find both a mystery and a pathway to possibly somewhat of an answer.
The age old Buddhist question of what the sound of one hand clapping is, I solved by clapping my one hand to someone else’s one hand. In other words: relationships solves the question.
Likewise, we are indeed one with the Godhead as you call God, but nevertheless we are also in a relationship; this remains for now a mystery hard to explain. We are one, yet can relate. And this Godhead is also forever expanding. Each new baby receives a new semi-separate identity from God, that makes relationships possible. One yet sufficiently “apart” to make this relationship possible. Love desires to express itself. At the heart of God is of course this enormous Love. This is the core of the universe. And love is both everything but not material and so it is nothing by earthly definition.
The so-called nothing expresses itself by the very nature of love , by necessity and desire, creativity and explosive energy, as also everything; but the apparent two aspects are nevertheless the same thing. Nothing at all cannot be and thus, the theory of the Big Bang can never be understood correctly if if sees the birth of the universe from merely a physical perspective only.
Thanks.
My dear Adrian, I think you are indeed on to something there! Organized Nothing is Something – Organized Love becomes All – and Jesus is of the highest aspect of the Godhead, which is undifferentiated, and yet Jesus is a differentiated Being, and all of this is entirely consistent. Early in my research, I learned from an extremely advanced Being that I would not be able to understand anything until I could hold every idea and its opposite in my mind simultaneously.
The idea being described has been termed Block Time Theory
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time ) as I discovered after writing about my own concept, which differs, as I do not believe the future is set but evolves, while leaving traces of the past behind. All that exists is Now in both the 2nd and 3rd Domains. It’s also so interesting that when we are in the 2nd Domain, it is clear that time does not run, and that only Now exists, although ever evolving. I recently published a paper explaining how time does not run in the 2nd Domain, as implied by Special Relativity, but yet change is ever ongoing without contradicting Special Relativity:
Near Death Experience & Special Relativity
Abstract
In near death experience, a common feature found was an observation that everything perceived from the out of body state, such as other people, appeared to be made of light. Special Relativity established that time for any physical object slows, with respect to any given reference frame, as the object’s speed increases, and at light speed, as a limit, time stops. It is generally thought that when time stops, no activity or change would be possible for any object traveling at light speed, such as a photon. The analysis presented here demonstrates that change is possible when time has stopped by posing alternate reference frames for an object. ( https://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/989 ).
My complete theory text (including Frozen Time Theory and the Tripartite Domain Theory) is available in print copy on Amazon here ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1698062621/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=quainc0f-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1698062621&linkId=dc55a74bbc282a0acf4b1ca61363199b ), An updated version was posted as an ebook ( https://www.amazon.com/Near-Death-Experience-Space-Consciousness-ebook/dp/B081T7D7LQ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=jack+hiller&qid=1588777468&s=books&sr=1-1 ).
I had not started out to write any book, but simply wrote papers as the ideas came; after about a decade of such work I realized that the papers evolved as a coherent theory, and so compiled them as a text. I have not myself had an NDE or OBE, or any drug induced trips.
It became clear in retrospect that as my Mom was passing, she was participating in an otherworldly experience, because she told me about my future wife (she would be “sorta Chinese,” which at the time I dismissed and soon forgot as coming from my NYC born Jewish Mom; it was over 35 years later, as I was working on NDE research, when it struck me that what Mom said had come true, as my wife is Filipina, Chinese, Spanish). It was love at first sight, and we married after only two months dating, some 47 years ago.
Dear Jack, you keep talking about time as if it were intrinsic. Frozen. Unfrozen. A part of domains, and something that we always must contend with. But objective time does not exist in the astral plane, which is 95% of what exists. Indeed, the evidence when we look instead from the eye end of the microscope seems to be that it is on the microbe end instead. Have you considered that possibility?
Dear Roberta, Per my prior response to your question about time, I did state that in the 2nd Domain (which roughly corresponds to what you term the astral plane) time does not run, so we experience there an eternal Now. The wiki for time as conventionally defined is rather good ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_physics ), but my own theorizing extends beyond that and takes a book to explain.
