To Be or Not To Have Been and Daniel Day-Lewis

A rumination on Hamlet's question; "To be or not to Be."

Mr. Day-Lewis. National treasure.

To be or not to have been. Hamlet, the Danish Prince (not to be confused with the Danish Pastry) has the most famous soliloquy in the English language - perhaps in all human language.

Daniel Day-Lewis as Hamlet

"To live or not to live."  That's the question - if its noble to stay alive and suffer all the difficulties tossed our way willy nilly or to just end it?  And if we end it, what next? What's out there in the "undiscovered country?"

A long and glorious sleep?  With dreams? What dreams may come?

But hang on.  You know how it goes. (reprinted below)

In light of this Flipside research, how should this soliloquy go? (Apologies to the Bard)

To be Benedict or not

Here's the conundrum.  What people claim consistently under deep hypnosis (the reports from Michael Newton, 7000 cases over 30 years, or Dr. Helen Wambach 2000 cases a decade prior) is that we choose to incarnate.

We choose to be.

They claim we can opt out.  Choose to not come to the planet.  Or choose to not be.

Maybe the play calls for "The cranky drunk uncle." The cereal maker. The cereal eater. The cereal killer.  "I don't wanna play that part - you asked me to play the marauding drunk uncle in the Viking era!  No thank you!  Passola.  Passorama. Ask someone else. I don't care how good I was as your drunk uncle, I don't want to play him again!!!"

"Oooh but you're so good at it" they say.  "I can never learn the lessons I need to learn if someone else plays the part. I might forgive them. I need to learn the lesson of forgiveness. Or letting go. They aren't as good as you.  You're the best drunken uncle out there. Pleeeease?"

Wheedling and cajoling from the soul group and guides.  "They do have a point you know.  You haven't done that part in at least a dozen other performances..."

"Ok fine. If you insist. After all, 80 years on earth feels like a half hour back home.  You want an hour out of my existence?  I will give it to you because I love you unconditionally. But this is the last time I play that role for you." (applause, bowing)

This brings to mind the report of Daniel Day-Lewis giving up acting. 

You can give up hats, but you shouldn't give up why you chose to be on the planet.

Hilarious. You can't give up acting. It's what we do each time we choose a new lifetime.  We give it up when we graduate to the next level; spirit guide, teacher, council member and no longer incarnate.  Etcetera, etcetera, et cet er a.  

Giving up acting is like giving up breathing.  Why would anyone do that? (Besides when has he ever "acted?"  He's always "been" in every role I've seen him in.  I think he's just refering to the circus around the profession.)

Granny knows a conundrum when
 she sees it. (Irene Ryan)

I'd say that idea of "giving up" on acting is "kinda" selfish actually.   He's been convinced his acting chops came from his environment, from his genes.  But he knows that it comes from before that... it was in his conscious mind as a child. Because back there on the flipside, we choose who we are going to be, and what we are going to do, and we choose these occupations because it heals other people.

I've filmed 45 sessions, and have asked dozens for the "first conscious thought they had they would be doing what they're doing."  The FBI agent said "preschool."  I asked why. She said "I started keeping lists on everyone, what they wore, what kind of car they had, what they ate for lunch." We kinda know who we want to be. Question is whether we can get there or not.  But we choose these roles to "help other people." We choose our occupation to "heal other people."

I've been told that "the energy of a lifetime in the arts is very similar to that in healing.  The energy comes from the same place."  People often claim they choose a lifetime as an actor, director, musician to use their energy to "heal other people." (Not making this up, just reporting what they consistently say.) 

Like a doctor. Like a surgeon. Like a shaman. Like a holy man.  "One huge belly laugh can do more to change a person's health or dispostion in an instant."  "Tears work the same, but they require catharsis."  And Daniel Day-Lewis is the walking epitome of catharsis.   

Yes. I got an Oscar.
From Curtis Hanson.
Had to give it back though.

He planned this lifetime. He has honed and crafted and had fun with it. He instinctively knows the shoe maker, the tailor, the working man has the luxury of disappearing into his or her craft.  But acting is a craft as well.  It's the ensuing trivia, the icing of vanity; all of that is a mental image - a puff of smoke blown his way.  Wave those hands, ignore the smoke, and focus on the idea that a profession can and does heal lives.

