Hacking the Afterlife with Jennifer Shaffer, her dad, my dad and others

A visit from Jennifer's dad, her grandparents, my dad and a couple of Italian architects. (Bernini and Michelangelo)

To recap: In the podcast, there’s a discussion of a dream I had where I saw my old friend Luana Anders with brown hair. 

And when I asked her close friend Robert about it, he said “Well, maybe you were seeing her in the dream before you met her.”’ And then - when asking Jennifer about it, she said the same thing “It was a time before you knew her… and a way to introduce the concept for discussion…” 

And afterwards, unrelated, looking for a photograph of something else, I ran into this photograph. Never saw it before - with her friend Hazel Medina… I cast them both in my film “Point of Betrayal” - they started their careers together, and then in 96 their last movie role together in that film… but here’s the photo. The same color and length of hair that I saw in the dream. Odd. 

Hazel remained a close pal over decades, and the last time they appeared in a film together is in "Point of Betrayal" a thriller I made for Jonathan Krane.  Gave me a chance to put them together on the screen... as nurses. Here's from a bit earlier in their careers (Hazel did Broadway, lived in NY, Luana did Broadway, but mostly films, and lived in LA. Both were Buddhists together (SGI).  

Fun to find this photo.

Luana with the hair color I saw in the dream, same
length. I met Hazel many year later - and this was
at a time before I knew either of them.
I don't  remember ever seeing
this photograph... but today it "popped up" out of 
somewhere... this morning.

Find the Flaw and Life Reviews

So, this morning, I awoke with this sentence in my head, "Find the flaw."

An icon without flaws

I knew what it was in reference to, and it was about the "process of speaking to the flipside."

It refers to the idea that during the pandemic, people are shut away from their journey, their path, their joys... but not their sorrows.  Friends, loved ones, we will all be affected by the loss of someone at this rate. 

I know I have been - friends, neighbors, have been lost to something that was preventable.

It's infuriating to think that with competency, this wave of disaster didn't have to occur.  So when one is considering what I'm about to say about the flipside, know that I'm as outraged, furious, fist waving as anyone when it comes to "snap out of it!" kinds of answers to what's going on. Mask up, grow up is my motto.

But I've also been speaking to people on the flipside for the past ten years. To be clear, I'm not doing the talking.  I mean, I am talking, but it's asking questions.

I have been filming people under hypnosis for the past ten years speaking to loved ones no longer on the planet about the process, about the architecture of how that occurs, "Architecture of the Afterlife" - I've been filming people talking about it (see "Flipside" or "Talking to Bill Paxton" on Gaia, or the 40 podcasts on "HackingTheAfterlife.com" or at MartiniZone.com

Yeah that's right. I just keep filming, and posting. Filming and transcribing and publishing. Speaking up and out whenever I can to whomever wants to hear.

Recently on Quora, someone posted a comment, "So what are we supposed to do during the pandemic? We are obviously no longer on our path?"

I said "change the paradigm. Do something for someone else. Go to an animal shelter and offer to walk a dog. Look up someone who is suffering and donate money." 

These small gestures, according to the research and reports - are the major gestures in our lifetime. 

We think it's about the "foundation" we created, or the charity work we do - but when it's specific, like literally holding a hand of an older person walking across the street, or stopping to help them up - those are the things people report in their past life review.

So I had an experience once I began this research.  

Again, I was a skeptic about it - didn't believe there was an afterlife, or any order in the universe at all - until I started the documentary. And then unfortunately everything I'd believed about the planet had to be reevaluated.

Including myself.

When I first heard about the "past life review" - that is someone who during a near death event experiences a "life review" - it gave me pause. People would describe either an intimate setting with their guides or council members where they went over  details of the things they did that were helpful or the things  they did that were hurtful.

People reporting experiencing these events first hand - if someone punched someone in the mouth, they suddenly were the victim feeling the punch, the blood, the broken tooth, the humiliation.

Think  that over for a moment - every bad moment we've had in life will be experienced once  we get to the flipside. So one can see why some people are reluctant to leave - for fear of the consequences of their actions.