My lovely Jack, I want to be sure to say something about your very sweet story about your mother and your wife. And to hug them both!!
Dear Roberta,
There is actually an interesting back story on my happy marriage. As a workaholic, I never did vacations or parties, so circa 1999, with our two Sons grown, Becky was restless, and was overspending on clothing, etc. So I decided to retire from my Pentagon job that I had intended to keep until I literally would die in my office, and instead explore getting a higher paying contract job. The highest ranking officer killed when the plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 was my immediate boss. LTG Tim Maude ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Maude ). When the plane hit, he was conducting his regular weekly office meeting at which I would have attended if I had not retired. The year after 9/11 we simply got back together with no discussion and have had a most happy marriage ever since (with her owning her own credit cards).
When my Mom was passing after a house fire that killed my Dad a few weeks before, She would say things while looking up at the ceiling, which then meant nothing to me. Her last gambit was telling me that I should start thinking about getting married. She looked up toward the ceiling, and with hesitation said, “The girl could even be… sorta Chinese.”
Oh my! Jack, were you a credit card Nazi? And so no wonder your wife had to drown her sorrows in shopping? But my goodness, we almost lost you to the Pentagon conflagration?? And then your mom lost your dad in a house fire? I am so, so sorry!! But you have had an amazingly interesting life! It’s lovely to feel that we’re getting to know you better. Thank you for that!!
“The most euphoric feeling”. This means someone was there to witness the euphoric feeling. I don’t believe non-existence is a possibility.
Or maybe I should have said “experience” the euphoric feeling
I think the problem is that NDEs have simply set people’s expectations so high!
Roberta,
Would you mind elaborating on this a little more? Would you say we continue on in the next life at our current level of consciousness
(at death)…and that maybe everyone expects pure bliss instantly upon leaving this life? Is that what you mean?
I think the problem might be that NDEs have established a kind of customized expectation. People expect what happens at death to be more like what they hear about in NDE stories. More jazzy. Less intimate.
Yes indeed, dear Daniel, a feeling does require a feeler. But the problem is that people require not just to be, but they expect and hope for so much from heaven. So very much!! My husband’s horror was to be awake, and to experience – to see, hear, feel – not heaven, but… nothing.
The word “heaven” automatically conjures up thoughts of bliss, love and perfection, but I don’t believe that dying is that magical. I think we take our baggage with us and have to be taught how to release it and I don’t believe that happens all at once. I think that is what Jesus was trying to teach us. Forgiving ourselves and others is the most important step, and it should be done here. If we are successful, transitioning to another realm will be a breeze. If not, the baggage we have at the time of our death will remain. I feel that if we sincerely want help with this issue when we get there, we can get this help, but we should work on our issues here before we leave
Oh my dear, you really cannot imagine what it is like to die.
I did my core research on dying in the materials that were produced in the very end of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century. How can I describe what I found? It was like watching experts in the care of brave warriors receive them off the battlefield. With love, respect, kindness, care, on the warriors’ terms, and giving them time to get over and process their whole awful and amazing experience. The warriors’ loved ones then took over with joy as those warriors returned to themselves, relieved and ever happier. Then it started to be playtime. But the people coming home didn’t seem to keep their earth-baggage, as you call it, for long. In fact, there was a process for that – there was a process to help them shed it, and from our perspective, it seemed to take a few months. We who are here really cannot fathom just how different it is at home, and how much love awaits us there!
Dearest Roberta,
It’s a pity your good husband had experienced a less than comforting state of being aware amid nothingness. I can only offer one idea that may help some of us to come to terms with this kind of thing:
I have been fortunate to meet, befriend or be related to more than a few people who have experienced OBEs of some kind. After much discussion and reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that in our earthly incarnation we get used to living in a world of grosser, material vibration. Also, we are bound to experience everything through the five senses. Though I’m grateful for the chance to live on earth for a while, I’m also aware that this has to be a life of forgetting the true Afterlife home from which I originate. Also, I must live on earth with considerably duller senses and a much smaller mind. So –
Are we not so bound to the vibration of the ‘material’ world, that some experiences of actual spiritual states are fleeting and somewhat fragmented?
