Eben Alexander on the Science of the Flipside

Here's an excellent scientific analysis of the flipside from a scientist. 

Mnemosyne, Goddess of Memory

This interview with Dr. Eben Alexander which includes reference to Ed Kelly's work (who I met with at UVA along with Dr Greyson as reported in "it's a Wonderful Afterlife") is worth reading and repeating.

(I will add my flipside comments where *noted.)

Dr. Eben Alexander on His Near-Death Experience—and What He’s Learned About Consciousness

In 2008, Eben Alexander, M.D., an academic neurosurgeon for over twenty-five years, including fifteen years at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School in Boston, fell into a deep coma due to bacterial meningitis, from a particularly vicious strain of ecoli. 

After a week in a deep coma, his doctors put his survival rate well below 10 percent, with the caveat that if he did somehow emerge, he would be in a nursing home for the rest of his life. 

Not only did he make a full and miraculous recovery, but he recounted an incredibly deep and profound near-death experience from his time in this coma, when the neocortex of his brain was completely shut down. He was effectively dead, without a functioning brain—and from a materialist view of science, certainly not a brain that could manifest his experience, which he documents in great detail in the New York Times #1 bestseller, Proof of Heaven.

As a neurosurgeon, he had heard stories from patients about their own NDE’s, which he had casually dismissed as hallucinations, never taking the time to entertain or explore what his patients recounted, or what it could possibly mean. 

As he writes in Proof of Heaven, “Like many other scientific skeptics, I refused to even review the data relevant to the questions concerning these phenomena. I prejudged the data, and those providing it, because my limited perspective failed to provide the foggiest notion of how such things might actually happen.” He goes on to add, “Those who assert that there is no evidence for phenomena indicative of extended consciousness, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, are willfully ignorant. They believe they know the truth without needing to look at the facts.”

Since his near-death experience, Alexander has taken a bit of a right turn to explore, as the philosopher David Chalmers calls it, “the hard problem of consciousness,” which essentially boils down to whether the brain creates consciousness, or whether we are spiritual beings living a physical existence, where the brain functions as more of a filter. 

In Alexander’s latest, even more fascinating book, Living in a Mindful Universe, he explores the science behind all of it in great detail, as well as discussions about everything from where the brain stores memories (hint: nobody knows), to what the other side might be able to teach us about our reality today.

Nasa Photo of "Home"

Q&A with Eben Alexander, M.D.

Q: Before your near-death experience, you explained that you would have considered yourself a “skeptic,” without really understanding what that meant—in your book, you describe the concept of pseudo-skeptics as well. How has your stance changed based on your own experience, and everything you’ve learned since?

A: Before my coma, I would say I was an open-minded skeptic. The pseudo-skeptics, in contrast, are those who have made up their minds based on their prejudices, and who prove to be remarkably resistant to accepting empirical data or reasoned arguments. Many critics of spirituality, psi, and paranormal experiences, especially those who write publicly in disparaging terms about other’s sharing of such experiences, are simply pseudo-skeptics. Living in a Mindful Universe challenges many of those fundamental beliefs directly, in an effort to more broadly explain all of the empirical evidence of human experience. 

Having had a personally transformative experience of my own, my stance is now far more open, because I see possibilities for a worldview that is more comprehensive, synthesizing the evidence for our spiritual nature living in a spiritual universe along lines that fully accept the frontier science emerging from quantum physics and cosmology.

Q: What is the materialist view of consciousness?

A: Conventional science can be called reductive materialism, or physicalism—basically, that only the physical world exists. This means that thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and memories are merely epiphenomena of the physical workings of the brain, and thus have no real existence in their own right. 

Thus, according to materialism, consciousness is no more than the confusing result of the chemical reactions and electrical fluxes in the substance of the brain. Major consequences of this view are that our existence is birth-to-death, and nothing more, and that free will itself is a complete illusion. If conscious awareness is nothing more than chemical reactions, there is no place for “free will” to play a role.

“The brain is more a prison from which our conscious awareness is liberated at the time of bodily death, enabling a robust afterlife that also involves reincarnation.”

