So someone mentioned me on Quora and I felt compelled to respond.
And respond. And respond.
Have been responding for a few days, wondering "what am I doing responding?" Chances are these questions are computer generated.
But maybe the computers need answers too.
But since these questions may be universal, here's a sampling:
Q: If there’s an after-life, is there an after-after life?
It’s a great question. First of all, when trying to define the ineffable, we spend a lot of time using words that we can’t define. So - what’s the definition of life to begin with? If you look it up, the definition of life is “not dead.” Okay, that’s nice. But doesn’t really help. Because the definition of dead is… wait for it… “not alive.”
So we have a conundrum. How do we “know we’re alive?” Our thinking on the topic stems from “I think therefore I am.” (Or as I like to paraphrase it for Buddhist philosophy “I think therefore I am not.”) But either answer really doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. What’s an afterlife, if we can’t really define what life is other than “not dead?”
I’m frequently asked “So then what happens?” in my public talks about the afterlife. (MartiniProds on youtube). I report what people consistently say about the afterlife either under deep hypnosis (as pioneered by Michael Newton, or Dr. Helen Wambach) or compare those reports to what people say about the afterlife during a near death event.
And the way I parse near death events from imagination, or “cryptomnesia” (having heard, seen or experienced what you’re seeing during your past life memory or during your NDE) by examining “new information.” Information that you could not have known, did not know, but learned from your experience interacting with someone on the flipside, or “in the afterlife.”
These reports are consistent and they are replicable. What people say consistently is that “there is no death.” That your body may cease functioning, but who we are does not. Call it a soul, call it an energetic hologram, call it a cheese sandwich, people say the same things consistently and report the journey in a consistent manner.
They claim that those who’ve “done themselves in” are startled to discover they haven’t “ended anything.” That they are then witness to all the stress, sadness and suffering their loved ones may or may not go through once they’ve “crossed over.”
Further that their consciousness doesn’t dissipate, or travel to a “pool of other consciousness” (as posited by Jung) but that our consciousness travels to a place they refer consistently as “home.” The place where they originated, a place where they reconnect with the “conscious energy” of theirs that was “left behind” and reconnect with their loved ones. (This is not my theory, opinion or belief in these reports - I’m just reporting them.)
So when we talk about the afterlife, we’re already using mistaken terminology. Because there is no “after” if you’re returning home. There’s before, then there’s during, and then there’s what happens next. But it’s never described as a finite place, nor are souls defined as “immortal.”
What we learn back there is that we are always changing, always learning, always “filling in the blanks” (and for Buddhist theorists, not that there is no “finite soul”per se - because we are always evolving) - as if we are living lives so that we can earn a degree in consciousness. The degree just happens to be the journey of our souls.
So when we speak of the afterlife - think of it in these terms: we’ve gotten off stage. We’ve put away our costumes and props, and we now go back “home” where our pals and loved ones are. They may tease us about our performance, or applaud (usually applause), and at some point they’re going to start bugging us about coming back and “doing it again, but better.”
Reportedly we can refuse their suggestions, for whatever reason, but inevitably our loved ones and guides will nudge us into seeing that we really do need to work on a few extra things. And then we choose to come back - perhaps looking over the groups we’ve already been here with, or the folks we’d like to be here with… and together make a plan.
Yes, the afterlife of the afterlife — is life. And after we’ve graduated from “all our lives” - might be a long time in earth time, but relatively short over there - we can choose to become a guide or a teacher or someone else of service. Perhaps sit on a council of souls and help guide and teach souls that come before us.
These positions are reported consistently, both by people under hypnosis, but also, as of late, by people who are fully conscious, but are just being asked questions (by me, the trusty tour guide) of what and who is on their spiritual council. The results have been nothing short of astounding (to me and them.)
The afterlife of the afterlife is life - unless you want to stay back home, or you graduate into another level of service…not unlike a video game.
after a reply:
As noted, it’s not a theory, it’s just what people say consistently about the path and journey. People come to the planet by choice - learn the lessons they want to learn and “graduate” to another level. That each lifetime might be a particular lesson in some quality - compassion, love, charity, forgiveness - each person has the opportunity to learn from those lessons (or teach.) In terms of the “progression” - each person has their own journey and path.
