This week on MindMatters we look at some of the most interesting research on the subject, including the recent Netflix docu-series Surviving Death, based on journalist Leslie Kean's book of the same name. We also look at its relationship to consciousness, psi and values - and how the largely narrow perspective on these themes only goes to serve the "modern" trend to accept the nihilistic and toxic strain of ideologies, postmodernism, scientism, and other limiting belief systems. (See also Stephen Braude's Immortal Remains)
Running Time: 01:09:34
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Here is the transcript:
Elan: Hello and welcome back to MindMatters. Today we're going to be re-visiting a theme that we covered on one or maybe two shows now. It's the subject of 'the afterlife', and what evidence exists to support the idea that there is a non-physical realm or level of reality that we go to after our physical bodies expire, what the implications are for such a level of existence in contrast to all of the types of scientific materialist underpinnings of reality that we're constantly being indoctrinated with. And there seems to be no shortage of ideas and directions that we can go in discussing this subject because when we discuss the afterlife, the implications of a different level of reality open up all sorts of other questions. There is seemingly no limit to what's implied in the suggestion that this isn't everything there is.
So we will be getting into some of the implications of the best evidence, if such a word can be used, of the afterlife. Well, there's a lot of literature that continues to be put out on the subject, and so we recently got to see a documentary on Netflix called Surviving Death, which was divided in six parts, and each of them coming at the subject from a different angle. It's not a great, but a decent introduction to the subject, including parapsychology that I think many people will be very new to. Some of it demands skepticism, some of it, because of its emotional reality, invites more questioning and more thought on the subject. So we'll be getting into that a little bit as well.
I'll start in a roundabout way by just saying that having read some of the more esoteric literature on the subject, I was kind of sad to see that the series didn't cover any of that. The tomes of writings that were put out in the heyday of spiritualism in the late 19th century and early 20th century that was transcribed by authors who were given to automatic writing who were in communication with beings of the afterlife, who were attempting to convey what the reality is like and what purpose it serves, and how lives continue there and what the purpose of that level of reality is in the vast scheme of things.
So one of the most compelling parts of this whole story wasn't included in the show, which is okay.
Harrison: And debatable.
Elan: What?
Harrison: Personably I don't think that those were the most compelling. I think they're the most interesting, and the most like reading a science fiction or fantasy novel, but I wouldn't call them the most compelling in the sense of evidence. So this series was based on, and inspired by Leslie Kean's book, which we've got here, Surviving Death. She published this one in 2017, so it's four years old. She's a journalist, she's a good journalist. The main thrust of the book is to look at what she considers the best scientific evidence, the best evidence that can be brought to bear for a modern mind.
She interviews all the leading researchers in these various aspects. Like you mentioned the show has six episodes devoted to five themes, five threads of evidence. There's medium ship, reincarnation, near death experiences, signs from the dead, and deathbed apparitions, of which there are two types and I can't remember the specific terminology for each of them, but one is when a loved one or someone close to you dies elsewhere and you have a vision at night or you hear their voice or you have a vivid dream, or something happens. You might see them when they are not actually there, and then a day, a week, or a month later, depending on the time period and depending on how fast information will travel, you get news that that's when they died. They might have died in a specific manner that you saw them, like someone might have a vision of that person drenched in water and then you find out that they've been drowned, halfway across the world, something like that. Or, an actual deathbed vision of a person who's dying, and this seems to be a reoccurring theme among people who are dying who in the last moments, the last days or weeks, sometimes even longer than that, have visions of their loved ones who have previously died and waking visions. These people can be totally lucid, not necessarily with dementia or anything like that, just as lucid and coherent as they are ordinarily but they will be seeing things that aren't there, for other people.
So, Leslie Kean interviews a lot of the people involved in each of these separate fields including some philosophers, some medical doctors, psychologists, people of those sorts. She interviews them all. One of the people that shows up in the book is Steven Braude who we interviewed on SOTT years ago. He's a philosopher and he has written several books. One of them is called Immortal Remains - The Evidence For Life After Death, and so he takes a real analytic approach to all the evidence. He comes to a philosophical conclusion that you can't say one way or the other with certitude. A lot of philosophers and people looking into this will say 'oh it looks like the evidence tends in one direction. The evidence does seem to support the evidence of the afterlife', but given all of this other stuff that we know about the capacity of the human mind, we can't say definitively that it is so.
So we're left in this position, within the categories of how we in our time think about things and judge evidence, we can't say for certain that it's one thing and not the other. So, I can understand whatever position someone might take on the actual evidence, whether it's from a dogmatic traditional perspective where there's a very set belief in what the afterlife is or is not and what happens, and then maybe the agnostic approach which is leaving open either possibility. So for that you'd have to kind of reject at least the mainstream materialistic scientific worldview to be open to the possibility of something over and above that, or maybe somehow work with that, might include that, but with something else on top of it or over and above it.
Then, I guess the other extreme would be to simply reject the traditional notions of the afterlife and to go firmly into 'okay, yes it exists and this is what it's like but it doesn't have anything to do or resemble to any great degree the common options on the religious market'. It's kind of like a horseshoe theory where it's pretty close to the religious perspective.
So before we get into the stuff that's in the book, I wanted to comment on some of those perspectives that you're talking about from the 1800's and the very in-depth presentations of the afterlife. We'll get into something that I was planning on talking about because two of the episodes out of the six, while each type of evidences usually has one episode devoted to it, mediumship has two devoted to it, just because there's so many mediums and so many different types of mediumship as they show in the show. When you look at mediumship, I think mediumship for the most part is actually the weakest form of evidence that would actually convince a hard nosed sceptic out there.
One of the charming things about the show is that they interview a lot of people who've had experiences, right? I can't remember if it's in all of the types of evidence but usually there's a couple involved, and there's a death in the family and something will happen and the wife will be the motivating force and saying 'look what's going on' or 'look what happened, this is really weird'. It's the husband who is usually like 'oh no we can't get into that, that's crazy stuff'. Luckily for the show and for the wives in these situations, the husbands come around because you can see that it's not something that you can just dismiss out of hand or just write off completely. But you can see where they're coming from, where they're starting from. But when you see the stuff produced by mediums, this is where I think Braude's approach, even if I don't necessarily like it - I have a personality aversion sometimes to - might be kind of contradictory because I tend to be the same way - to the kind of hard nosed intellectual like 'oh this can't be proved', it's kind of annoying.
But, I think that can be helpful in certain situations, and maybe I'll give an example. When we did our interview with Mary Balogh, I brought up a case. I couldn't remember the woman's name of a medium, if you could call her that, from the early 1900's I think, named Pearl Curran who with an acquaintance of hers sat down at a Ouija board and they made contact with this woman named Patience Worth. The idea was that they eventually narrowed it down that Pearl was the channel, the medium, the woman she was with - I think her name was Elisabeth Hutchings or something like that, wasn't necessary so they could actually contact Patience Worth when this other woman wasn't there. So Pearl was the woman that, you could say, channeled this personality for the next twenty five years. Patience gave a back story of who she was and a story of the life that she'd lived, and that she was a writer. So she actually wrote poems, novels, aphorisms, all kinds of literary works that she produced, allegedly, through Pearl Curran on a Ouija board very rapidly and remarkably without any errors.
So as I kind of alluded to or described not too completely in that interview with Mary Balogh that we did, she could sit down and start writing a novel, as Patience Worth, and then cut off for a week or a month, come back and continue pretty much mid-sentence, and then once the novel was complete, all that had to be done was the minor editing job of separating the words, and maybe adding punctuation. But there were no major revisions done and she wrote tons of novels this way. Some of them were best sellers at the time, but they weren't really remembered because they were kind of written off as a gimmick because it was this Patience Worth who doesn't exist, writing through this medium at a Ouija board. So people didn't really catch on. She wasn't a real novelist.
So the question was, was Patience Worth a real person? And Braude devotes a whole chapter to the case and goes into it in depth, and he comes to the conclusion that there's no evidence that this Patience Worth ever existed or was ever a real person. And the best explanation that seems to be the case, for this particular case, was that Patience Worth was essentially a creation of Pearl Curran's subconscious. It was Pearl who had the creative ability. She had the innate talent but she had no outlet for it in her life. She couldn't be a writer and so the manifestation of Patience Worth was a way for her to express her creativity which was remarkable because there doesn't seem to have been a novelist before or since who had this creative capacity to just open up the channel, like open up the floodgates, and just let a novel come out perfect in its first draft that doesn't need any revision. I'll get into some other remarkable things she did later.