My new view, and one that is emerging in neuroscience and philosophy of mind, is the exact opposite: that soul/spirit is what exists, and projects all of apparent physical reality from within itself. The brain is more a prison from which our conscious awareness is liberated at the time of bodily death, enabling a robust afterlife that also involves reincarnation. Our choices matter tremendously, and thus free will is a crucial component of evolving reality.

Q: What do we know about the brain and what can we prove?

A: We know a tremendous amount about the brain and its workings, including the evidence that it is not the producer of consciousness at all. 

The best clinical examples are terminal lucidity, acquired savant syndromes, and hallucinogenic substance studies. In the cases of terminal lucidity, elderly demented patients become much more reflective and communicative around the time of death, in ways that would be impossible if the brain were somehow producing consciousness. 

(*NOTE: See Dr. Bruce Greyson's youtube talk "Is Consciousness Produced by the Brain" on youtube, or reproduced in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife")

Acquired savant syndrome occurs when some form of brain damage—such as a head injury, stroke, or autism—allows for superhuman mental feats of memory, calculation, gnosis, etc. 

The emerging evidence from functional MRI (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies of patients on serotinergic hallucinogenic drugs (like psilocybin, DMT [ayuhuasca], LSD, etc.) reveal the most profound of such drug experiences are associated with the greatest shutting down of the physical brain’s activity. 

This shocking finding of such experiments is fully consistent with my own amazing explosion of rich, vibrant, ultra-real conscious awareness—that accompanied the progressive damage to my neocortex during severe gram-negative bacterial meningitis, rendering me comatose for a week in November 2008.

“We need to accept that full explanation of mind and consciousness must involve investigation beyond just the physical substance of the brain.”

Search for “the hard problem of consciousness” to find more of the absolute dead end this kind of thinking has yielded about the nature of consciousness, and the relationship between brain and mind. From a physicalist perspective, the problem of how consciousness might arise from the physical brain becomes the impossible problem. 

We need to accept that full explanation of mind and consciousness must involve investigation beyond just the physical substance of the brain. 

One of the most renowned neurosurgeons in the 20th century, Dr. Wilder Penfield of Montreal, spent his career studying the effects of electrical brain stimulation in awake patients, and is thus a scientist in better position than most others to discuss this mind-body problem in detail. In his 1975 book Mystery of the Mind, he made it very clear that the brain does not explain the mind, thus is not the producer of consciousness itself, nor is it the harbor of “free will,” or even the repository of memory storage.

"Home" courtesy NASA

Q: Why do you believe there is such a chasm between materialist or physicalist science and those who believe that the soul survives death/is not created by the mind? Why is it so difficult for both belief systems to coexist?

A: The scientific revolution began approximately four hundred years ago, when the likes of Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and others were trying to define the laws of causality in the physical world. If they strayed too close to the realm of mind or consciousness, they risked being burned at the stake. 

Scientist Giordano Bruno

(*NOTE: Giordano Bruno, as I mention in "Hacking the Afterlife" was burned at the stake because of his "out of body experience."  He had an OBE that revealed to him that we aren't the only solar system, and that as he "traveled through space" he saw that other solar systems revolved around suns.  He spoke about it publicly, eventually getting him a one way trip to the stake.)

Over the centuries, physics was viewed as the study of the physical world, and thus, from a scientific perspective, the physical was the basis of all of reality. This necessitated the supposition that humans and their awareness of the world was just another subcategory of the physical.

The problem is they failed to realize that subjective reality is the only thing any human being can possibly know to exist, and that our mind is intimately involved not only with perceiving the world around us, but also in generating the emerging reality.

Quantum physics, the most proven theory in the history of science, insists on putting consciousness back in primary position as the initiator of all of emerging reality, yet the modern physics community has difficulty relinquishing the many-century notion that the world can be explained through physical matter alone. Many quantum physicists are advised to “shut up and calculate.” That is, to pay no attention to the completely counter-intuitive and bizarre properties of the subatomic world that appear in quantum mechanics experiments.

“The problem is they failed to realize that subjective reality is the only thing any human being can possibly know to exist.”

Materialism is the easy science, the low-hanging fruit, and very much held onto by those who simply want to claim some knowledge of reality, even though it fails miserably at explaining anything about conscious awareness itself, or all manner of human experiences, both mundane and exotic. 