In order to think of it in terms of “human evolution” we’re constrained by generational divides. People come to the planet - live their average lifespan, pass along as much information as they can, yet we continue to make the same “mistakes”or rehash the same lessons but in different guises.
The same is true in a university - each teacher comes with teaching and information, the students pass through the class, but in the next semester, or the next year, or the next four years, new students come without the knowledge and have to go through it on their own.
During one of these between life sessions, a woman (who had been a skeptic of the process) found herself in a library with one of her guides and asked “So, is the universe a machine?” He answered “The universe is a mechanism, however it’s sentient.”
If that’s accurate, then he’s making the point that the universe learns lessons, or perhaps we all learn lessons eventually. It’s the “100th monkey” discussion (which science has disproven) that a certain amount of a species learns something (how to extract food using a tool) that everyone learns it. Science has shown that to not be the case in humans - but if the knowledge and help of how to navigate the planet is also coming from another source - perhaps the consciousness left behind, as so many claim, then perhaps it makes sense how we can adjust and develop.
But finally, once we get to the concept of what “good” is - or what we all might agree the end result of being kinder or “more enlightened” is - or even more intelligent - it’s debatable what the collective is trying to accomplish or learn. Some people claim their entire soul group has numerous lifetimes where they explore or examine the”energy of addiction.”
If that’s true, then each time they travel down that path, one could argue they’re not “learning anything.” However, they claim that we do learn more days of tragedy than we do from days of joy. As one person said under hypnosis “You can learn more on this planet from one day of tragedy than you can from 5000 years on some other boring planet.”
Perhaps that’s the reason behind incarnating on a “polarized” planet - good and bad - yin and yang. There are many lessons to be learned here, and it makes for a great university.
Q: What's the point of life?
First define life. What is it? Is it breathing? Actually the definition of life, if you can believe it, is “not being dead.” And the definition of death is “not living.” So we are already on shaky ground just asking the question.
Because it assumes that there is a point or a time, or a stasis where we are not living. And I can tell you that does not exist. We are never not alive. We are never not existing. I can describe the process of coming into being - as reported by people who claim to have knowledge about such things - but suffice to say, once we’re in existence, we don’t blend out of it.
We can’t get out of it. No matter how hard someone might try - the conundrum is that those who “choose to no longer be alive” can’t do anything of the sort. They find themselves chagrined to discover that they have not died. (They’ve stressed out everyone they ever met or loved, and they have to deal with that, but that’s another topic.)
So let’s start there. You can’t not be living. Ever. Then the question becomes “So why am I here in this physical form? What am I doing here? What’s the point of going through all I’ve gone through to get to this point?” Now that’s a good question. Only one person can answer it. That’s you.
So if you don’t know why you chose to come here, why you chose this lifetime, if you don’t know what the lessons are that you came here to learn or to teach; then now’s a pretty good time to start searching for that answer to that. And the first step on that path was asking the question.
“What’s the point of my being here?” Only one person can answer it.
Q: Why did God create some humans whom he knows previously that they will go to hell? Isn't being the most merciful a logical reason that he didn't create them?
Imagine yourself standing in a theater, watching a play on stage. No matter how bad someone acts in a play, we never chase after the actor after the play is over to rail at them. Actually sometimes people do, certain parts “ruin an actor’s career.” But in general, when watching a play that deals with good and evil, happy or sad events, we’re focused on the lessons that are learned on the stage.
What the reports show is that we choose our lifetimes after consulting with our loved ones and fellow travelers “back home” - and choose to play a particular role while here on the planet.
During one deep hypnosis session I was filming, a woman who recalled a life which ended in Auschwitz found herself standing before her council of guides and asking them “Why did I agree to sign up for this lifetime? It was horrible and I lost everyone I loved.”
She then said (it’s in the book and film “Flipside”) “Oh, there showing me something that’s every hard to describe. I don’t know if I can describe it. But they’re showing me that it was harder to choose to play the role of a perpetrator in this lifetime, than a victim.”
Easily the most politically incorrect sentence I’d ever heard.(It was the first time for me filming someone under deep hypnosis - but now I’ve filmed 40 and hear the same kinds of reports often.) She said “every day that I spent in that camp was an intense, heightened lesson in life; the nature of forgiveness, of courage, of compassion, of anger, of hate… each more difficult than the last. But from my perspective, I see why I chose this life rather than the other option.”