(I love #DanielDay-Lewis' work, he's fantastic in "#PhantomThread."  I know the great designer Nino Cerruti, and I felt this performance, unconsciously or otherwise, often captured Nino's bemused smile and design style. But I digress.)

Someone somewhere on the planet has been healed by watching a film or a performance. If you can heal one person than your choice to come here was worthwhile.

Really? Hard to believe
when you look like this guy.

I get emails from people who say "I read your books and I no longer see the planet in the same way.  Thank you." (As I've noted, I'll never get those kinds of reviews from my film work, I have written and/or directed 8 theatrical features.  People chuckle, sometimes laugh in my films - but no one was said "That film saved my life.") 

With Judy Dench in Hamlet. 

Actors can do that for people moment by moment.  Heal them, help them see a way out of their diaspora. Out of their doldrums. Out of their predicament.

Daniel is one of those people who can recreate human experience, embody compassion with a flick of his eyebrow, and wave of his hand.  If he wants to "give up acting" - he should add a proviso.  "I will give up acting until I'm cast opposite Meryl Streep."  (Another avatar of intent and healing light within a gesture. I'm not aware of any films they've done together, but would vote to see one.)

I'm not saying "don't give it up because you're good and the industry needs you."  That's all vanity.  "Vanum populatum." (google it) Do it because you still have more people to help and heal and make whole.

Jonathan Pryce checking out Yorick.

But back to Hamlet.

He too is talking about a choice, and the choice to give up acting, or to give up life, is after all - a personal one. It is about free will. Because we don't have to incarnate.

We choose to. To be or not to be. 

That's right. Every frog, every fruit fly chose to be here.  Don't like that analogy?  Sorry, too bad. It's accurate. And we can't kill them either.

Because we cannot "not be."  (First law of thermodynamics. Energy doesn't "die" or disappear, or even dissipate.  It just moves to another dimension, form or in our case realm. Energy cannot be destroyed. Not killed.  Not ended.  Just transformed.) 

Once we are formed as consciousness (willed into existence if you will - or won't - like Will Shakespeare) First "there was the word."  "Will."  And that's how we begin as well.  As will.

We all have free will.  We all are free willed.  (We should free poor Willy now and then as well.)

Nice hat. I get it. Tradition. But
it's also a costume bearing fardels.
Avoid the fardels.

To be on the planet or not.  To incarnate or not. It sounds like may people - based on the amount of complainers out there - wish they had not made that choice.

I hear you. You don't like being here. It's hard here.  It's beyond the capacity of many to navigate.

But mark these words. (Not on your screen, please, in a future book perhaps) Note the concept.  You made the bargain.

You agreed to come here.You said you could handle it. You had the choice to say no but you didn't.  You said "I want to be!"  "I can handle this! I got this! Let's roll!"  And you came here - the mewling welp suckled by his mum, taken care of (or not - it was by your design) and left to fend (or offend) for itself.

To have been. That's the victory. To be able to return home to the loving embrace of our brothers and sisters, of our friends and frenemies - of all the people who have ever been on the planet or have existed in any realm - those fellow travellers who we call our "soul group." To return to their loving embrace after we've successfully navigated the stage as we set out to do.

We've seen our loved ones before and we'll see them again. Inshallah. God willing.  Or our willing.  Will Shakespeare? Will he what precisely?

Free Will.  Indeed. An apt term for telling Will to come to life and unleashing that energy. 

Anyone who has ever been or ever existed exists still.  They're out there. Gone from this stage, but their role not ended.  "Not gone, just not here."  Never ended, just not here.  Off stage. Back stage. Back home.

To be or not to be.  It is the question we all asked and ask ourselves prior to every lifetime. What say you?

"From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember'd; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day." (Enrico the 5th)

"C'mon in the water's fine!"

Shall we take up arms, hold hands and leap into the breach, jump into the fray once more?  Go down there (or over there) to that planet where we get the luxury of breathing fresh air? Where we have the luxury of drinking cool refreshing clean water?  (Unless it's gone.  No longer fresh. Polluted and stale.) Why would we pollute, destroy the place we love to return to?