The answer comes in adopting a much grander world view, notably that of metaphysical idealism: that consciousness is fundamental in the universe, and that all else, including the observable physical universe, emerges from consciousness.

Q: As a neurosurgeon, it seems that your opinion about the function of the brain has changed, from believing it creates consciousness to wondering if it isn’t some sort of filter. What do you believe the function of the brain really is, and what does science currently support?

A: Filter theory makes the most sense to me—that the physical brain serves as a filter, only allowing in limited states of conscious awareness. 

(*NOTE: In Dr. Greyson's interview, he points out that those filters appear to "die" with patients that have Alzheimer's - he cited that 70% of the hospice care workers report their patients "regaining full memory" just prior to death - either minutes, hours or sometimes days.  As if the "filters keeping conscious thought" outside of their brains have died; when these patients' brains are studied via autopsy, they're shown to be atrophied and incapable of memory.  Unless memory is not soley a function of the brain.)

The brain certainly manages many functions of the human body and gives us our linguistic capabilities and ability to analyze and solve problems. But these seemingly superior traits (as compared to other species) often serve to limit us from the full spectrum of what is possible. 

The production model of physicalism (that is, that the physical brain creates consciousness out of the purely physical matter of the brain) is the least reasonable of the options to explain consciousness, and fails miserably at providing any explanatory potential.

Sunset is a sunrise elsewhere. Always transforming.

Q: Is there a way to prove any of this?

A: The evidence that the materialist “brain-produces-consciousness” model is wrong is all around us. To the scientific-minded who want to pursue it, I recommend Ed Kelly’s two extraordinary books Irreducible Mind and Beyond Physicalism. 

(*I met with Ed Kelly PhD when researching "It's a Wonderful Afterlife." )

Conventional science has been guilty of suppressing and denying a mountain of evidence over decades, simply calling all manner of such human experiences (remote viewing, out-of-body experiences, precognition, past life memories in children, NDEs, shared death experiences, etc.) “hallucinations,” instead of studying them in more detail and trying to understand them. 

Sooner or later, sheer frustration about the failed world view of materialism is inevitable, and the result will be the extinction of that world view, in favor of one far more capable of explaining the wide variety of human experiences to be fathomed.

Q: For people who want to explore their consciousness on a deeper level, what do you suggest? Is there anything that you’ve experienced since that is NDE-like?

A: The worldview of idealism (that our consciousness creates all of unfolding reality) opens the door to the extraordinary potential each and every one of us has to influence our lives. We are all a part of this consciousness and it’s incumbent on each of us to uncover the truth of who we truly are.

“The veil is part of the ‘programmed forgetting,’ an intentional loss of memories from past lives and between lives that gives us ‘skin in the game.'”

Beginning around two years after the coma (in 2010), I started investigating binaural beat sound technology, a form of brain entrainment, utilizing a timing circuit in the lower brainstem. I wanted to duplicate the neocortical inactivation experienced during my coma, but without coming so close to death. Binaural beats have been crucial during my soul journey of the last few years, allowing me to reconnect with the realms, beings, and fundamental forces of love that I first encountered during my NDE. 

In particular, I’ve found the tones developed by Kevin Kossi and Karen Newell of Sacred Acoustics to be especially powerful. I have partaken in past life regressions, and feel they also help in this journey of discovery, but tend to default to self-generated investigations by exploring within consciousness through Sacred Acoustics audio recordings. I have had broad success at revisiting the spiritual realms I encountered during my coma and continue to develop my connection with my higher soul.

(*NOTE: My exploration of binaural beats included a head-ache, so I've focused on merely "asking questions" to someone who has had a near death event, or perhaps a recurring dream.  If the architecture of the afterlife is a known quantity (and it appears to be, without structure per se, but with words that evoke a memory, as in "council" "soul group" etc.)

Q: Can you tell us more about binaural beats?

A: Binaural beats are a phenomenon discovered by mid-nineteenth century Prussian physicist Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, who found that presentation of slightly different frequency, pure tones to the two ears (varying by anywhere from less than 1 Hz to ~ 25 Hz with each other) engendered a wavering sensation in the perception of the sound. 