In fact, during a session recently we heard that - from none other than Chuck Yeager, someone I didn't know, never met, someone Jennifer didn't know, never met - and he was saying "Because he carried the deaths of all those he'd killed in World War  II and the Vietnam  war, he was afraid of  "consequences" when he got to the other side.

But that's not what happened in his case - he reported that the German pilots he'd shot down (at one point 5 in one day) were there to "congratulate him" on a job well done. They showed him that he had been a pilot for Germany in World War I and that he'd been "downing other planes" for some time. (That's not something I could make up, nor could Jennifer. He said it. She heard it.)

So back to "finding the flaw."

I started to  think over my life, and those I may have harmed, hurt or made feel bad. In my mind's eye, I was asking for forgiveness from each of them, and then one fellow popped up into my mind. Someone that our class had bullied in grade school. I've talked to him about this - and he says he didn't feel bullied - but I recalled it in vivid detail. Each time someone made fun of his clothes, his jacket... just awful behavior in a grade school setting. And I had participated in it.

But I thought about having that life review - where I would be the child taunted and harassed - and thought, "Is there any way to rectify this?"  I sought him out - found him online, grown up, a successful  person in his world. I was going to be in his neighborhood, so I asked him to join me for coffee.  

And as we sat there having these coffees, I thought about not bringing it up. The usual "Hey, how's it going, just curious about  your life" kind of  chat. But I finally forced myself to say "Do you remember our harassing you in grade school?"

He looked at me with a face that seemed as if he had no recollection of it. And as I looked at his face, I saw how beautiful a person he is. Always was. 

I mean, for a moment, I was looking at his blue eyes and could hear a voice say "What possibly could have possessed you to harass this beautiful human being?"   I just said "Look man, even if you don't remember it, I'm sorry that I participated or had anything to do with making you feel bad. Ever. I just wanted you to know that."

He thanked me, still not quite sure what the heck I was doing in front of him.

I  dug deep to find the flaw.

Not everyone has the ability to track down an old acquaintance for grade school and see them. But you can look them up. Search for them online. Donate something to their cause or work or what they loved. Say hello. Say goodbye. Say something that changes the paradigm.

When I went to school in Rome (The Rome Center, part of Loyola Chicago) I took  a sculpture course with Peter Rockwell, the son of Norman, and a famous gargoyle maker for churches in Europe.  He took us to Carrera, taught us how to sculpt -and told the story of how the 25 year old Michelangelo competed for a giant block of marble in Florence.  He won the competition and won  the marble - but when he began to work on it, he found a flaw.

A flaw usually dooms a  piece of marble. Because you could be working on a piece and the rest falls away. But instead, Michelangelo followed the flaw. He dug into the marble, followed the flaw until  it ended, and that's where he began the sculpture. The flaw ended in the David's knee.  If one looks carefully, they can see that one knee cap is smaller than the other. Michelangelo dug to find flaw, and then built out from there.

Where Michelangelo began

Everyone has flaws. Every piece of sculpture does as well. Every song, every painting. Every play, everything we've ever created. The better artists know how to hide the flaws.  But as people we need to look inward to find the flaws, then dig deep to fix them, or otherwise influence them.

Peter Rockwell, National Gallery

When stuck in a room due to the pandemic, look for the flaws.  

They may not be apparent. They may be as simple as "You know, I never told that person I loved them, I'm going to take out their photograph now and apologize to them." Or text them. Or call them. "Hey, I was thinking of you, how are you?"

So many people have touched our lives -I think of some of the "past life reviews" that people report that are in front of a giant auditorium.   Thousands watching, and each moment that is recalled - everyone in the audience experiences that as well.

I had a dream about this - I became conscious that I was in a giant auditorium, and someone was on center stage, and was getting their  life review.  I was up in row 120 or so - pretty far away. But  each time this fellow was reminded of something he'd done to help someone, the visual went out through the audience like a wave. We all experienced it, we all saw the value that was being expressed.

I remembered this dream, because as I was "coming to consciousness" I turned to someone sitting nearby and said "Oh man, I gotta go, I wish I could stick around." And this  person (whom I did not recognize) said "That's okay, this will be going on for days."

