Posted by Roberta Grimes • February 05, 2022 • 43 Comments
Afterlife Research, Understanding Reality
I see trees of green, red roses too. I see them bloom for me and you.
And I think to myself, What a wonderful world!
I see skies of blue and clouds of white.
The bright blessed day. The dark sacred night.
And I think to myself, What a wonderful world!
– Bob Thiele (1922-1996) & George Weiss (1921-2010), from “What a Wonderful World” (1967)
Perhaps a decade ago, I attended a conference headlined by creationist scientists. I was curious, but I was also hopeful! My focus of study had by then become an effort to put together all that I had learned in forty years of research, and to make some beginning sense of our whole reality as it actually is. So I was very briefly hopeful that trained scientists who were not bound by mainstream science’s materialist constraints might have begun to undertake the same huge task.
As you know, mainstream science reduced itself a century ago to studying only what can be seen as material. This foolishness seems to have begun as a protection against their inadvertently finding God, so I was sure that creationist scientists wouldn’t share their hang-ups. And of course they did not! There were wonderful presentations on the complexities of eyes, cells, and DNA, and other kinds of evidence of the fact that blind evolution is not sufficient to explain the rapid development and complexity of the staggering variety of life on earth. But by the end of the second day, I was struck by a horrifying realization. These good folks’ insistence on working from a Christian perspective was handicapping them in much the same way that materialist scientists are handicapped!
The attendees were a friendly group. Between sessions, I talked with some of them about this problem. I said something like, “You’re right about mainstream scientists. They’re over here on this materialist hill. They won’t study anything that’s not on their hill! But don’t you see that you’re over on this other hill that has a lot of evidence that materialist beliefs are wrong, which to you means the Christian God must be real? But if you limit yourselves to just that hill, you still are ignoring the enormous valley between those hills that contains a lot of useful information about reality that both you and the materialists are ignoring because it doesn’t fit either of your agendas?”
I soon felt like the skunk at their garden party. No matter how much I praised what I was hearing at their conference, and no matter how mildly and respectfully I spoke, reactions ranged from blank looks to outright hostility. Most of them seemed to be unable to comprehend my analogy involving the two hills and the information being ignored in the valley between them. Even worse, those few who got the analogy seemed to assume that I was anti-Christian.
I’m sorry, but I just don’t see any value in beliefs-based science of either kind, whether atheist or theist. There is ONE REALITY! It’s a complex and surprising reality, true, and most of it is not accessible to the senses, but it is the reality that we all share. And it doesn’t exist as convenient blocks of curated and readily accessible information! Instead, it is mostly densely interwoven non-material dimensions, and each affects and is affected by the others. So you can’t study just limited aspects of it if you hope to make sense of any of it!
Both hills harbor well-meaning scientists who are devoting their entire careers to doing research inside artificial and arbitrary limits. And if even this hobbyist researcher can see that, it surely must on some level be obvious to the scientists who are working on the hilltops!
A similar phenomenon exists in afterlife research. Nearly every expert in this field has made a career of studying and talking about communication with the dead, or physical mediums, or astral travel, or life-planning, or consciousness studies, or spiritual-growth techniques, or any of a half-dozen other fields that are genuine and useful, to be sure. But by themselves, these fields are all anecdotal. They are yet more evidence that the afterlife is real, but when the evidence is so fragmented by source and by method of study it is immensely less convincing! And yet, a hungry world is desperate to know the truth. The human death rate is one hundred percent! Multitudes are eager to know for sure that physical death is no big deal, and that what comes next is glorious. Hints are better than nothing, of course, but people would so much rather have it all put together for them in some fashion. And yet, in a world of nearly eight billion people, I know of only two rather eccentric folks already in their seventies who feel driven to investigate all the evidence for the afterlife and the greater reality, and to try to make sense of how it fits together. I comfort myself that there must be more than two. We just can find no sign of them. But at least there are two! Craig Hogan and I have done most of our work independently, so we can compare and discuss our conclusions now. And we are excited by the fact that in every significant detail, we have both reached precisely the same conclusions.
