Posted by Roberta Grimes • May 28, 2022 • 32 Comments
Understanding Reality
To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe,
To bear with unbearable sorrow, to run where the brave dare not go.
To right the unrightable wrong, to love pure and chaste from afar,
To try when your arms are too weary to reach the unreachable star,
This is my quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far.
To fight for the right, without question or pause,
To be willing to march into Hell for a Heavenly cause.
– Mitch Leigh (1928-2014) Joseph Darion (1917-2001) from “The Impossible Dream” (1965)
When in June of 2013 I was invited to do a radio program and podcast about death and the afterlife, and I was asked to come up with a title for it, I assumed we would call it something death- or afterlife-related. So when I opened my mouth to say, “Let me think about it,” and instead what I said was “Seek Reality,” I had no idea where that had come from! But by then I was used to these unexpected interventions. Four years earlier, as I was sitting in a pew one April morning and waiting for services to start, I had impulsively given the rest of my life to God. It seemed only fair. But when you do that, God takes you at your word.
Seek Reality has turned out to be the perfect title. It has been broad enough to let us spend the past nine years venturing far beyond just death and the afterlife in our choice of Seek Reality guests. I feel as if even after nine years, we have only just begun! The title was still available in every form when we bought it recently for online use, so it is about to become our title of choice for the website with which we are going to begin to free the world from the fear of death. Of course, now I know that it was my Thomas who spoke up on that fateful day nine years ago. And of late, I have learned a great deal more. Thomas is my spirit guide, and my ceding my life to him as God’s proxy in 2009 was by prior arrangement made before my birth, so his stepping in and making decisions for me as he has been doing routinely since then has all been according to plan. I think this might be happening now to a lot of people, actually. This whole arrangement is informal and voluntary, but when some of us are nearing the end of our incarnations, and when guide and guided are close friends, Thomas tells me that especially now, when there is so much that needs to be done on earth, there are many of us who are willing avatars for guides not in bodies who are trying to accomplish what they could not otherwise accomplish without the help of the incarnated people they are guiding.
And actually seeking a clear and objective reality is an impulse that is in short supply! We assume that mainstream scientists are seeking reality first and foremost, don’t we? Isn’t that what we rely upon our most trusted institution to be all about? Or else, what is its value? But over the past few years, I can tell you for a sorry fact that we have demonstrated both in this blog and with our Seek Reality guests that mainstream science is not seeking what you and I would consider to be reality at all.
Perhaps to be fair about this, we should define our terms. What should mainstream scientists be studying? It seems to me that we expect scientists to be studying reality. Or is using that term in itself naïve? I tried googling “seeking reality,” and found mostly… myself. It was embarrassing! Googling the generic words “seeking reality” actually gets you a page of Roberta Grimes’s podcasts. So apparently “reality” isn’t a word that is very much in current use? I think that we expect scientists to be studying at least humanity and everything that might affect us, right? Or at least the earth? And the solar system? Might we agree upon that much?
But expecting scientists to seek to understand all of reality is as foolish as it would be for us to expect a Catholic priest to seek some objective God. No, a priest is going to seek to relate to the Catholic God. And in just the same way, we can expect a scientist to seek to find only the materialist facts that the leaders of materialist science are directing him to seek and to find. As you will shortly see.
When I first began to study the afterlife in the nineteen-seventies, I found that there were many books by researchers of early-twentieth-century deep-trance-mediums in used-book stores. And over two years of intensive reading, I both convinced myself that the afterlife has to be real, and I uncovered a scandal that was by then half a century old and still continues to this day. What I found was that many of the books that I was reading had been written by eager researchers soon after the turn of the twentieth century as they tried to convince the scientific community that it was time to begin to investigate the afterlife. But physicists at the turn of the twentieth century were freshly dealing with the shock of quantum mechanics. So rather than at the same time also considering the possibility of life after death, the scientific gatekeepers – the university departments and the peer-reviewed journals – simply took a hard pass on also dealing with the possibility of an afterlife. Such an impulsive decision was probably meant to be temporary. Let’s deal with one crisis at a time! But their decision had a history going back as far as Plato and Aristotle. It long had seemed to make sense that “material” and “spiritual” matters should be handled separately. And the result of their impulsive decision is that even a full century later, mainstream science is at this point absurdly reduced to spending a billion dollars on seeking a source of consciousness inside the human brain.