Elan: Did you say that was all through a Ouija board?
Harrison: All through a Ouija board. I'll do that right now. So like I say, I don't see this as evidence for the afterlife but I do see it as evidence that the human mind is probably infinitely more remarkable than most people have an idea of, if you look at some of the things that she was able to do. There was a guy that worked with her and did some kind of challenges with her, tests just to see what she could do. W.F. Prince was this guy's name. I can't remember who he was but he set up a bunch of interesting challenges for Pearl, or for Patience. This was in the section called 'stunts of composition'. I'll just read it, for example:
On May 6th, 1920, Prince asked Patience to dictate a poem to John Curran", (I believe that's Pearl's husband), "while Pearl simultaneously wrote a letter to a friend.So she's sitting with one hand composing a letter to a friend, with the other hand she's moving the Ouija board to different letters.
Before beginning, Patience said 'I shall set a wee wit of a singing while she sets the bannock.'Patience often spoke in this kind of dialect. It's very poetic and hard to understand for a 21st century person (chuckles). I'll just read a sample of the poem and the letter she wrote. So the poem that Patience was composing on the Ouija board is called Willow of the Wisp:
Oh you marsh light, flashing across the marshes, beckoningMeanwhile, she's writing:
Did I see a beacon to tomorrow?
Give me a sign, oh you banshee, give me a sign
Make tomorrow's question marked against the sky
Fitfully as thy flash, oh you marsh light flashing
Then shall I be more accustomed to the questioning that I live.
Dear Dotsie, I am writing you while I write a poem, it's a new trick. Do you like it? See here honey, my hands are full. I don't like it honey, it's like baking bread and stirring soup. I am sick of the job. I wish you were here and that we could go over this together. This is a mess of a letter honeybug. I'm nuts, this is some chase. Slinging slang and purring poetry. Jack is doing best in this marathon, this is fine business and I'm up against it. Finniss honey, and I call it going home... Pearl.So she composes this letter while she's writing a poem at the same time with different hands. On another occasion, he got her to compose a dialogue in her characteristic archaic dialect between a lout and wench at a fair. And then interspersed between lines of this dialogue, she was to compose a poem on the folly of atheism. So, that's exactly what she did. I'll read a little bit of it but again the dialect is kind of hard to understand and I'll leave out the ellipsed letters so that they make words that you can understand, so:
Have you seen the mummers setting up a puppet show(interspersed with)
A thin the fielding, nigh
Who doubts his god is but a loutEtc., etc., etc. She composed a poem immediately after being told to, with each line starting on the new letter of the alphabet. So:
Who pits his wisdom with egotery has lost his mark
Aye, I see them fetch and past, and bide of a ribbon and a new latchet
And a shoon bucklin entassled thongs
To doubt is but to cast thee as a stone
Unto the very heart of god
Aye, and I fetched me a whistle and heard the doings of the village
That mark the smithy
Hade a new wench and she be left
"A task is before meEtc., etc., etc. And she's doing all this immediately at full speed while sitting at a Ouija board. That's in addition to the novels that just flowed out of her, seemingly, from nowhere. And she herself didn't take any personal credit for it, kind of like Mary Balogh and for many novelists it just comes to them. Well for her it was literally watching the novel being composed on a Ouija board.
Can I oh god perform it
Dole me patience
Enough that I be sustained
For I am indeed in need of strength
Adam: Okay, so this might be a strange thought. So I was reading one of 'The Westcott Series' books and one of the characters can play piano. Now he had never taken any formal lessons, so he just naturally had this ability to sit down and play. So I was thinking about it and you know there's virtuosos of that sort who do exist and are real. Mozart was one of them who just kind of picked up the piano at a very, very young age and just took to it like water.
So it made me think that there is some kind of information and an information field, right? And all we do, when we do things is we tap into it and there's multiple ways of tapping into it. For most of us, the only way for us to be able to access the information in order to play music is by having the hard wired code into our neurology, into the physical motor units in order for that to come through. However, perhaps it's possible to have access to that without all of the actual motor neuron ground work. So I was thinking about it in terms of what you were talking about - she's able to tap into that part of the information field without ever having actually taken any writing courses. Did she ever take any writing courses or anything like that?
Harrison: I can't remember the specifics but I'm pretty sure she didn't, but she had some kind of passing familiarity with Chaucer. But she hadn't devoted herself to a serious study or had experience in writing. It kind of just came out of nowhere.
Adam: That's pretty much what I had in my mind as to how this could possibly work. Now again, what does this mean and how does this actually work and what does that then open the doors to, in terms of possibilities? I don't know but I think that's pretty cool. There were the stories of Gurdjieff being able to watch somebody do something for a couple minutes and he would do it himself, and I'm wondering if that was what he was doing. I don't know.
Harrison: There is a question about the nature of human genius - what it is - and no one really knows what it is. There are some ideas about what some of those things might be, like with the virtuoso musicians, one idea is that they are reincarnated. But then the question as Braude raises, 'Okay, well let's assume that's the case. Then how did the previous version get that talent? Did they develop it in their life?' Is it possible to develop it in life? Or maybe for some people it just does come out of nowhere. But then you could put both of them together - maybe it comes out of nowhere and maybe that genius will then reincarnate in another genius and you'd have two geniuses.
So if you're open to the possibilities of both, then maybe there is more than one explanation for it. Maybe it is just like everything in human nature, part of that bell curve where some people are at that tiny end of the bell curve where they just have a lot more of something than everyone else does. Maybe talent is distributed like that. Maybe it doesn't have to have anything to do with reincarnation, but maybe it sometimes does. What I find to be some of the most compelling evidence for the continuation of life after death would be the reincarnation cases. For some reason those just kind of strike me as the most compelling, and they have two really good cases in this show which are discussed in the book too. So I'd recommend either reading the book or watching the show to get familiar with them because they're really compelling and interesting.
But one of the things about kids who remember past lives, which is a phenomenon first studied in depth by Ian Stevenson, a medical doctor and psychiatrist - I can't remember if he was a psychiatrist or not, but he collected tons of cases from all over the world but mostly starting out in South and Southeast Asia. These would be kids who from a very young age, sometimes between three and five years old, sometimes before that, will say things and tell their parents about 'well my previous mommy did this' or 'my old mommy did this' or 'you're not my mommy, this is my mommy' and 'my name isn't John, it's George', and then they would give details. And in a lot of cases in Asia, they might remember 'oh I was from this village', and so they would bring the kid to that village and then the kid would point out their previous parents or 'that was my brother' or 'that's the guy that killed me'. So there were a lot of interesting cases like that in Ian Stevenson's work and also Jim Tucker who they interview for this show, and who's interviewed for Leslie Kean's book.
Some of these kids show an unexpected, unexplainable preternatural knowledge of something that they are obsessed with. One of the cases, we'll call him James, was a kid who from a very young age was obsessed with planes. He would draw pictures of plane crashes and he would say 'oh, this is me, I died in a plane crash' and he'd have nightmares for months or years, I can't remember. His parents collected all this detail and his dad was on it, he was collecting every little thing he said and he was looking it up and finding things out. This kid would tell his parents things about planes that he couldn't have known, he couldn't have found anywhere, and that they had no idea about. He would name the planes 'oh that's this kind of plane, and that's this kind of plane'. He wasn't on the internet. This was in the early 2000's I think, late 1990s. He didn't have access to this kind of stuff. It was just stuff that he knew, somehow.
So there does seem to be the possibility, again, for some of these 'skills', even in this case if it's just facts to carry over that kind of information. If they were to sit him in a flight simulator, it would have been interesting at the time to see if this kid remembered the actual motor neurons, the actual movements that accompanied flying a plane. Long story short for this case, they found, eventually through just a couple of things that he happened to say, they managed to find the aircraft carrier and the squadron or whatever that he was part of, and the guy who died in the battle of Iwo Jima that matched everything he said.
So that's pretty remarkable. Again, Braude would say 'well it doesn't necessarily mean that it's actual life after death', but that's because Braude is open to the idea of Psi. So what you might say is that from a strictly intellectual, scientific, philosophical perspective, the only way to account for all this evidence is either to accept life after death or to accept that Psi is a real phenomenon. If you don't have either of those, then you can't explain it.