The frequency of the wavering results from the arithmetic difference between the two tones, i.e. 100 Hz in one ear combined with 104 Hz in the other ear leads to a 4-Hz wavering sound. Others have investigated the alterations in consciousness associated with this binaural beat phenomenon, especially in enhancing out of body and remote viewing experiences.

Various benefits of binaural beats include reducing constant mind chatter, improved sleep, less anxiety, emotional release, spiritual guidance, enhanced intuition. Everyone is unique and it is important to try firsthand to see for yourself what results might be achieved. Karen and I regularly teach workshops on how precisely to do this, and free training videos are available at Sacred Acoustics, along with a free 20-minute sample recording.

Take a left past the galaxy to get "home."

Q: Why do you think the veil exists, i.e., what do you believe that we are here to learn?

A: I believe that fundamentally the universe exists so that sentient beings can learn and teach in this “soul school,” the sum result of which is the evolution of consciousness itself. Such learning necessitates that we not be privy to all that is known by our higher soul. 

However, we reconnect with the spiritual realm after bodily death, in the process of a life review; encounters with the souls of those in our soul group; and re-immersion into that ocean of unconditional love represented by God and similar concepts by those who have had such rich, spiritually transformative experiences. We can also access our higher soul through prolonged and extensive programs of “going within,” or meditation, practiced throughout our lives.

(*NOTE: "Soul Group" is not referring to James Brown or other groups of singers. (joke) However it is referenced quite a bit by Michael Newton, where I first found it in my research.  I've filmed 40 sessions of people visiting their "soul group" - I've done 5 sessions myself, and visited my "soul group" and "classrooms" and "libraries" and "councils" in the between lives realm.  Afterlife is a misnomer in the sense that life doesn't end, nor is it something that occurs "after we are here."  According to the research, some part of our consciousness is always "back home" - participating in events there while we participate in events here.  That's not opinion, belief, or theory - it's just based on the thousands of cases Michael Newton, Dr. Helen Wambach and the 40 sessions I've filmed claim.)

The veil is part of the “programmed forgetting,” (*NOTE: Scott De Tamble, hypnotherapist in Claremont (lightbetweenlives.com) calls this "Forget-me-juice.") an intentional loss of memories from past lives and between lives that gives us “skin in the game.” 

That is the emotional buy-in to our status as “individual souls” to live our lives to the fullest. Hardships serve as the engine for our soul’s growth and the growth of other souls with whom we are connected.

(*NOTE: Mnemosyne.  Remember her? Used to be very popular. Her name was cited prior to every Greek play so the actors "could remember."If you look up the Goddess of Memory, Mnemosoyne, you'll find that when someone dies, they take a drink from the river Lethe to "regain all of the memories of their lifetimes," and a drink from the river Mnemosyne when they return - to "forget all of them". Apparently, an accurate description of the process.)

Reprinted from Goop
Eben Alexander, M.D. spent more than twenty-five years as an academic neurosurgeon, including fifteen at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School in Boston. In 2008, he had a near-death experience that has led him to deeply explore the complexities of consciousness, which he writes about in the books: Living in a Mindful Universe, Proof of Heaven, and The Map of Heaven.

Mnemosyne.  Remember her? Used to be very popular. Her name
was cited prior to every Greek play so the actors "could remember."

Thanks Number 22 and Dave Schultz

"Jonathan Taub isn’t a big believer in this sort of thing. He tries to be rational when he says, “For the people who believe in that, they were moved.” 

And yet he allows that the series of events was “funky.” He decides to stay with that word, but it’s clear he’s considering other words. Stronger words."

Casey spends his whole life pointing to a stunt he's going to pull off once he's off the planet. People ignore him... until he can't be ignored. "What are the odds that the goal would be scored at the precise second that reflects the number he'd chosen to represent himself as?" Well, it's not about coincidence. 

It's about understanding the nature of consciousness. How while we're on the planet, some part of us (and people claim it's the majority of our energy) is always "back home" - back there, back in the place that isn't here - call it heaven, call it the flipside, call it a cheese sandwich. But the reports are consistent, people say the same things about the flipside every time I turn on my camera. 

That we aren't just here - but we're also back there as well. Only we can't see it - we choose not to see it - or we see it and move on. In this case... "hey #22, thanks for the reminder that life goes on."

