…..in the current paradigm our sense of ‘self’ incorporates our entire body. Epidermis is what most all of us regard as the boundary of our ‘self’. Our ego’s existential attachment to our mind extends to include our entire physical being as ‘self’ – anchored by our mind as its center, director, and base of existence. Our abject fear of death is rooted in this attachment: we believe we are our mind/body, hopelessly clinging to an iron-clad conviction that when our physical form expires, our ‘self’ dies along with it.
In the next paradigm, we consciously wear our body. From our voyage on the ‘razor’s edge’ that is life (see Creation), our expanded awareness perceives our body as simply another component among all phenomena. This corresponds in concept to the way we infuse our identity into a job, relationship, etc. until its ‘lifetime’ ends, or wear a trademark outfit as personal presentation that we discard when it has worn out…..
Consciousness definitely survives the transition into the bliss place.
I have been there , had total release from the physical plane, been completely inculcated into the other world, plugged in, expanding and contracting in a magnificent limitless timeless formless place.
It was familiar to me, it was the first place, it is from this place I began my journey of awareness. First I was connected to everything in this place, super absolute total connection with the universe. At a point time or acceleration was introduced and at this point I became self aware. Incarnation followed. I made some kind of arrangement to incarnate.
When I was 3.5 years old spirit introduced me to the other place and gave me a knowledge download so that I could understand what it was that I was being shown. A nde (unconscious under water in the ocean and sunk to the bottom near a reef) and a subsequent re-awakening rekindled my acquaintance with the bliss place.
There is no heaven vs he'll. There is only one place and irrespective of what u did in life you are welcomed back. All is forgiven during transition.
For me this is a reality.
Coming back to life bought with it some new gifts and abilities.
These are all good points in understanding the issue of "life after death" and in an academic sense our collective knowledge of this issue has indeed increased since the spiritualists approached it over a hundred years ago. The question i bring up, is whether this pursuit, framed academically, has really gotten us anywhere much ? Do these New -- Paradigms, Metaphors and Directions, acquired while seeking Beyond Self and Personality -- really get us further than the ones arrived at in previous eras ? Or perhaps were the concepts the spiritualists applied, right for them, while ours are appropriate for our times ?
Could it be that the idea of progress for progress' sake, is just another grand illusion, in effect keeping us from doing what we really should be doing -- while in this special situation of existence on the Earth plane, i.e. "Oh, we know so much more now, than the spiritualists ever did, it'll all be a piece of cake when the time comes" ? Alternative Egyptologist, John Anthony West highlighted the religiosity of this attitude, by calling it "The Church of Progress." From his in-depth understanding of the spiritual life of the ancient Egyptian civilization, progress wasn't big on their to do list.
i know it seems that revelation of new takes on the matter, as conveyed by each of the esteemed researchers you interviewed, would add to finally resolving it, but isn't this barking up the wrong tree -- of life and death ? However i do admit, without being the least bit cynical, that pulling together all these fresh perspectives on this age old question, is still a very noble venture.
However maybe the real objective to this pursuit is more like, what has already been coined by some -- "unlearning." For all the acclaimed objectivity of the scientific method, isn't the concept of science itself, a dogma, especially when we begin to glimpse that consciousness is necessary for matter to even exist, but science still demands that matter and all else, exist independently ? However using our mind is obviously still important, essential in fact, but using it in the service of . . . what ? This to me is the real question. Once we step out of giving our intellect full and autonomous authority, we seem to immediately become heretics doing a sacrilege -- in regards to this Church thing again, whether its progress or science. Can't science really stand on its own merits ? Maybe in truth, it really can't !
To me, in some sense, some big sense -- "science" is counterposed by "life." You know like people who really know some stuff, some good stuff, but haven't acquired it at an institute of higher learning, may cite "the school of life" instead. Learn from them instead and eventually become them, through the real progress -- of your own life -- but also the collective one of your tribe (and/or all of humanity). In effect -- serve life itself. And use your intellect to make up all the "takes" necessary, as needed, for each evolving situation of this -- "life."
However, there could still be some personal benefit to a deep search for metaphysical truth, as it seems to be for the theoretical physicists driven to search for the ultimate theory unifying of all of the known forces of Nature (but didn't Einstein already do that, and it was kept secret ?). In alchemy it is known that it is never really about turning lead into gold but the real objective is the transformation of consciousness, however the pursuit is still necessary and needs to be undertaken with extreme dedication, as if it is the only thing worthy of doing -- this path with a purpose then configuring, aligning and transforming the consciousness of the Alchemist.