So either way, the scientific materialist perspective can't account for this kind of evidence.It might be able to account for Pearl Curran, but to go there you'd have to still accept that the subconscious mind is far more mysterious and powerful than most people give it credit for, which in itself is a pretty remarkable position to take or to consider and to look at.
One other case, kind of like Pearl Curran, there is a famous experiment - I think it's called the Felix experiment - where a group of people who are familiar with the literature decided to get together and create a personality. I can't remember if it was at a Ouija board or if it was using table tapping, but somehow they deliberately created a personality that they created a background for and a story for. And then, that personality manifested seemingly autonomously among them and they engaged in dialogue with it.
The non-Psi explanation for this, even if there may be an element of Psi involved, that I think the direction Braude goes in is it's essentially like creating a dissociated personality, a multiple personality, but it isn't a fragment motivated by any kind of mental illness, that it is utilizing the dissociative capacity of the mind to create something. You can create all the personalities you want in your mind consciously because that's what novelists do all the time, they're creating personalities. When it gets into the realm of psychopathology is when there's actually some pathological dissociation going on, and that creates these autonomous personalities that might switch or take over for psychological reasons.
But that capacity within the mind still exists to close off and shape a personality within the master personality that seemingly has its own autonomy, its own history. It can create a history, and it can create an entire story for its existence and then manifest it and tell it to you. Without any of your conscious awareness it's coming from your own mind. It's kind of like novelists when they write a story. A character manifests itself and speaks in its own voice and has its own story, but with either dissociative identity or multiple personality, or with these more Psi-related things, it seems to be an external actual personality; it seems to be an actual person. A novelist is aware, to some degree that - well this is debatable too - aware that it's just a character. It's fiction, but it's a remarkable fiction. It has a life of its own. Maybe it actually does exist.
Another source for great literature is "What if in these great sci-fi or fantasy stories, what if these characters actually exist in some alternate universe and we're just observing them.
Adam: Or tapping into them. It puts the finger on something that I was thinking about as you were talking about this guy's explanation for Psi as being a possible explanation for some of the reincarnation stuff. I was wondering if maybe that's possible but then you start to get into a realm where you're undermining the position or possibility of consciousness, unless you're assuming that Psi can create consciousness or consciousness is Psi of some sort.
Harrison: I can't remember if this is Braude's position, but a similar position would be that the child, for whatever reason, is tapping into that actual previous life and then remembering it as their own when it wasn't actually their own. So that would be in that specific case. Of course, the question arises, why and how does that happen? What makes that so different, why would a child have this experience of 'well I WAS that person'?
Adam: Yeah, it's a very different thing from being able to sit in a classroom, somebody asked a question and an answer came out of my mouth. Before I even realized what the question was, the answer came out of my mouth. I had no conscious control, I had not studied this thing, it just came out. So I can see where that happens because it has happened to me. However, that is totally different than being like 'I experienced being in a plane and crashing'. That's two very different things and that's why I was getting to the point of 'well if you get into that realm where it's just a subconscious thing', then we're talking about having to re-formulate what consciousness is. If somebody's consciousness can access it in that way and have that experience then...
Harrison: That's why I sometimes find a philosophical, sceptic approach annoying because it is annoying (chuckles).
Adam: Yeah.
Harrison: But useful as a check now and then to just kind of stay grounded.
Elan: Well I want to comment on that because we're all making leaps of assumption or putting up walls to the possibilities of consciousness or afterlife existence, and there seems to be, from my perspective, when I said earlier that there's certain literature that I found very compelling, you might say that even though I reserve some skepticism as to what some of the so-called proofs are of an afterlife, you can say that I assign high probability to the validity of the idea.
So using that as a point of departure, when I've read some of these readings, some of this channeled material, some of this automatic writing that is so filled, from my perspective, with some amount of wisdom and insight into the human condition, into a spiritual hierarchy that could be said to exist in the universe in terms of development and in terms of being of a more or less greater level of being, to me, having assigned a certain amount of probability to the reality of an afterlife, I find that is the most useful material to my mind.
By the same token, this discussion has taken on some interesting directions because really, the possibilities for consciousness are almost limitless, in a sense. And we've been so hit over the head with very narrow definitions of what we're capable of, of what is possible to perceive of cognitive ability that, if anything, this material provides a basis for more questions. So that's also what I find kind of stimulating about looking at this material because Leslie Kean's book and this docu-series that's been based on it, really, really just scratches the surface of what's out there.
Adam: For me, because I haven't looked into physical mediums, as an example, so I was able to learn some cool things about physical mediums that I had had no idea about. I think one of the good hallmarks of something that's worth engaging in is when you walk away with more questions than answers, in a good way, in a curious way, not in a movie with all the plot holes in the world, like some recent things that shall not be named. It sparks a curiosity in you that gives you more questions than answers in a way that leaves you more informed. Even though you have more questions you're still more informed than you were before and I think that's a good hallmark or a good benchmark for when some things are worth engaging in. So, I just wanted to throw that out.
Harrison: Well you could say that this book and a show like the one we watched is more of what might be the evidence that suggests that life after death is real. Then the stuff that you're talking about is; what might be the in-depth details about the nature of that afterlife, right? So, those would be kind of, I think, two different questions, or could be. So once you get into that question, then it's entering the jungle where it's a matter of sorting through the numerous different portrayals of what the afterlife looks like and separating the wheat from the chaff. I think that's why a person like Kean or Braude or the filmmakers avoid that is because that's a huge project and what's your standard aside from 'well I like this one', right? That would be in itself a huge project to engage in.
Elan: I completely agree. I've read enough of these books now where I've yearned to see some representation of it that didn't look or sound like Michael Landon's 1990 series Highway to Heaven, just something that gave an eloquence, a beauty, to all of the wisdom that seems to be conveyed through these books that are meant, not to give us a solace in the idea that there's more to this mortal coil, but that there is much more to life and to the cosmos and human existence and the existence of the universe that we just don't have the background for
We have these very shorthand explanations of it, I think through a lot of the world's religions and it seems to me to be very incomplete and wanting because if you're looking for directions to grow into, what does that even mean for oneself? What is it about an understanding of how things may in fact exist at other levels that inform our existence? So that's why I come back to these books - Life Beyond the Veil being one that I've mentioned repeatedly on this show that has scenes in it that are just, to my mind, a little astonishing that at least speak to my own sensibility, if such a thing can be described as such.
But by the same token, I've watched this series - I didn't get to read the book yet - but thought as a kind of a primer, even though a lot of this has already been out there and distributed in articles and books and discussed on various talk shows here and there as human interest stories, it does manage to put together some fairly best evidence, best case scenarios, for the probability of afterlife existence for a lot of people. And I found myself wanting to say to friends and family who are maybe of the more skeptical bent; 'Hey, watch this. Don't believe in it necessarily but just watch it. Listen to the people's experiences of seeing departed ones visit them close to their death beds. Listen to the people who were trapped under the river surface in their kayaks for an hour and saw themselves at a distance and were clinically dead for a little while.'
Adam: And then we're able to describe what some of the people that came to help them were wearing or what people said they were being operated on while this person was either dead on the table or completely zonked out because of the anesthesia.
Elan: Yeah. You don't have to decide. You don't have to make a decision one way or the other, but it is material that if you're a thinking person - I'll say that - if you have any questions about anything in your life about life itself - this will add to them.
Adam: And to engage with it in a way that's not totally just outrightly dismissive because you can look at it and you can just go like 'oh, they're crazy', and don't engage with it anymore than that, which is disrespectful. It's intellectually lazy. It's just lazy to me, for somebody to watch it and just say 'oh they're crazy'. Yeah, you can use that as a possible reason for what happened and what they were saying, but yeah that's totally possible, or there's something else going on and we need to be able to account for it. If there's something here that happened, we need to know what it is and how it fits into the greater narrative of things so if we're wrong about something, we need to know. If we're basing all of our lives on a specific assumption and that assumption is wrong, we will have a price to pay.
Elan: Harrison you mentioned a little earlier how it was the mothers of the children who were experiencing these reincarnational knowledge dumps, like James with the fighter planes during WW2 or the Indian boy who knew things that only the departed chief of the tribe knew very specifically, and I think there were a couple of other cases where it was the mom who had stepped into the situation out of an empathetic desire to help their child with the nightmares, with this other body of knowledge that they had no right to know so well and to continue to incorporate into their own lives.