When the clock struck 22:22 … 
by Eric Adelson
Columnist
Yahoo Sports

Casey Taub (photo from Jonathan Taub via Yahoo sport)

Casey Taub picked 22 for his jersey number when he was in fourth grade. A lot of soccer kids choose 10 or 9, which tend to be the numbers of the sport’s biggest stars, but the boy from Chappaqua, New York, went with 22 and stuck with it. Nobody really knows why.

It was kind of appropriate, though. Casey was a bit more worldly and wise than the typical 9- or 10-year-old. He would go up to adults at his parents’ parties and strike up conversations. He loved history – so much that as a child he put a mustache of soapsuds on his face in the bathtub and told his mom he was President Chester A. Arthur. His dad, Jonathan, used to wonder, “How is there a 40-year-old man trapped in a 10-year-old body?” Casey wasn’t quite like a 40-year-old, though. Closer to 22.

He was 14 when he came down with what his parents’ thought was vertigo. After a battery of tests, though, there was an unthinkable reason for the dizziness: brain cancer. “Initially I thought it was something a lot of kids recover from,” Jonathan says. “Then we saw it was a mutated tumor, which you never want to hear.” A high school sophomore immediately faced a challenge most never have to fathom.

At one point, Casey looked at his father and asked, “Am I going to die?”

“You immediately tell him, ‘No.’ ” Jonathan says. “What do you do? You pray.”

He gets emotional as he remembers this conversation. He says he would have said “No” even if the doctors gave Casey zero chance. There was a chance for Casey, just not a terribly fair one.

He would need bravery beyond his years, and in some ways he would turn to soccer for support. So would his dad. There were six weeks of radiation, five days a week. There were three surgeries. Over many months there was progress, but as the doctors explained, treatment was “like trying to catch up to a speeding car.” Casey wore his 22 jersey as often as he could, but the chemo weakened him too much to play.

He chose London for his Make-A-Wish. He wanted to meet his beloved Chelsea team. He also got introduced to some of the players on NYCFC back home. Forward Khiry Sheltonkept in touch, and he sat with Casey in the hospital. He stayed not for a few minutes, but for hours.

Still, many of the closest relationships for Casey were on his own team. It was hard for him to watch Horace Greeley High play without him, but he became a team manager. Soccer brought him to a place of comfort.

And that made it that much harder when Casey began to struggle even more this past summer.

“When his vision got blurry, when May hit, he really started not wanting to talk to his friends anymore,” Jonathan says. “They’d come over, and just sit with him.”

He gets choked up.

“He soldiered through a lot of stuff,” he says. “He was a trooper. He never gave up.”

Casey Taub entered the hospital the weekend before July 4. He passed away on the 9th. He was 16.

There were 800 people at the funeral. And that would have been enough of a tribute. But there would be one more, at least: a varsity soccer match dedicated to him. It was his teammates’ idea.

“I was all for it,” Jonathan says, searching momentarily for the right words. “For some reason, still, in a way, it sort of gave me comfort that Casey … that I’m still connected to him.”

The decision was made to honor Casey during the 22nd minute, a nod to his number. The fans and players on the sideline would clap for the duration of that minute as the game went on.

The minute came and the ovation began somberly. Then came an unplanned spike in noise and a loud crescendo: Matt LaFortezza, a senior captain on Horace Greeley, scored a goal. The moment was so special that it took another for the crowd to realize: the goal came at 22:22.

Was it cosmic when Horace Greeley High scored at 22:22 during a game honoring its late teammate who wore No. 22? (Courtesy of Jonathan Taub)

“When they started the clapping thing I was OK,” says Jonathan. “As it kept going on, I was overcome. When the goal was scored I was crying and everyone was comforting me.”

Jonathan Taub isn’t a big believer in this sort of thing. He tries to be rational when he says, “For the people who believe in that, they were moved.”

And yet he allows that the series of events was “funky.” He decides to stay with that word, but it’s clear he’s considering other words. Stronger words.

Even if the time of the goal was completely random, the gesture of the game and the tribute was certainly not. Casey’s friends and even his team’s opponents wanted to do something symbolic, and because of that, something even more symbolic happened. Maybe it’s cosmic, maybe not. Who knows? But if anything, 22:22 is a promise to a father and a family that moments with Casey will be easy to remember long after his teammates have left the fields where they all played.