Surely we cannot expect too much from any single supernatural experience. Sometimes we get an amazing experience and sometimes we don’t. And that is okay.
The existence of God, Heaven and a roller coaster ride through the Afterlife doesn’t depend on one underwhelming out-of-body-experience.
And then there is the ‘Holding Space’: It is not a space exactly, but it is a womb-like potential that is quiet and dark from which Divine, exuberant creation can spring forth. This has references in ancient Jewish and Hindu theology. In Sanskrit for instance, it is Divine feminine in nature and is called the ‘Akasha’. It is a substratum from which everything arises in color, light and form. It isn’t ‘nothing’ as per human understanding; it is the nurturing ‘something’ that is part of the ‘everything’ that God is.
Once a couple of decades ago, I knew a young woman who sadly contracted a meningitis related illness. She very nearly died at one point. Thankfully she did heal with only some diminished memory capacity. She told me of a ‘place’ she went to inside herself on one occasion when she was very, very unwell. This quiet, honest, sanguine person said she felt as if she was dying, detaching from all life and pain. Suddenly she was aware that she was in a dark place of nothingness. It wasn’t bad and soon she felt wonderful because she was enveloped in the deepest sense of love that she had ever felt. It was extremely powerful and completely present with her. She simply didn’t want it to end.
Maybe the nothingness state is a forerunner to something good, healing and nurturing. It might feel like a fizzler for someone, something more for another, but it doesn’t matter does it? There is so much more wonder to come for each of us. Even in this life something amazing might be just around the corner. Only wonderment then, can anticipate what the Afterlife will be like.
Therefore as you say Roberta, it is not wise to place all one’s faith in NDEs and make a religion, a guru-ship as it were, out of these often contradictory experiences. I’d rather exist in that holding potential at heart, where I anticipate in awe what I don’t yet know; our bright birthright to come.
😊🌅🙏🏼
I have experienced that dark place of nothingness in an OBE way back in my college years when I was working on consciously inducing OBE’s. I lifted up and found myself In what seemed like the absolute absence of any space, time, or form and the thought came to me that I could be trapped there “forever!” That was probably the greatest terror I have ever experienced, and as soon as I felt it I slammed back into my body. Probably because of that momentary fear of the absence of all things, OBE’s fizzled for me ever since. Maybe I should have been a little more patient and might have emerged somewhere else. I have wonderd since if I was simply temporarily in a sort of border zone between planes, or maybe it was a metaphorical “womb” experience of the Great Unmanifest out of which all creation comes. Does the multiplicity of creation have meaning without the Oneness from which it arises, and does the Unity, the zero point, the unmanifest infinitude of potentialty, AKA God, have meaning without meeting and experiencing itself in it’s infinite expressions?
Efrem: What you describe here is very common and seems to happen a lot. They tend to feel a sense of unconditional love they haven’t experienced before and they have difficulty finding any words to describe it. Since they are not in the actual afterlife, I agree that this sense of nothingness is likely a forerunner to something more. but the experiencer didn’t actually die, so his or her story ends at that point.
Hey Lola 👋
Yes, I’ve heard of people in dire situations feeling the flood of pure, non judgmental love. I reckon this is an expression of Divine mercy, because it often happens at a time of severe illness and excruciating, serious injury. Alternately, the flood of love can happen spontaneously when someone is least expecting it, so who knows?
Perhaps we will only understand why this experience happens to some people in dire straits and not to others in similar situations when we are in the Afterlife.
Things look very hard living on earth, don’t they? For instance, what is someone supposed to think when they see another person saved from an attack, when they were not saved from an earlier attack themselves?