Steven Braude comes at this from a very scientific, analytical perspective as you mentioned before, but there's also, I think, an emotional component to all of this which is one of the threads throughout the series and throughout our own lives, which is that intelligence or thinking ability is also informed by an empathic emotional desire to be of assistance, to be of a giving nature. And there's certainly a danger to that too, as is found in the 'New Age' community that might take emotionalism further than is helpful. It could be detrimental if there isn't a certain level of critical thinking and rational analysis.
Adam: But at the heart of it the reason why people do things is because there's some kind of relationship that's drawing them towards it. Even if it's a totally egoistic thing, or a totally narcissistic thing, it's a relationship with oneself. I think in that respect it's pulling them towards doing or searching or looking or doing something.
Harrison: What were you guys talking about, what's a practical example there?
Adam: What the hell are you guys talking about? I don't understand a thing you said... (laughter)
Harrison: What's an example of the dynamic that you're talking about?
Elan: Getting back to the mothers of the stories, there wouldn't have been greater knowledge - and the father in the case of James - there wouldn't have been a greater knowledge base for the probable existence of an afterlife reality had not they cared enough about their children to investigate it, instead of dismissing them. I mean there was a real desire to help this kid come to terms with all of the stuff that is really quite abnormal to be dealing with at such a young age. So it's that impetuous, that empathy, that care for the child, like the dad who took the boy to the very island where the past life man lost his life. I mean this was an act of pure love and kind of therapy, to go through all that trouble. It was very touching, actually. So there is another type of intelligence, an emotional intelligence, if you will, that informs some of this knowledge I think.
Harrison: Yeah I wanted to bring up something very similar and that is to take a couple of points out of what you both said for the last few minutes. I think that the starting point, the most healthy and rational starting point is to just first of all accept that these kinds of things happen, whatever the explanation is for them. For example, until reading the book I hadn't been aware of how common it is for people who are dying to have waking visions of their dead loved ones. I hadn't known how common it is, but it's actually pretty well among hospice workers that this kind of stuff happens. But because they reject the idea that it could be true, a lot of people are closed off increasingly to the idea that it even happens. So it's just something that happens that the people that deal with the dead and the dying are aware of. I hadn't been exposed to that. It wasn't part of my worldview that that is a thing that happens regularly, or it could happen regularly.
Adam: What's the percentage of the number of people that experience it, do you remember?
Harrison: No I can't remember.
Adam: Was it a high like 70% or more like 20%? No idea?
Harrison: I have no recollection.
Elan: I thought it was around 50, based on one of the things that I had read, but it is surprisingly high. And it didn't surprise me because I had heard anecdotally stories like that where a friend's mother on her deathbed pretty much, had that vey experience of seeing people coming to her, and her saying 'Don't you see?'
Harrison: So if you're aware that that kind of thing happens, it's not going to be a surprise to you and regardless of what you may think about the reality of if they're seeing them or not, it's important to know that it happens to be able to deal with it. The same thing with the children who remember past lives. If you live in a world where that thing never happens, like a lot of these families it comes out of nowhere, you're surprised by it, you don't know what to do, your child is in terror every night because of these memories or nightmares, and you have no options. You don't know what to do. Even if a culture totally rejected the possibility of an afterlife, if they were aware of these things happening and had responses to them, they'd be able to deal with them. It's like 'He doesn't really remember a past life, it's just a coincidence that everything that he says matches up with his actual past life, but here's what we do when a child delusionally thinks that he was this person that actually existed and knows all these details of his life, so let's do this thing'.
And I think that the reason that we reject that is because that's an absurd way of looking at it because you have to reject the fact that he actually is remembering things that actually happened that he could have no access to. But regardless, if more parents were just aware that it's a possibility that 'My child will have memories of a past life whether real or not, well here's what we can do to help him get through it'.
Elan: And that's something I thought the show did well because as in the case of the Indian boy who was basically...
Adam: His own grandfather?
Elan: ...like the head tribesman, he was already born into a culture that was very accepting of this type of thing.
Harrison: Yeah, expected it.
Elan: ...respectful of ancestors. So it was built in. It wasn't a thing whereas in most western cultures it's the stuff of sci-fi. It's a curiosity and an entertainment and a novelty, and not part of our worldview. So acknowledging what may very well be or should be part of our worldview through these facts and not being dismissive of them outright, I think is just a good idea. And on that point it was very interesting to read some of the reviews of this program because you had a lot of reviewers saying things like 'Well there was no equal attention given by scientific materialist analysis'. When I read that I thought 'But you know what, everything is so biased in that direction anyway, for the most part, that here finally is a reasonable, not perfect because there was things that stretched my beliefs and possibilities or at least caused me to question with some scepticism what it was we were actually seeing, as in the case of the mediums...'
Harrison: Even then, the mediums were entertaining, if nothing else...
Elan: Yes true. But certainly there is a kind of a vociferousness, an anger, a dismissiveness to any kind of presentation of this kind that is kind of a knee jerk reaction. It seems to me that there is some segment of the population that is either so indoctrinated with materialist science or somehow constitutionally incapable of taking on this information as part of their thinking and being. It's like there is a wall inside of their minds that has been so built up and strengthened and fortified that they are prepared to come up with any rationalization to dismiss out of hand any of this information.
So that's unfortunate. By the same token, I don't think most of the people who are going to be tuning into this program are of that bent because they're probably already predisposed to some level of open-mindedness, and at best they have more questions that they can pursue for themselves about the reality of this whole subject.
Harrison: Well, the last observation I wanted to make about watching the show, and this kind of relates back to what we were just saying about being aware of these kinds of things, even for their therapeutic value, is that one of the themes of course is that it's six episodes about death, death which is a part of everyone's life, whether they want it or not. You see the amount of grieving that people go through when a loved one dies, especially if it's a child or a young person or someone that dies unexpectedly and just out of nowhere. They're here one moment and then totally unexpectedly - you were expecting to have years and years with them and then they're gone.
So the family members and the loved ones go through this immense grieving process naturally. Now one of the things that stood out throughout the series is the therapeutic effect of, again, these types of things that actually bring some sense of closure and some sense of acceptance and ease the grieving process.
Again, from a strictly utilitarian perspective, even if you don't want to change your worldview it would make sense if we're looking at what actually works - again, I think that there's a high degree of probability that this is actually true that there is life after death, that a lot of these things are veridical experiences, they actually do happen in some sense in the way that they appear to happen - but for a culture or for a person who rejects that possibility, then I'd say the next best thing would be to take the platonic noble lie into account where you say 'Oh well I don't believe that the afterlife actually exists, but look at the effect that it has on actually helping people to function'. Again, I don't agree with that as the approach to take, but I think it would be better than nothing.
There was the one couple that set up a group to put people in touch with certain mediums and it was a hodgepodge of a whole bunch of different perspectives and approaches. The one that sticks in my mind is the man, who was a medium who draws portraits, so faces of the spirits, of the dead people that he's seeing, and then relays a message.
But, things like that, even in the mediumship which I'm most skeptical about but which I still think that there are actual good mediums, it seems to me that it would make sense to take a scientific approach to find out what actually works the best to help people get through grief because in a lot of these cases you see the success stories like the couple who set up this retreat center and program. I think they had lost a daughter, I can't remember for sure, but even though they still feel -- not just them but a lot of people in the series - even though they still grieve and they still miss their daughter or their son or their husband or wife or whatever, that there's more of an acceptance to it and they can live their lives because you also see some people who are in a terrible place who can't move on with their lives.
So yeah, I haven't totally formulated that thought but similar to the kids who remember past lives, isn't it better to figure out something that actually works to help them as opposed to just blocking it off and not acknowledging that it's actually happening? Or to give some interpretation on it and impose that interpretation on a kid that potentially only makes things worse? There does seem to be methods that actually have a good outcome.
Elan: And there's another reason why I think all of this is important and that is that it's anti-nihilism since so much of what's worse about developments in the world today are due to a nihilistic perspective in regards to postmodernism and ideology and technology and political movements. So much of it is informed by this anti-nonphysical reality perspective that this is having at least an openness to all this, I think, subverts and undercuts all the kind of anti-spiritual, for lack of a better word, movements that are being kind of foisted upon people en masse. There's a raging war right now with intelligent design, which is another subject we'll be revisiting, that lays out the warfare of these two sides in a way, that is very important to think about and to consider and to realize in all of the many different directions and implications that an understanding of these issues have. So that's all I wanted to add to that subject.