Where we get to witness a dawn and sunset.... we get to witness life all around us?  Despite closing our eyes for a third of our lives, despite being asleep for fully one third of the trip - we get to be here on this mangificent blue ball hurtling through space.  What a joy!  What a delight!!!

Why would we ever choose not to be here? Ah yes, back stage. Back home. Where we reconnect with our loved ones. Where we experience unconditional love on a permanent basis. The kind of love Will wrote about in his sonnets, the kind of love that is beyond comprehension, beyond the capacity of the brain to understand which can only be known by experience. That kind of love.

I could go on.  I will go on.  Be.  Don't not be. Trust in the choice you made. You chose to be. Try to understand and enjoy that choice. Make others happy they made the choice to be with you.  
Be all you can be. In your heart. In others' hearts.

Catch you on the Flipside. 

HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. (except we don't... the troubles end to be sure, but we don't end)
To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. (That we chose to experience so we could understand or know them)
 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. (Or not. Some are able to lucid dream. Some experience dreams as reality. Some believe that the dream state is reality. We have a poor choice of words for a myriad of experience that we can only refer to as a dream.)
There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? (All stones in our path that become diamonds once we've overcome them.  A bodkin is a knife, and one could argue that the cigarette, the drunk driving is a form of bodkin, that we don't see as threatening our existence - except when it does.)
 Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
(Um, like Jason Bourne - we all come back from that excursion. All, except those who choose not to return. That's up to them. But even you dear Will have made this journey many times.)
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. (Or, people realize that they chose to be here, that being here is actually a fun place to be, even if someone has murdered your father the King.  If it's revenge you want, your best option is to serve it by making the perpetrator realize he too chose this lifetime, and nothing can kill your father - hence why he keeps showing up as your ghost.  Or did you not realize that?) -- Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.  (One can hope that in Ophelia's prayers, she prays for Hamlet to realize that compassion is the greatest gift he can learn, and forgiveness the gift he can bestow.  But alas, then we would have no drama.  Conflict is the essence of drama, so thank heavens that he existed in Will's mind so that we can witness the kind of drama we don't have to live through!  If we watch this kind of drama on stage and learn what we don't want to be, it's arguably a form of "experiencing it during a lifetime" and if we've learned the lesson, we don't have to repeat it.  Exeunt.

Hacking the Afterlife is available here:
Flipside is here:
It's a Wonderful Afterlife is here:
and you are Here. Be Here Now.

Memories of a native American lifetime

For fans of my book, "Flipside: A Tourist's Guide on How to Navigate the Afterlife" you may remember that during my first between life session I "remembered" a previous lifetime where I saw myself as a Lakota "medicine man."

As noted in the book, I was not familiar with the Lakota, other than the film "Dances With Wolves" which does a pretty good job of depicting what life in the 1860's was for them.  Further, I was not a "believer" in past life regression, I was making a documentary about the work of Michael Newton (Also called "Flipside") and agreed to do one of his "between life session" with the idea that I could "disprove it" in some fashion.  

After all, I didn't believe I could be hypnotized, nor was I coming to a session believing I had a past life (or that the between lives realm existed) and thought that by participating in a hypnosis session, I was determined I would not be "talked into" saying that I was seeing anything that I wasn't seeing.

The Taj. With Santa Martini

However, as people who've read Flipside know; that's not what happened.

I started the session like most people do, talking about memories of growing up, and at some point Jimmy Quast (eastonhypnosis.com) asked me to "return to a lifetime that had some significance to this lifetime."  He gently talked to me about traveling somewhere, through space perhaps, until I saw something.  I saw nothing.  Blackness.  I said so. Repeatedly.  

I used space on the cover of "Flipside" as it reminded me
of what it felt like moving through it.

But Jimmy has been doing this a long time, and he made a simple suggestion.  "Just look down." That's when I began to see and visualize and sense a lifetime that I wasn't familiar with - but since then feel as if I become more familiar with it, the more I research the time and era.

I'm going to include that memory below.  But recently I traveled back to Wisconsin, back to the land of my Irish cousins, to attend the funeral of my dear departed uncle who had 11 children, and made it to 96 years old. And I spent some time with my cousin, his son, who is a historian of sorts, about all things native American about tribes of the region.  