If it were only me, I’m not sure I would attempt to do Seek Reality Online. Even though there is a desperate need for it! But Craig has reached my same conclusions at a more sophisticated level. And as we work with the developers now, I can see that his vision for the website is also greater than mine. As an aside, this is turning out to be a lot of fun!
It is important to stress the fact that all scientific ideas are presented as theories. Even gravity is a theory! Nothing in any scientific field is assumed to be a proven fact about which nothing further can be learned. The scientific method requires the observation of some phenomenon, and then its investigation and the positing of explanations and details until a testable theory develops that can be even further refined. And that works fairly well for the scientists on both hills, with a couple of caveats:
Just as examples, here are four basic questions for which no scientist on either hill can form a viable theory without recourse to information from the valley that lies between their hills:
What independent researchers have discovered in the valley that is still being ignored between the province of materialist science and the province of creationist science is a gigantic trove of information! There is so much evidence available there in so many different fields that once people with scientific credentials feel intellectually free enough to study it, they might well fairly rapidly more than double humankind’s store of knowledge. Or as the great polymath Nikola Tesla 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.”
The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky,
Are also on the faces of people going by.
I see friends shaking hands, saying, “How do you do?”
They’re really saying “I love you.”
I hear babies cry. I watch them grow.
They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know.
And I think to myself, What a wonderful world!
– Bob Thiele (1922-1996) & George Weiss (1921-2010), from “What a Wonderful World” (1967)
Hi Roberta, hi everybody! First, thank you for using one of my favorite songs (particularly Louis Armstrong’s rendition) as the frame this week. I have mentioned my dreamwork in previous comments and the way my beloved guide Arrow has used dream imagery to communicate with me. What is interesting to me today is that for many decades I have had recurring (and vivid) imagery of a landscape with a distinct hillside going into a valley. In these dreams, I always have the sense that what matters is in that valley but I am typically skirting the hillside in whatever I am doing. Further, my dream imagery is very similar to the pictures used to illustrate this week, especially that last one. I am beginning to wonder if Arrow hasn’t been sending me another of her riddles via the valley metaphor. It would be just like her! I think now she must have been saying—get off your hill and descend into the valley and get started!
PS-The valley is indeed a “wonderful world.”
Wow! I too have had visions (for lack of a better word) of beautiful hills with valleys in between but attributed it to my hiking days, as sights like that are common on hiking trails. After reading today’s blog, however, I am convinced there is something more going on. This is a perfect analogy, as the actual answers are found in the “valleys” that separate the 2 hills. but are largely ignored by both the creationists and scientists. Tesla was certainly correct when he said that studying non-physical phenomenon is the way to go. We can’t separate science and spirituality – it’s impossible. Even Einstein, Tesla and Planck knew this.
My dear Mike, this week’s effort was entirely Thomas’s work. On Thursday I didn’t even know what it was going to be about! All I had was the image of a valley. Then the title. Then he brought that ten-year-old rather embarrassing conference experience to my mind, and as I started to write it down he began to play Louis Armstrong in my head. And it went from there. We had a whole draft written in two hours! More and more, I feel like just the avatar that apparently I actually am 🙂
I had a colleague, since passed, who was a serious Creationist and published good research about it; my impression is that he and other Creationists are materialists who attribute Creation to the Divine. I am OK with the “Divine ” part, but of course not with materialism being any foundation for the whole of reality–which belongs to consciousness (one of the consistent reports from OBEs is that everything experienced when out of body owns consciousness, not just souls and angels, but rocks, water, and plants). A good source of evidence for Creation being divinely engineered (not the product of random evolution, although once created species may adaptively evolve within a specific set of environmental conditions) is in this excellent description of the complexity of what used to be thought of as a simple human cell ( http://www.esalq.usp.br/lepse/imgs/conteudo_thumb/The-Complexity-of-the-Cell.pdf ).