Adam: To expand on the points you were kind of making a little bit, the two perspectives, the totally materialistic versus the non-materialistic perspectives, I mean if all we are is just bags of meat and the only thing we have is the time we have here and now, then one could make the case that 'why should I not go for what gives me the most pleasure in the here and now moment because I'm not guaranteed tomorrow and if I did die tomorrow then there's nothing left of me, so I'm totally justified in acting or behaving whatever way I see fit at the time'.
However, if we have this different perspective where once you're dead you're not gone and if somebody that you know and love dies and you can still have conversations with them and they can still communicate with you in some way, well then it's not all about you and it's not all about the here and now. So it changes your value system and expands the possibilities for what is good and right and how best to behave.
Now I would still say that even if there was only the here and now moment and there was no hereafter, I still think that it's better to live a life of goodness even if there's no heavenly reward afterwards. I still say it's morally better to live your life in a way of service to others more than the service of yourself and your own ego. But we can take that perspective and have a life after death and it provides a greater impetus for behaving in a way that is considerate of other people, and you're less likely to get controlled, in certain ways because again, as with all of the covid hysteria, there's a lot of fear of death. But if we have a perspective where death isn't the worst thing that can happen to you, because that's kind of the shift of the perspective, the perspective has shifted from what matters most is how you lived your life as opposed to 'are you still alive?'
So it has shifted in the wrong direction. So if we can shift it back, then we will no longer be cowed into the fear state that allows for the manipulative control. Because again; if death is the worst thing that can happen, then you want to stave off death by every means possible. If death is not the worst thing in the world and it's not the worst thing that can happen to you, then we need to be addressing THOSE things because death isn't the most important.
So that's why I think this stuff is so important to look into, to research, to share, to learn more about, because it can have a real benefit for everybody who engages with it.
Elan: Well I like what you said about - was it enlarging your value system or...
Adam: Something like that.
Elan: ...or something like that, because it is about a value system, in a way. You take your values with you wherever you go. Your environment is part of you, in a very real sense. Imagine, not necessarily a carrot and a stick situation, but wouldn't you like to be in a place that fits a positive disposition for most people? If you have a hellish mindset all the time, it makes sense that you might find yourself in a similar environment one day because that's where you fit.
In any case, this isn't the end of this discussion but it is the end of the show and we thank you guys for listening. Take good care and we'll be coming at you soon with another show.
Reader Comments
RC
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the title itself, bespeaks Buddhism.
Surviving Materialism, Accepting the Afterlife my helper claims Buddhism as his 'Faith'
he is 26, I am 61.
is "Accepting the Afterlife " a reference to heaven and hell, or reincarnation? are there other forms of 'afterlife? that I am not aware of?
I asked him this very day.. is 'reincarnation' just another 'happy accident ' like thermodynamics' ?
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did you have a point to make sir?
R.C.
I oops, someone who I met (SWIM) first smoked pot at 12-13, coke (before speed) at 14, acid at 15, opium around that time, etc., and who quit smoking pot before most others had even tried it, (SWIM should know - he controlled the entire pot market at his then largest** in Florida sized HS.)Jeez! I've gotta publish that AB!
rc
**Was AAAA (4A). Nowadays, I think that they get up to 7A.
rc
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can you tell me how you consider the subject of 'thermodynamics' sir.
am I a 'voodoo' child?
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the subject of thermodynamics. fucks with your head. just like everyone else.
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can I assume that you use 'joules' to measure heat content? if so, how can 'enthalpy' be explained in joules?
get this, thinking that I spelled it wrong when I got the squiggly red line under enthalpy, I looked it up, I spelled it right. this word is just not recognized.
enthalpy is Total heat content. entropy is direction of flow.
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i find it so complex to grasp that i do not understand why you bother to use it/how it might serve any practical purpose.
in a walk-in cooler application, we do NOT want to remove humidity from the air. for comfort cooling we do.
when we remove 'humidity' from the air, it allows your body's natural cooling system to work.
if we remove enough 'humidity' your skin will feel fresh. and clean. if we increase the pressure in your building with fresh air and oxygen.. endorphins will be released.
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thermodynamics. if I spin around and click my heels three times.. will I find an 'expert' here?
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I did not write that you did.
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Excerpts from ' A Voyage to Arcturus ' by David Lindsay [Link]
"...After a long ten minutes the pedestal of the statue was seen to become slightly blurred, as though an intervening mist were rising from the ground. This slowly developed into a visible cloud, coiling hither and thither, and constantly changing shape. The professor half rose, and held his glasses with one hand further forward on the bridge of his nose.
By slow stages the cloud acquired the dimensions and approximate outline of an adult human body, although all was still vague and blurred. It hovered lightly in the air, a foot or so above the couch. Backhouse looked haggard and ghastly. Mrs. Jameson quietly fainted in her chair, but she was unnoticed, and presently revived. The apparition now settled down upon the couch, and at the moment of doing so seemed suddenly to grow dark, solid, and manlike. Many of the guests were as pale as the medium himself, but Faull preserved his stoical apathy, and glanced once or twice at Mrs. Trent. She was staring straight at the couch, and was twisting a little lace handkerchief through the different fingers of her hand. The music went on playing.
The figure was by this time unmistakably that of a man lying down. The face focused itself into distinctness. The body was draped in a sort of shroud, but the features were those of a young man. One smooth hand fell over, nearly touching the floor, white and motionless. The weaker spirits of the company stared at the vision in sick horror; the rest were grave and perplexed. The seeming man was dead , but somehow it did not appear like a death succeeding life, but like a death preliminary to life. All felt that he might sit up at any minute.
“Stop that music!” muttered Backhouse, tottering from his chair and facing the party. Faull touched the bell. A few more bars sounded, and then total silence ensued.
“Anyone who wants to may approach the couch,” said Backhouse with difficulty.
But Lang did not venture to, nor did any of the others, who one by one stole up to the couch—until it came to Faull’s turn. He looked straight at Mrs. Trent, who seemed frightened and disgusted at the spectacle before her, and then not only touched the apparition but suddenly grasped the drooping hand in his own and gave it a powerful squeeze. Mrs. Trent gave a low scream. The ghostly visitor opened his eyes, looked at Faull strangely, and sat up on the couch. A cryptic smile started playing over his mouth. Faull looked at his hand; a feeling of intense pleasure passed through his body.
Maskull caught Mrs. Jameson in his arms; she was attacked by another spell of faintness. Mrs. Trent ran forward, and led her out of the room. Neither of them returned.
The phantom body now stood upright, looking about him, still with his peculiar smile. Prior suddenly felt sick, and went out. The other men more or less hung together, for the sake of human society, but Nightspore paced up and down, like a man weary and impatient, while Maskull attempted to interrogate the youth. The apparition watched him with a baffling expression, but did not answer. Backhouse was sitting apart, his face buried in his hands.
It was at this moment that the door was burst open violently, and a stranger, unannounced, half leaped, half strode a few yards into the room, and then stopped. None of Faull’s friends had ever seen him before. He was a thick, shortish man, with surprising muscular development and a head far too large in proportion to his body. His beardless yellow face indicated, as a first impression, a mixture of sagacity, brutality, and humour.
“Aha-i, gentlemen!” he called out loudly. His voice was piercing, and oddly disagreeable to the ear. “So we have a little visitor here.
”Nightspore turned his back, but everyone else stared at the intruder in astonishment. He took another few steps forward, which brought him to the edge of the theatre.
“May I ask, sir, how I come to have the honour of being your host?” asked Faull sullenly. He thought that the evening was not proceeding as smoothly as he had anticipated.
The newcomer looked at him for a second, and then broke into a great, roaring guffaw. He thumped Faull on the back playfully—but the play was rather rough, for the victim was sent staggering against the wall before he could recover his balance.
“Good evening, my host!”
“And good evening to you too, my lad!” he went on, addressing the supernatural youth, who was now beginning to wander about the room, in apparent unconsciousness of his surroundings. “I have seen someone very like you before, I think.
”There was no response.
The intruder thrust his head almost up to the phantom’s face. “You have no right here, as you know.
”The shape looked back at him with a smile full of significance, which, however, no one could understand.
“Be careful what you are doing,” said Backhouse quickly.
“What’s the matter, spirit usher?”
“I don’t know who you are, but if you use physical violence toward that, as you seem inclined to do, the consequences may prove very unpleasant.”