(all photos courtesy Jonathan Taub via Yahoo)

But this story brings another Flipside story to mind.

That of Dave Schultz, the wrestler who was murdered by Dupont, the story was told in "Foxcatcher." 

Dave Schultz Olympic Wrestler

The part of the story that wasn't told was the eulogy that Phillip Schultz, his father gave at his funeral.  In the eulogy, he recounted how the young Dave had come to him and said "Dad, can I tell you a secret?"  And how his son had walked him outside of earshot of others behind their home.

He said "Dad, I had a meeting with my council, these old wise men who said I could come down here to teach a lesson in love." He dad listened, not sure what to make of his story of this council of old wise men.  He said "Okay."

His son then said, "But dad, I won't be here very long."

His father Phillip had not remembered that conversation until his son's passing.

Council?  Elders?  Not here for very long?  

I've been filming people under deep hypnosis for over a decade now.  And in all 40 sessions, people recount a time when they went to "visit their council" and spoke to them about the life they were planning, or the life that had just happened.  Each council is there for each individual to see how they've done in this lifetime.  Each council tries to help the soul remember why they chose a particular life and what lessons they are here to teach or learn.

In Dave's case - it was a "Lesson in love."  To whom? For whom?  I don't know, but we'd have to ask Dave.  It could be for Dave himself, it could be for his loved ones, it could be for those who loved him from afar.  Lessons in love are not easy to explain, nor easily defined.  But he knew what his lesson was going to be - even as a 5 year old.

He also knew that he "wasn't going to be here for very long."  It's a rare gift to know how long we're going to be on the planet, but if your child told you that he or she wouldn't be here for very long, I would do everything in my power to convince their guides that they should be here for very long - I don't know if I would be successful at it, but I'd do everything in my power to give them the opportunity to learn and teach and experience and feel as much as they could.

But I would also be aware that when we leave this earthly plane we're not gone.  We're just not here.  We're just not accessible.  We learn lessons in love every day.  And this is one from Casey Taub (via Dave Schultz.)

Posts on Quora from the Afterlife Expert

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.

The Flipside of 9-11

Well, it's that time of year again.  Where we remember where we were, what we were doing, the emotions we felt on 9/11.

My 1st trip to NYC in 1959. A few years prior.

As for me, I was teaching in Maine, I drove through an epic lightning storm to hang with some friend's at Harry Cipriani's Downtown - film director Phillip Noyce and artist Peter Tunney. Crashed at Pete's near Canal Street; dawn brought clear blue autumn skies. 

I planned to stop at H and H for a couple bags of bagels my film students, but somehow I missed the turn off the Westwide Highway.

First indication something was amiss that day; the gas station in CT had a crowd around a TV because "some plane had hit the WTC." 

I called my then girlfriend Sherry in LA and told her to turn on the tv; I just "neglected" to mention had just been blocks away. 

I spent the rest of the drive listening to the towers fall on the radio.  It was eerie to hear it instead of see it - somewhere near Camden I pulled off to watch it on tv at a hotel.  I sat by myself in a chair and sobbed. "Oh... the humanity."

A week later wife Sherry made the trip to ground zero - she wanted, needed to see it - but I passed on that visit; it took me over a year to return...  just too painful for me emotionally to make that journey.

Another kind of journey in Central Park

Since then I've spoken to many people who claim to have spoken to people on the flipside that describe these events from a spiritual perspective, not "them versus us" - but in terms of what's "meant to be" - and that's what I'm writing about here. 

I know a child who when looking at a photograph of the twin towers said "I was there."  Her mother, knowing that her daughter had never been to Manhattan, said "When?"  

She said "I was there with my brother, and there was a giant fire, and we were helping all the people come out, and there was paper everywhere; it came down like snowflakes."

Neither she nor her brother had been born prior to this event, and this kid's parents avoided all mention of 9/11 as their kids were growing up, avoiding having to explain that particular tragedy.

Their daughter described the event as if she was there.  "My brother and I were helping people out."Her brother was an infant when she told this story. But she told it as if it was just something she felt she needed to share.

I know a fellow who was in mid meditation in a forest in New Jersey when the towers came down - he was out in the woods meditating when he suddenly saw rows and rows of people floating by. As if they were departing from that scene.