I guess we cannot understand all things with our human minds. However, I do feel if someone in trouble is flooded with love and someone else isn’t, this is not because one person is loved more than the other. Definitely not.
❣️🕊
My dear Efrem, I do think that we can get much too caught up in all the various states of being that are possible for us. I hear all the time from people who specialize in helping people learn how to attain these states, and in eastern religions they can become a kind of addiction. I think it’s unhealthy to become too much involved in trying to attain them, frankly! But rather, it’s enough for us to try to become better at simply being present in the here and now!
You are right here, dearest Roberta. Having been associated with Eastern paths in my youth I did find there was too much emphasis on certain things that were not of the heart. There were two areas where I encountered the over-dependence on certain norms to the point of addiction:
Firstly, certain practitioners did indeed place too much emphasis on different, hard to attain, altered states described in ancient yoga practices. The goal was to have these awareness altering experiences, while equating them with actual spiritual progress. To sit for hours or days trying to achieve a specific altered state was one common fixation. Also, austere discipline like prolonged uncomfortable body postures, exposure to cold or heat and minimal eating for long periods was another extremity.
Secondly, over emphasis on yoga techniques and rigorous, exacting meditation practices often seemed to make certain people quite ‘technical’ in approach. Yoga meditation for instance, all too often becomes a rational, rather cold, exercise of willful exactitude. Else, it can promote obsession with inner, spiritual purity and demand a host of daily clearing rituals. Sadly, this may be at the expense of opening the heart and loving fellow human beings. And there are still hierarchies and distinct pecking orders in Eastern organizations.
As you say, it is better to be in the present; better to become humble, grateful, helpful, forgiving and loving.
To me that is the brilliance of The Way that Our Jesus teaches. It is simple and unburdened by rules or techniques that can take people off the loving path. The Way honors each and every soul as (particularly) beloved of God, where each person is inherently equal. Jesus even calls on us to love each other as He loves us. (Although that is far from easy.)
The path of Love seems the healthiest to me. ❣️🌅🕊
Oh my dear Efrem, I love everything that you’ve said here! So beautiful!! And “technical” is perfectly said about so many of the religious practices that make people feel all altered-state-y, but really don’t move them in the direction of love so they don’t elevate them spiritually much at all. We are going to have so much fun one we get Seek Reality Online really going! I just wish it were possible to find a convenient time for us all to get together at the same time and raise our vibrations. We’ll work it out somehow!
I have definitely heard about the process to shed earthly baggage, and I think that’s wonderful. However, what I meant to say was that we have to take advantage of and cooperate with that wonderful process in order to acclimate ourselves to that new way of thinking. In other words, the sooner we can let go of earthly concerns that no longer matter, the better off we will be.
Dear Lola, it does seem to be the case that our primary guides know us pretty well internally. They have planned our intake process, whether we will need some rehab or what counseling might be helpful, and so on. And just the process of arriving back home and reuniting with our vast, eternal minds seems to bring so much of it back! Mikey describes that feeling so well in Flying High in Spirit. It seems to be something like a gigantic, “Duh!” We had forgotten so much, and now it all comes flooding back!”
Roberta: Here is something interesting. When my husband died, I went to a medium a few months later, and she was very good. Long story short, she said nothing about him because she told me he was in “rehab.” I’m glad you mentioned this, as I had forgotten. This implies that there is some type of personal attention given to the newly crossed over. I have read Mikey’s book but I think it’s time to re-read it. A book this informative should always be read more than just once
And my dear Lola, you have just cemented the idea I’ve been thinking about for my next blog post! Thank you for that!!
Scott, I like your expression “the Great Unmanifest out of which all creation comes..” It’s suitably elegiac.
Your OBE experience does sound disturbing. I feel for you as I do for Roberta’s husband, as it is a pity such a unique happening was not more inspiring. The terror in that moment would make these kind of things hard from then on.
So after all is said and done, maybe the actual transition to the Afterlife at death is the most beautiful and most important thing to anticipate. At least that’s how I see it.