Then what about this "death" that it would be foolish to deny we will encounter at some point ? Maybe that's all been taken care of already in doing our best in life ? Sure there are all those "takes on how it all works" -- ones that can't be mentioned while still adhering to proper scientific inquiry -- like the concept of the "soul." Interestingly, the Egyptians had a different concept that really blows ours out of the water -- of the Ba and the Ka in perpetual dialectic relationship to each other -- till death, when the prospect of the evolved Akh becomes possible through the merging of the two. Now wasn't that evolved, and doesn't it demonstrate that metaphysical concepts like these, although having merit and meaning, are still specific to each culture and epoch of time ?
Then what about the "guide" that inevitably appears in all of the accounts of NDEs i've read -- giving the recently departed, but arrived there instead -- their choice of going on into the afterlife or going back to do some special mission for humanity or at least taking another stab at their personal life plan of balancing out some inequity to their soul, taken in previous incarnations. But this immediately brings up the already coined terms "dharma" and "karma" -- and we can't have those in any respectable review of literature, while retaining academic merit. Ah, this is going to be impossible !
Honestly this keeps me going back to tidbits of wise counsel i'm come across in my journeys -- either literary, geographic or interdimensional. This is one that made me take notice on the eve of the plandemic (eves are more potent than the days-of); it's by a wise Hopi: https://www.pressenza.com/2021/08/hopi-indian-chief-white-eagle-this-moment-humanity-is-experiencing-can-be-seen-as-a-door-or-a-hole/ If we prepare and take death as a "door" we walk through, rather than a "hole" we are forced to fall into (by any of our life's circumstances) -- we will continue with the same attitude of care, joy and positivity, we held for each other, our Earth, and ourselves.
But yet although i keep hearing this type of wisdom, sometimes in sequences that could be framed in Jung's concept of "synchronicity" -- in each instance having a slightly different form but essentially the same message -- one for me personally, i still keep being drawn to know stuff -- to really figure stuff out (metaphysical stuff) -- somehow as if to act as my legacy that i will hold up as i pass through the dimensional barrier. Undoubtedly it will be laughed at -- but it will likely be i myself who is the one laughing, while lamenting rhetorically "not again."
Great post, with one exception. You use acronyms, but don't give us the details of what the acronyms stand for. So we are left to try and guess. I've gotten in the habit of helping the reader understand because there are so many acronyms now days it's hard to decipher. When I use an acronym I do it like this: Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) then when ever I need to use FBI the reader knows what I'm referring to. I'm in agreement with the other commenters on this and most of your post. Having experienced a Near Death Experience (NDE) in my senior year of high school it took me almost 2 decades to understand what I had experienced and integrate it into my life to make sense of it all. We are all one consciousness, but individual expressions of such. When we lose this physical vehicle we remain an individual expression of consciousness within the collective consciousness. If we use water as a comparison to consciousness. We are like a rain drop that falls into the ocean. We may meld within the whole we still remain individual as a single bee in a series of hives. The energy of consciousness remains individual but we have access to the whole of consciousness energy if we train our physical vehicle to access those levels of consciousness. Experiencing the light of Love for the brief time I was exposed to it. That is the best expression of the experience using words to try to paint the picture. As I am not aware of better words to use as a paint or canvas to express the journey. Fear is put within us to overcome. At least that has been my experience. You need to face and overcome your fear and your fear will change for another challenge. The more you do this, the calmer you become and the less frequent the challenges come. I spent 20 years fighting fire. I've faced and over came numerous fears and challenges. To the point it's all a jig saw puzzle now you just calmly try to decide where that situation, drama, experience, etc. fits into the whole picture. Hope this helps. Great article... Peace...
More primitive humans could only record what they understood to be happening based on their current experiences, with all the real understandings in this article and reader comments. For instance. John was told to record his dream or vision, and that description is available in the book of Revelation. Loosely, he described commerce in the last days, as a number on one’s hand or forehead to buy or sell. Perhaps, John observed todays individual, presenting a credit card cupped in his hand, or compact cell phone presented with a digital passport.
Or even a computer chip implanted under the skin, now currently being done in large corporations to bypass lanyard I.D.’s.
On another thought, many persons today have verified recollections of people, places and events that took place many years before their birth, and described places they had never been. Reincarnation?
The door I open, is that I consider early man trying to record and pass down stories of events as best he could understand.
Humans who embrace bad while embodied here in this life go to a different place than humans who embrace love.
My spiritual experiences, visitations, and senses have proven to me, beyond doubt, that we are surrounded in real time by loving spirits, ancestors, ancient souls, those who pass before us. We need only think of them, talk to them, acknowledge them and they hear us.
Sometimes they present a sign in an observant, quiet moment.