It was at the funeral of his mom, some 5 years ago, when I first revealed to him that I had done a past life session and remembered a lifetime as a native American.  That I had claimed during the session to remember a lifetime as a Lakota.  

It turns out my cousin is an expert in their history.  He said to me "Just tell me what you were wearing."

I told him, and he asked "how many feathers did you have?" I said "two."  He said "were they up or down?" I said "down, tied in my hair."  He said "that would make you a medicine man."  I asked about the memory of a name I had "watanka." (something I searched for on the internet but could not find) and he said "it's a derivation of Wakan Tanka - which means "Great spirit."  As a spokesman for the Great spirit it's what they would have called you." 

Further, I asked him about my memory of my tribe being wiped out by Huron - when the Huron are traditionally near Lake Huron, and the Sioux were in Montana.  He said "You're sitting on the spot where they fought for 60 years. Eau Claire, Wisconsin."

All of these details were new information to me.  None of it I had read or could find online or in books.  Subsequently he's given me some books that contain the histories of these people, and I just finished reading William Warren's book "History of the Ojibway People."  Warren was an Ojibway (Chippewa) and he traces the story (through eyewitness interview of tribal elders) of how the Huron people fought and wound up in upper Wisconsin near Minnesota, and how the Dakota/Lakota fought for their hunting grounds along that region.

Ojibway delegation 1911.
https://www.pinterest.com/taniaochoa1/ojibwe-or-chippewa-nation

It's a difficult book to read because it's 200 years of detailed slaughter.  The Ojibway fought their way across the upper midwest, and some claim their name comes from the look of someone who had been captured and torched by them; "puckered" as in "burnt flesh."  (Others claim it relates to other versions of the word, but their fire punishment is well documented.)  

Basically it read like two angry football teams eking out a few yards at a time over decades, except they were using tomahawks, arrows and axes to cut off the scalps of their victims.  It was a brutal tale of warriors fighting to earn feathers - each feather represented a dead member of the other tribe (basically.) 

One funny note; they invented lacrosse and played it like crazed teams. If a ball went into a house by accident the teams would "tear down the house to get it."  If the ball went into the water they would claw and drown each other retrieving it.  

According to the book, Chief Pontiac used a lacrosse game to draw the British troops out of their forts to watch it - 200 natives racing back and forth, and when the gates of the fort were opened, they threw the ball inside.  As they raced to get it, their wives handed over the knives, axes and sawed off guns they were hiding in their cloaks.  The Ojibway slaughtered the garrison (and took 13 other forts), which is why Pontiac is more than just a name of a city in Michigan.

In terms of observation from the Flipside perspective - I can see how choosing to be the member of a tribe was in many cases, a lifetime chosen to participate in the playing field of life.  Definitely not one in the stands watching others duke it out, but one in which they fought for every inch of land.  Many warriors were dispatched to the hunting grounds, and by the time the Americans showed up, many of their warriors were already gone.

The point being; we choose our lifetimes. Some of us choose lifetimes that are in the playing field fighting with weapons, others choose the stands to watch the action and root for their heroes.

Interesting how the book notes how the French did a masterful job of trading and honoring the native traditions, (doling out medals and awards, and leaving them in peace) which were followed by the British who had less sympathy, but still allowed the native Americans to follow their traditions - followed by the long knives (Americans) who did everything in their power to disrupt, change or wipe out their traditions.  

We all live with the after effects of that diaspora.

A white squirrel I saw in Eau Claire. 

But when I went to visit my cousin, I drove through the autumn leaves of the region, and opened my consciousness up to the possibility that I might have "lived there before."  There's an odd thing that occurs when one does that - certain vistas start to look familiar, rather than just beautiful. In this case, I was driving around Eau Claire, and it was the first snowfall of the season.  I stopped by to see my cousin after the funeral and we chatted a bit about this research.  He wrote me this note today:


"I have been researching the history of the Huron, as it relates to encounters with the Lakota/Dakota. Traditionally, the Lakota inhabited Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas. The Huron homeland was the Mackinac Island and Lake Huron region. So, they would not have been traditional enemies.

However, the Iroquois battled the Huron in their homeland and forced them from the region in 1652. Some Huron went South into Michigan. Another group moved farther Northwest to Chequamegon Bay on Lake Superior and allied with their old friends, the Ojibwa.

