Hacking the Afterlife with Jennifer Shaffer, David Bohm, David Bowie and Chadwick Boseman

The latest podcast. A number of people asked me about this, or about doing this. I always ask Luana if the "person I'm thinking of wants to be interviewed." 

Sometimes they say "No," or Luana says "They're not ready yet."  

In this case, while Jennifer had heard of his passing - she had not seen his iconic roles.  I'm fortunate to say that I have, and it gave me the unusual opportunity to ask him questions without Jennifer being aware of what or how he might answer based on her knowledge of his work.  

Some folks may be offended by this kind of exploration - we do it because it demonstrates that anyone can do so, that our nearest and dearest are not gone. One doesn't need a medium per se (it helps) but one can focus on the signs, incidents, reports from others that we all here. 

David Bohm, the great scientist weighs in on something, the late great David Bowie is asked some questions, and I saved my research for someone I greatly admire - but left it up to him whether he wanted to answer any of our questions.  

I asked for specific messages to folks that I know or have met in my career that he knows - and he responds accordingly. Not gone. Just not here.

PS. As I was falling asleep last night, I heard a voice say "Thank you." I thought - "who would be thanking me?" The response I got was "For putting this out there."  I replied, "Oh you mean the five people having pizza watching it who will appreciate it?" I heard a laugh, then  "More than you know."  

I'm not a medium - but sometimes, I'll let my imagination run free.  What I tell people is "if you hear something from a loved one, or even a stranger, instead of parsing it, just allow that it was "heard in a dream."  

And in terms of what Jennifer and I are doing - it's a bit like the two of us are sharing a dream. She's telling me what she's seeing in a dreamlike state (without hypnosis) and I'm allowing my imagination to run free for questions to ask.  

Obviously it relates to the idea of "what is waking reality? Are we living in a form of a dream?"  

Perhaps we are. It's fun to imagine it being so. 

My two cents.

Truth is Beauty and All Lights Matter

Last night I was having a chat with someone on the flipside. 

Not entirely sure who, but I was aware that he was Jewish, because he was showing me some artifacts from his "shul" back in New York City.  I heard the word "shul" and remembered it enough to include it in this post. The word means synagogue in Judaism, and I was being shown these items, not from a perspective of pain or suffering, but just history, or remembering.

It reminded me of when I played piano at my friend Dave Patlak's little brother Danny's Bar Mitzvah.  Danny, bless his heart, is no longer on the planet, but when he was mitzvahed the family asked me to play.  At the time I was playing guitar and piano in "open mic nights" in Chicago, and said "Sure."

But I wanted to play "Hava Nagila."  (Most people were playing "Tequila" or "Innagaddavida" at events, but I thought I'd be politically correct - funny, I never knew what the title of "InnaGaddaDaVida" meant until today - according to its Wiki page, after a gallon of Red Mountain wine, it's what the drummer heard from the drunk Iron Butterfly vocalist Doug trying to sing "In the Garden of Eden.") Growing up Cat'lick, I didn't know the tune other than Harry Belafonte's version.

So I learned it - and I played it. 

And the room was clapping, applauding and singing along until I forgot how it went - and apologized profusely, and said "Let's see if I can remember how it goes this time" and someone in the back of the room yelled "DON'T KILL IT AGAIN!"

Pretty funny. I'm still laughing about that one.

So this fellow in my dream and I were chatting about the idea of how everyone is just "Walking each other home."

I've heard it often - I know Ram Dass made it a popular phrase, but it's been repeated in the flipside research.  "All roads lead to the same garden."  Meaning, all religions, all philosophies, all non religions, all belief systems - we are all just walking each other home.

But beyond that - "who's the we?"  If we ask people on the flipside what they look like to others, they often report "I'm a light."  

People can be asked "What color is that light?"  Even the ones who say "It's mostly white" will also add "It's got streaks of vibrating blue, pink..." etc.  These strands appear related to guitar strings - vibrating at a frequency if you will. All lights have all kinds of color inside of them.

Rich, Jennifer and Scott De Tamble

Scott De Tamble, lightbetweenlives.com and I have frequent discussions about what he's heard or learned about the flipside. He observed that when he's speaking with or communicating with someone considered to be "old and wise" or venerated (worshiped, adored) when asked "So if you were looking into a mirror, how would you see yourself?" they inevitably say "as light."

So in essence - we are all lights.

When I'm doing my research with Jennifer Shaffer, and ask her "How does the bat signal go out to inform people that class is about to begin?" she often gets the visual of Christmas tree lights going on - or a string of lights, lights beyond lights into infinity. 

In one of the first sessions I filmed, Chanda Berlatsky ("Flipside") saw how everyone is connected together like a "string of lights."  This metaphor is used over and over again by people who are trying to describe what they are seeing from the perspective of the flipside.

We are all just lights.

Class in session

And then the conversation drifted into that speech that King T'challa gives at the UN - (the late great actor Chadwick Boseman) “Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers.” ⁣

And I had this odd LIGHTNING BOLT of a revelation.  These wars, these divisions, they're all metaphors - all portions of plays written to teach us lessons. Take any division in human history and examine it from this lens.

Diasporas worldwide. 