“And without pleasure our evening would be spoiled, wouldn’t it, my little mercenary friend?
”Humour vanished from his face, like sunlight from a landscape, leaving it hard and rocky. Before anyone realised what he was doing, he encircled the soft, white neck of the materialised shape with his hairy hands and, with a double turn, twisted it completely round. A faint, unearthly shriek sounded, and the body fell in a heap to the floor. Its face was uppermost. The guests were unutterably shocked to observe that its expression had changed from the mysterious but fascinating smile to a vulgar, sordid, bestial grin, which cast a cold shadow of moral nastiness into every heart. The transformation was accompanied by a sickening stench of the graveyard.
The features faded rapidly away, the body lost its consistence, passing from the solid to the shadowy condition, and, before two minutes had elapsed, the spirit-form had entirely disappeared.
The short stranger turned and confronted the party, with a long, loud laugh, like nothing in nature.
The professor talked excitedly to Kent-Smith in low tones. Faull beckoned Backhouse behind a wing of scenery, and handed him his check without a word. The medium put it in his pocket, buttoned his coat, and walked out of the room. Lang followed him, in order to get a drink.
The stranger poked his face up into Maskull’s.
“Well, giant, what do you think of it all? Wouldn’t you like to see the land where this sort of fruit grows wild?”
“What sort of fruit?”
“That specimen goblin.
”Maskull waved him away with his huge hand. “Who are you, and how did you come here?”
“Call up your friend. Perhaps he may recognise me.” Nightspore had moved a chair to the fire, and was watching the embers with a set, fanatical expression.
“Let Krag come to me, if he wants me,” he said, in his strange voice.
“You see, he does know me,” uttered Krag, with a humorous look. Walking over to Nightspore, he put a hand on the back of his chair.
“Still the same old gnawing hunger?”
“What is doing these days?” demanded Nightspore disdainfully, without altering his attitude.
“Surtur has gone, and we are to follow him.”
“How do you two come to know each other, and of whom are you speaking?” asked Maskull, looking from one to the other in perplexity.
“Krag has something for us. Let us go outside,” replied Nightspore. He got up, and glanced over his shoulder. Maskull, following the direction of his eye, observed that the few remaining men were watching their little group attentively."
or,
you could write something your own damn self you know.
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it is also known as 'forum sliding' .
"The three men gathered in the street outside the house. The night was slightly frosty, but particularly clear, with an east wind blowing. The multitude of blazing stars caused the sky to appear like a vast scroll of hieroglyphic symbols. Maskull felt oddly excited; he had a sense that something extraordinary was about to happen. “What brought you to this house tonight, Krag, and what made you do what you did? How are we understand that apparition?”
“That must have been Crystalman’s expression on its face,” muttered Nightspore.
“We have discussed that, haven’t we, Maskull? Maskull is anxious to behold that rare fruit in its native wilds.
”Maskull looked at Krag carefully, trying to analyse his own feelings toward him. He was distinctly repelled by the man’s personality, yet side by side with this aversion a savage, living energy seemed to spring up in his heart that in some strange fashion was attributable to Krag.
“Why do you insist on this simile?” he asked.
“Because it is apropos. Nightspore’s quite right. That was Crystalman’s face, and we are going to Crystalman’s country.”
“And where is this mysterious country?”
“Tormance.”
“That’s a quaint name. But where is it?”
Krag grinned, showing his yellow teeth in the light of the street lamp.
“It is the residential suburb of Arcturus.”
“What is he talking about, Nightspore?... Do you mean the star of that name?” he went on, to Krag.
“Which you have in front of you at this very minute,” said Krag, pointing a thick finger toward the brightest star in the south-eastern sky. “There you see Arcturus, and Tormance is its one inhabited planet.
”Maskull looked at the heavy, gleaming star, and again at Krag. Then he pulled out a pipe, and began to fill it.
“You must have cultivated a new form of humour, Krag.”
“I am glad if I can amuse you, Maskull, if only for a few days.”
“I meant to ask you—how do you know my name?”
“It would be odd if I didn’t, seeing that I only came here on your account. As a matter of fact, Nightspore and I are old friends.
”Maskull paused with his suspended match. “You came here on my account?”
“Surely. On your account and Nightspore’s. We three are to be fellow travellers.
”Maskull now lit his pipe and puffed away coolly for a few moments.
“I’m sorry, Krag, but I must assume you are mad.
”Krag threw his head back, and gave a scraping laugh. “Am I mad, Nightspore?”
“Has Surtur gone to Tormance?” ejaculated Nightspore in a strangled voice, fixing his eyes on Krag’s face.
“Yes, and he requires that we follow him at once.
”Maskull’s heart began to beat strangely. It all sounded to him like a dream conversation.
“And since how long, Krag, have I been required to do things by a total stranger.... Besides, who is this individual?”
“Krag’s chief,” said Nightspore, turning his head away.“The riddle is too elaborate for me. I give up.”
“You are looking for mysteries,” said Krag, “so naturally you are finding them. Try and simplify your ideas, my friend. The affair is plain and serious.”
Maskull stared hard at him and smoked rapidly.
“Where have you come from now?” demanded Nightspore suddenly.
“From the old observatory at Starkness.... Have you heard of the famous Starkness Observatory, Maskull?”
“No. Where is it?”
“On the north-east coast of Scotland. Curious discoveries are made there from time to time.”
“As, for example, how to make voyages to the stars. So this Surtur turns out to be an astronomer. And you too, presumably?”
Krag grinned again. “How long will it take you to wind up your affairs? When can you be ready to start?”
“You are too considerate,” said Maskull, laughing outright. “I was beginning to fear that I would be hauled away at once.... However, I have neither wife, land, nor profession, so there’s nothing to wait for.... What is the itinerary?”
“You are a fortunate man. A bold, daring heart, and no encumbrances.” Krag’s features became suddenly grave and rigid. “Don’t be a fool, and refuse a gift of luck. A gift declined is not offered a second time.”
“Krag,” replied Maskull simply, returning his pipe to his pocket. “I ask you to put yourself in my place. Even if I were a man sick for adventures, how could I listen seriously to such an insane proposition as this? What do I know about you, or your past record? You may be a practical joker, or you may have come out of a madhouse—I know nothing about it. If you claim to be an exceptional man, and want my cooperation, you must offer me exceptional proofs.”
“And what proofs would you consider adequate, Maskull?”
As he spoke he gripped Maskull’s arm. A sharp, chilling pain immediately passed through the latter’s body and at the same moment his brain caught fire. A light burst in upon him like the rising of the sun. He asked himself for the first time if this fantastic conversation could by any chance refer to real things.
“Listen, Krag,” he said slowly, while peculiar images and conceptions started to travel in rich disorder through his mind. “You talk about a certain journey. Well, if that journey were a possible one, and I were given the chance of making it, I would be willing never to come back. For twenty-four hours on that Arcturian planet, I would give my life. That is my attitude toward that journey.... Now prove to me that you’re not talking nonsense. Produce your credentials.
”Krag stared at him all the time he was speaking, his face gradually resuming its jesting expression.
“Oh, you will get your twenty-four hours, and perhaps longer, but not much longer. You’re an audacious fellow, Maskull, but this trip will prove a little strenuous, even for you.... And so, like the unbelievers of old, you want a sign from heaven?”
Maskull frowned. “But the whole thing is ridiculous. Our brains are overexcited by what took place in there . Let us go home, and sleep it off.”
Krag detained him with one hand, while groping in his breast pocket with the other. He presently fished out what resembled a small folding lens. The diameter of the glass did not exceed two inches.
“First take a peep at Arcturus through this, Maskull. It may serve as a provisional sign. It’s the best I can do, unfortunately. I am not a travelling magician.... Be very careful not to drop it. It’s somewhat heavy.”
Maskull took the lens in his hand, struggled with it for a minute, and then looked at Krag in amazement. The little object weighed at least twenty pounds, though it was not much bigger than a crown piece.
“What stuff can this be, Krag?”
“Look through it, my good friend. That’s what I gave it to you for.”
Maskull held it up with difficulty, directed it toward the gleaming Arcturus, and snatched as long and as steady a glance at the star as the muscles of his arm would permit. What he saw was this. The star, which to the naked eye appeared as a single yellow point of light, now became clearly split into two bright but minute suns, the larger of which was still yellow, while its smaller companion was a beautiful blue. But this was not all. Apparently circulating around the yellow sun was a comparatively small and hardly distinguishable satellite, which seemed to shine, not by its own, but by reflected light.... Maskull lowered and raised his arm repeatedly. The same spectacle revealed itself again and again, but he was able to see nothing else. Then he passed back the lens to Krag, without a word, and stood chewing his underlip.