The level of frank stupidity being displayed now in the scientific community would be amusing, if it were not so tragic. That impulsive decision that was made somewhere around 1910 soon became hardwired into the system as “the fundamental scientific dogma of materialism.” And yes, back then you could find those words in print. Of course, anything with a hard-wired and enforced dogma is a belief-system, by definition. So by now, mainstream science has become what we might call the religion of atheism, broadly construed. It is no longer an open-minded search for the truth, if indeed it ever was. And while this sad transformation was underway, a few of the most senior scientists who were then actively working continued to seek reality, essentially all on their own. So it was the brilliant Max Planck, who in 1918 had won the Nobel Prize in Physics as the father of quantum mechanics, who finally made the breakthrough that eludes the rest of the whole scientific community to this day when he said in 1931, “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Exactly right. We who are not bound by any scientific dogma know now that consciousness is the base creative force. And in fact, nothing else actually exists! But because mainstream science is a belief-system now, and no scientist is encouraged – or, frankly, is even allowed – to seek reality without being declared out of bounds, we can find only fringy-seeming ideas being advanced within the scientific community at this point. Like uploading our minds to the cloud in dyson spheres, for heaven’s sake! Or attempting to regenerate the brains of brain-dead people as if they were salamanders. And actually, I know Ira Pastor personally! He was my guest on Seek Reality four years ago. Ira is a lovely man, a genuinely beautiful human being. But like everyone else, he needs to make a living.
All of this is tragic because it is demonstrably so flat-out wrong. Look, I am no scientist. I am a science hobbyist at best. But the truth is evident, even to me. For the whole past century, ever since that stopgap decision was made to avoid looking at afterlife communications until they could get the inconvenient problem of quantum mechanics sorted out, there have been no big scientific breakthroughs achieved worth noting. Oh, there have been a few ideas tossed around. String theory, and so on. But scientists still have no clue about so many things! We could point out their many deficiencies here that are the fallout from their detour into the materialist weeds, but let’s name just four of the biggest ones:
If those scientific gatekeepers in the early twentieth century had done what they ought to have done, and responsibly and open-mindedly sought reality when confronted with that flood of good afterlife evidence, the world would be quite different today. In fact, Max Planck was right. We cannot get behind consciousness for the simple reason that consciousness is the base creative force which continuously manifests this universe and everything in it, and it is the only thing that objectively exists. Once we know that, we can easily solve all four of the problems given above, and a great many more besides.
In limiting themselves to studying only what they considered to be material, investigative scientists actually chose to limit themselves to knowing pretty close to nothing about anything new at this point. Oh, they think they know a great deal more! They have created many blackboards (or, in recent decades, whiteboards) full of mathematical equations that set forth all sorts of theories. But, to what purpose? When their lack of understanding of what actually is going on is so fundamental, how can they be making much sense of anything now?
Max Planck said in 1944, not long before his death, “I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.” And the estimable polymath Nikola Tesla was right, too, when he said, “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”
So when Craig Hogan and I begin to say the same things on Seek Reality Online a few weeks from now, we will be in exalted company. The entire scientific community is wrong. And Max, Nikola, Craig, and I are right! The only thing that independently exists is what we experience in a dim way as consciousness. If it takes an additional hundred years for the scientific community to come to terms with reality, still eventually reality is going to win.
And I know if I’ll only be true to this glorious quest,
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I’m laid to my rest.
And the world will be better for this,
That we four, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove with our last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable stars!|
– Mitch Leigh (1928-2014) Joseph Darion (1917-2001) from “The Impossible Dream” (1965)
Dear Roberta, I have read that we plan our lives before we’re born. What confuses me about this is why would so many people choose to live a life starving to death in Africa? Thank you for your response.
Hi Jackie. Or be starved and brutally tortured in a Syrian prison. Roberta explains this wonderfully. I’ve wanted to pass along a quote from a prior path, “the growth is in the hassle “.