Not to mitigate anyone’s pain or experience or journey. But when we truly examine the nature of what we’re doing here on the planet, we hear these stories over and over. We are responsible for choosing our journey here. We may get here and not fulfill the promises we made, we may fall short of what we set out to do. But that’s okay, because we do get off stage and go back home. We get to examine all of the other choices we made.
In the book “Memories of the Afterlife” one woman in Germany recalled a lifetime as a German soldier. She recalled seeing herself as a man, engaged to marry a beautiful girl in Berlin.
But his parents discovered she was Jewish and forbade the marriage. Later, the soldier saw himself on the Swiss border; his job to stop refugees from escaping. He recounted stopping a truck, lining up all the passengers and having them shot. And he recognized his fiancee as one of the people on the truck - but didn’t stop himself from ending her life.
He said he was physically ill for days/weeks after, and eventually remembered being shot by a US soldier. And when he left his body and returned “home” - out of the grey mist came his fiancee, holding her arms open for him.
And he said “I can’t, I’m so embarrassed, I’m so sorry for what I did to you…” and he/she reported that his fiancee said “Don’t remember? This is what we signed up to experience. We’ve had many lifetimes before, and we’ll have many in the future.” And at that moment recognized her as a colleague at work, and after her between life session, connected with her and they started a company together.
Might not be what you expected to hear as an answer, but it is what’s consistently in the reports.
Q: Could our consciousness indeed be our soul?
There’s every indication that it is. From a Catholic perspective, look to the original text behind the “holy trinity” - which was “father, son and breath.” If you think of father as being “source” and son as being “human” - then the thing that animates that human (and all sentient creatures) is consciousness.
If you think of it from a science point of view - people consistently say that our consciousness returns “home” after life. They claim that when we return “home” we reconnect with the part of our consciousness that we did not bring to this life.
When asked why that is, people claim that “there’s too much energy, that bringing the whole package would “blow the circuits.” They further claim that when we return home we connect with the roughly two thirds of our consciousness that is always “back home.”
When asked what the two thirds of our consciousness is doing back home while we’re here struggling to get through life, the answers are consistent; going to class with fellow travelers, (these classrooms have been described in numerous places, including Michael Newton, Dr. Helen Wambach, Galen Stoller’s “My Life after Life” and other people).
I know that sounds disturbing - as it first sounded to me. “Classrooms in the afterlife? Are you kidding? After 18 years of school I thought I was done with classrooms!”
But these classes are described as pretty unusual. I’ll leave it at that.
But to answer your questions, that appears to be the best way to refer to the soul, since it’s reported to be part of who we are. When we return to reconnect with our other energy back home, we get to see all the previous incarnations we’ve had, and reconnect with all the lessons we’ve learned (and not learned.) It’s who we are.
It also explains how when people have an out of body experience, or a near death event, or some other consciousness altering event, they can see or observe, report things that they shouldn’t have been aware of, couldn’t possible have seen. (See Mario Beauregard PhD’s “Brain Wars” where he describes a person telling his doctor about his orange shoes, but this patient was blind from birth; had never seen orange.)
Or Dr. Greyson’s hour long talk on youtube “Is Consciousness Produced by the Brain?” for numerous cases where people should not have been able to communicate (death, brain malfunction, loss of brain matter, atrophied brain, etc) but still were able to communicate.
If we think of the brain as a receiver rather than a broadcast unit , complete with filters and volume control, regulating what gets in and out while we’re on the planet, we have a closer picture to how consciousness works.
Q: How can I reconnect with God?
"Open your heart to everyone and to all things.” This was the response given by a “spirit guide” to a skeptical film producer who was under deep hypnosis that I filmed for my book “It’s a Wonderful Afterlife.”
She had gone into this session not believing that she could access a previous lifetime or anything to do with the afterlife, and on her list of skeptical questions “In case I get anywhere” she included “What or who is God?”
Eventually, after a memory of a previous lifetime (details which I was able to verify) she found herself in a giant library with her spirit guide (for lack of a better term.) The guide seemed annoyed by the question about God. His full answer:
“You humans feel like by naming something you get a better handle on it. Let me put it this way; God is beyond the capacity of the human brain to comprehend. It’s just not physically possible. But you can experience God. To experience God; open your heart to everyone and to all things.”