We are loved, all of us, and supported more than we could ever imagine, by spirits.
There are spirits who do not reside in the light, as well. I have seen them and felt their desire for attention, a pulling toward them, if you will. They are unhappy, but choose their path through their own behavior and ill will. I acknowledged them: "I see you. I'm not interested. That's not where I'm headed."
The welcome and acceptance of light and love is where my heart naturally goes. And man, it is beautiful. They are beautiful. I do not fear death. The warmth and love in the spirit world is Universal, whole, unconditional, and where I plan to reside to assist those in need of it after life in this body. I will join my Mom there, my brother, my college friend, all part of a loving network, after my body dies.
They are right here among us, see us, hear us. We need only call on or think of them to know their presence.
My sense is, is that yes our personality is constructed, but also contains the personality of our 'soul', and is expressed to greater or lesser degrees in this life. I don't think energy is fundamental, I think consciousness is, and consciousness directs energy into form. I don't believe we meld back into a soup of greater consciousness after death, losing the boundary of our personal soul consciousness. I believe we are both part of the greater soul consciousness and a unique expression of it, after death also. I think Jesus tried to impart that to us. If I didn't have the common experiences of remote viewing, precognition, communication to souls disembodied, I most likely would believe all of this was codswallop, so as a naturally doubting Thomas, I am glad I am reassured with such experiences. But it is only partial reassurance, being embodied is the most familiar experience I have as well as interaction with other embodied souls, and the unfamiliar is frightening to me at least. I just don't see how we can truly capture through the lens of science the mechanics of what is going on in non-material reality, I think it really is like trying to nail jelly to the wall. Going back to Jesus, he demonstrated according to what is written (and I hope it is not exaggerated, perhaps it is) the non local, non physical nature of reality and he tried to inform us that it is powered creatively by 'love' consciousness. I don't like using that word 'love' because a word really doesn't convey the true meaning. It is an experience, a very powerful and profound experience that I think we humans rarely experience, even if we think we do.
Here’s the first book I’ve read from an NDE’r, who experienced the separation of the Soul from the Self and actually describes it.
https://www.amazon.com/My-Self-Soul-James-Debar/dp/0980906601/ref=sr_1_1?crid=20QVAMKJOTTYS&keywords=My+self%2C+my+soul+by+james+debar&qid=1697312927&sprefix=my+self%2C+my+soul+by+james+debar%2Caps%2C145&sr=8-1
Evidently our Souls are here to ‘experience’ the Self (the Ego).
"Hypothetically…..
…..in the current paradigm our sense of ‘self’ incorporates our entire body. Epidermis is what most all of us regard as the boundary of our ‘self’. Our ego’s existential attachment to our mind extends to include our entire physical being as ‘self’ – anchored by our mind as its center, director, and base of existence. Our abject fear of death is rooted in this attachment: we believe we are our mind/body, hopelessly clinging to an iron-clad conviction that when our physical form expires, our ‘self’ dies along with it.
In the next paradigm, we consciously wear our body. From our voyage on the ‘razor’s edge’ that is life (see Creation), our expanded awareness perceives our body as simply another component among all phenomena. This corresponds in concept to the way we infuse our identity into a job, relationship, etc. until its ‘lifetime’ ends, or wear a trademark outfit as personal presentation that we discard when it has worn out…..
…..hypothetically….."
https://bohobeau.net/2022/10/24/the-next-paradigm/
Consciousness definitely survives the transition into the bliss place.
I have been there , had total release from the physical plane, been completely inculcated into the other world, plugged in, expanding and contracting in a magnificent limitless timeless formless place.
It was familiar to me, it was the first place, it is from this place I began my journey of awareness. First I was connected to everything in this place, super absolute total connection with the universe. At a point time or acceleration was introduced and at this point I became self aware. Incarnation followed. I made some kind of arrangement to incarnate.
When I was 3.5 years old spirit introduced me to the other place and gave me a knowledge download so that I could understand what it was that I was being shown. A nde (unconscious under water in the ocean and sunk to the bottom near a reef) and a subsequent re-awakening rekindled my acquaintance with the bliss place.
There is no heaven vs he'll. There is only one place and irrespective of what u did in life you are welcomed back. All is forgiven during transition.
For me this is a reality.
Coming back to life bought with it some new gifts and abilities.
Raoul.
These are all good points in understanding the issue of "life after death" and in an academic sense our collective knowledge of this issue has indeed increased since the spiritualists approached it over a hundred years ago. The question i bring up, is whether this pursuit, framed academically, has really gotten us anywhere much ? Do these New -- Paradigms, Metaphors and Directions, acquired while seeking Beyond Self and Personality -- really get us further than the ones arrived at in previous eras ? Or perhaps were the concepts the spiritualists applied, right for them, while ours are appropriate for our times ?