He was profoundly moved when he learned later that the tragedy had occurred.

In Michael Newton's book, ("Destiny of Souls") he makes reference to a between life session where a client recalled seeing a "room full of people" who had been summoned to discuss an event that was about to occur. It was an "emergency event" and people were being asked to either participate in it, or not.  

The man claimed that he heard some people being offered incentives - like "if you can suffer through this event, we'll make sure to make it up to you in the next life." People either volunteered to be part of this lesson, or in some cases apparently did not. 

Michael Newton did not clarify what the event was, when it occurred; but as I read it, the description made me think of those who participated in 9/11. 

 If you consider for a moment that no one dies in these events - indeed, they're gone from this plain, they're no longer physically available to their families or loved ones - that's stressful.  No mitigating pain of the loss of a loved one.

In between the towers being down and the Freedom going up.

But when you think of the lessons in love, the advancement they might have by participating in a profound lesson like this - you can see how some folks are willing to offer up the rest of their life in order to teach or learn lessons in love.

I know that's hard to wrap our minds around on a day where we "remember" those who've gone before us. 

But it's no different than going to a funeral, going to a cemetery, honoring our loved ones who've gone before us, no matter their method of crossing over.  We honor them by talking about them, by remembering them, by thinking of them, by talking to or about them.  

Robin Williams and Radioman in Manhattan (Getty)

It's the best way to memorialize anyone.  Talk about them.  Think about them. (or in Robin's case, post pix of them - I was looking for another photograph, and when this popped up, it was as if he was saying "post this one! It's me! I'm in Manhattan too!") Say kind words about them, say sarcastic things about them - bring them back to life.  Honor them by talking about their accomplishments, their path, their journey. 

They're not gone. They're just not here.

And they can hear you.  It's just not that easy to have a two way communication with them, but it's worth trying. 

Oh look. Manhattan... with palm trees. (Vegas)

And try to have a little perspective on a day like today.

In my life, the events of 9/11 led to an entirely different set of circumstances, directly responsible for my going on adventures and meeting people whom I admire, consider friends, who are in the vanguard of the fight against what caused these events. So from a different perspective, this day 16 years ago led to other vistas, different venues, and helped clarify paths for many. 

I know it inspired many to join the military, to fight for their country, to become active in defense of their beliefs and part of their journey.  I am reluctant to add that is true on "both sides" of the equation, but I add it because that's what's reported in the research. 

We sign up for a lifetime knowing pretty well what we want to learn or teach or accomplish. And along the way we're called upon to do something selfless - give of ourselves, to save or help or learn from saving or helping someone else.  It's the essence of who we are as humans.  And once you begin to realize that we are all souls who choose our lifetimes, then the actions of some can only be seen in light of a bigger picture.  
Again, I'm not arguing this, or trying to force anyone to change their opinion or belief system.  I am reporting what people say about the flipside - consistently - whether they've done a session under deep hypnosis, or had a near death event and been able to examine it under hypnosis, or whether they've had access to the flipside in some other manner.  They consistently say these things about it.  

We learn from our errors, we learn from our mistakes, we learn from having the courage to come to this stage and perform difficult journeys.  That's consistent in all the reports.

So when remembering a day like today - remember those who gave of themselves to save others, those who risked everything to help others, those who went out of their way to help others.  

And think for a moment (if it's possible) to consider the choices of those who sacrificed their lives to hurt others, to make life difficult for others - I can't imagine why anyone would make that kind of choice, I can't offer any logic or answer that would give solace or understanding why anyone would choose to play a perpetrator than a victim... but I can report that people claim that some do "offer" to play the role of perpetrator because there's some reason for it. ("They needed to learn a lesson in negativity." "They will be a victim in a future life at the hands of the people they hurt." etc) And perhaps one day that information will become apparent.

In my case, I can only choose to honor those I know and love who've gone before me, and I choose to honor or talk about those who've sacrificed themselves to help others. For me it's the essence of why we're on the planet.  Unconditional love.

So when someone says "Never Forget" - it applies to everyone who has ever been in our path... don't forget them, their voice, their actions or their love - which is all that remains. 

The Apple Store on 5th Ave