This is an excellent article, Dr H. Because it’s so small, most people don’t contemplate the dynamics of a single human cell, There is no question that cells are carefully designed. I am a nobody, but feel this article should be required reading for every high school and college student. I wonder if cells have consciousness. I strongly believe that rocks, plants and water have a consciousness. Just because we don’t recognize that they do (at least not in physical reality) doesn’t mean that they don’t, so why wouldn’t cells have a consciousness as well?
Dear Lola, since all that exists is consciousness, clearly cells must be consciousness too, but being composed of consciousness energy is different from possessing individual awareness. We are aware. Animals are aware, but to a lesser extent. Plant awareness is less than animal awareness, but plants do communicate and act together to a remarkably sophisticated degree. At the cellular level, that cooperative aspect of consciousness probably also operates; but without any individual awareness. We should note, too, that the animating principle – life, in other words – is a property inherent in and animating every living cell, whether animal or plant; and that animating principle leaves when the animal or plant body of which that cell is a part dies. Beyond that, the non-living matter that makes up that dead cell is also an aspect of consciousness, and the part that I least feel confident about is just how consciousness relates to non-living matter.
More and more, I can’t wait until scientists finally get on this and apply their skills and training to investigating so many things!!
Oh my dear Jack, you make such a wonderful point! Yes indeed, creationist scientists are materialists! Of course! I never had thought of them that way, but right you are. I love the work they have been doing with cells and DNA and eyes and other complex systems, and I admire some of them personally so much that I hadn’t thought until I saw you say it now that their work is as flawed as mainstream scientists’ work because it is all in service of their own beliefs-based agenda.
And as for everything material being somewhat conscious, that insight came to me perhaps fifteen years ago now, as I was sitting in my Thomas-mandated Course in Miracles study group. Someone else was talking. From nowhere, there came to my mind a green landscape with trees and a driveway circle lined with rocks. And Thomas said in my mind, “It’s all consciousness.” That idea kind of freaked me out at the time, but I realize now that it probably is true not only in the astral, but here as well.
Dear Lola and Roberta,
Yes, everything must possess some level of cnsciousness (and I have no authority to conclude this except the highly consistent anicdotal evidence from OBE reporting and the fact that it just plain makes good sense). In fact, last year I thought to apply this realization about consciousness to theory construction for psychological counseling when I realized that I had collected three OBE reports that described how their bodies continued to function even when they were out and no longer in charge of them (i.e., a conflict between boody and soul). In one case, the body of an injured motorcyclist punched the driver who hit him when he came over to help out; in another, the body continued to swim to shore on its own, and in a third, a women’s body was yelling from trauma even though she did not even realize it. It lead me to realize that much of our normal psychological conflict is generated by the instinctual needs and desires by our body which conflict with the morality owned by our soul; published here ( https://scigod.com/index.php/sgj/article/view/780 ) .
Dear Roberta. Hi everyone. A few weeks back I wrote here that the Godhead experiences what we experience through us. Your statement “…,apparently the Godhead is effectively …US?” seems to support this. ( I asked Mikey about this before that post ). I so anticipate the Beyond Reality website! Thanks to you and Mr Hogan.
My dear Ray, it took me years to get to the point where I began to accept the notion that God is a Collective of Perfected Beings! The evidence is strong, but I was such a Christian that it seemed like a sacrilege even to think such a thing. And it took a while, too, before I was able to inhabit non-time and see the effects of that. At first the Godhead concept seemed to be a comedown for God, but by now it feels immensely comforting. The Christian God was so different from us, so far above us, that it was hard to see us as even lovable by God. But when we embrace the Godhead as effectively our older brothers and sisters helping us to grow as they have grown, we free ourselves from all reservations and we can at last see ourselves as perfectly loved!