“You take a glimpse too,” scraped Krag, proffering the glass to Nightspore.
Nightspore turned his back and began to pace up and down. Krag laughed sardonically, and returned the lens to his pocket. “Well, Maskull, are you satisfied?”
“Arcturus, then, is a double sun. And is that third point the planet Tormance?”
“Our future home, Maskull.”
Maskull continued to ponder. “You inquire if I am satisfied. I don’t know, Krag. It’s miraculous, and that’s all I can say about it.... But I’m satisfied of one thing. There must be very wonderful astronomers at Starkness and if you invite me to your observatory I will surely come.”
“I do invite you. We set off from there...”
RC
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At onement with machines brought to you by the Canadian Gov't.... I'm sure every government has their own version.
'If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.'
It works both ways.
Have a good one.
ned,
out
What would life after death mean? What would existence without a physical body mean? What is the compartment human beings live in? How does the human being connect to physical reality? Is physical reality the limit of existence? Not having answers opens the mind to possibility.
I would propose the image that we live in is a box created by our mind, body and experience. We are asking the question does anything outside of the box exist? We are trying to answer the question from inside the box. We try to measure it from inside the box. We use our existing senses and scientific devices to measure energies and frequencies within the box. This can extend our questions about reality. For example, it was once thought that most of the universe is empty space, a vacuum, part of scientific materialism. Now they have discovered within the vacuum there is a vast energy, such that the physical visible universe comprises only 5% of the total. This has become one research direction of zero-point energy, and probably has already been secretly created under national security of course.
If we study spiritual disciplines, like prayer or meditation, then we are working from the assumption that consciousness exists outside the mind and body, outside of the box. This means that to perceive outside the box you must develop abilities or functions which are outside of the box. In Gurdjieff’s system these functions are called higher emotional and higher intellectual centers. The clearest presentation of this, is Ouspensky’s “Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution”.
If you want to see a medium convey information not of this world, search the "Law of One" website.
RC
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RC
I'm confident that I was confused by that for some time.
RC
If the after life is real: does that mean everyone who ever lived on earth is there? Does that mean we all have the ability to communicate with spirits? Does that mean that spirits can communicate with us through words or emotions without us being aware? Are all of us influenced by spirits all the time? Could that explain suddenly knowing the answer to a question that has not been asked yet? Could that explain a child thinking it has memories from a ‘past’ life when it really is the spirit trying to share its life with the child? Could that explain PSI? Could that explain the genius phenomenon? Could that explain automatic writing? Could that explain the movement on the weiji board? Is most music and literature influenced by spirits?Do we all go to the spirit world in our sleep?
I believe the answer to all those questions is yes.
I defer. All I know is that I don't know much.
RC
God foresaw that humans could become so degraded in their soul condition that very evil acts could be attempted, so the soul is not actually on the earth and cannot be reached.
No matter how degraded a person is in their soul condition, redemption is possible. (Like the bible story of the one lost sheep.). It is what God wants and God always wins in the end. Through repentance or compensation we will all be redeemed in the end - it might take a thousand years or more for some folk.
I feel the same way: the more I learn the more I realise I don’t know much.
With the ever increasing evidence of reincarnation, it is not possible to negate a further dimension.
does that mean everyone who ever lived on earth is there?
Not if we reincarnate. Every living thing in the universe grows from seed, matures, appears to die, only to be reborn again.
What is the afterlife? Does it include higher selves? Is that the soul, or at least a more fully formed soul? Does the soul always reside in this afterlife, even while it lives a physical existence? Does God encompass all souls? Will we never be God, but only with God? I am not necessarily clear on these issues, they are genuine questions.
It doesn't mean that, but that could be. It could also be that those who don't have higher centers, to try and awaken in themselves, perish altogether, or need a lot more "time" to evolve as you indicate later.
Not a bad idea.
Rowan Cocoan
Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, Man's Possible Evolution, Meetings with Remarkable Men, Life Is Real Only Then, the Gnosis trilogy, might be worth reading Azize's Gurdjieff book together with Life Is Real Only Then. They are not bad reads, some of them may have an audible version if necessary, but I'm not sure. Gurdjieff is very materialistic apparently, so it'd be helpful to understand some things more symbolically. G refers to all men being mechanical until they work to acquire a soul, and also came up with the idea of B and C influences, the "finer substances" in his parlance, which I suppose we can attract by being "good Christians," so to speak, or good obyvatels. Mouravieff mentions pre-Adamic man compared to Adamic man, and the soulless as you refer to them might be those with a black magnetic center, who attract evil influences. For G the soulless would be everyone who didn't awaken their higher selves. The C's say the soul is what counts, that soul is consciousness and that's enough of a definition. Of course, they're also all about gradations of consciousness. Dabrovski's a good read too. More objective and practically psychological, or so I would think if he could ever gain some recognition.
as i see it gurdjieff was heavily influenced by a) the ideas of alchemy. aka the idea that is possible/(necessary) to go though a transformation in order to breake out of 'lead' to turn into 'gold'. (popular idea then and earlier, ref isaac newton and carl jung to mention a few).
b) platonism: the 'real world' is abstract/'something else' than what we perceive as reality etc, and c) gnostisism: knowledge might help you 'see the light'/make you understand what you need to know/do to be granted access to 'heaven' .
for what i know, G might be right about it all, even a) b) and c) does not seem to be very popular ideas any more.
Of course you're not interrupting.
That is concise yet brilliant. I think especially platonism influenced him, Iamblichus I guess.
Yes,
Yes,
No,
No,
Situational,
Perhaps,
Who knows?
No,
Unknown,
Uh, unlikely,
No,
No.
Been "there." Several times. "There" is not always the same "place." For sure, we in this plane underestimate the power of creativity we are invested with.
45 yrs ago I had an exceptionally rare Downs daughter. That strain of Downs genes gave her moderately good health over that of the more common Downs. But she was scholastically nearly as dumb as a rock. But I swear over the yrs her native intelligence came shining through and it belied an exceptionally keen mind. There is no way to measure native intelligence in this plane of existence, and probably not the limits in THAT one either. What is clearly evident to me is that the configuration of our genes at conception dominate how much and what qualities pass through from consciousness to manifestation here.
I should perhaps shaddup about this stuff. Its extremely difficult to relate, and not a benign environment.
hmm. did i miss a vital point even there/here?
." NOBODY really knows anything,"
yes, I will in fact quote you on that! LOL!
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When I read about this topic - Owen mainly - , my determination to at least achieve some major goals, is strengthened.
- At least I tried.. - I want to be able to say that over there. Hopefully use available review-options over there: I want to see what odds I was against, while living on Earth.
Good points. I've been nearly killed but never nearly dead. There was a time when my father insisted that I learn to swim though... I remember being dragged out of the water, thanking God for every breath, and then... Round Two, Bitch! [Link]
I will say, every surfer has a few 'I nearly drowned' stories. I've gotten to the beach several times where I wanted to kiss the sand but it would have been too much effort. One time I literally did not have the strength to walk up the beach and instead crawled. (Any of those same events now would kill me - not even close.)
RC
In some ways everybody is living their review already or just creating a memory of a life or two, at any rate in some ways my life could be called upon as a lesson or maybe more like crash test dummy, god knows. lol
Maybe they have already, they just don’t know it yet.
The cycle of the apple is light reaching from the sun and earth to that positive half of the apple cycle which we hold in our hand. The negative half of the cycle is light returning to sun and earth for repetition as another manifestation of the eternal idea of the apple. The same is true of the flame, the tree or any other part of the One Whole Idea of Creation. The flame “goes out” to our sensing. But it still IS. Likewise the tree, the forest, mountain, planet and nebula of the far heavens appear, disappear and as surely reappear. Likewise man appears to disappear and reappear again and again in countless cycles to express eternal life of the spirit in eternal repetitions of that part of the man cycle which the body of man can sense.