People being harassed for the color of their skin, for their religion, for their sex, gender, choice of mate - etc.  Millions of Jews being harassed since forever - not just by Christians, but beyond. Arabs fighting other Arab tribes. For money, for gold, for oil, for sand.  Chinese tribals factions - Asians like the Khans marching across the globe, Tibetans being rounded up modern day, Native Americans wiped out by Europeans. Alexander the Great and his Greeks created war and havoc in India - in Egypt across the planet. Followed by the Romans versus the non Romans. Asians versus Asians, Africans versus Africans, Russian tribes versus Russians, etc.

It's them versus us. Us versus them. 

All variations of color of skin, of backgrounds, beliefs - like warring ants coming together to wipe out other armies of ants.  From the above point of view, it's just ants fighting, but from the ants' point of view - it's history, it's differences, it's... survival.

And yet here we are all lights. 

Just lights. But not only lights - multi-faceted, multi-jeweled lights. Multi-colored lights. At our essence and core, droplets of water fighting other droplets of water over something that has nothing to do with who or what we are. Refractions of light. Reflections of light.

What I got from this discussion with this fellow on the flipside is "We never learn."  

When I heard that - I realized each and every diaspora is a lesson... whether its building walls to keep out immigrants, or millions exterminated because of their religion. Estimates of 20 million Russians killed by Stalin because he feared them overthrowing him. Nazis exterminating gays, Jews, Catholics.... people they considered "less than."  Never mind that the concept of Aryanism - that Tibet as the birthplace of the Aryan nation was fabricated out of thin air...  Pol Pot arming children to kill children. Chairman Mao allowing the cultural revolution to murder estimates of ten million. Alexander the not so great wiping out civilizations - Darius of  Persia, Genghis Khan and all his crazy kids...  etc.  All of it ridiculous wastes of humanity.

Not a lot of women in there, but give Victoria her due. Or Elizabeth. Or Catherine the Great, or Elizabeth of Russia. Napoleon. Even Columbus, and his impact on the Americas. Millions upon millions willing to kill each other (they didn't do all the killing, they pointed and the rest of the ants rolled over the hill and slaughtered the rest.)

Will we never learn?

Reportedly, there is a time element involved. I've heard it often in the research. That human consciousness is shifting whether it wants to or not - to realize that we are not alone in the universe.  

That the process of incarnation reveals that we chose our lifetimes as humans, that as light beings we choose lifetimes in other time zones, other realms, other planets.  That's not my opinion, theory or belief. It's in the reports. I turn on the camera - people report they can recall lifetimes on other planets, I put those transcriptions into my books.

Or, I turn on the camera, a medium talks directly to someone who is no longer on the planet, who reports new information from their perspective - and I post it online. It's data. We may not like the data, but that doesn't affect the data.

So how to impress upon humanity that everyone they meet, everyone they've met, everyone they will meet is a light? 

They may be a bright white light, or a blue light, or pink, orange, green, purple - all variations on light. And if they look carefully they'll see the light dancing, moving, not matte, but electric and present.  Not skin color. Not size or shape. Hair or eyes. Not clothing.  Not anger, resentment, fear, jealousy - those may all be aspects of one manifestation of that light, but the overall picture or package is light.

It's a bit like walking past the sandbox. There's a group of toddlers over there throwing sand, arguing, fighting over toys. We can go over and say "Guys, calm down. There's no point in fighting over this stuff. It's just playtime." And they look up at the ancient, old avatars looking down at them and say "Pfft. What do you know?" and go back to slapping, biting and throwing sand.

The oldsters look at each other and smile - with amusement, or perhaps melancholy. "Were we ever that young?" We cannot interfere, yank the toddler out of the box - we can't interfere, stand in the middle of the sandbox... we can take their toys away, but even then they don't want to hear the lessons.

Blind leading the blind (on film)

But we can repeat what we learn. And by repeating what we've learned - or giving people to access what we've learned, or by showing them how to access this information by bypassing the filters and accessing memories of previous lifetimes via hypnotherapy, guided meditation or just one on one questions - allows people to open up the garden gate.

The truth is just by reading the above sentence, one's higher self becomes aware of the process.

And some will see the truth in this research - or see the beauty.

John Keats doing his best Adam Driver imitation

Today an old friend was quoting the "Ode to a Grecian Urn" - and it reminded me I had been to the place where the young poet Keats died at the ripe old age of ... 25 to the same disease that felled his family.   Too young to die, but his words burn brightly.

His poem ends with the following:     

"When old age shall this generation waste,
                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

There are things of beauty here on the planet. 

We need to preserve them, not only for future generations, but for our own possible return. 

TRUTH IS BEAUTY

I was making my Dogme film "Camera - Dogme #15" - and was filming a wedding and ran into Jack Nicholson. (I made it for fun - it was awarded the Dogme certificate, played in Dogme fests around the world, including India where I presented it to a sold out audience of 3000 Indians - who roared with laughter). 

I asked Jaaaack to make a toast for the wedding couple (I was going around asking people "How do you keep a happy marriage?" It appears in the film "Camera - Dogme #15").  He said "Suuuure Richaard."

The wedding couple were two old friends.  I asked Jack for a toast, and he gave it to me.  I realized to my dismay that I hadn't recorded it, had just pointed the camera at that iconic face and had forgotten to push record. I had the temerity to apologize - and ask for a "take two." This is his "take two" Where he quotes "Ode to a Grecian Urn."




My two cents.