Perhaps as SRO comes to fruition this reality will become clear to more. It is mystical and cannot be measured, but as Consciousness and Awareness and Creativity —not as concepts but as force and driving energy —become clear so will God, and we will be as comfortable with this as God is.
Oh wow, Mike – “From your mouth to God’s ears!” as beloved Jewish grandmothers have been known to say.
I think that many people are going to have as much trouble with accepting the notion of the Godhead as a Collective of Perfected Beings as I did. It took me awhile! And it took my first better understanding non-time and the physics of conscious as these factors actually seem to operate in non-material reality. We are going to teach all of this, of course. As we must! It’s included in the basic free course. But whether it will turn many people off remains to be seen.
Another issue is we “perceive” God from our Earthbound perspective—and we think of God as someone “out there”—separate from nature and whatever our Earthbound reference point calls the “universe.” We see ourselves as even further separate. Words really do hamper reality, don’t they?
Roberta, in addition to Mike’s comment, the song that you picked has significance to me also, being the song that my daughter chose for me to dance with her at her wedding. It’s funny, I never listened to those meaningful words until today, Thanks for the gift.
The side of the hill in the blog that I relate to is the scientist side that base their conclusions on numbers. After taking Physics in high-school ( which I got a “D” to taking it in college , which I somehow got an “A”, probably because the professor gave us the formulas), I have never understood my entire life, how a set of numbers could have anything to do with how the universe was created and is run. The valley you mentioned was a “ah-hah” moment for me!! Thanks. Dave
My dear Dave, I think the use of mathematics to study reality should be seen as a gigantic “Aha!” by all materialist scientists! But of course it is not.
My “Aha!” came some twenty years ago, when I was watching a PBS special on the universe and a young physicist said, “For some reason, mathematics can be used to study reality.” That “for some reason” caught on my mind, and then seized it! We know that what we today call mathematics was invented, and perfected, and in fact it isn’t the only number system that has existed in human history. Its value in the study of material reality is a gigantic tell! And eventually… gradually… that one insight helped me to come to see that:
1) The numbers-based physics that exists in less than 5% of reality is probably meant to keep us from messing with material things here (as our minds can easily do everywhere else), so we will have to take our earth-lessons seriously.
2) Creation is not one-and-done, but it happens continuously, very much as a filmstrip consists of individual realities.
3) Without objective time, what we think of as “the past” is part of each slide of that filmstrip, so the past is being (or at least can be) re-created freshly in each micro-instant. So it makes perfect sense that something that humankind has invented is actually at the base of reality. Without time, it all makes sense!
4) Yup, the Godhead probably is indeed a Collective of Perfected Beings. All beings above the upper fifth level (in our parlance) seem to work in ever-increasing collectives, and that likely includes most of our own spirit guides. That is clearly the natural inclination of all beings!
So that throwaway line by a confused young physicist on PBS 20 years ago turned out to be a key for me that helped to unlock everything else!
And come to think of it, this might be a good blog post topic…?
Roberta, each time you explain this, like you just did, it sinks in more and more. I don’t have it 100% but every day I feel I’m getting closer! Dave
Dear David, you always make me smile! And I am being told now by the actual author of these blog posts that my answer just above is meant to be the subject of a new blog post, so perhaps that will help you as well. And it will help me, too! I often find in writing these posts an opportunity to learn something more 🙂
As you know who says, “There is no darkness, only discovery.”
Hello, Roberta;
It seems odd to imagine the time past, when my reality was so constrained as those on the two hills. Over the past few years, I have been investigating death and the Afterlife, and I have been “red-pilled” (a reference from the movie, The Matrix) so that I cannot un-see the greater reality that revealed itself to me. I have carefully revealed the “a-ha’s” to my precious wife, and although we never really discuss these revelations, I’m sure that she has thought about and internalized them. We are “wired” very differently.