If you think about that for a moment - how do you open your heart to all people? We live in a conditional love world - “if you love me I’ll love you. I love you until you do something I don’t like.” What people claim is that over there - “back home” it’s an experience of unconditional love.
That’s what “god is.” Unconditional love. So that means opening your heart to everyone - even the person who cuts you off in traffic (or builds a wall.) Easy to say, but obviously hard to do.
But he added the last part - “and to all things.” What does that mean? I take it to mean that atoms exist in objects in some form of agreement - after all, what’s a pencil but a bunch of wood and lead atoms vibrating together?
What keeps them together? Well, they have this right to exist in this space as well, so if I can open my heart to all things - including a pencil, which is composed of the same vibrational energy we are all composed of - then I’m that much closer to “experiencing god.”
So to reconnect with God, I recommend start with mirror. Open your heart to that person first. Unconditional love. Then move that focus to those around you, that you do love on a daily basis, then spread it to those you meet on a daily basis, and finally to those you avoid or hate for reasons you can’t quite elucidate.
Because they too come from the same source, and are merely playing roles (perhaps annoying ones) for our benefit. And then… voila, open up that radius of unconditional love to include the pencil, the tree, the car, the book - the earth, this thing we exist on while we’re here. Give the earth unconditional love, and it will repay you a thousand fold. (I made up that last sentence, because it sounds good.)
Q:"Is it realistic to believe in reincarnation?"
Do you believe in gravity? It’s a mental construct to explain something that occurs. Why believe or not believe, and just focus on the data?
What’s the data show? Well, if you look at Ian Stevenson’s 30 years of work at UVA, Dr. Jim Tucker’s research at DOPS or Carol Bowman’s research (“Children’s Past Lives”) you’ll find evidence. Detailed examples of children (for the most part) who remember previous lifetimes and their cases are verifiable.
Then if you expand your research, you’ll find notable cases of reincarnation in eastern literature, specifically with regard to lamas who remember previous lifetimes. However, I’m happy to add, they remember the previous incarnation for a few years, and then that memory fades. (i.e, the Dalai Lama, who remembered the items he owned as the 13th, but since then, not so much).
Why is that? The reports show that children appear to be able to remember previous (verifiable) lifetimes up until about the age or 7 or 8. Some argue that’s when the filters in the brain no longer allow new information, I’ve noted its the age when the skull hardens, perhaps altering the ability to “receive” information that is accessed somehow - the brain acting like a stereo receiver.
How do we know there are filters? In Dr. Bruce Greyson’s youtube talk, “Is Consciousness Produced by the Brain?” (reproduced in my book “It’s a Wonderful Afterlife”) he cites the 70% of cases in the UK where Alzheimer’s patients suddenly, spontaneously regain access to their memories “minutes, hours,sometimes days” prior to their death. They somehow have a full memory of their lifetime and can access those memories. However, autopsies of their brains after death show they’d atrophied and should not have been able to access memory. As if the “filters” in the brain had “died” or ceased to function along with other parts of the brain, and yet consciousness returned in those incapable of it.
The word “believe” implies that there isn’t evidence of something. The idea of “faith” is to put your mind and heart around something that isn’t verifiable. However, consciousness existing outside the brain is verifiable, and further, points to the answer to the question. “How does reincarnation work?”
According to people who claim to have experienced a “memory” of the process - (that is through the research of Dr. Helen Wambach (2000 cases) and Michael Newton (7000 cases)) people under hypnosis claim that the process is the same, has always been the same, and continues to be the same. That once our consciousness (or soul) leaves the physical realm we inhabit, it “returns home” where it sorts out why and how and with who to make the choice to return.
They further claim that “this isn’t the only playground.” That people can choose to incarnate elsewhere, in other worlds, but that we like to return to this “difficult polarized realm” because “we can learn more spiritually from one day of tragedy on earth than we can from 5000 years on some boring planet.”
Again, not a theory, not a philosophy, not an argumentative supposition about how things should work; just reporting verbatim what thousands have said while either under hypnosis, during a near death event, or in some other consciousness altered mode where they claim to be able to access this information. And their replies are consistent and replicable. (Which by definition, is what science requires when examining data.)
What’s not realistic is to “believe” we don’t reincarnate. That unrealistic premise leads to people living on a planet they don’t think they’re going to return to, therefore leave it in a state of decay. That would be a “belief” as it is contrary to what these thousands of folks have said consistently.