I feel that, IT IS IN THIS TIME FRAME THAT YOUR BATTLE WITH the LAKOTA and HURON ENSUED. (Between 1652 – 1670’s)

Historically, it is the only time that they would have crossed paths in a war-like manner. We need to find a battle, as described in your "memory" in that period of time, that occurred on one of the many tributaries of the Miss. (It could be the Crow Wing, St. Croix, Chippewa, St. Louis, Minnesota, Kettle, or a number of other rivers that empty into the Mississippi in that region.)"



I had not mentioned this to him, but during my session when I was asked "When did this occur?" I said "late 1600's.  Like 1670."  

The chapter doesn't include that note, I trimmed the transcript, but it exists in my notes.  So technically, the memory could be correct. I was surprised to read it in his email today, and felt that "zing" of truth about it.

  Here it is:

(reproduced with the author's permission from the book "Flipside: a Tourist's Guide on How to Navigate the Afterlife." ) Jimmy Quast, trained by Michael Newton in hypnotherapy, conducted the session.  After going through memories of my lifetime, a memory of "being born" we got to a point where I was saying "I don't see anything."  Finally, he said the following:

               Just look down. What do you see?

               This is unusual. (I saw my bare feet in a creek. The water was cold, soothing. My feet bloody, scratched.) What's coming to me is... Native American Indian. I'm a male. And I'm trying to get the impression here... What’s on my legs? I want to say buckskin, there's a feather. Two feathers, not up, but down... tied in my hair, black hair, and I can feel my clothing - suede vest, pants... bare feet.[1]

               How old are you?

               Seems like 28. I'm looking around; it's hills, trees and dried old grass. It's the dry season...

Are you alone?

Not around anyone else at the moment – I’m by a creek; I can put my foot in. I have wounds on my feet; don't know why, but... I notice they're beaten up, feels good to put them in the water.

               Is that why you've come here?

               I come here for solace to get away.  I think it's about my spirit guide. I come here to commune.

               A spiritual connection with your guide... what do they call you?

               I heard Tan’ tanka’ mon, I think that means “running bear” which sounds funny to me; tatanka... (Remembering the Kevin Costner film “Dances With Wolves,” where he was a Lakota Sioux named “ Buffalo ” – Tatanka). In my case it means “Runs from bear.”  (I said this as an observation that I was not a warrior)  It might be "Watanka"…^[2] 

               Your spirit guide is here by the water?

               Not a human guide. It's a cougar.^[3] Mountain lion.

               What does that mean to you?

               Hunter, alone.  

               Would it be okay to visit where your people are?

               (Sigh)  I’d prefer not to.

               Where is your village?

               My overall impression is that... it's gone. (Sigh) 

               Just relax... (Puts his hand on my forehead)

               I see. I didn't want to tell you about it. There's a wife, involved... there was a problem.

               You’re safe, tell me what happened.

               (I started to choke up. In my mind's eye a village of teepees and bodies everywhere. A massacre. Lots of blood. People hacked to death.)

               What happened?

               Hacked to death.

               By whom?

               Damned Hurons. ^[4] Everyone's dead.

               Except you?

               (Through tears) I was away. I was doing something else, picking something up. I just came back and everyone is dead.

               Your wife?

               Yes.

 NOTE: In my minds eye, I saw this village of massacred Indians whom I sincerely believed to be my people.  I went to a teepee, the class kind with leather flap and sticks holding it up, and pulled it aside to see a beautiful woman with long black hair lying in a pool of blood, dead. I was overwhelmed with the emotion of seeing my dead wife.  But I was also conscious of the fact that this emotion swept over me – If I was making this up, why was I so connected to this emotion? I started to sob.

                I had one child... My son was taken. (Feeling the full emotion of that thought.)

               And where do you go now? Do you have any place?

               That's why I'm here, by the river, soaking my feet. I'm trying to understand.

               I want you to move to your last day in this life. In this body. Are you still alone?

               I'm alone.  I see. It's alcohol and drowning. I got drunk and went to the river and just slipped away. (A muddy brown river, floating down, holding a whisky bottle, bobbing like a cork.)