I look forward to Mr. Hogan’s and
your new course on the greater reality for me to use as a tool to introduce others to this knowledge. Yesterday, my aged cousin asked me to help with the arrangements after he dies. He made some reference to his future death in a typical way, where death is seen as a negative. I told him that death was wonderful and the reports from the other side are that once the old, decrepit body is left, that no one looks on it with any feeling of loss or desire to return to it. He just mumbled something about being religious and that something would happen next. Later in the day, I arranged to send him your book, The Fun of Dying, as a way to hopefully give him more knowledge of what comes next.
Your new course will be tool to help others in another way. For example, I could post the course information on my Facebook page. I rarely post anything there, and I have mostly maintained it so my wife can inform some of those that I have known when I have died. I know … it’s kinda morbid, but like my cousin, one starts thinking about these things when one gets older. I have been known to say that when we are young, we don’t know anybody who has died, but when we get old, then everybody we know has died. : )
I no longer fear or feel ignorant about my death. However, as was said in the movie, Gladiator, it is “but not yet.” I retired over 4 years ago due to feeling really not well, and I have confined myself to home all this time. This has been unfortunate, but I have learned much during this time, and now I am feeling better and I am about to embark on a new career doing something. I am no longer going to “dance on a stamp”, but I am going to use more of the dance floor. (This is a reference from Garnet Schulhauser and his interesting books about revelations he has received from his spirit guide.)
I wish you and Mr. Hogan well in progressing your new project. I intend to do my part in getting it out there, as I feel the calling to help some few spirits to be unafraid of death and anticipate “graduation” from this incarnation as successfully completing their life plan.
God bless you,
David
Oh my dear David, thank you for such a lovely and insightful set of comments! As you so wisely point out, our shared task now is to “red-pill” the world, and with eight million people to reach that is going to be a gigantic project! So, yes, we welcome your participation in that process with joy. Thank you! We are beginning to hear from others, too, who want to help to spread the word. All over the world! And we are planning to have the website translatable into six key languages. As Jesus said, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. But if each enlightened person will teach the others that he can reach, then soon we will have workers enough in the field to be able to enlighten all of humankind!
All I can say is THANK YOU Roberta,
My husband transitioned into spirit world 1-27-22
We read your book, The Fun of Dying. We spent hours talking about our spiritual journey. Phil was completely ready for his spiritual journey. The hospice nurses said they never seen anyone so calm, at peace, and ready. His 6 days in-home hospice was a blessing. I have a joy knowing how much fun he is having; however, my sadness runs deep. We were married 49 years, prayers for me please
Question, do we continue to pray for the departed? Thank you for making Phil’s spiritual easy. Marilynn
Oh my dear Marilyn, being widowed is never an easy thing. And I have been married for 49 years as well! Please accept from me the world’s biggest hug 🙂
And thank you for sharing your beautiful story with us here. I have heard from others, too, who read The Fun of Dying with their loved ones who were preparing to transition, and it seems to have helped them all, which is my life’s biggest thrill! The first of these stories came soon after the book was published in 2010, and the person transitioning was a minister I knew personally. His wife called and told me afterward how excited he became as they read the book together, and she said he died with a smile on his face. At the time, I thought that one moment on the phone was joy enough to have been my whole life’s work!
My dear Marilynn, you needn’t pray for Phil’s safety or survival, but our transitioned loved ones do say that they are supported and helped by our prayers of love and joy. You might pray in gratitude affirmations, saying things like, “Thank You, God, that Phil is so happy now and close to Your heart!” or “Thank You for giving my Phil such a beautiful and joyous eternity!” That sort of thing. And of course, the energy is increased when we pray out loud, or even just speak aloud to Phil as you share your days with him. Those who have gone ahead say that the energy of all of this is love and joy that especially uplifts them when they first arrive!
Dear Marilynn,
I feel for you at this time of loss. I know there are so many people who are part of this blog family, who do not write here and feel greatly for you. They pray too for the soothing of your heart.