Actually, my dear Ray, you’ve just explained it better than I can 🙂
Jackie I used to wonder about this too. Then I started doing a lot of reading and was fortunate enough to to discover Roberta and her books. The way I see it now is that we all live many many lifetimes in all kinds of situations. In the grand scheme of eternity these lives are brief and well worth the opportunities they present for the soul to achieve spiritual growth which is the whole point of us being here.
That isn’t to say we shouldn’t care about people who are starving or suffering. I believe part of our lessons when we have plenty is to learn to share and give as much as we can. There is enough for everyone’s need but not everyone’s need.
I was re-reading The Afterlife of Billy Fingers last night and he says, if we could see each other’s souls we would all go and feed the starving children. My current challenge is to ask myself if I’m really doing enough to help and what more could I do.
I agree with you, Lisa. We are meant to help others even in small ways.
So very true, my dear Lola. And this is true even of our cranky Uncle Fred, who is miserable and alone in the nursing home, with no one to visit him. We all have people and animals in our lives, or even in our vicinity, who need or could benefit from our care, or even just from a little bit of our attention. When my daughter’s children were grade-school age, she had them make a list of everyone they could think of who might like a little something at Christmas but wouldn’t be expecting anything, and they made a point of giving all those people gifts. I thought that was lovely.
Oh my dear beautiful Lisa, this is why I don’t rush in and answer questions here right away! you all answer each other’s questions much better than I ever could. Yes, those children starving in Africa are offering themselves as a spiritual gift to us, an opportunity for us all to grow spiritually.
Oh my dear Jackie, please understand that the reason why we even come here at all is so we can experience negativity in order to push against it in an effort to grow spiritually! Our eternal lives in the astral are so perfectly blissful that we find it difficult to raise our consciousness vibrations there at all. And sometimes, of course, we do overshoot the negativity mark, but in general we tend to reincarnate repeatedly in the same culture for the sake of convenience, to avoid having to acclimate ourselves to a whole new culture each time we are born, and Africa has over the centuries been an especially fertile area for spiritual growth.
Thank you, everyone, for the responses. I’m new to all this as I’m deconstructing from Christianity.
Welcome to freedom from fear, my dear Jackie! The wonderful news is that as you deconstruct from Christianity, you can walk right into the welcoming arms of a very much closer walk with Jesus.
Dear Roberta, The situation for “hard” sciences is actually worse than being ignorant of reality, because it cannot in principle objectively research topics as fundamental as how the material universe came into existence, or how consciousness operates. When after years I was getting nowhere in resolving such questions it occurred to me that objective empirical science works best by locating outside of the phenomenon to be researched, so that independent observation is enabled–but we can never stand outside of the material world to observe it; likewise, because our consciousness (spirit) functions in the Universal Field of Consciousness (i.e., the mind of God), we cannot locate outside of it to independently observe how it works. I termed this fundamental, intractable, barrier the Principle of Interior Unknowability.
Re quantum mechanics, Planck and Einstein, along with Bohr, realized that energy and electron orbits in atoms were not continuous phenomena, but work in jumps, which became known as a “quantum” jump from one state to another, and that was good. However, Heisenberg and Bohr made a catastrophic error by foolishly applying the philosophic idea of requiring that any aspect of reality must be observable to own a real existence; that perspective is generally a good qualification and is termed “opoerationalism.” But they mistakenly applied that principle in deciding on the reality status of subatomic particles. Because it was impossible for them to accurately observe the status of particles (such as observing both particle location and momentum together, since the energies used for the observations was always going to interfere with the particle status), they decided that particles could not be assigned a real status, so they defined particles to exist in a nebulous state modeled by probability distributions (using the Schrodinger wave equation, whIch works very well to mdel observable behavior). Ironically, operationalism can be seen as demanding that they not assign any status at all for lack of the required observation. Einstein for his part ridiculed the idea that particles lack a real existence, but he lost the argument for lack of objective evidence. What then transpired is the interpretation of particles to lack a real existence until energetically observed (said to collapse the Schrodinger probability distributions into a definite, real existence) wqhich led to the idea of nonlocal effects (termed quantum entanglement), what Einstein derided as impossible “instantaneous spooky action at a distance.”