And respond. And respond.
Have been responding for a few days, wondering "what am I doing responding?" Chances are these questions are computer generated.
But maybe the computers need answers too.
But since these questions may be universal, here's a sampling:
Q: If there’s an after-life, is there an after-after life?
It’s a great question. First of all, when trying to define the ineffable, we spend a lot of time using words that we can’t define. So - what’s the definition of life to begin with? If you look it up, the definition of life is “not dead.” Okay, that’s nice. But doesn’t really help. Because the definition of dead is… wait for it… “not alive.”
So we have a conundrum. How do we “know we’re alive?” Our thinking on the topic stems from “I think therefore I am.” (Or as I like to paraphrase it for Buddhist philosophy “I think therefore I am not.”) But either answer really doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. What’s an afterlife, if we can’t really define what life is other than “not dead?”
I’m frequently asked “So then what happens?” in my public talks about the afterlife. (MartiniProds on youtube). I report what people consistently say about the afterlife either under deep hypnosis (as pioneered by Michael Newton, or Dr. Helen Wambach) or compare those reports to what people say about the afterlife during a near death event.
And the way I parse near death events from imagination, or “cryptomnesia” (having heard, seen or experienced what you’re seeing during your past life memory or during your NDE) by examining “new information.” Information that you could not have known, did not know, but learned from your experience interacting with someone on the flipside, or “in the afterlife.”
These reports are consistent and they are replicable. What people say consistently is that “there is no death.” That your body may cease functioning, but who we are does not. Call it a soul, call it an energetic hologram, call it a cheese sandwich, people say the same things consistently and report the journey in a consistent manner.
They claim that those who’ve “done themselves in” are startled to discover they haven’t “ended anything.” That they are then witness to all the stress, sadness and suffering their loved ones may or may not go through once they’ve “crossed over.”
Further that their consciousness doesn’t dissipate, or travel to a “pool of other consciousness” (as posited by Jung) but that our consciousness travels to a place they refer consistently as “home.” The place where they originated, a place where they reconnect with the “conscious energy” of theirs that was “left behind” and reconnect with their loved ones. (This is not my theory, opinion or belief in these reports - I’m just reporting them.)
So when we talk about the afterlife, we’re already using mistaken terminology. Because there is no “after” if you’re returning home. There’s before, then there’s during, and then there’s what happens next. But it’s never described as a finite place, nor are souls defined as “immortal.”
What we learn back there is that we are always changing, always learning, always “filling in the blanks” (and for Buddhist theorists, not that there is no “finite soul”per se - because we are always evolving) - as if we are living lives so that we can earn a degree in consciousness. The degree just happens to be the journey of our souls.
So when we speak of the afterlife - think of it in these terms: we’ve gotten off stage. We’ve put away our costumes and props, and we now go back “home” where our pals and loved ones are. They may tease us about our performance, or applaud (usually applause), and at some point they’re going to start bugging us about coming back and “doing it again, but better.”
Reportedly we can refuse their suggestions, for whatever reason, but inevitably our loved ones and guides will nudge us into seeing that we really do need to work on a few extra things. And then we choose to come back - perhaps looking over the groups we’ve already been here with, or the folks we’d like to be here with… and together make a plan.
Yes, the afterlife of the afterlife — is life. And after we’ve graduated from “all our lives” - might be a long time in earth time, but relatively short over there - we can choose to become a guide or a teacher or someone else of service. Perhaps sit on a council of souls and help guide and teach souls that come before us.
These positions are reported consistently, both by people under hypnosis, but also, as of late, by people who are fully conscious, but are just being asked questions (by me, the trusty tour guide) of what and who is on their spiritual council. The results have been nothing short of astounding (to me and them.)
The afterlife of the afterlife is life - unless you want to stay back home, or you graduate into another level of service…not unlike a video game.
after a reply:
As noted, it’s not a theory, it’s just what people say consistently about the path and journey. People come to the planet by choice - learn the lessons they want to learn and “graduate” to another level. That each lifetime might be a particular lesson in some quality - compassion, love, charity, forgiveness - each person has the opportunity to learn from those lessons (or teach.) In terms of the “progression” - each person has their own journey and path.
In order to think of it in terms of “human evolution” we’re constrained by generational divides. People come to the planet - live their average lifespan, pass along as much information as they can, yet we continue to make the same “mistakes”or rehash the same lessons but in different guises.