               Not much else to do, was there?     

               No. Everything about my life that I cared for - my family, my culture, my world is gone.

               Move away from that body. You're free now.  Are you looking back?

               Much happiness.

               You feel any remorse?

               No, I’m just passing into "the Great White." I've done this many times. It's time to move home.  No reason to linger.

 

NOTE: I saw myself holding a whiskey bottle, clear, with half its contents gone.  Some years ago, I was at a Christmas party with some old friends, and they pulled out a bottle of whiskey from 1840 that had been in the family for generations.  We all took a sip of this concoction, which was smooth and burning at the same time – nothing like modern day liquor.  At that moment I had a flash of me holding an empty whiskey bottle. Also when I said "move home" my conscious mind said "Where's that? My home in Chicago? Or the home from this lifetime? What does that mean?"

 

A JOURNEY TO THE LIFE BETWEEN LIVES

               Tell me what this is like, you're moving away.

               Going home?  (I'm) Looking ahead. Just getting together with my friends. (I saw a fast field of white in the distance, then I moved into it at lightning speed until the faces and bodies came into full focus. A crowd of people greet me). They’re here with me... It's just lovely. Lots of friends.  Like 20. Smiling. Embracing me. Everybody's here.

               Recognize anyone?

               My wife. (The Indian one; long black hair, and a young boy next to her. A profound sense of connection with them.)

               The one who was killed.

               My son. (I see) Both of them. (I saw them standing together, smiling at me).

               Who else?

               My father. (Charles, who passed away in 2003, 5  years earlier.)

               How are they arranged?

Sort of a semi circle.  About 20 or so. Lots of them.

               Who comes out of this group first?

               An elder.  Comes out from the center, about twelve o’clock.  A male, white hair, somebody very gentle, welcoming me, he's my grandfather at one point... (Not in this life - He has a kindly, old face, very distinct, about 70 years old. Smiling. A warm greeting)

---

[1] I found out later from a Lakota historian that medicine men had two feathers pointing down.  

^[2] Tatanka, means "Bull Buffalo" in Lakota. According to my historian, it‘s definitely a Lakota name. Watanka means “Great Spirit.”

^[3] Some Native American tribes have a “Vision Quest” where they commune with an animal spirit, who becomes their “spirit guide.”

^[4] My conscious mind thought - "If I'm calling myself by a Sioux name, I couldn't be fighting with a tribe associated with the East Coast.” But post session, I discovered through research that the Sioux and the Huron fought a series of battles in the upper Midwest, near Eau Claire , Wisconsin , in the 1840's." (END QUOTE)

 

Years later, I examined this lifetime again in a subsequent session, asking myself "So where was I, when the battle started?"  I offered that I was "out gathering medicine for the upcoming battle" that I had "foreseen" or felt was coming... and I had gone out to gather the healing herbs when the battle began, herbs that I would use to cure wounds... and when the battle began I had run up the hill to the creek... tearing my feet on the way.  

But I can tell you that I have never been inside a Teepee, but in this vision, when I opened mine, I could feel the raw skin of the leather - a feeling that I've not known in this lifetime but feel I now know.  Also, when I saw this woman with black hair lying face down at my feet in a pool of blood, I had the feeling "Oh no, they've killed my wife and taken my son."  

Consciously I was saying "wait, what? How do you know there was a son here? How do you know this is your wife?"  But physically I felt the deepest most profound sorrow I've ever known - and thank god have not had to know in this lifetime... but as I felt it I thought "If i'm making this up, why would I allow myself to experience this kind of pain?"  

Indeed.  Why would I allow myself to experience that depth of pain?  The only answer I can come up with is; to share it with you.

Quantum Memory, Identical Twins and the Flipside

Here's an example of quantum entanglement existing in nature.

Justin Goldberg’s Search For Long-Lost Twin Is Story Made For Hollywood

by Bruce Haring
November 24, 2017 9:00am


"The 51-year-old executive recently was awakened to the possibility of his twin’s existence thanks to a chance meeting at Los Angeles’s Farmers Market between his teenage daughter and the alleged twin. His daughter saw the doppelganger, and was so stunned at the resemblance to her father that she was afraid to directly approach. Instead, she surreptitiously filmed him, and later showed her father the footage.