😉🙏🏼🌅
Thanks Efrem. Luckily I was not discouraged in my spiritual search, which is the really important thing, not the “siddis” as the yogis call psychic experiences or abilities. What you say about the actual transition to the afterlife brings up a question I’ve had recently. There are a couple of prominent astral projection experts I have seen out there, including being featured often on the Zammits’ weekly afterlife report, who claim to be able to visit the afrerlife realms and then be able to tell us what they are like and what they are about. Are they simply confusing astral realms for the afterlife, just like people having NDE’s? Are they able to pierce that veil and come back to tell the story? Are the informants they encouner on their trips reliable? I have my doubts.
Great question there Scott.
I too have my doubts. I’ve heard of NDErs not being able to go farther into the realm they are visiting, because they would have to die to their earth life before they could proceed.
So – does this mean that ace astral travelers are also unable to get to the true Afterlife? 🙏🏼🌅
My dear Efrem, anyone who enters the afterlife with a silver cord attached has his cord break. He is then officially dead, and the body he left behind ends up in the morgue. So even the aciest of ace astral travelers can’t enter the afterlife and come back out of it again. End of story.
Oh my dear Efrem, more and more I am coming to see how truly wonderful each individual’s transition actually is! You’ve fought the good fight, and the battle is won. No matter how you thought it was turning out, as you enter the final stage of your life there seems to be a kind of peace that settles over you – and perhaps even positive hormones that start to flow – so when you then spot your mom or spouse or both of them plus your childhood cat in an upper corner of the room, you start to feel joyous. By the time you are free of the drag of the dead boat-anchor that was your physical body and you are light as a feather, hugging your loved ones and being whisked joyously back to your true home, soon reconnecting with your entire mind and rapidly remembering so many wonderful things, of course it’s all beautiful and amazing and clearly the best fun you have had in your life!
Hi Roberta, hi everybody! The thread of comments above reminds me of what my own beloved guide has told me. We are having this experience we perceive as incarnation in order to learn ITS lessons—seeking spiritual insights is important but our current day to day life plans are challenging enough.
Hey Mike 👋
I reckon you’ve nailed it. 👍👍🌅
And indeed he has, my dear Efrem!!
Yes, my dear Mike! Each of our eternal lives is something like a beautiful carving inside a block of granite, highly individual and waiting for us to complete it. I can’t recall which great sculptor it was, but one of them said in response to a question about what he was doing that he was carving away every bit of rock that didn’t look like the general (or whatever it was that he was carving). And in just the same way, each of us is having experiences that are unique to us that are meant to help us to grow spiritually in ways that we ourselves uniquely need to grow. Well said!
Dear Roberta, thank you so much for your work! I‘ m from Germany, so please excuse my mistakes…. At the age of 5 I had a profound NDE in which I met 3 beings of light and finally Jesus. He explained to me why it was important for me to go back and gave me some insight into the future of our planet with tropical storms, pollution etc. and told me I could take part in improving the situation on earth, especially for the animals and nature in general. Now, decades later, I try my best to do so, although it seems so little, what I can do right now.
I have watched your videos and read a lot about the experiences of other NDEers and what transitioned humans tell us. Our planet seems to be a „learning planet“ with bad circumstances nessecary like the machines in the gym you mentioned in your videos. So do you think we will really have a chance to change the behaviour of the humans for the better? But if everything was fine it won‘t be a „learning planet“ anymore?
As I have watched the videos of Gary Schwartz about the soul phone, which to my opinion would be one of the greatest inventions of all times, one strange question occurred to me:
Do you think it could be possible to communicate with the Higher Self of a person even though this person is incarnated at that time?
Do you know about medium communication with the Higher Self of any living person? Might it then even be possible to talk to one‘s own Higher Self aspect of personality?
So such weird thoughts come to my mind during the covid situation and home office…
Best wishes to all of you!
Welcome, my dear Karin! And, no worries – your English is wonderful. It’s certainly a great deal better than my German!