The same is true in a university - each teacher comes with teaching and information, the students pass through the class, but in the next semester, or the next year, or the next four years, new students come without the knowledge and have to go through it on their own.
During one of these between life sessions, a woman (who had been a skeptic of the process) found herself in a library with one of her guides and asked “So, is the universe a machine?” He answered “The universe is a mechanism, however it’s sentient.”
If that’s accurate, then he’s making the point that the universe learns lessons, or perhaps we all learn lessons eventually. It’s the “100th monkey” discussion (which science has disproven) that a certain amount of a species learns something (how to extract food using a tool) that everyone learns it. Science has shown that to not be the case in humans - but if the knowledge and help of how to navigate the planet is also coming from another source - perhaps the consciousness left behind, as so many claim, then perhaps it makes sense how we can adjust and develop.
But finally, once we get to the concept of what “good” is - or what we all might agree the end result of being kinder or “more enlightened” is - or even more intelligent - it’s debatable what the collective is trying to accomplish or learn. Some people claim their entire soul group has numerous lifetimes where they explore or examine the”energy of addiction.”
If that’s true, then each time they travel down that path, one could argue they’re not “learning anything.” However, they claim that we do learn more days of tragedy than we do from days of joy. As one person said under hypnosis “You can learn more on this planet from one day of tragedy than you can from 5000 years on some other boring planet.”
Perhaps that’s the reason behind incarnating on a “polarized” planet - good and bad - yin and yang. There are many lessons to be learned here, and it makes for a great university.
Q: What's the point of life?
First define life. What is it? Is it breathing? Actually the definition of life, if you can believe it, is “not being dead.” And the definition of death is “not living.” So we are already on shaky ground just asking the question.
Because it assumes that there is a point or a time, or a stasis where we are not living. And I can tell you that does not exist. We are never not alive. We are never not existing. I can describe the process of coming into being - as reported by people who claim to have knowledge about such things - but suffice to say, once we’re in existence, we don’t blend out of it.
We can’t get out of it. No matter how hard someone might try - the conundrum is that those who “choose to no longer be alive” can’t do anything of the sort. They find themselves chagrined to discover that they have not died. (They’ve stressed out everyone they ever met or loved, and they have to deal with that, but that’s another topic.)
So let’s start there. You can’t not be living. Ever. Then the question becomes “So why am I here in this physical form? What am I doing here? What’s the point of going through all I’ve gone through to get to this point?” Now that’s a good question. Only one person can answer it. That’s you.
So if you don’t know why you chose to come here, why you chose this lifetime, if you don’t know what the lessons are that you came here to learn or to teach; then now’s a pretty good time to start searching for that answer to that. And the first step on that path was asking the question.
“What’s the point of my being here?” Only one person can answer it.
Q: Why did God create some humans whom he knows previously that they will go to hell? Isn't being the most merciful a logical reason that he didn't create them?
Imagine yourself standing in a theater, watching a play on stage. No matter how bad someone acts in a play, we never chase after the actor after the play is over to rail at them. Actually sometimes people do, certain parts “ruin an actor’s career.” But in general, when watching a play that deals with good and evil, happy or sad events, we’re focused on the lessons that are learned on the stage.
What the reports show is that we choose our lifetimes after consulting with our loved ones and fellow travelers “back home” - and choose to play a particular role while here on the planet.
During one deep hypnosis session I was filming, a woman who recalled a life which ended in Auschwitz found herself standing before her council of guides and asking them “Why did I agree to sign up for this lifetime? It was horrible and I lost everyone I loved.”
She then said (it’s in the book and film “Flipside”) “Oh, there showing me something that’s every hard to describe. I don’t know if I can describe it. But they’re showing me that it was harder to choose to play the role of a perpetrator in this lifetime, than a victim.”
Easily the most politically incorrect sentence I’d ever heard.(It was the first time for me filming someone under deep hypnosis - but now I’ve filmed 40 and hear the same kinds of reports often.) She said “every day that I spent in that camp was an intense, heightened lesson in life; the nature of forgiveness, of courage, of compassion, of anger, of hate… each more difficult than the last. But from my perspective, I see why I chose this life rather than the other option.”