Seeing the mobile phone video reawakened feelings Goldberg had been burying all his life. He knew he was adopted from an early age, and was never bothered by that. But he always found himself looking at faces in the crowd, trying to connect with someone out there for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. When he saw the film, it triggered him to begin exploring his past in depth.

What he found was chilling. The Louise Wise Agency, the New York adoption service that matched him to his family, actually had a dark secret — they were part of a psychological experiment to separate twins and study their life paths to see whether nature or nurture was the biggest influence. Dr. Peter Neubauer, a noted psychologist, worked at Bellevue Hospital and convinced the agency that the study was important. Since no laws governed such splitting of twins at the time (they have since been changed), there was nothing barring the action.

The Wise Agency experiments were detailed in the book Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited (Random House). It’s the story of two women who accidentally meet and discover their kinship and connection to the Louise Wise Agency’s role in their separation. In the book, they confront the doctor, who insists he did nothing wrong. The study itself is sealed and allegedly housed at Yale University.

When Goldberg began his investigation of having a twin, his search led him back to Louise Wise, where he discovered the book. He also uncovered an unsettling fact: there were 13 sets of twins used in the long-term study of separated lives. All of them had eventually met each other by chance — except for two sets of twins that had never been aware of each other’s existence or met.   

...“I never thought I was a twin, but there’s something about this story that seems too strange to be discarded,” he says. “There’s a part of me that’s pretty confident, and I wanted to take people along on the ride with me to figure it out...”
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Aside from the obvious feelings of dismay at being separated at birth as the result of an experiment, there's something else going on here worth noting.  His daughter sees her father in a crowded place.  So startling is the resemblance, she whips out her cell phone and films him. 

I once was walking on Broadway in upper Manhattan, passed a store, walked a few feet passed the entrance and stopped feeling as if I "had seen someone I know." I doubled back and went into the store, and then heard his voice. It was my cousin who I hadn't seen in 20 years, he no longer had hair (as I last saw him) but from the back of his bald head, I had "recognized" who he was.

How could that be?  One can argue that it's like the facial recognition software, the shape of his head, his ears perhaps - but there are millions of heads we see every day.  Why would I instantly recognize it?

Can you recognize me in this group portrait?

It may be more related to quantum entanglement than we see on the surface.  As we know, entanglement is the scientific proof that two objects created in the same place always "know each other" no matter where they are in the universe.  "Know each other" is a colloquial way of putting "If one is stimulated, the other reacts."  It's what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance" and proves there is something that travels "faster than light" - as the two objects are somehow "communicating with each other" despite distance.  Communicating "simultaneously."

Spooky Action at a Distance

Well we have an example of that in nature.  It's obvious, it's in front of us like the nose on our face, and yet has never been studied from a science point of view. (From a psychology point of view to be sure - many books on identical twins and their behaviors, but none on "Why" they have experiences of phantom pain.)

"Quantum Memory" is what I'm calling what twins experience when one is hurt, injured, or some event happens, and simultaneously their identical twin feels the same event. (Not to be confused with "Phantom Memory" as term used to discredit deja vu.  People claim that there could not be a memory of something that occurred before - but if the synapses fire over the same file in the brain, it makes sense that someone would associate that electrical charge with something similar that occurred before - either during this lifetime or a previous one.)

Further, there's some evidence of identical twins remembering the same event even though only one person experience it.

"One 54-year-old identical twin, on hearing the other claim ownership of the memory of a roller-skating injury from when they were eight or nine, responded indignantly. "Well, that actually happened to me if you don't mind… I think you'll find if you think really hard it was me." The other, yielding ground, eventually responded: "Oh well, I guess we get confused; it happened so long ago."
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What these scientist fail to see is that consciousness does not always uniquely exist inside the brain.  And if my identical twin (my quantum entanglement other) experiences an event, it's entirely possible that I've "seen" the event because I'm a member of that person's soul group, and I'm so closely aligned with them I think that I experienced it as well.

I interviewed an identical twin recently.  