Could it be that the idea of progress for progress' sake, is just another grand illusion, in effect keeping us from doing what we really should be doing -- while in this special situation of existence on the Earth plane, i.e. "Oh, we know so much more now, than the spiritualists ever did, it'll all be a piece of cake when the time comes" ? Alternative Egyptologist, John Anthony West highlighted the religiosity of this attitude, by calling it "The Church of Progress." From his in-depth understanding of the spiritual life of the ancient Egyptian civilization, progress wasn't big on their to do list.
i know it seems that revelation of new takes on the matter, as conveyed by each of the esteemed researchers you interviewed, would add to finally resolving it, but isn't this barking up the wrong tree -- of life and death ? However i do admit, without being the least bit cynical, that pulling together all these fresh perspectives on this age old question, is still a very noble venture.
However maybe the real objective to this pursuit is more like, what has already been coined by some -- "unlearning." For all the acclaimed objectivity of the scientific method, isn't the concept of science itself, a dogma, especially when we begin to glimpse that consciousness is necessary for matter to even exist, but science still demands that matter and all else, exist independently ? However using our mind is obviously still important, essential in fact, but using it in the service of . . . what ? This to me is the real question. Once we step out of giving our intellect full and autonomous authority, we seem to immediately become heretics doing a sacrilege -- in regards to this Church thing again, whether its progress or science. Can't science really stand on its own merits ? Maybe in truth, it really can't !
To me, in some sense, some big sense -- "science" is counterposed by "life." You know like people who really know some stuff, some good stuff, but haven't acquired it at an institute of higher learning, may cite "the school of life" instead. Learn from them instead and eventually become them, through the real progress -- of your own life -- but also the collective one of your tribe (and/or all of humanity). In effect -- serve life itself. And use your intellect to make up all the "takes" necessary, as needed, for each evolving situation of this -- "life."
However, there could still be some personal benefit to a deep search for metaphysical truth, as it seems to be for the theoretical physicists driven to search for the ultimate theory unifying of all of the known forces of Nature (but didn't Einstein already do that, and it was kept secret ?). In alchemy it is known that it is never really about turning lead into gold but the real objective is the transformation of consciousness, however the pursuit is still necessary and needs to be undertaken with extreme dedication, as if it is the only thing worthy of doing -- this path with a purpose then configuring, aligning and transforming the consciousness of the Alchemist.
Then what about this "death" that it would be foolish to deny we will encounter at some point ? Maybe that's all been taken care of already in doing our best in life ? Sure there are all those "takes on how it all works" -- ones that can't be mentioned while still adhering to proper scientific inquiry -- like the concept of the "soul." Interestingly, the Egyptians had a different concept that really blows ours out of the water -- of the Ba and the Ka in perpetual dialectic relationship to each other -- till death, when the prospect of the evolved Akh becomes possible through the merging of the two. Now wasn't that evolved, and doesn't it demonstrate that metaphysical concepts like these, although having merit and meaning, are still specific to each culture and epoch of time ?
Then what about the "guide" that inevitably appears in all of the accounts of NDEs i've read -- giving the recently departed, but arrived there instead -- their choice of going on into the afterlife or going back to do some special mission for humanity or at least taking another stab at their personal life plan of balancing out some inequity to their soul, taken in previous incarnations. But this immediately brings up the already coined terms "dharma" and "karma" -- and we can't have those in any respectable review of literature, while retaining academic merit. Ah, this is going to be impossible !
Honestly this keeps me going back to tidbits of wise counsel i'm come across in my journeys -- either literary, geographic or interdimensional. This is one that made me take notice on the eve of the plandemic (eves are more potent than the days-of); it's by a wise Hopi: https://www.pressenza.com/2021/08/hopi-indian-chief-white-eagle-this-moment-humanity-is-experiencing-can-be-seen-as-a-door-or-a-hole/ If we prepare and take death as a "door" we walk through, rather than a "hole" we are forced to fall into (by any of our life's circumstances) -- we will continue with the same attitude of care, joy and positivity, we held for each other, our Earth, and ourselves.
But yet although i keep hearing this type of wisdom, sometimes in sequences that could be framed in Jung's concept of "synchronicity" -- in each instance having a slightly different form but essentially the same message -- one for me personally, i still keep being drawn to know stuff -- to really figure stuff out (metaphysical stuff) -- somehow as if to act as my legacy that i will hold up as i pass through the dimensional barrier. Undoubtedly it will be laughed at -- but it will likely be i myself who is the one laughing, while lamenting rhetorically "not again."