Not to mitigate anyone’s pain or experience or journey. But when we truly examine the nature of what we’re doing here on the planet, we hear these stories over and over. We are responsible for choosing our journey here. We may get here and not fulfill the promises we made, we may fall short of what we set out to do. But that’s okay, because we do get off stage and go back home. We get to examine all of the other choices we made.
In the book “Memories of the Afterlife” one woman in Germany recalled a lifetime as a German soldier. She recalled seeing herself as a man, engaged to marry a beautiful girl in Berlin.
But his parents discovered she was Jewish and forbade the marriage. Later, the soldier saw himself on the Swiss border; his job to stop refugees from escaping. He recounted stopping a truck, lining up all the passengers and having them shot. And he recognized his fiancee as one of the people on the truck - but didn’t stop himself from ending her life.
He said he was physically ill for days/weeks after, and eventually remembered being shot by a US soldier. And when he left his body and returned “home” - out of the grey mist came his fiancee, holding her arms open for him.
And he said “I can’t, I’m so embarrassed, I’m so sorry for what I did to you…” and he/she reported that his fiancee said “Don’t remember? This is what we signed up to experience. We’ve had many lifetimes before, and we’ll have many in the future.” And at that moment recognized her as a colleague at work, and after her between life session, connected with her and they started a company together.
Might not be what you expected to hear as an answer, but it is what’s consistently in the reports.
Q: Could our consciousness indeed be our soul?
There’s every indication that it is. From a Catholic perspective, look to the original text behind the “holy trinity” - which was “father, son and breath.” If you think of father as being “source” and son as being “human” - then the thing that animates that human (and all sentient creatures) is consciousness.
If you think of it from a science point of view - people consistently say that our consciousness returns “home” after life. They claim that when we return “home” we reconnect with the part of our consciousness that we did not bring to this life.
When asked why that is, people claim that “there’s too much energy, that bringing the whole package would “blow the circuits.” They further claim that when we return home we connect with the roughly two thirds of our consciousness that is always “back home.”
When asked what the two thirds of our consciousness is doing back home while we’re here struggling to get through life, the answers are consistent; going to class with fellow travelers, (these classrooms have been described in numerous places, including Michael Newton, Dr. Helen Wambach, Galen Stoller’s “My Life after Life” and other people).
I know that sounds disturbing - as it first sounded to me. “Classrooms in the afterlife? Are you kidding? After 18 years of school I thought I was done with classrooms!”
But these classes are described as pretty unusual. I’ll leave it at that.
But to answer your questions, that appears to be the best way to refer to the soul, since it’s reported to be part of who we are. When we return to reconnect with our other energy back home, we get to see all the previous incarnations we’ve had, and reconnect with all the lessons we’ve learned (and not learned.) It’s who we are.
It also explains how when people have an out of body experience, or a near death event, or some other consciousness altering event, they can see or observe, report things that they shouldn’t have been aware of, couldn’t possible have seen. (See Mario Beauregard PhD’s “Brain Wars” where he describes a person telling his doctor about his orange shoes, but this patient was blind from birth; had never seen orange.)
Or Dr. Greyson’s hour long talk on youtube “Is Consciousness Produced by the Brain?” for numerous cases where people should not have been able to communicate (death, brain malfunction, loss of brain matter, atrophied brain, etc) but still were able to communicate.
If we think of the brain as a receiver rather than a broadcast unit , complete with filters and volume control, regulating what gets in and out while we’re on the planet, we have a closer picture to how consciousness works.
Q: How can I reconnect with God?
"Open your heart to everyone and to all things.” This was the response given by a “spirit guide” to a skeptical film producer who was under deep hypnosis that I filmed for my book “It’s a Wonderful Afterlife.”
She had gone into this session not believing that she could access a previous lifetime or anything to do with the afterlife, and on her list of skeptical questions “In case I get anywhere” she included “What or who is God?”
Eventually, after a memory of a previous lifetime (details which I was able to verify) she found herself in a giant library with her spirit guide (for lack of a better term.) The guide seemed annoyed by the question about God. His full answer:
“You humans feel like by naming something you get a better handle on it. Let me put it this way; God is beyond the capacity of the human brain to comprehend. It’s just not physically possible. But you can experience God. To experience God; open your heart to everyone and to all things.”