Even when we know that our beloved one is shining in God’s joy, we feel the loss of not being able to see, hear or touch our beloved. That’s love while being human, I guess. 🙂❣️
I’d like to say here, that Roberta has helped me greatly with the death of someone very close to me; my beloved Aunt Margaret. This was later last year. Roberta’s gratitude affirmation thing really did help me on the inside; quite surprisingly actually.
I said: ‘Thank you Lord, Margaret is free to dance and sing in Your light. Thank you for freeing her of her tired, painful body.’ Before long something changed inside me and made things start to feel better; resolved somehow…
Also, I have chosen two special chairs that I use to talk to my beloved Margaret. One I sit in; the other I invite her to sit in. I say what’s in my heart then sit quietly, clearing my mind and see if a thought impression or a picture comes into my mind’ eye. Then I repeat this process. Marylinn, I soon got better at it and doing this practice often became quite amazing.
I wish you soothing of heart and the flourishing of your eternal love connection with your beloved Phil. Now that the unbreakable love you both share connects you between two planes of existence, may you be happily surprised by how close you both still are. 🙂❣️🙂
🙏🏼❣️🕊
Oh my sweet friend Efrem, your contributions are always so lovely! I’m sure what you have said here is immensely helpful to Marilynn, and to others. Thank you so much!
Dear Marilynn, We all share your mortal loss in our spirit bodies of consciousness. Your thoughts are not mere mortal brain activity, but your consciousness at work, and so are available to Phil. When you pray, you are thinking and those thoughts are shared with him, even though you may not directly “hear” him now.
Marilynn: Your prayers for souls are always heard and welcomed there, and there is no cut-off point where they are no longer effective. As noted above, they are not mere brain activity, but consciousness, which ties us all together.
Dear Lola, one of the things that I most love about our little tribe of commenters here is how much everyone loves and supports those who come to us for help and guidance. Especially now, with so much to do for SRO, it can take me a day or two to get here, but you my dear and others are always ready to offer your love and support!
My dear Jack, thank you – precisely right!
Hi Roberta,
Always look forward to your weekly posts. You said it perfectly as always. As I read your post I could not help but see how science has totally gone off the rails with Covid. Putting politics aside we never shut down our world for a virus even for Polio. Yet scientist told us they could contain the virus as they claim they can change our climate by making man give up progress. Sadly science tells us to wear masks akin to having us install cyclone fencing around our homes to keep out mosquitoes!
Being nearly as “experienced” in life as you I remember when, the joke was people will talk about the weather but can do nothing and the person who finds the “cure” for the common cold will be rich. Sadly today many people claim to be able to save our climate and others have made millions on gene therapy that still needs time to vindicate if it really was the right course of therapy that offered more protection than harm. Only time will tell.
As we all experienced this real time it is so eye opening to see how science is so dogmatic today. When Aids raged in the 80’s the stickers in the NYC subways read “Silence = Death”. Yet those same activities seem to want us to remain silent regardless of the outcome?
When we take all of this into consideration it is so easy to see that perhaps this charade will open people’s eyes to a new “reality” that is based upon actual facts and experiences.
Lastly, I recall that when the Spaniards Conquistadors sailed into the Americas most of the people could not “see” their ships. It took a few elders days of studying the horizon to finally “see” these ships that were anchored right in front of them for days.
Hopefully, more of the population will open their eyes and see that our reality as you said is so much more than we can imagine.
Best of luck with your new venture I know it is going to be a great success.
Sincerely,
John
Dear John, it absolutely astounds me that a project so profoundly needed as basic universal afterlife education is being undertaken by no one else! Just think about how incredible that is. Many others are sharing slices of afterlife-related information the way carnivals used to display oddities like two-headed snakes and five-legged lambs, but by now we ought to be far beyond that!