Great post, with one exception. You use acronyms, but don't give us the details of what the acronyms stand for. So we are left to try and guess. I've gotten in the habit of helping the reader understand because there are so many acronyms now days it's hard to decipher. When I use an acronym I do it like this: Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) then when ever I need to use FBI the reader knows what I'm referring to. I'm in agreement with the other commenters on this and most of your post. Having experienced a Near Death Experience (NDE) in my senior year of high school it took me almost 2 decades to understand what I had experienced and integrate it into my life to make sense of it all. We are all one consciousness, but individual expressions of such. When we lose this physical vehicle we remain an individual expression of consciousness within the collective consciousness. If we use water as a comparison to consciousness. We are like a rain drop that falls into the ocean. We may meld within the whole we still remain individual as a single bee in a series of hives. The energy of consciousness remains individual but we have access to the whole of consciousness energy if we train our physical vehicle to access those levels of consciousness. Experiencing the light of Love for the brief time I was exposed to it. That is the best expression of the experience using words to try to paint the picture. As I am not aware of better words to use as a paint or canvas to express the journey. Fear is put within us to overcome. At least that has been my experience. You need to face and overcome your fear and your fear will change for another challenge. The more you do this, the calmer you become and the less frequent the challenges come. I spent 20 years fighting fire. I've faced and over came numerous fears and challenges. To the point it's all a jig saw puzzle now you just calmly try to decide where that situation, drama, experience, etc. fits into the whole picture. Hope this helps. Great article... Peace...
More primitive humans could only record what they understood to be happening based on their current experiences, with all the real understandings in this article and reader comments. For instance. John was told to record his dream or vision, and that description is available in the book of Revelation. Loosely, he described commerce in the last days, as a number on one’s hand or forehead to buy or sell. Perhaps, John observed todays individual, presenting a credit card cupped in his hand, or compact cell phone presented with a digital passport.
Or even a computer chip implanted under the skin, now currently being done in large corporations to bypass lanyard I.D.’s.
On another thought, many persons today have verified recollections of people, places and events that took place many years before their birth, and described places they had never been. Reincarnation?
The door I open, is that I consider early man trying to record and pass down stories of events as best he could understand.
Yes, the spirit is real.
Humans who embrace bad while embodied here in this life go to a different place than humans who embrace love.
My spiritual experiences, visitations, and senses have proven to me, beyond doubt, that we are surrounded in real time by loving spirits, ancestors, ancient souls, those who pass before us. We need only think of them, talk to them, acknowledge them and they hear us.
Sometimes they present a sign in an observant, quiet moment.
We are loved, all of us, and supported more than we could ever imagine, by spirits.
There are spirits who do not reside in the light, as well. I have seen them and felt their desire for attention, a pulling toward them, if you will. They are unhappy, but choose their path through their own behavior and ill will. I acknowledged them: "I see you. I'm not interested. That's not where I'm headed."
The welcome and acceptance of light and love is where my heart naturally goes. And man, it is beautiful. They are beautiful. I do not fear death. The warmth and love in the spirit world is Universal, whole, unconditional, and where I plan to reside to assist those in need of it after life in this body. I will join my Mom there, my brother, my college friend, all part of a loving network, after my body dies.
They are right here among us, see us, hear us. We need only call on or think of them to know their presence.
My sense is, is that yes our personality is constructed, but also contains the personality of our 'soul', and is expressed to greater or lesser degrees in this life. I don't think energy is fundamental, I think consciousness is, and consciousness directs energy into form. I don't believe we meld back into a soup of greater consciousness after death, losing the boundary of our personal soul consciousness. I believe we are both part of the greater soul consciousness and a unique expression of it, after death also. I think Jesus tried to impart that to us. If I didn't have the common experiences of remote viewing, precognition, communication to souls disembodied, I most likely would believe all of this was codswallop, so as a naturally doubting Thomas, I am glad I am reassured with such experiences. But it is only partial reassurance, being embodied is the most familiar experience I have as well as interaction with other embodied souls, and the unfamiliar is frightening to me at least. I just don't see how we can truly capture through the lens of science the mechanics of what is going on in non-material reality, I think it really is like trying to nail jelly to the wall. Going back to Jesus, he demonstrated according to what is written (and I hope it is not exaggerated, perhaps it is) the non local, non physical nature of reality and he tried to inform us that it is powered creatively by 'love' consciousness. I don't like using that word 'love' because a word really doesn't convey the true meaning. It is an experience, a very powerful and profound experience that I think we humans rarely experience, even if we think we do.