If you think about that for a moment - how do you open your heart to all people? We live in a conditional love world - “if you love me I’ll love you. I love you until you do something I don’t like.” What people claim is that over there - “back home” it’s an experience of unconditional love.
That’s what “god is.” Unconditional love. So that means opening your heart to everyone - even the person who cuts you off in traffic (or builds a wall.) Easy to say, but obviously hard to do.
But he added the last part - “and to all things.” What does that mean? I take it to mean that atoms exist in objects in some form of agreement - after all, what’s a pencil but a bunch of wood and lead atoms vibrating together?
What keeps them together? Well, they have this right to exist in this space as well, so if I can open my heart to all things - including a pencil, which is composed of the same vibrational energy we are all composed of - then I’m that much closer to “experiencing god.”
So to reconnect with God, I recommend start with mirror. Open your heart to that person first. Unconditional love. Then move that focus to those around you, that you do love on a daily basis, then spread it to those you meet on a daily basis, and finally to those you avoid or hate for reasons you can’t quite elucidate.
Because they too come from the same source, and are merely playing roles (perhaps annoying ones) for our benefit. And then… voila, open up that radius of unconditional love to include the pencil, the tree, the car, the book - the earth, this thing we exist on while we’re here. Give the earth unconditional love, and it will repay you a thousand fold. (I made up that last sentence, because it sounds good.)
Q:"Is it realistic to believe in reincarnation?"
Do you believe in gravity? It’s a mental construct to explain something that occurs. Why believe or not believe, and just focus on the data?
What’s the data show? Well, if you look at Ian Stevenson’s 30 years of work at UVA, Dr. Jim Tucker’s research at DOPS or Carol Bowman’s research (“Children’s Past Lives”) you’ll find evidence. Detailed examples of children (for the most part) who remember previous lifetimes and their cases are verifiable.
Then if you expand your research, you’ll find notable cases of reincarnation in eastern literature, specifically with regard to lamas who remember previous lifetimes. However, I’m happy to add, they remember the previous incarnation for a few years, and then that memory fades. (i.e, the Dalai Lama, who remembered the items he owned as the 13th, but since then, not so much).
Why is that? The reports show that children appear to be able to remember previous (verifiable) lifetimes up until about the age or 7 or 8. Some argue that’s when the filters in the brain no longer allow new information, I’ve noted its the age when the skull hardens, perhaps altering the ability to “receive” information that is accessed somehow - the brain acting like a stereo receiver.
How do we know there are filters? In Dr. Bruce Greyson’s youtube talk, “Is Consciousness Produced by the Brain?” (reproduced in my book “It’s a Wonderful Afterlife”) he cites the 70% of cases in the UK where Alzheimer’s patients suddenly, spontaneously regain access to their memories “minutes, hours,sometimes days” prior to their death. They somehow have a full memory of their lifetime and can access those memories. However, autopsies of their brains after death show they’d atrophied and should not have been able to access memory. As if the “filters” in the brain had “died” or ceased to function along with other parts of the brain, and yet consciousness returned in those incapable of it.
The word “believe” implies that there isn’t evidence of something. The idea of “faith” is to put your mind and heart around something that isn’t verifiable. However, consciousness existing outside the brain is verifiable, and further, points to the answer to the question. “How does reincarnation work?”
According to people who claim to have experienced a “memory” of the process - (that is through the research of Dr. Helen Wambach (2000 cases) and Michael Newton (7000 cases)) people under hypnosis claim that the process is the same, has always been the same, and continues to be the same. That once our consciousness (or soul) leaves the physical realm we inhabit, it “returns home” where it sorts out why and how and with who to make the choice to return.
They further claim that “this isn’t the only playground.” That people can choose to incarnate elsewhere, in other worlds, but that we like to return to this “difficult polarized realm” because “we can learn more spiritually from one day of tragedy on earth than we can from 5000 years on some boring planet.”
Again, not a theory, not a philosophy, not an argumentative supposition about how things should work; just reporting verbatim what thousands have said while either under hypnosis, during a near death event, or in some other consciousness altered mode where they claim to be able to access this information. And their replies are consistent and replicable. (Which by definition, is what science requires when examining data.)
What’s not realistic is to “believe” we don’t reincarnate. That unrealistic premise leads to people living on a planet they don’t think they’re going to return to, therefore leave it in a state of decay. That would be a “belief” as it is contrary to what these thousands of folks have said consistently.