Yes, we all feel as you do, that there is rather little that we can do to really improve things on earth, and improve the behavior of human beings, but in fact we are coming to suspect that in fact we may be able to improve humankind simply by teaching immortality. I’ll be writing about that possibility on Sunday, 1/23, in fact.
And yes, it’s possible to communicate with our own higher self while we are in bodies. Hypnotherapist Peter Wright is a favorite on my podcast, Seek Reality, and it is one of the techniques that he uses in therapy. Pretty fascinating!
Dear Roberta, I am so grateful für your reply and really looking forward to Sunday. Knowing about immortality and maybe even the possibility to contact our loved ones on the other side via soul phone will surely change everything!
And I will watch your podcast with Peter Wright; that topic sounds so amazing!
Dear Scott, I have made both experiences, the most beautiful and the most frightening, At the age of 5, I had an absolutely wonderful NDE (which I mentioned in my comment yesterday). In that realm all my questions were answered in the very moment they came to my mind. There was tremendous light, energy, incredible love and wisdom allover. It was all that ever existed or could exist at once. There seemed to be no time and with the beings of light I “travelled” or floated by mind to various places and the most beautiful landscapes with amazing flowers, animals etc. Communication was without words, rather by thoughts or feelings and without any misinterpretation. Everything seemed to be much more real than my life on earth. As I finally agreed to go back, I came back into my body within a second (as it seemed to me), although I obviously flew through space and saw the earth and then towns etc. coming nearer and nearer. It looked like a toy landscape and not real at all. I was so enthusiastic about my great experience and full of that great love and wanted to tell my parents everything, but I couldn`t explain this to them or anyone else.
At the age of 8, I had an experience in that dark place you described. It was night and I was sleeping in my bed. I don`t remember if I was dreaming at that moment, but suddenly I saw my bedroom and every detail of it, the wardrobe, my toys on a shelf an so on. It looked exactly as my room looked at that time, but the light was a bit different and everything seemed to be seen clearer than usual and I saw it from an angle above my head, under the ceiling. I didn`t see my body; my attention was focused on the room and my toys. I thought, I had woken up and tried to get up, but I coudn`t move. Then I found myself in a dark place where there was really nothing at all and I got so frightened! Somehow I had kind of an instinct or remembrance that there had to be a slam or shock to put me back where I belonged. So I tried to “move” and do a “somersault” with the result that I saw my room from above again. I then thought, maybe I had just dreamed that I had woken up the time before, but had still been in a dream and therefore couldn`t move and go out of bed. So I tried it again, but it was the same and I returned to that black nothingness again. That was the most horrible experience and I really panicked. Then I once more did a “somersault” in my mind (or spritual body) and then finally I succeeded. With a great slam I came back into my body and my whole body was shivering and shaking.
From then on I was afraid to fall asleep for a long time, but this horrible experience luckily never happened again. It took me almost 40 years to understand what these two experiences really meant.
So in the second one, I switched betweeen an OBE (seeing my bedroom from above my head) to the dark nothingness back and forth 3 times. It seemed a long time to me, but probably this took only 20 seconds or so. I don`t think anyone really gets stuck in this dark place for a long time. I think you either go back to the OBE perspective and then into your body or you will go to the other side and probably see the light or beings of light to guide you.
I can`t tell how I got into my beautiful NDE. I don`t remember a tunnel or anything else.
Maybe children leave their bodies more often or easily while they are sleeping than adults? But I never wanted to try this again consciously…….
My dear Karin, we all travel out of our bodies nearly every night in order to consult with spirit guides, meet with dead love ones, take classes, and simply travel and have fun in the astral while our bodies sleep. It seems quite possible that children might find navigating that sort of journey every night to be a process they might have trouble learning at first, and it might be your attempts to first do it right that you remember as a scary experience. We don’t know when children first begin to do what soon becomes a normal part of their lives, but ages 5-8 have been suggested.
And it turns out that our discussion of immortality is being delayed for a week. But we definitely will do it, and meanwhile I hope you will enjoy what we have to say this week!