However, over the past few years physicists have developed tools for observing particles with such slight energy that the particles are not significantly affected, and the particles are seen to own a definite, real existence. But the dogma in physics is so strong that the researchers publishing their findings applying “weak” measurement did not realize the Heisenberg and Bohr mistake. The consequence is that physicists now accept magical nonlocality and the idea of a multiverse (an infinity of parallel worlds with only the one we are in as observable).
Computer designers are also unsuccessfully applying the idea of quantum entanglement to build quantum computers, but these computers always fail to perform with reliable calculations–because quantum entanglement is a fiction, as I have published about, Uncertainty Principle in Light of the “Weak” Measurement Experiments
( https://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/934 ).
And as to the Big Bang Theory, it is contradicted by existing data ( see the Big Bang Never Happened, Eric Lerner, 1991). And the Principle of Interior Unknowability asserts that we cannot scientifically find out how the material world was created from our location within it.
Anyone eho has studied philosophy realizes that these problems all resolve into one – the unbreachable conceptual distance between epistemological potential and ontological status. Do we have physiciats decrying the existence of ‘non-observables’ simply because they confound what may be known with what exists. This is an ancient, bottom line, the tension between idealism and materialism, neither of which are solvable from within the confines of the logical rules by which they are bounded. Most of eastern religious philosophy examines these problems in detail, and some mystical traditions of the Abrahamic faiths as well as the ancient Greeks. Right? One cannot answer ontological questions by applying epistemological postulates,nor vice versa, because what inevitably results is a morass of the ‘entanglement’ of language with the world, and the ridiculous kinds of rationalist conclusions that reduce what is to what may be described,not onlyin the hard sciences butin post modernist theory with all its idiotic sequelae.
Oh my dear Sha’alah, you are talking way over my head, but then I have never studied philosophy and I am sure that you are right! All I know is that we are trusting people who have demonstrated themselves to be manifestly unworthy of our trust. And as a result, people are now living in a private terror of dying, and they are dying in anguish. And a quarter of those who are dying as I am writing these words are dying in such fearful confusion that they are not even following the process that is laid out for them, but instead they are wandering and lost and they have to be rescued one by one, in a process that is sometimes taking as much as a century or more!
So Craig and I are devoting our rocking-chair years and everything we have to undoing the harm that these fools have done and continue to do today. We are setting out to educate the entire world about the fact that life is eternal, and teach them what they would long since have known if these supposed scientific experts had not drifted into the materialist weeds a hundred years ago!
Dr H: I always loved your fish tank analogy that you used to discuss your PIU theory. We are like fish in that fish tank – only able to explain mysteries from inside the tank, and totally unaware of the waaaaay bigger picture, so science is trying to explain everything from this limited perspective, even though they know we can observe only <5% of what makes up the universe.
Yes, my dear Lola. Stupid indeed.
Wow, Jack, this is fantastic! You really have thought all of this through. I think of them simply as fish asking one another, “What is water?” And I also consider it to be the fundamental principle of “follow the money,” which operates in every area of life. Once those who are paying for all this research wise up, and the money dries up, the scientists are going to have to stop doing mindless research and start looking for actual answers.
Dear Roberta, Lola was referring to one of the devices I used to justify the Principle of Interior Unhknowability. Specifically, if we think about fishes born in a fish tank who were to wonder about the nature and origin of the environment in which they live, we realize that they have no way of knowing how their environment was constructed. The what is water quote is one of my favorites too, and I used it to introduce my chapter on consciousness to illustrate that, by our full immersion in it, we do even not realize it exists:
Chapter 9. What is Consciousness ?
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”
—David Foster Wallace, This Is Water
That is hysterical, my dear Jack! I knew I had seen it somewhere, and likely it had been from you. But it is simple common sense that you don’t get something from nothing! Even I know that, and scientists think the public is simply stupid when they continue to push the Big Bang theory as if it made any sense at all. I mean, if it were someone unlettered who had first proposed a consciousness theory of everything, that would be one thing. But it was Max Planck! And they ignored him! There is absolutely no excuse at all. When they finally have to give up and give in – and they will, eventually – they will have egg on their faces enough to make a thousand omelets.