There is a certain nervousness inherent in being the first to do anything. You intermittently wonder why it hasn’t been tried before. Is the fear of death really so great that not enough people want to study it and learn the truth to support an afterlife university? But when Craig and I have spent our lives researching what really is the most important topic of all, and when all the news really is good news, we just can’t see taking all that we have learned with us and going home without at least first trying to share it with the world!
John, All well said. Science is not conductewd by God ordained priests as perfectly hionest truth tellers. Scientists are people who make their living working at it and teaching about it, i.e., it is a business. There are honest leaders, dishonest ghouls are greedy to get promoted academically and gets grants (such as from the likes of Fauci for health and Green advocates for climate), and with the vast majority followers with minor talent. A philosophy prof, Thomas Kuhn, gave a lecture one day and was surprised at the aclaim he gotr, and so wrote a book about the topic of how science actually progresses, with great duificulty, not with thirsty reception for new ideas and challenges to the old as had been the academic lore:
” Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922–1996) is one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century, perhaps the most influential. His 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most cited academic books of all time. Kuhn’s contribution to the philosophy of science marked not only a break with several key positivist doctrines [ meaning the insistence on observable pheniomena], but also inaugurated a new style of philosophy of science that brought it closer to the history of science. His account of the development of science held that science enjoys periods of stable growth punctuated by revisionary revolutions. To this thesis, Kuhn added the controversial ‘incommensurability thesis’, that theories from differing periods suffer from certain deep kinds of failure of comparability. ” ( https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/ ).
To put it bluntly, any professor who has acquired tenure has a huge vested interest in the theories he honored with his career investment, and so are actively hostile to challenges to the truth of what they had committed to for their life’s work. When funds are made available to support an idea in an area for which they are credentialed, they apply and honor the provider’s interests to gain their grants. Science is a business, with good players and bad.
Oh my dear Jack, very well said indeed. Science is an endless series of topics that all have their proponents. The one area where there are no grants given is the absolutely open-minded pursuit of the truth, wherever it may lead!
Hi Roberta. I like the metaphor that you, or perhaps I should say Thomas, chose this week. If those folks would leave their hilltop fortresses or ivory towers and go down into the valley, they would see that “there is a river,” and if they would just flow with it and let it guide them, they would be led back to that primordial ocean of truth or potentiality from which all arises. Like Mike and Lola it reminds me of recurring dreams I’ve had many times, not so much of the valley, but of a special river that I’m traveling on or following and that seems to be leading me somewhere. Sometimes it is an underground stream right under the house, or springing up from a sacred well. It also reminds me of a beautiful dream recently in which I was on the other side and the person with me, perhaps my guide, showed me a pool of beatiful water full of rainbow colors that seemed alive and said, “Here, when people drink the water, it is like a sacrament.” Symbolism can be a lot of fun, with so many potential layers of meaning. I think that is why myth has always had such an appeal over the ages.
Dear Scott, I don’t know where the metaphor of a valley came from when I was at that conference, but it turns out to be a universal problem! It is so tempting to study one small area of any field, and try to make sense of that; and when you have nailed your one area, you then want to generalize from there. But reality is a lot more complex and gigantic!
This problem exists in the area of afterlife studies as well. There is a lot of afterlife evidence, and it’s pretty readily discoverable. But unless you also figure out the greater reality of which it is a tiny part, knowing about the afterlife itself doesn’t really mean very much. And yet, as you say, most people would much prefer to study and draw conclusions from just their limited area! This is true for scientists, for Christians, and also for those who want to know about the afterlife but who may be a bit afraid of the vast sea of uncertainty that seems to lie between there and here.
It took me just a few years to figure out the afterlife. And another four decades to figure out how it relates to where we are!
Amen!
This is so true, Roberta. There are so many people (almost everyone in the paranormal field) who get voices on their recorders or pictures of anomalies and then stop any further research, not realizing that they have only just scratched the surface. There is always more to learn, and I don’t think there is ever an end to what we can learn in this area.