Man never dies. He is as continuous as eternity is continuous. Jesus rightly said that man shall not see death, for there is no death to see or to know. Likewise the body of man does not live, and having never lived it cannot die. The spirit alone lives. The body but manifests the spirit. That which we think of as life in the spirit of man manifests itself by willing the body to act. Actions thus made by the body under the command of its centering Soul have no motivative power or intelligence in themselves; they are but machines motivated by an omniscient and omnipotent intelligence extended to them. These things we do not yet know, for man is in his infancy. He is but beginning to know the Light.
The Nams are quiet open minded but not so open minded that their brains fall out or closed minded enough not to take other possibilities into account, perhaps it has something to do with their particular solar system being a binary star system enabling them to operate at a higher level of being or maybe it’s as simple as they have more sunlight making them less cranky.
Although a human would get eaten by the dandelions growing there and despite such an abundance of very intelligent plant life, the Nams have no word for war, the concept seems quiet alien to them but they have their own issues to contend with...
They might be horrified to hear of a planet with only one sun shining, as a word for war for them could only make sense in such a solar system, in their world of two suns the possibilities of life are increased and the world that exists in plain sight is easily seen, as is the simultaneous exchange between the suns and organic life.
If there’s a wheel of life surly it gets a bit flat when it comes to earth and luckily when it comes to a flat here it’s only ever flat at the bottom, where organic life exists and other strange things too.
I was hoping someone would ask who authored the above, as it wasn't me.
Anyhooo, if interested here’s a podcast interview of ‘Atwater’ NDE experiencer, and researcher... some interesting information... [Link]
Topics include consciousness, humans' divine nature, NDEs in young children, the life-long effects of early life NDEs, reincarnation, pre-incarnate experiences, the different types of NDEs among adults, the different forms of "the light", post-NDE psychic experiences and enhanced intelligence, synesthesia, OBEs during child abuse, NDE and abduction experiences linked to earlier abuse and trauma, academic study of NDEs, blind people and NDEs, 360 vision, NDE disruption of relationships, personality changes...
Hope MindMatters crew are ok with the link, she would be an interesting guest for you guys to interview.
A new global "religion" is being implemented: A religion of materialism. Aliens (whether real or simulated) are about to play a part, as portrayed in the movie Prometheus a few years back where our creators are revealed as flesh and blood superiors, Sitchen/von Daniken style. Fits right in with the whole globalist agenda. They need to break down religious diversity and belief in spirituality, and that is how they'll do it.
2025 I suspect will be a big milestone year in the great plan, with 2030 seeing its completion.
did it really not die out a quarter of a century ago?
‘we are all part of God’ and ‘God is in all of us’
Actually I believe this is so. Rather than disassociation, this surely brings about a unity with God and a sense of empowerment and personal responsibility?
I think the disassociation came about because we've been taught for a long time that God is "out there" and we have to pray to the big sky-fairy for salvation (or mercy). That was how the church leaders controlled their flock, yes?
The New Testament states openly that we are "in Gods image" and that God works through us by our own deeds and actions (in opposition to the much of the Old Testament excepting the opening chapters of Genesis).
What's coming via the New Age movement is a total eradication of spirituality. Our "gods", I think, will be revealed as aliens, much like the movie Prometheus, which in turn was inspired by the likes of Von Daniken and Sitchen.
You may notice how Socialist interests are working form inside the major religions to transform them: They are quietly standardising them to eradicate any differences.
There has been a strong focus on "protecting" the faith of Islam, but now Hinduism is getting the treatment, with a push to promote the concept that Kali Yuga comes to a close in the year 2025 and a "new age/New World Order" begins.
Watch the UFO "disclosure" hype building. It all ties in.
Ultimately, when all religions are "inclusive" and "diverse" enough, the demolition will begin and a false messiah will take his throne.
Pages 161/2 Dr. John Coleman. "Conspirators Hierarchy:The Story of the Committee of 300."
If Satanism has only recently become obvious to the "awake" general public, it has obviously been part of Freemasonry for a long time as evidenced by the multiple signs from the corrupt Film Industry and its actors and the equally corrupted Politicians, most of whom have sold their souls to the "Commander" - the Devil.
my 'faith' is based on how perfect this world is. consider, we have animals just the right size for riding. abundant fuels that allow us to not only live but also to thrive. (Hydrocarbons)
when we breathe it is food for the plants that sustain us..
it is also warm right about now. (we are not in an ice age)
if 'aliens' exist, why do we not receive any radio waves? propagation through the aether of space is widely held to be true. and I do in fact believe in the electromagnetic spectrum.
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thanks, i will probably kill a few hours looking into this.
two of his statements that i can recall was;
1) i am deeply religions, but i do not believe in god - or in afterlife, but it would be be nice...
2) spinosa have "allways" been my (idol)...
those statements did not make much sence to me then.
reading a bit more about pantheism, theism and spinosa did however make those statements much more clear to me;
1) i see why pantheists (like spinosa, and people "overly concerned about animals/nature" ) might seem like "the others" to traditional religions ppl
2) for atheists, it does not make any sence to distinguish between love for different ideas of what one regard as divine.
2) for atheists, it does not make any sence to distinguish between love for different ideas of what one regard as divine.
I consider Atheists pompous and arrogant.. (yes even worse than me!)
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thanks for the link! 😘
the reason that I chose deism, is all of the marvels that we humans simply cannot explain. there is AMPLE evidence that we live in a 'Goldilocks' solar system.
if you really believe in 'aliens'.. do you really believe that ALL of them are able to hide their communication signals from us?
yes, my trade has revealed things to me.. real things.. that are real and true, 100 times out of 100 times. all over the world.
to keep it short, I have become aware of how little we humans actually understand.. knowing how to MAKE something work.. and how it does that are two very different things my friend.
mebbe when we can figure out fricking gravity for christs sake... we can declare that 'god' does not exist?
thermodynamics is where I learned the truth. FACT is.. we know how to use the method of heat transfer involved in modern cooling equipment. but we humans CANNOT explain how it does that.
I learned this by becoming a master cooling specialist in the deep south of the USA.
peace.
somehow, i do feel a bit lonely in the world, and therfore i cry out.
here, i found hfl, lm, you, (harry k), and a few others that i like.
so, i will prb hang around and pester you some more if time allows/not being kicked out 😉
however, I challenged myself to define what I believe in . that was when things changed for me.
should I really chose HVACTech if I cannot defend it?
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living in what i see as a multiclored society, i do not see such issues as issues at all.
can we still play and have fun, or should we search deep within ourselves to see if there is not something in there that we might use as a reason for alienating?
can it be understood as a measure from eg 0-100% which denotes the current energy-state of let's say an outer unit of a heat pump like i have on my house? (combining stored heat-energy and and stored up preassure in a small/big tank)?
hmm. it is not a simple task trying to explain even basic ideas at solemnly/(retarded) solemnly (again) solemnly english forum.
this is as short as I can respond to your well, "solemnly/(retarded)"
if you find yourself capable of asking an intelligent question, I will answer.
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pretty simple, eh?
if you copy and search vapor compression refrigeration. .. you will find this at the very end.
Refrigeration may be defined as lowering the temperature of an enclosed space by removing heat from that space and transferring it elsewhere
now, if you copy and search, methods of heat transfer... only 3 will show up. vapor compression . is NOT among them.
there are 2 types of heat. sensible and latent. (copy and search that)
if what I say is true, why am I a voice in the wilderness?
the reason is, that if you understand thermodynamics. .. it is easy to make the connection to weather. .. and therefore 'climate change'
the outdoor unit of your heat pump is not 'storing' anything. it is transferring heat.
yes, I do in fact know how to take heat out of -20 celsius. I also know how to take heat out of ice cubes.
what I use is latent heat of Vaporization. works like a charm!
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this is all that I have to offer. I am of the opinion that the world needs this information right now.
"Enthalpy' is the total heat content of air. this is how we plot heat loads. (heat is a form of energy)
to understand the total heat content of air. you will need to understand that there is not just one type of heat.. the type that you can feel. (sensible heat)
if you want to know why hurricanes and tornadoes develop.. you will need to comprehend the psychometric chart.
How to Read a Psychrometric Chart.
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they only understand the laws of man.
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your turn, Cowboy.
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there is not just one type of heat.
there are two.
is there a reason that you and the other 129 experts at sott.net are protecting this information?
I have made an attempt to disburse this information. on an international ,anonymous forum.
therefore, I shall consider myself sanctified.
carry on sir.
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not only does RC not understand what a Psychometric chart is. he did not know that it even exists.
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but i usually do try to push such images away. G
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Brakar is a chick?
RC