Hi Roberta,
Years ago, when I first became convinced of the idea of Universal Reconciliation –thanks to all of the information provided at Tentmaker. Org– I was so ecstatic & relieved. My journey has brought me to the same place where you are now.
I am currently reading the “Backwards Guidebook”by Nanci L. Danison on being an extension of the collective God conscience and I feel somewhat let down. The verse, “I am the vine you are the branch, etc.,…” Makes more sense now but,why do I feel disappointed ? I know, it’s probably the animal part that is disappointed, but how do I get the joy back.
Oh my dear Gee, you get the joy back by going to the nearest trash can and depositing Nanci Danison’s book. She is an NDE-er, and since NDEs have nothing to do with actual death, I have no idea what she says in the book but you cannot rely on it as evidence of what actually happens after death. Please wait just a few weeks and then join us at seekreality.com, and learn the truth about what happens after death based on fifty years of research!
Dear Roberta, I biefly engaged her in an email exchange prompted by one of her ads contents. As I recall, I politely expressed my intuition that she was not making sense, asking her to explain her perspectives, instead of simply asserting opinions. She took offense instead of trying to explain what I thought was senseless. Still get her ads though, and it just seems to me that she is hustling. But, what do I know?
Oy. Well, that nails it for me, my dear Jack! You know a great deal, my beautiful friend, and if you thought what she was saying was senseless, then that seals it! She should be ashamed for peddling nonsense NDE gibberish and creating even more despair and confusion about death. But not for much longer.
I emailed her also because her account is so different from anyone else’s and I wondered why. She clearly has not read much about this subject, which is not the path of a good researcher
Wow, so this woman is peddling her own eccentric view of the afterlife, based on her NDE? Good grief! My dear Lola, your observation that her doing that is not the path of a good researcher is a classic understatement!
Hi Roberta,
My grandmother is friends with a psychic who recommended you to me and also gave me “the fun of staying in touch” to read. I have yet to read it, but I’m so fascinated in staying in touch with my grandfather and also one of my favorite music artists who was killed in 2018. His name is Jahseh Onfroy, stage name xxxTentacion. He used to be a troubled kid, and had a spiritual awakening when he was 19 about a year before he was killed. If you do some research on him you can find out more. They also came out with a documentary about him on Hulu called “look at me”. I was wondering if you could give me any advice on how to communicate with him? I have been able to feel my grandfather’s presence before but I’m not sure I am actually feeling Jah’s presence or if I’m just playing tricks on myself. Let me know if you have any advice and I’d be so happy to hear!! Thank you!
Dear Michael, if you don’t know him personally it will be difficult for you to contact him through a medium, but you can try. There are some mediums listed on my website who have been tested and have done well for others.
Nanci Dannison experienced nothing but light beings and says that what Mikey Morgan, Erik Medhaus and others experienced are kind of like hallucinations that are only temporary. This would also cancel out all the “scenery” that is so often described
My dear Lola, what Nanci Dannison experienced was only an NDE, which therefore had nothing to do with actual death. She might as easily have experienced pink poodles flying through the sky. And Mikey Morgan is a genuine sixth-level being who is in continuing contact with his mother. If anyone is in contact with her, you might tell her from me that if she doesn’t stop using his name RIGHT NOW, she can expect a lawsuit.
Hello Roberta –
I read your wonderful blog weekly and THIS TIME – for some reason – before I opened up the full blog page, my mind focused (zeroed in on) your title: SEEKING REALITY. I actually thought about the words more deeply for a moment before reading the posts.
I’de read this term before, but it literally jumped out at me this morning, while I was still open and non-caffinated…how interesting — I opened your blog and the discussion is actually about your (helpful/correct) title: SEEKING REALITY!
I truly do feel divinely guided to this information and is this what the new website will be called?
Oh my dear Jennifer, we do own the URL “Seeking Reality” as well, and we could use it and point it to the website if we wanted to do that, but as of now we are using just “Seek Reality” for the new website. We want seekers to feel that they can seek reality with us, but to know that we have found it for them, and we can offer it to them now!
hi there, i was wondering what is the fee for the new realiy show going to be.
thank you kindly
My dear Ramonia, come to seekreality.com. The website has just gone live!