The person onstage was a musician, famous for being an iconoclast, someone I had reviewed when I did music reviews for Variety, someone I did not know, but who has shown up often in the research with Jennifer Shaffer ("Backstage Pass to the Flipside") 

I'm not mentioning his name, because it's not about his fame or celebrity (that doesn't exist on the flipside) but  it is about the experience of being in the audience and experiencing someone's life review. An amazing experience. Virtual in 4D - as one sees it and feels it simultaneously as it's being reviewed.

If you haven't thought about it - now's as good a time as any to think about it. And if there are flaws to fix - fix them.  It will be entertaining when we all get to view that event.

My two cents.

Flipside Two Book news

Many thanks to NY Times, Pulitzer Prize winning author, Bill Vlasic for making a generous donation to the completion of this next edition of "Flipside." His "Once Upon A Car" is a must read to understand the history of Detroit, the bailout, and what's behind the politics of that arena. A generous fellow! Thank you!



Speaking of "Flipside" am nearing the end of my interview phase with scientists. I had an amazing chat with Mario Beauregard, a neuroscientist in Montreal who explained what "post materialist" science is about, and his theory that the human body may function as a kind of television set for consciousness, complete with its own set of filters (V chip?) for accessing certain kinds of information.  His book "Brain Wars" talks about the research he's done using EEG and fMRI to understand more fully what's going on in the brain when someone is having a near death experience.  He cited 5 studies that have examined 100's of cases where are person has died during cardiac arrest, there's no blood to the brain, and yet they come back to life with accurate reports of what they saw in the operating room, conversations doctors had, even in adjoining rooms in the hospital.


Just got the great news that I'm going to be able to submit some questions to Dr. Bruce Greyson and Dr. Edward Kelly - authors of "Irreducible Mind" - Both at UVA, Dr. Greyson is considered "the father of near death studies," and Dr. Kelly is a cognitive neuroscientist who has written extensively on consciousness outside the body. (Their 800 page book on "Psychology for the 21st century" is required reading)  I'm hopeful to get their opinions on this research into the idea that consciousness exists outside our mental framework.

I had a lively discussion with an Oxford trained Neuroscientist who teaches at one of my alma maters, who telling him about "Flipside" repeatedly said "I don't believe a word you're saying." He also lumped me in a group of "Hollywood people trying to cash in on new age nonsense."  But he revealed that he once had a mystical experience where he was in a gymnasium and felt Jesus was jogging alongside him.  I pointed out that there's no rational logic for why he thought that to be the case (He agreed, and felt he'd imagined it) but when discussing the actual "feeling" of knowing that someone was running next to him, he said the same words people do under hypnosis, or during an NDE about things they witness; "I just knew it was him."

I pointed out that "knowing" implied that he'd met the fellow before, else how would he "know" someone unless he'd met them previously? And further, people claim to see Jesus often during NDE's - of course non Christians don't - but how do these people know that it's Jesus they're meeting? Is he wearing a name tag? Could it be someone else pretending to be Jesus?  Again - they have this feeling of "knowing" who is in front of them - I don't doubt that, but how can you know who someone is if you're meeting them the first time? (unless it's not)

Which is what I'm trying to explore. If we can experience things outside of our conscious minds that include "knowing" or "remembering" or "reliving again" or "between lives" - logic tells us either they're accurate or they are not. If they are not, then why have thousands had nearly the same experience when they've not met each other, read anything that related to their experience, or for other reasons could not be making it up? (I point to some of these cases in "Flipside").  If they are accurate - or are based on some universal objective truth - then they bear further scrutiny.  If only to understand what the heck we're doing on the planet.

Someone sent me this pic - oddly looks like me, but not me.

Oddly enough, is me.

Again, thanks for your contributions - I know this is an odd way to ask for support, but it came to me - if Lorenzo de Medici could pick artists out of an academy and tell him he'd like to support them (as in the case of an 11 year old Michelangelo) is it that much of a leap to imagine artists of any era should find create ways to help fund their work?  We're not talking "the David" here - but most folks don't know Michelangelo won that piece of marble in a competition, found a flaw in the marble, and built the statue around the flaw by following it to its end and beginning there (David's left knee, according to my professor sculptor Peter Rockwell when I took his class in Italy). And young Buonarotti was only 25.

I'm just looking for the flaw in the idea that consciousness exists only in the brain and beginning there.