My dear Lola, you are so right! The non-material reality turns out to be fully as gigantic as the whole material reality – indeed, it is even more gigantic – and there is even more to be learned about it than there has been to be learned about our material reality over the past several thousand years! And yet, as you say, only a bit of the surface here and there ever is scratched. As Craig and I have put together the SRO materials, it has frankly surprised us to realize how much we already know, even though it still is sadly so little. It will be a great day indeed when we can enlist the participation of actual trained scientists in our investigations!
I know in my heart that Tesla was correct. If only more non-material research had been done, just think of how much more we would know now. This physical reality and its dense vibration, is just a tiny part of the greater reality
“In a reality without time, apparently the Godhead is effectively …US?”
– Roberta Grimes (above)
Dearest Roberta,
This hill and valley metaphor goes right to the good earth, the very terrain on which we humans stand; the place in which we live these manifold lives amid the wondrous biosphere. Hence, this analogy says much about the nature of the simulation we call Earth, and the nature of human psychology and sociology. Yes nature. Human. Earthly.
We see the patterns repeating themselves: The human explorer-discoverer soon becomes the claimer of what he has found. All too soon he clears the tabletop land, builds his castle and hedges the afflicted hilltop with walls, parapets and iron gates.
Before long the claimer-owner’s perspective changes. ‘Valleys below and all that unkempt, riotous shrubbery and wild water be damned!’ he shouts. ‘This mighty hill fortress is mine!’ The claimer who has become a lord declares, ‘This is what I can see and control, this alone in all the world is mine!’ Then he is apt to threaten, ‘Woe betide anyone who dares to say otherwise.’ As he builds his towers to the sky the newly powerful lord might even say, ‘Look on my works ye mighty and despair!’
Roberta we humans are great at exploring and discovering; at claiming and organizing. We are also even better at stopping once we’ve claimed a place and fenced others out. The high churchmen eschew all further study of reality; the much vaunted science institution snubs non material areas and different methods of inquiry – Just as the landowner, now rich and settled, ventures not into the wild where he is at risk of the bear in the brushes. Even psychics, mind talkers, delvers into past lives and astral travelers may, in all innocence, say ‘This is enough for me. I can do this well and I won’t now venture too far afield.’
My dear, we are a species that loves questions, exploring and discovery – perhaps almost as much as limited answers, settling in comfort and looking over the hilltop with long owned satisfaction. Indeed we are both things: We explore and we stop. We question and make do with well known answers. We journey and discover, then we sit down.
Scott F beautifully reminds us (above) that rivers twist and turn through valleys to emerge at the sea’s edge, soon to become one with the vast ocean. So those of us who explore the valleys and follow the river’s silver threat will come at last to the vast, boundless ocean and become one with it.
Maybe the important thing is this. We do not so much become the drop in the ocean, but we become the ocean in the drop.
🌅🌊🌊
I like that idea of the drop in the ocean and the ocean in the drop, Efrem. Just for fun, to riff off that and Roberta’s metaphor of the valley and her theory of collectives, I can imagine the water evaporating from the ocean, raining down as freshly minted soul drops into the earthly realm, moving along countless routes, coalescing into larger and larger streams, and eventually returning to unity with the sea as a great collective, like a holy river, in a never ending cycle.
Woah! I love it!
There is much beauty in your sustained metaphor of awakened, earthly Divinity in an infinite water cycle.
Powerful riff Scott. 🌎🌧🌅
Oh my dear Efrem, what I am coming to realize now is that the whole despairing world encompassed in that drop of ocean is thirsting and unable to drink, seeking and unable to find, climbing those hills when the bountiful valleys beckon! What all people want is the simple truth, but there is no religion and no form of science that has the truth because they all insist on their own already-presumed answers! Perhaps with Seek Reality Online we can fine the genuine truth together?