You can learn how to obtain first-hand knowledge of life beyond what our society considers normal. You can learn how to extend your abilities in ways that our society considers to be impossible. Most important, you can experience the world in ways that shed new light on the reality that has been set forth (and then repeatedly misunderstood) in all the world’s scriptures.
My own experience convinces me that this life is not our only life. We are immortal spirits temporarily inhabiting bodies. And we are not separate “individuals” but are all connected one to another because we are part of a larger being. This larger being cares about us and can be trusted, and is a source of foresight and wisdom except when we lose communication with it by failing to remember that we are more than we appear to be.
It should be obvious that this sketch of the way I now see the world passes for a good description of God as God is understood in the Christian, Jewish and Moslem traditions. In fact, it corresponds with descriptions handed down by mystics and other wanderers in realms beyond what I call 3D Theater. But it also encompasses Bob Monroe’s description of earth-bound individuals as probes sent into what he calls the Time-Space Illusion in order to experience earth life. The probes live as if they were separate beings, and at physical death they reunite not only with the part of the larger being that stayed outside of 3D Theater, but also with the others who were in the physical.
The fact that many different religions and philosophies and first-hand accounts may be describing the same reality ought to open up many a line of fruitful inquiry, retrieving various babies from the bushes where they landed with the bathwater. The implications of these few statements are immense, literally changing from birth to death and beyond. If you once see us as all connected through a larger being, many otherwise puzzling reports become matters of common sense. They become, in fact, only what is to be expected.
Communication with the dead? Telepathy? Distant healing? Ghosts?
Our society has opinions on all of them; all over the landscape, but it has no knowledge, only opinion.
And this goes double for the ultimate questions. Is there an afterlife? Does God exist? Do spirits exist? If so, do God and the angels concern themselves with human lives?
Of these things, our society teaches nothing because it knows nothing. Indeed, silently, by implication, it teaches that we can know nothing. Our society not only lacks a common body of accepted knowledge, it lacks a commonly accepted method of acquiring knowledge on these subjects. Instead, various elements in society dismiss the questions with contempt, or maintain a benevolent neutrality, or invite us (silently) to form opinions based on the opinions of others, or on blind faith.
But when we find that certain classes of phenomena continue to be reported throughout history, we ought to take that as a sign that we need to find or construct a better picture of the world we live in. Only an inadequate world-view forces us continually to ignore inconvenient data or put it into separate boxes that don’t communicate with the rest of our mental world or with each other.
Among those inconvenient reports: Ghosts. Out-of-body experiences. Possession and witchcraft. Telepathy. UFOs. Afterlife experiences, including heaven and hell. The power of prayer. The ability to heal by touch, and at a distance. Plenty more.
Every way of seeing the world that has been believed over time by large numbers of people has at least some grain of truth. The trick is to distinguish between reality and the logical structure that was constructed atop it. The way to do that is to see which parts can be reconciled with other parts, because truth, ultimately, is one.
A way of seeing things that offers a continuing path for us to explore and refine, that makes our world whole without chopping out large bits that we can’t find room for, and does so without requiring watertight mental compartments, that doesn’t require us to believe incompatible things and think in mutually incompatible ways, that reconciles and affirms the beliefs of many seemingly incompatible belief-systems – do you think that might have some value to us?
[Adapted From my book Muddy Tracks]
Everything you say here condences into a nice package of what the world we live in “could be like.” However, the past 1,000 years have shown that organized religion takes up so much room in the lives of humans–by using its’ power to determine “what” people “can” believe–that major changes need to be made in the religious realms before there is room enough for a true transformation of our collective consciousness.
By and large, religion dictates what society is willing to embrace as an “acceptable reality.” Religion forms the parameters of reality, and informs people of “the way things are.” These narrow views of reality are heavily enforced with the promise of heavenly bliss, or eternal damnation. A reformation, or even a deconstruction of these major religious traditions is long overdue. This does not mean that the knowledge and wisdom found in their written traditions should be “thrown out with the bathwater”. Quite the opposite, for there is much to be learned from ancient written traditions that has yet to take hold in the minds and hearts of humanity, despite religious claims to the contrary.
However, such ancient written traditions need to be put into a 21st century context in order for our 21st century experience to expand enough for a new collective consciousness to be formed.
Nice blog Frank. Sometimes we all need to communicate what we are thinking and feeling. Thank you.