She's given me two insights into her experience of the planet.  I asked her what her first conscious memory of knowing her sister was - she said about age 3 or 4 at a birthday event, when both of them were blowing out candles.  She says she looked across and recognized her as a "friend."  I asked what the feeling was like.  She said "a feeling of safety. Of security. Of being home."  I asked if it was associated with anything stronger; she said "Unconditional love."

That's the term I hear frequently from people who've either had a near death experience and "went home" or people under deep hypnosis who claim to have visited the "between lives realm."  The most common experience they have during this event is a feeling of "unconditional love."  Not "conditional love" as we know it on the planet (and hence could not be cryptomnesia, as it doesn't exist here per se) but a love that is "unconditional" and all encompassing.

The other thing this twin told me - I asked if she had any experiences of "feelings" when her sister was affected by something or hurt.  She said "not that I'm aware of but we did share a dream once."  I asked about the dream.  She said she and her sister were "in a classroom, or a place where a woman was teaching them about a particular topic.  And she used us as an example."  I asked what the example was; she said "of unconditional love."

There it is again. (For more classroom details, see "Flipside" or my other books) And what is unconditional love?  A form of quantum mechanics.  Feeling as if we are connected to another, so closely that they are part of ourselves.

And finally, today I was speaking to a friend whose son is no longer on the planet, and he said that his son "always asks if I am happy." He wrote "I respond happier as things could always be so much worse."

I replied: "That's funny.  It's like someone saying "how's your day?"  and you respond "Well it's not night."  

I was filming someone recently and asked "so what's the difference between being here and there?" And they said "Well, I can fly for one."  I said "What's the value in that?" They said "I just think it, and I'm there."  I said "What do you miss most about not being on the planet?"  "To breathe.  The thing that you take for granted every day.  Opening your mouth and pulling that delicious oxygen into you.  You can't see it, you don't know it, but it's what I miss the most."  

So I try to allow that is a reframe - being happy that I'm breathing (for one day I won't.)  Doesn't mean I won't again, but there'll be a pause between breaths so to speak, so I try to focus on why I chose this lifetime, why I chose to be here, and what lessons in love I'm here to impart or learn." 

My two cents.

"Hacking the Afterlife"

Being On The Right Path

I normally try to avoid reading reviews. 

After my film "Limit Up" opened, I asked Luana Anders (my co-writer) to read me an "edited review" over the phone (From Roger Ebert "thumbs way down") 

She read ""Limit Up"... was directed... by Richard Martini." ...followed by silence. 

(Ha! I think it's still funny, timely, included a chapter on Roger in "Flipside" proving he was more familiar with the afterlife than he imagined) 

Came across this review for "Hacking the Afterlife" today, and well, decided to share:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Life changing read...."

By E. Kepneron July 6, 2017
Format: Audible Audio Edition

"This is my first book by Richard Martini and my first book on past life / between life regression therapy. I love the fact Richard is a film maker and researcher and not a medium or hypnotherapist. There is an honesty, a purity to his writing and to the reading of his book as well. 

I listened to the Audible edition and am grateful he recorded this book for those of us who only have time to listen to books these days. He speaks as a person who has heard the same stories over and over. He isn't trying to sell anyone on any of his ideas. 

In fact, he says multiple times in the book for people to "get their money back, PLEASE" if this book bothers them or doesn't ring true for them. 

As a Christian with more universal beliefs, I have long wondered about souls I've loved who have passed on and seem to help me from the other side, about my purpose for my time and my family's time on the earth, about Christ and our obsession with his birth and death instead of his life, and about how different religions seem to teach so many of the same concepts and carry the same energy. 

Often many of my thoughts on these topics seem to be disconnected and unrelated. This book has helped me integrate these concepts for my own life while providing a reassuring and peaceful vision of what was before and what awaits on the flip side. 

This is a long book full of fascinating verifiable stories. I will likely listen to it again and I know I will gain more insight each time I hear from Richard and his research. Definitely life changing and definitely worth the read, if you are open."

At some point I've realized, I will never ever, not ever - get reviews in my film career with the headline "Life changing film." 

I guess I'm on the right path after all. 

Thanks E. Kepneron for reminding me, wherever you are!


https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Afterlife-Practical-Advice-Flipside-ebook/product-reviews/B01J63P3R6/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewopt_srt?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews&sortBy=recent&pageNumber=1